Very welcome for the presentation of the half-year one results for 2022. First of all, as executive summary, we are very proud about the strong recovery of the operational result of the company and the free cash flow generation. Needless to remind you that the first quarter of this year was still heavily impacted by restrictive measures in Canada. Several cinemas were still closed, all the cinemas were closed in the Netherlands, and we had the obligation to close our shops in France and in some other countries and theaters during the month of January and February.
That, of course, impacted the business and the fact that we only had the first, let's say more important, blockbuster in the month of April, and then essentially in May and June, where we had a strong content lineup again. Nevertheless, with 77.2% of the 2019 attendance, and you will see in the presentation that we often will refer to 2019 because 2021 results, impacted by closures and COVID, doesn't tell us a lot. Compared to the 2019 results, we made 77.2% of the attendance, resulting in 93.5% of the H1 2019 revenue. We will explain to you later. We corrected this for all the one-off COVID related items.
Talking about profit on vouchers that we booked for the past, rent abatements, rent subsidies, wage subsidies. This, in fact, understates the real performance of the company because we eliminated the positive exceptional elements. For instance, if you have a wage subsidy, you could expect that, and that there's a trade-off in Canada to keeping your teams on board. Of course, if you would not have that wage subsidy, you would eliminate, of course, the cost as well, or try to eliminate it by putting more staff in economic unemployment. What we didn't do because of the subsidy. We corrected the subsidy, but not the cost. The result that we will have corrected is rather a bit understated than anything else.
In June, we went up to 107% of visitors versus 2019. It's not like for like, it's so MJR included and the new builds. In Q2, we even attained 87% of our visitors, resulting in 104% of our 2019 result. We told you before that we saw that some countries lagged a little bit behind, like Spain and the U.S. There we saw that during the month of June and July, and right now they have caught up and are on the same pace as the other countries in terms of recovery. The month of July started very strong on the same pace as the month of June until the July 15th, when we were hit by the heatwave.
The heatwave was very impactful for us. We see now with the rain, visitors coming back bit by bit. Nevertheless, we can tell you that the financial result for the month of July was very strong. We see a very strong contribution of the Entrepreneurship plans, and we have been testing in different ways as well, the H1 results. What we announced before, that we would be able to compensate 25% visitor loss. Not a goal, but as an approach in terms of EBITDA generation and making the EBITDA generation the same as 2019. We can assure you that those Entrepreneurship plans are effective. The sales per visitor remain high and there is a higher demand for experience and premium products.
We have been compensating some inflation as well, and we think that we are, let's say, in front of a new price increase to further compensate inflation. Because what we have been doing in terms of higher ticket price and higher concession prices dates from December and January this year, so before the Ukraine crisis, war crisis. We only compensated in the results we have here part of the inflation. We will probably go in the next weeks to come for another review of our ticket prices and concession prices. We had as well a very high, let's say, average ticket price and an extremely high demand for experience and concessions immediately after the lockdown, during what I called the liberation.
Higher than what we had in our Entrepreneurship plan. Let's see, out of prudence, we have been planning in our profit plans for 2022, a lower average ticket price and in-theater sales than what we were making at the end of 2021. We have seen that, let's say that higher demand is sustainable. That makes that today our average ticket prices and our average spend exceeds, in fact, the profit plan KPIs for both activities. The other business lines shows, as well, a more smooth recovery. A strong recovery, but more smooth. It's clear that if the government allows you as an individual to go back to the cinema, that some customers, the day after, already go to the cinema.
In screen advertising and B2B, you need more time to restart and to plan your events. In business-to-business, the second quarter was particularly strong, even stronger than 2019. I think it has to do as well with the fact that so many events within your private life as well, so many, anniversaries and other parties have been postponed during the pandemic. We have here in business-to-business, taking advantage of the catching up in fact of that activity. We are not very visible in the CapEx amounts, but we are investing further in expansion and premiumization. That will more impact or impact more the results of the coming months. We'll come back to that as well.
