Mesdames et messieurs, welcome to the 2023 Ordinary and Extraordinary Annual Shareholder Meeting of Sartorius Stedim Biotech S.A. My name is Anne-Marie Graffin. I'm a member of the Board. In the absence of Mr. Joachim Kreuzburg, Chairman of the Board, I will chair the meeting in accordance with Article 22.9 of the Company's Article of Association. Mr. Joachim Kreuzburg is attending the meeting via video conference and will provide the presentation of the Company's activity and answer all the Q&A session. I would like to start by thanking all shareholders present in this room today. I would also like to thank all shareholders who casted their vote remotely ahead of the Shareholders' Meeting and people watching our live stream broadcast video. I really think that this format could offer the potential to encourage a higher level of physical participants and participation of our shareholders.
Next to me in this room are Mrs. Pascale Boissel, Member of the Board, Mrs. Christelle Baudere, Member of the Board representing of the employees; and Mr. Olivier Guitard, Head of Controlling of the BPS Division and General Manager of Sartorius South Europe. Are there any shareholders who wish to volunteer as a scrutineer of this meeting? Just please be aware that the scrutineers will need to stay after the meeting to finalize all formalities and sign the minutes. Okay, then, I may ask Mrs. Pascale Boissel and Mrs. Baudere to agree to act as scrutineers of this meeting. Thank you. I also ask Mr. Olivier Guitard to act as Secretary of this meeting. Thanks very much.
We also have the Auditors present in the room and a service of English and French translation, if need be. I will have now to inform you about several formalities, mainly in three categories, starting with the number of shares represented today and the number of voting rights. We have the quorum to hold this Combined Shareholder Meetings as follows. The quorum is currently of 92.89%. The final percentage will be available after the final treatment by the banks. Second, with regard Annual Combined Shareholders' Meeting, the agenda and the text of the resolutions are available here and were published in the Bulletin No. 20 of the BALO of February 15, 2023, for the avis de réunion.
In the Bulletin No. 29 of the BALO of March 8th, 2023, and in the newspaper La Provence of March 8th, 2023, for the avis de convocation rectificatif, adding a 15th Resolution related to a delegation of authority to increase the share capital reserve for the Company's employees pursuant to Article L. 225-129-6 of the French Commercial Code. No draft nor new items of the agenda were requested. Other information is all taken from the 2020 Universal Registration Documents. All documents required by law, which you may have received from Uptevia or your financial intermediary, are available as well here during the meeting and also on our website. Finally, regarding presence and voting.
The attendance list has been signed at the beginning of the meeting, and it indicates the number of shares and voting of rights of the shareholder presence and also the number of proxies received before the meeting. I will now need to introduce Annual Combined Shareholders' Meeting. under the competence first of the Ordinary Shareholders' Meeting, reading of the three reports of the Board of Directors, respectively, the Management report on the financial statement incorporating the Group's report, the report on the proposed resolutions of Shareholders' Meeting, and the Corporate Governance report. Reading of the three reports of Statutory Auditors, respectively, the report on the financial statements for the year ended December 31st , 2020. The report on the consolidated financial statements for the year ended December 31st, 2022.
The report of the regulated agreements covered by Article L. 225-38 and subsequent of the French Commercial Code. Approval of the financial statements for the year ended December 31st, 2022, and discharge to all Directors, which is gonna be Resolution 1. Approval of the consolidated financial statements for the year ended December 31st, 2022, namely Resolution 2. Allocation of the financial results for the year ended December 31st, 2022, Resolution 3. Approval of the special report of the Statutory Auditors concerning regulated agreements as referred to in Articles L. 225-38 and sequence of the French Commercial Code, Resolution 4. Six resolutions concerning the remuneration of the members of the Board will follow in compliance with the Say on Pay rules are described in our 2022 Universal Registration Document. We are now talking about Resolutions 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, and 10.
Authorization granted to the Boards to enable the Company to trade its own shares, Resolution No. 11. Finally, proxy to carry out formalities, Resolution No. 12. Under the competence of the Extraordinary Shareholder Meeting, the reading of the report of the Board of Directors on the proposed resolution. The reading of the Statutory Auditor's special report, three delegations of authority granted to the Board of Directors in relation with the share capital of our company. We are talking about Resolution 13, 14, and 15. Proxy to carry out the formalities, Resolution No. 16. I will now leave the floor to Mr. Joachim Kreuzburg, who will provide, as previously mentioned, the information about the activity of the Sartorius Stedim Biotech Group, including the main results for the fiscal year 2022.