We continued with our strategic pillars, which in fact are underneath the strategy since 2008, or the approach since 2008. That's where the improvement potential comes from for expansion. Let's say that the Entrepreneurship plan is nothing else than an acceleration of the execution of and in a more aggressive way, certainly essentially in cost savings on headquarter levels in the different countries and headquarters. That's what has been the basis for our so-called Entrepreneurship plan. Further highlights. The first quarter, as I said before, still impacted by closures and restrictive measures. We will further in the presentation, that's the first time that we do that for a half year, make a distinction of the performance Q1 versus Q2.
Because in Q2, you all see much better the recovery and the company taking its financial strength, because it's not impacted by closures or restrictive measures. We continue with the further rollout of premium products, in Europe, the Cosy Seats Plus. Then in Canada, we have now and we added 10 theaters where we did roll out what we call Premiere Seats, and which is nothing else than a combination of our recliner seats with our Cosy Seat concept. Very high demand. The occupancy of those seats close to 50% compared to 22% for the other seats. Very high return, more than 30% return on investment. We are preparing to roll out those concepts in more theaters. We are preparing for a rollout and test as well in the United States.
Same thing for Laser ULTRA, which is very successful in those countries as well. We ordered, in fact, 220 laser upgrades this year in January. We are waiting for delivery to 150 retrofits. Where we will swap the light engine in the existing projectors and 150 new systems. We are counting on 50%-55% energy saving. Since the electricity costs in Spain is the highest in Europe, we will prioritize the replacement of our existing equipment in that country. I said before, Entrepreneurship plan fully executed. STAR plans are ongoing. I will come back on that more in detail later on.
As we announced last week, we took over the lease of two Spanish cinemas, one in Marbella and one in Barcelona. The existing tenant will leave for the end of October, and we will take over the beginning of November. In fact, both cinemas together made 1 million visitors pre-pandemic, are located in zones with a higher than average buying power than the rest of the Spanish market. Yeah, it's visitors for free. We didn't pay for the business as such. We came to a new agreement and renegotiated the deal terms of the lease agreement for the future and taking more into account, let's say the increased uncertainty that we have about the rhythm of recovery of that market.
We will introduce there as well our known concepts, not only the way of working and so our three strategic pillars, but as well our Cosy Seats, Laser ULTRA laser projectors as a standard and two MegaKiddies. I'm very excited to announce to you the appointment of Mr. Jeroen Mouton as CFO of the Kinepolis Group. I guess that some of you will have met him or know him. Let's say that first of all, there was a lot of interest in the position of CFO. Together with the Chairman of our audit committee, Mr. Geert Vanderstappen, I did all the interviews. We appointed Russell Reynolds Associates to do the search for us. Let's say that Jeroen ticked all the boxes for us.
He has a lot of experience internationally and nationally. Worked for companies like Procter & Gamble, where he started his career. Sioen Industries, Electrawinds, Daikin, and is today CFO of the Roularta Media Group, as you know. Jeroen will start the November 15th, and I'm really looking forward to work together with Jeroen. Here, a couple of pictures and, let's say, bullet points on the investments we made in the premium moviegoing experience. The introduction of the Premiere Seats in 10 additional Landmark Cinemas. We had already three Landmark Cinemas where we tested during 2021. We renovated completely the theater St. Catharines in the Pen Centre in Canada. We are now preparing for the introduction of VIP Seats and Laser ULTRA in the U.S. in the third quarter.
We came to an agreement as well to deploy a new theater management system from the provider Eikona Cinema Manager in the European sites. This will allow us to better program and adjust not only the trailering, but as well other let's say commercial messages and screen advertising, to based on the movie and on each customer group that comes to watch those movies, we will be able to do that from a central point. We will be further as we will be able to control as well what's going on and if those trailers yes or no have been shown.
It is as well the basis for another project that we will, let's say, where we are finally testing, and where we will be able, probably to communicate with each individual in a theater. That's something that we are planning to test and to launch in the coming weeks and months. I'm very excited about that approach and idea and more to come about this. Then we will, let's say, be furnishing Kinepolis Metz Amphithéâtre, and opening is foreseen end of Q3, Q4, depending on how fast suppliers will be able to provide us all the equipment. Here you have a picture of that or a rendering of that cinema.
That means we will have a portfolio of 110 theaters, 1,135 screens, and it's from November on, the situation. Right now we have 108 theaters that we have in operation. Here you have the results, and I will need my glasses for this. This is the result as announced for the first half, and where we compare as well to 2019. Here you will see that we made 77% of the visitors, 13,668,000, compared to 17,713,000. That we are making with this, and it depends if you exclude or include those exceptional COVID measures, 93% or 97% of the revenue.
Based on this, the EBITDA margin is 4.99% and compares to 3.99% for H1. EBITDAL, the one I'm looking at all the time, EUR 3.68 compared to EUR 3.12. The financial debt came back to EUR 450 million from EUR 474.5 million at the end of last year. We made again a positive result of EUR 9.1 million. Here we are splitting up in, let's say, the two quarters. There you see the second quarter where we have a lot of exceptionals. I will come back to that immediately. We went up to 6.15%, which is higher than the run rate, and that's why we decide to eliminate the exceptional elements. Sorry, I pushed too fast. Yeah, this is the slide where I need to be.
Here we eliminated, in fact, on the revenue level, profit on vouchers. We had in 2019 a lot of outstanding vouchers and most of them were valid for 12 months. We have prolonged the validity period of those vouchers until the end of June 2022, so that we gave the opportunity to the customers to come during a period that the cinemas were open and to use their voucher. From there we add, let's say, an incremental result of EUR 5.4 million, which is not cash. It's just as such a result impact. Then we add wage, rent, and other subsidies and rent abatements all together for an amount of EUR 6.4 million.
By doing this, we are understating the real result we made, because by eliminating, for instance, the wage subsidies in Canada represented the fact that we were asked to keep our staff on board. In fact, we paid them their salary and the Canadian government paid their salary. We eliminated only the subsidy but not the cost. The real revenue and the real result would have been higher. The second thing that I would like to emphasize here is that we are still missing important economies of scale because we are not completely, let's say, on recovery level and to the level to where we will evolve. That's clear for us that we continue to make more and more visitors proportionally.
That's an important element as well in EBITDA and EBITDA contribution per visitor. As such, if we see in our profit plans the difference between the first half and the second half based on profit plan in terms of contribution per visitor, then we see that in the second half and essentially in the fourth quarter, there's an important, let's say, economy of scale as such. That's an element, of course, that's not taken into account, but we illustrate a bit already with the difference of Q1 to Q2. You see in the second quarter, that we are at EUR 4.19 per visitor compared to EUR 4.06 in 2019, same quarter, and EUR 3.73 compared to EUR 3.26.
Take into account as well that here you compare 2022 with M JR four new theaters, new builds, and Arcaplex two cinemas in the Netherlands. Let's say we made equivalent of the revenue with EBIT, with more theaters. Your operating costs and your overhead is more important, and you will see further that we compensated that as well, essentially thanks to those entrepreneurship plan. In this background, I think that this is a result we are particularly proud about. This is not something that we will show in the future, but it's just to, let's say, we think that with exceptionals on the slide before, for the second quarter. With EUR 6.15 per visitor, we would have put you on the wrong leg.
I don't know if it's the right expression in English. That's the reason why we wanted to show you this result as well. The reality is somewhere in between in terms of performance. Here you see visitors compared to 2021. Doesn't tell us a lot. We have a slide further compared to 2019, will give you a better view on, let's say, how the market recoups in terms of revenue, is that slide. Because this is essentially driven by which theaters were opened or closed last year. Before we go further, I would like to invite you to a couple of images that we have of events that will illustrate how we enriched the experience for the customer during the several movies that we have been launching.