Thank you very much, Anne-Marie. Good day, everyone. Good day, dear shareholders. Thank you for your interest in Sartorius Stedim Biotech and for your participation here today. I would like to first of all apologize for not being present in Aubagne today, due to the travel limitations in both France and Germany today. That's really a an unfortunate situation, but that triggered this different setup than we initially planned for. What I would like to do now is to report to you on the business of Sartorius Stedim Biotech in general, then of course also on the results of the last fiscal year and about the future perspectives of the company. Next chart, please. What we are doing, and what we are really focusing on completely with our purpose and our mission is health.
We want to contribute to one of the most relevant and pressing global topics, and that is human health. As you can see here on this chart, the world population, we all know that it's growing, and particularly the aging population is growing, and there is a strong correlation between the need for medicine and age. Something that you can't see on the chart is, for example, the fact that only a minority of the kids worldwide get vaccinated. It's clear there is still a huge demand for better health globally. Some more information here. What you can see is that therefore there is substantial investment going on, particularly into biologics, as biologics very often provide superior treatments to a couple of severe diseases. There is a strong and growing demand for such biologics, as you can see here as well.
Next one, please. Of course, there are challenges also associated to that, and we try to address those challenges. In a nutshell, you can say the key is here that the development and manufacturing of medicines is very time-consuming and costly. It's a complex matter. It takes a long time. You can see mostly, more than 10 years to bring a new drug to the market, and it's very costly because you have to try a lot of different options until you finally bring one drug to the market. Next one, please. That is, in a situation or within a context where a lot of innovative biological medicines are highly effective, enable the treatments, partially the cure of so far untreated and uncurable diseases. There are a couple of examples here.
I don't want to read them all out, but what you can see here is, and what we want to bring across by this chart is that there are unique treatments for a couple of severe diseases and partially also widespread diseases, partially more often diseases, but nevertheless. Another common denominator is they are very costly, and costly to an extent that it's a little bit prohibitive for a really a wide utilization of such drugs. Therefore, there are two key challenges. How can we shorten the timelines that were shown on the one chart before? How can we reduce the cost that it takes to bring such drugs to the market and bringing them to the patient? Next one, please. Just a couple of examples what we are doing here, and again, without going into all those details.
One example here that is rather addressing the early stage of developing a drug, bringing it to the manufacturing stage. What the example here is about the acceleration of cell line media and process development that we are providing by offering cell lines, media, but also process optimization technologies and services. Our Ambr 15 is a great example that enables the highly parallel running of experiments that help our customers to finally find the best clone and media combination to accelerate the time to the market. Later, next one, please. When it is about the manufacturing phase of a biopharmaceutical, further examples here would be in the downstream domain.
For example, a product that we have added to our portfolio through an acquisition that is reducing the downstream processing time very substantially, or another one, a known development here that reduces the costs associated to this process steps also very substantially. Again, tools that exactly address the pressing items of our customers in the industry. What is also important to note is, next one, please, that these technologies also help to improve the ecological footprint of biomanufacturing. Two factors that play a very significant role here is water consumption on the one hand and then energy consumption. Of course, very often there is a high correlation between energy consumption and CO2 footprint.
Again, you see some product examples here that stand for helping our customers to reduce the consumption of water and energy substantially. 30% is a good ballpark number here, of course, it differs very much on the particular process step, on the particular process also that our customers run here, the product, the volumes, et cetera. We are proud being able to say, next chart, please. We are proud being able to say that we are substantially contributing to one of the 17 sustainability goals being defined by the United Nations, and the third one that is in particular relevant here is good health and well-being for human beings. You can read also our mission here that is really addressing this by helping our customers to simplify and accelerate the processes, as I described before also along some examples. Of course, as you can imagine, this is also very much about innovation.
Next one, please. We therefore constantly look for making our product portfolio even more relevant, even more helpful to our customers, and that is a lot about innovation. As you can imagine, only innovation helps us to further shorten the timelines, reduce the cost position in those processes. We base our innovation activities on three pillars since many years already. We have a strong own competence in certain areas that we use to continuously develop new products in those segments. We also run a lot of collaborations with leading partners in the industry, in technological fields, where we have some competence, but where we think we are even stronger by cooperating with the right partners. Of course, we are constantly also looking for additional technologies, additional innovation through acquisitions.