We'll be back for the rest of the presentation after this movie. Here you have, let's say, the revenue by country, but again, doesn't tell us a lot because of the closures in 2021 and, yeah, the new situation in 2022. Same for the revenue by activity. You saw, for instance, that in the first half of 2021, real estate was more important because some of our tenants continued based on the agreements we made to pay part of the rent, and that was then an important amount compared to the closed theaters. You see that coming back to normal more and more in H1. Here you see the weight of the top five blockbusters in 2019, that was close to 23%. Now it was 38.3%.
What we essentially see and feel is that those blockbusters perform very well and that customers come back for. All the fans come back for the movies they want to see. We are still in competition with everyone catching up in his agenda with postponed anniversaries and other parties from the COVID period, which makes that, you know, just going to the movies and picking out a movie is not that, let's say, is not that important in terms of activity for the time being, but we estimate that that will recover in the future. I was listening to an interview of the two Jans that are running the Sportpaleis in Antwerp, and they witnessed the same.
They said that all the concerts with the fan base perform very well, but all the rest does 30%-35% less because there is no space in the agenda just to go to the cinema and pick out a movie. They witness that they feel the same. The lineup for the third, fourth quarter. The third quarter, we had a couple of strong movies like Thor, the Minions. Bullet Train is very good. There will be a re-release of Avatar one in an upgraded version in September as well. It's essentially the fourth quarter that is particularly strong in terms of visitors with several franchises, important franchises, and, as, let's say, most important release, the second movie of Avatar.
Some of our colleagues have already seen it and were really blown away. In terms of technology as well, it will be a step up again because Avatar is for me more an experience than a movie. Third quarter, the lineup of local content where we pay more and more attention. Here you see that is rich as well in several countries. I'm not going to go through all of them. For instance, in Belgium, the movie Zillion is very promising, and we combine that as well with an initiative where we will reopen a Zillion discotheque in the Waagnatie in Antwerp. We are selling that at EUR 180, so movie included and a reserved table in the new Zillion.
We will have that for one month open. After two weekends of two weeks, we were sold out completely. It's clear that the willingness to pay for more experience is something we need to work on. It's a strategic element for us for the future, and that will help us to even increase further revenue per visitor. Before, because I will take this time in absence of our CFO and in waiting for Jeroen to come the financial part as well. Essentially, what we can and what gives us a lot of comfort is we have, during the pandemic, been working on that so-called Entrepreneurship plan.
We said to the teams, we need to prepare for the worst, because during the pandemic, a lot of initiatives were taken by the studios to go with their blockbuster releases immediately on premium VOD. Let's say, in that background, we said, "Look, we don't know how the new normal will look like, so let's prepare, with a plan where we dramatically lower our break-even point." That's the so-called Entrepreneurship plan. The STAR plan is a lot of initiatives, more offensive. I'll come back on that in a second. But let's say that we executed that Entrepreneurship plan, that the H1 results clearly illustrates that that plan is effective and works.
You know, we all would have hoped probably that we would have made already more visitors and that we would have caught up more aggressively. We are certainly not at the end point, but what we have been doing, if 100% of the visitors would come back instead of the EUR 147 million EBITDA, and I'm talking about the real EBITDA, so not the IFRS one, we would make more than EUR 210 million EBITDA in the future with an impact of 25% and depending on the country mix, maybe even a little bit more. We would make the same EBITDA as 2019. The company is, from a financial point of view, sound, is strong, and from there on, in terms of value creation, there are two scenarios.
Next year, 100% of the visitors are back, and that's not to be excluded at all because blockbusters make more than before. If those mid-sized movies regain a place in our agenda and makes more success, and we will do everything, of course, to focus on that, to sell those movies better and more. It's not excluded that we would make 100% of our visitors. If in the long term, in the most negative case, we would make 25% or 30% less visitors, we would make the same EBITDA.
I can tell you, and I think that was what was yesterday announced by some of our colleagues illustrates this, that will get many of our competitors on their knees and will make it, for us, easier to expand and to add new theaters to the group and there do our magic of improvement potential. Where you know that before the pandemic, on average, in one and a half year, we doubled the EBITDA per visitor of all the acquisitions we have been doing. The know-how and the results of the Entrepreneurship plan must in fact even increase the improvement potential that we will have in those acquisitions. I can tell you, we have done those exercises as well on, for instance, the new Spanish theaters. We could lose 40% visitors before we would go through the break-even point.
Yeah, I'm very excited about that kind of transactions. We will add, in that way, visitors, and probably in a cheaper way than when everyone would be again profitable and 100% of the visitors will have come back. If you would ask me what is the most likely scenario, I think somewhere in between. Because, you know, demographics, the trends we saw since the Second World War, you know, probably won't have stopped in the background of, the pandemic. Again, we know that recession in the past was often in the advantage of, the smaller expenses and that people start to rationalize their behavior, and that's what we, have seen. It's not excluded that we make 100% of our visitors neither.
We, as a management, have always trying to prepare for what we can't manage rather, and what we will undergo, rather than speculate and be hopeful for something that might never come. Those STAR plans, we launched a couple of products already, and all of those new products often have to do with important ICT developments, and that's why it take some time. In the U.S. and Canada, we launched new loyalty programs. We launched a Movie Club, which is a subscription, but not unlimited. We don't want unlimited subscriptions. Unlimited subscriptions are only, let's say, successful for an exhibitor when people don't show up, and that's not the goal. We want customers in our theaters. We started with the Movie Club.
We have 40,000 members in the meantime, and we started with it in the month of September. We will launch those in a couple of markets as well. We think that it will allow us even for the occasional moviegoer who comes once or twice a year to the movies to increase even further our ticket prices because they're less price sensitive. With this, we will have a formula for those that are, let's say, the frequent moviegoers, the frequent flyers. That's one of the backgrounds of this, and we try to increase visitor frequency. We will launch a new e-shop as well very soon, as well for B2B as B2C.
We're working on new websites, which gives us more, let's say, the ability to upsell and an easier walk-through process for the customer. Then last but not least, I was promised that I will see the first tests beginning of next week of an approach that will allow us to communicate with each individual in a theater, and that will open again a new world of products and services we will be able to offer to our customers. The financial part, I said before, with 77.2% H1, 93.5% of the revenue, again corrected for the one-off COVID-related items, an EBITDA of EUR 50.4 million.
The net financial debt went to EUR 450 million, thanks to a free cash flow generation of EUR 25.7 million, of which EUR 45.4 million from operations and payment of lease liabilities, EUR 10.7 million working capital negative impact, EUR 4.5 million interest paid, EUR 3.8 million maintenance CapEx, EUR 4.6 million income taxes paid, EUR 3.9 million investments in internal and external expansion, EUR 1 million resulting from the sale of treasury shares. These were shares that we had to cover our option plan, share option plans, and so not all the options were, let's say, utilized or distributed, so we sold the excess.
We had EUR 300,000 amortization of refinancing transaction costs, EUR 100,000 in positive proceeds from sales of property, plant, and equipment, and EUR 1.7 million of effect on cash. The next slide you see, let's say the cash position at the end of year one, almost EUR 200 million of available cash. In the first half, at the end of the month of January, we repaid EUR 61.4 million of bonds. That was a bond that came to maturity. That combined with the fact that after New Year, you always have to pay your suppliers and the studios after the high season. We came to a point of EUR 120 million.
That 122 was the lowest point to end again the first half with EUR 163.2 million. You see an important cash generation as well with what we are doing. The weighted average maturity of the credit lines we have at the end of the first half is 3.67 years, and the planned investments in new builds in 2022 is EUR 4.9 million. This is essentially the fit-out of Metz Amphitheatre. Here you see the revenue by country, and it's more interesting than the other slide with just the visitors and where we compare to 2019. You will see that further in the presentation, we will compare to 2019 as well because it tells us more than just comparing with 2021.