Here again, you find on the right-hand side some examples for both the acquisitions as well as collaborations. I guess the names Albumedix and Polyplus you have heard before when we reported on those acquisitions. Next one, please. One example where we have particularly been able to build a strong portfolio through such acquisitions, supported also by own developments, also by cooperation, is in the field of what we call critical raw materials and ingredients for biomanufacturing with a strong focus on new modalities. Biological Industries, an acquisition in Israel that we closed 2019. Growth factors and cytokines were added to our portfolio one year later through the acquisition of CellGenix. Another year later, we were able to acquire cell media and supplements. Another year later, so last year, we added Albumedix recombinant albumin.
We really have built a unique, strong portfolio of such critical input materials that again help our customers to increase the efficiency of their processes. Another aspect that I want to briefly touch upon on the next chart is our business model. What we try to describe here in a nutshell is one aspect that has to do with the fact that three-quarters of our business is with recurring products or with consumable products that provide recurring revenues. You see that on the right-hand side. At the same time, we are addressing the different process step of our customers, as you can see on the left-hand side.
In overall, what that enables or what that provides basically is on the one hand side, a lot of stability because of the broad scope as well as of the high level of recurring revenues, while at the same time enable attractive growth rates to be addressed, as you can also see along some numbers on the right-hand side. I would now like to shift perspectives on the next slides to the last year, 2022. We believe it has been a successful fiscal year again after two years already that have been showing very high growth rates, the years 2020 and 2021. You could have seen on the chart before that also before that our track record is characterized by double-digit growth rates anyway.
The last years, 2020 and 2021 have been incredibly successful or characterized again by overproportionate growth for certain reasons that I come back to in a minute. Last year, again, strong top line growth, 15% to EUR 3.5 billion of sales revenue. Underlying EBITDA was up even stronger by 18%. Of course, when we then take into account some currency effects, the EBITDA margin was slightly below previous year, but still at a very high level after really strong step increases the years before. 35% was the number we achieved here. Also underlying earnings per shares are strongly up by 16% to EUR 8.64.
What you also can see is that the normalization that we were talking about since Q3 2020 now finally materializes, or I should say, started to materialize. That was expected for reasons that I come back to in a minute. Therefore, order intake was down by 13%. You can see also the geographical distribution of our sales revenue, again, moved a little bit more towards a more evenly distributed geographical split of our sales revenues. Particularly Americas is now close to the size of the European business, as you would expect when you see the distribution of the market sizes as well. One quick look on the balance sheet of our parent company or the parent company of Sartorius Stedim, the Sartorius Stedim Biotech Group.
I think it's fair to say that again, it shows a very healthy structure with a 75% equity ratio. A brief look on one of the agenda items today, which is the dividend on the next chart. We propose a dividend to increase by EUR 0.18. That is an increase of, or would be an increase of 14%. The total profit that will be distributed is close to EUR 133 million. The payout ratio would stay pretty much on the exact level that we have distributed or paid out last year. 16.7% would be the number here. Coming back to our business activities last year, we tried to support our strong growth and growth prospects that I will talk about later by substantial investments.
More than EUR 400 million have been the investments last year, 12.3% our CapEx ratio, as also projected at the beginning of the year. As you can see by the examples on the right-hand side of that chart here is we are investing globally at our different sites. Mostly, we are expanding existing sites or that is the focus of our scope, that we are expanding existing sites, with the exception of South Korea, where we have started to build up a completely new site to support our business in South Korea, which is sizable, but also to support our customers in Southeast Asia, except for China.
What you can also see is that we are investing into both capacity expansions as well as R&D activities on a global scale. We also do care about the eco footprint of our activities. You can see that on the next chart, we are investing substantially into renewable energy supply. Two examples here, our campus in Göttingen, as well as the campus in India, that we are running solar panels. In India, as you would think, a very attractive way to reduce the CO2 footprint there and a very meaningful way. We are using geothermal energy opportunities, I would say, in that as specifically given in Göttingen to further reduce our footprint there as well.