Here we have in total EUR 228 million revenue compared to EUR 238 million . You see the difference in countries. For instance, the Netherlands compared to EUR 28.7 million, made EUR 26.6 million, knowing that the Netherlands was one month closed in the month of January. Two cinemas extra, Arcaplex. Belgium, EUR 62.8 compared to EUR 70 million with first quarter without essentially blockbusters and content. France, EUR 31 compared to EUR 38. Spain, weaker in that period, but catching up, as I said, to the same rhythm of the other countries with EUR 18.1 million compared to EUR 27.5. United States, no comparable, was not acquired, was acquired in October 2019, but as well, very similar to Spain, so less than.
Canada was a little bit weaker as well in that period, but all of them caught up later on in the summer. Here you see the box office per visitor. Let's say that for 2021 to 2022, inflation in the, let's say, in the increase of prices here is only 5%. So the rest is more premiumization. As such, if you compare to 2019, then we go from EUR 7.43 to EUR 8.82. So which is, I think, a very strong performance. We are preparing to again compensate part of the inflation we have been confronted with another price increase, where we'll define country by country, theater by theater, what is doable without impacting too much or not at all, the volumes.
That's something we are planning for September of this year. You see, in-theater sales is without in-theater sales delivery. A very high or a very important increase. This is something we see in all the countries and almost all the theaters as well. Sales and events, of course, up in an important way compared to 2021. As well, sales and events were for the first half 11.3% higher than 2019. The month of July was again a very good month. Here, I think that you have the catching up as well of all the events that has been postponed during the pandemic.
Let's say that where we are still suffering in B2C and in competition with all the other, events and anniversaries and parties where we are catching up as individuals, we are rather taking in the business-to-business, environment, advantage of this. Screen advertising is recovering as well in a very important way, but still for H1, 27.5% lower. We see the trend as well coming closer and closer to 2019. Here again, the first quarter, it's not like switching the light on. You need again start to sell your campaigns, and you don't sell a campaign for tomorrow, you sell a campaign for within two or three months, as such.
Real estate, where we see an important recovery, because you know those tenants that we had that you know stopped their activity or went bankrupt, have in the meantime been replaced. Because of the fact that where we have been giving rent abatements during the pandemic, all of those agreements came to an end. Still, we are 12% lower than the first half 2019, but are working here as well on recovery. Brightfish is below 2019. Brightfish does screen advertising and sales and events. You see screen advertising, the blue block is again going up in a very important way.
Sales and events is something that needs more time to plan because here we are more working on, let's say, events like the BNP Paribas Fortis Film Days, which are more, let's say, organized on a market level and, yeah, needs time to catch up and is foreseen for the end of the year, that kind of events. Same for film distribution. Rather a good first half. Has to do with the fact that since a couple of years, we are building up a rich catalog, so we have always been investing in theatrical rights, essentially for the Belgian market and for Flemish content. But since a couple of years, we negotiate as well the after theatrical rights. So, talking about streaming, free TV, pay TV, limited in volume DVD and Blu-ray.
Together with Dutch FilmWorks, our partner in the Netherlands, we have been investing in the past eight years about EUR 1.2 million a year in content, essentially in American content. This is the result of the buildup of that catalog, and it's essentially income from streamers that makes here the difference on top of the theatrical releases we organized in the first half of 2022. Operating costs compared to H1. Again, let me emphasize and underline here, MJR on top of the H1 result, full in Spain for the full first half. Arcaplex was acquired later on in the month of December 2019. Still you see that our marketing and selling expenses and administrative expenses are lower than the H1 2019.
has to do a little bit with startup, but was essentially to do with our entrepreneurship plan that worked as well on these costs levels. Other operating income is positive EUR 3.6 million. It is essentially grants and CNC grants that were booked under this item. Here you have the EBITDA and EBITDA per country. So there you see that I'm in the EBITDA now that all the bigger countries, Belgium, France, Canada, Spain, the Netherlands, even the United States, contributed in an important way to that EBITDA generation. Depreciation, amortization, and provisions have been more stable because less impacted, unfortunately, by the pandemic, because essentially we continued during the pandemic to amortize our theaters and our equipment that was out of use at that moment in time.