Therefore, what we can say is that Sartorius Stedim Biotech is a very significant contributor to the ambitious sustainability targets of the Sartorius Group overall. We have set ourselves targets that are even more ambitious than those of the European Union, for example, or the Science Based Targets. The reduction of 10% of our CO2 emission intensity between 2019 and 2030 would have to be seen in the context of 8.5% that the goals of the European Union Fit for 55 would represent. And that of course accumulates over the years. It's really a substantial reduction that we would lead to a reduction by 70% between 2019 and 2030 would be the result of that.
Maybe for those of you who are in the details here, this is related to the entire CO2 emissions or emission equivalents across the entire activities, including Scope 3 activities, which make up for 90% of the emissions, and Scope 1 and 2 , which are very closely in our hands. As the manufacturer, we want to reduce to zero. Another topic or further topics, I should say, that are on our agenda now is water and material efficiency. You can see here also a few information. We are working on reducing our water consumption, which is, for example, a topic in membrane manufacturing by respective measures. We have already very significant recycling rates in numerous areas of our manufacturing, but want to reduce that further in some areas, for example, in the domain of plastic materials.
Let's take a look on HRM aspects. We have seen another year of a strong increase in headcount. That was particularly necessary during the years 2020, 2021, and 2022 to manage order peaks. Of course, we would have increased our headcount anyway, but to manage these really extreme order peaks that we have seen, particularly since Q3, 2020 until Q3, 2021, we had to invest a lot into additional capacities on that. We added on average 1,600 jobs per year over the last four years between 2018 and 2022. Last year alone was also almost 1,600 people. Of course, such strong growth also offers substantial opportunities for internal developments. You see 60% of our internal jobs we fill, management positions we fill by internal talent.
We also become increasingly diverse. You can see that on the next chart. Very international workforce, very balanced age distribution, I would say, of course, also very much triggered by the high number of additional jobs that we have created. We also have a very substantial portion of female top managers in our group. We also get good feedback from both the inside and the outside to how we perform as an employer. Some numbers here. The 3% are from our annual. No, our half-year regularly made employee survey, and then the Glassdoor number, of course, is an external survey or an external feedback that we always get. Before I move to the outlook, I would like to take a look on the development of our shares last year.
Obviously, we have seen a certain decline of our share price by 37%, as you can see in the table up there. That decrease was higher than the decrease of the index that we would consider to be relevant here, CAC Large 60 and MSCI Europe. However, of course, we should take maybe a longer perspective on this. If we again take a look from 2018- 2022, I think that almost goes without words. We have seen an increase of 400% for the Sartorius Stedim Biotech shares, an order of magnitude stronger than the increase of the indices. I think clearly the valuation multiples have been extremely high during the years 2020, 2021 in particular, and also here we have seen some correction and normalization.
The development of the Sartorius Stedim Biotech shares is of course, no exception here. We consider the midterm outlook of our business and therefore also of our shares to remain very positive. Let's talk about the outlook of our business. Of course, an outlook on share price is always difficult, as there are also external factors to take into consideration. I think what we can say is that we are operating in a market that shows very healthy parameters and growth outlooks on the long term. There will be always fluctuations around the long-term developments, as we have seen that in the past, and I will come to a more short-term impact here just in a minute.
What are the long-term drivers? We see very healthy R&D pipelines. We see new modalities arising. We see biosimilars playing an increasing role. We still see that customers are increasingly shifting to flexible setups of their manufacturing. We address that with our strong portfolio of single-use and consumable products. Of course, innovation is something that is urgently needed. We talked about that before. The average, and that is really important, the average annual growth that is projected here until 2026 should be around 10%. This will be not the number for each and every year, but on average, I think it's very reasonable.
We believe that we can say that we have a very relevant position here for our customers because of the portfolio that we have built partially through acquisitions because of the global reach that we have, and the strong team also that understands the needs of our customers very well and addresses them on a day-to-day basis very thoroughly. Now I already said a few times that I would like to talk also about some short-term effects. I said a minute ago that we already saw the normalization of demand starting around mid of last year. This is because on the one hand, we saw or we have entered the tail of the Corona demand, very obviously.
The peak manufacturing of Corona vaccines is now already a couple of quarters behind us. Therefore, this additional demand is gone. We have seen less demand during 2022 already than in 2021. What is even stronger effect is one that we have started to talk about since Q3 2020, and that is that because of disrupted supply chains at the beginning of the pandemic, a number of customers of ours have started to build up inventory substantially. Now they have started, more precisely around of mid of last year, they have started to run down their inventory levels. We expect that this process will take a couple of quarters.
It's difficult to project that very precisely, but we always have said that we think that at least the first two quarters this year, so the first half of this year, we will see a significant impact from that. We have seen, therefore, book-to-bill ratios below one already during the last two quarters of last year. Therefore, we expect the year 2023 will be the year that will be characterized by migrating back to the underlying and projected growth trajectory after being at least 1 year ahead of this because of these extraordinary effects. I hope this chart shows this in a clear way.
The yellow curve represents the underlying growth trajectory that we have defined already a couple of years ago, and which is basically an extension of what we have shown over more than a decade now as our growth performance. Then you can see that 2021 and 2022 are sticking their heads out, basically. That means we are running ahead of the schedule, and we expect this to migrate back now because the underlying growth drivers are intact, which is a very positive statement. It would be also wrong in turn to say, "Well, for some reason, we continue to run ahead of the curve." I think this would be not realistic as well. This is nothing new. I only wanted to take the opportunity to explain that also here during the Shareholder Meeting in detail.
We have explained that quarter by quarter, very explicitly and in detail to the capital market, to all analysts, to all shareholders. The outlook for 2023 on the next chart now, therefore, is that we expect a low single-digit growth. If we would exclude these effects that are in one way or the other related, to the COVID directly, that means to the manufacturing of vaccines in particular, it would be a mid to high single-digit growth. If we would virtually exclude these inventory effects, it would be even higher, but that is hard to quantify. Therefore, this is just by excluding the Corona effect or the direct Corona effect. For the EBITDA margin, we project the high, the same high level as last year. My last chart now is about our midterm outlook.
That is the ambition for the year 2025. You might recall that we have first time defined that at the beginning of 2019, increased that because of our very healthy performance even before the pandemic a bit. We have also increased our expectation for the EBITDA margin, so not only the sales level, but we now have adjusted the sales revenue level that we are shooting for, for the year 2025 by approximately 10% because of the price adjustment that we have had introduced mainly last year but also to some extent this year as a reaction and a compensation for the inflation effects that we have seen since a year now. With that, I would like to again thank you and hand back to Anne-Marie to run the Q&A.
Yeah. Thank you very much, Joachim, for this extensive review and outlook for our activity at the Sartorius Stedim Biotech Group. Before moving to the resolutions on the Q&A, I have a few elements to mention regarding to specific former topics of the agenda. We will start with the topic one and two for the Ordinary Shareholders' Meeting. Topic one relates to the three reports of the Board of Directors. You find these respective reports as follows so that I don't need to read them out fully today. The Management report of the Board of Directors and the Group company management report are disclosed in page 17- 72 of the French 2022 Universal Registration Document.
Second report is the Board of Directors report and resolutions submitted Ordinary Shareholders' Meeting, which is fully disclosed in this 2022 URD in pages 234- 240. Along with the addendum we already mentioned provided in the shareholders guide and available on the company website about the Resolution 15, which has been added to the agenda to comply with the provision of Article L. 225-129-6 of the French Commercial Code. It being specified that such resolution has been included in the convening notice, avis de convocation rectificatif published in the BALO in accordance with law. The Governance report, which was drafted to comply with Article L. 225-37 of the French Commercial Code and is published in page 73- 124 of the 2022 URD.
Topic number two on our agenda relate to the three report of the Statutory Auditors, respectively the report on the financial statements for the year ending December 31, 2022, the report on the consolidated financial statements for the year December 31, 2022, and finally, the reports on regulated agreements covered by Article L. 225-38 and subsequent of the French Commercial Code. For this, I would like to invite Mr. Christophe Perrau, our auditor, to read and comment about these reports.
Good afternoon. I'm Christophe Perrau. I'm an audit partner at Deloitte. On the behalf of the two Statutory Auditors, KPMG and Deloitte, I will make a short summary of our audit reports because those reports are in the URD. The first report we issued is a report on the consolidated financial statements. In this report, we indicate as a conclusion that we certified that the financial statements are correct, and we make no observation on the management report on that point. The second report is a statutory audit report on the individual financial statement of Sartorius Stedim Biotech S.A., is disclosed on page 204 of the URD. This report, we indicate that we certified the financial statements, and for specific verification, we indicate that we have no observation. Then we issued a report on the related agreement.