I invited my former CFO, couldn't we stop amortizing this? Because this is impacting the solvency of the company, and it's just an accounting thing, it's not a reality thing. But of course, we are not allowed to do so. But that's essentially what happened. You see there more stable evolution and not important impacts of COVID as such. Financial result, interest expense, so same thing here. Financial charges, FX. We are, let's say, we have each time that we have been refinancing our investments in the past, we have tried to match the maturity and the duration of the financial instruments and the bonds or credits that we obtained with the payback period of the investment. We went for fixed interests all the time, so this is the result.
It's not very impacted by this. You see, again, essentially more bank charges because of the recovery of the activity compared to H1, and it's often per transaction that you pay those bank charges in your theaters. Taxes. 15.2 positive in H1 because of the result before taxes. EUR 3.2 million taxes that we have foreseen now result EUR 9.1 million. Effective tax rate will be around 25%-26% for the future. Here you have the waterfall from EBITDA to result. EBITDA, after the EUR 17.9 million of leases that we have been paying essentially in Canada, brings us to an EBITDA of EUR 68.2 million, 40.4 million depreciations, amortizations, and provisions, resulting in EUR 27.9 million EBIT.
After EUR 15.6 million of financial costs and EUR 3.2 million taxes, a net result for the first half of EUR 9.1 million. Investments with more to come essentially in internal expansion. The 220 Barco laser upgrades and further planned premiumizations that are ongoing essentially in Premiere Seats and a couple of initiatives in Europe, as well. Here you see the breakdown. We had in the first half of 2021, more external expansion, and has to do with the fact that we continued with the development and construction of the five new builds, as we discussed before. Free cash flow, the waterfall, coming from EUR 63.3 million.
The income tax, working capital impact, maintenance CapEx, interest paid, and then the repayment of the or the payment of the lease liabilities brings us to EUR 25.7 million free cash flow for the first half of 2022. Here you see the free cash flow evolution. Essentially in the first half of 2019, we did an acquisition. That's the 16 million that you will see or the 26 million that you will see. We paid 24 million of dividends. So that's essentially the biggest difference with the first half. That's financial debt evolution. Here you have the repayment of the. I need my glasses to see this. You have the repayment of the bond in the month of January for EUR 63.3 million.
Income taxes, working capital impact, EUR 7.7 million investments, interest and taxes paid, the EUR 4.8, and charges paid. Payment of lease liability, EUR 17.9. Then a couple of smaller amounts to do with the disposal of fixed assets, treasury shares that we sold, and the FX effect. Makes it a net financial debt at the end of H1 is EUR 450 million, and that results in a financial leverage ratio of 3.99 coming from 12.32 last year. We believe that this amount will get a lot lower at the end of the year and in the months to come. The maturity profile of the financial debt. We have another part of the term loan coming to maturity at the end of the year, EUR 10 million.
We have a bond, part of a bond, eight-year, EUR 15.8 million for 2023. The next important maturity date is for the bullet loans, the Gigarant loan of EUR 80 million in 2024. You see that we still have a lot of time ahead to recover and create more cash. Based on the cash position we have today, we got to already pay off these amounts, even the bullet loan of EUR 80 million. The balance sheet, where essentially you see that total equity, we are recovering in terms of solvency. We were around 16% before the pandemic, and so we evolve from EUR 10.1 million-EUR 12.6 million. Here as well, we expect that we will recover in the coming period.
We think that it will take a year to maximum one and a half year to be again at the same level of solvency of the pre-pandemic situation. Then a small transaction on the level of Kinohold Bis. The reference shareholder who sold 80,000 shares through the three of the four controlling shareholders, Joost Bert, Koenraad Bert, and Peter Bert, and 100,000 shares to myself. Financial calendar, business update, October 27th. Annual results 2022, the February 16th in the next year, 2023.