In this report, we indicate that we were not informed of any new related agreement, so it's a short report. It's nothing new. For the next part, for the short Extraordinary Shareholder Meeting, we also issued three reports in which we indicate that we reviewed the management information. We have no observation on the information that is disclosed, and we indicate that we will issue another report once and if those authorization are approved by the Board and used by the Board. Thank you.
Thank you, Christophe. Thank you very much. Well, now it's time to continue by voting each resolution with the shareholders present in the room. The final quorum as is remained at 92.889% here. Concerning the voting procedure, the shareholder is asked to write her or his vote for each resolution on the certified paper form given at the time you sign in, either by ticking for, against, or abstain. This paper form will be considered as proof, and you do not need to raise your hands to express any kind of vote. This voting form will be collected after the voting session and the detailed results, resolution by resolutions, will be communicated to you at the end of this meeting.
Well, I will go through the resolutions one by one, and after each resolution, of course, I will make a pause for you, for you to be able to fill in your certified voting forms in accordance to the explanation I just gave. Let's move now to the first resolution, which is approval of the financial statement for the year ending December 31st, 2022, and discharge to all directors. Can I move to resolution number two? The second resolution is approval of the consolidated financial statements for the year ending December 31st, 2022. Fine. Let's go to resolution number three, which is allocation of the financial results for the year ending December 31st, 2022.
Resolution number four is related to topic six of the agenda, namely the approval of the special report of the Statutory Auditors concerning regulated agreements as referred to in the Articles L. 225-38 and sequence of the French Commercial Code. We'll continue now with topic number seven of the agenda, which are six resolutions linked from one to the other about the remuneration of directors in compliance with the Say on Pay doctrine. Resolution number five is approval of the remuneration policy and determination of the amount of the total annual remuneration to be allocated to the Board of Directors for the 2023 financial year. Resolution number six is approval of the information mentioned in Article L. 22-10-9 of the French Commercial Code concerning the remuneration due or awarded to the corporate officers for the 2022 fiscal financial year.
Resolution number seven , approval of fixed, variable, and extraordinary component of the remuneration and benefits of all kinds due or awarded to the Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer for 2022 financial year. Resolution number eight, approval of the remuneration policy of the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer for 2023 financial year. Resolution number nine, approval of the fixed, variable, and extraordinary component of the remuneration and the benefits of all kinds due or awarded to the Deputy Chief Executive Officer for the 2022 financial year. Resolution number 10, approval of the remuneration policy of the Deputy Chief Executive Officer for the 2023 financial year. Now moving to the topic eight of the agenda regarding the 11th resolution, authorization granted to the Board of Directors to enable the Company to trace its own shares.
Let's continue now with topic nine of the agenda regarding the 12th resolution, which is the proxy to carry out all formalities. We are now at the end of the voting process for the Ordinary Shareholder Meeting. Let's move Extraordinary Shareholders' Meeting, starting with topic 10 and 11, which are linked from one another. Topic 10, reading of the report of the Board of Directors of the proposed resolution and reading of the Statutory Auditor's special report that Christophe just previously mentioned. The Board of Directors report and resolution submitted Extraordinary Shareholders' Meeting is disclosed in its fully in page 240- 242 of the 2022 URD, and its addendum has been provided for in the shareholders guide and on Company's website.
The special report is disclosed and available on our dedicated webpage. Therefore, I will not read them out loudly today. Let's go to the voting of the resolutions on topic 12 and 13, and we will go through the same kind of voting process that we used before. Resolution 13 now covers several 13- 15, sorry, covers several delegations of authority granted to the Board of Directors in order to act on the share securities and the share capital of the company. Resolution 13, delegation of authority granted to the Board of Directors to issue shares without preferential subscription right of the shareholders to name beneficiaries. Resolution No. 14, delegation of authority granted to the Board of Directors to reduce the capital in accordance with Article L. 22-10-62 of the French Commercial Code.
Resolution 15, delegation of authority granted to the Board of Directors to issue shares and/or securities given or capable of giving access to the share capital of the company reserved for members of the company saving plans without preferential subscription rights to the shareholders. Resolution 16 is powers for formalities, and the Shareholder Meetings give full power to the bearer of an original copy or extract of the minutes of Shareholders' Meeting to carry out any and all formalities that may be necessary. That was the last resolution for the extraordinary part of the Shareholder Meeting. We will now collect your voting forms, and please make sure that they are completed. Okay. Taking, I will now go through the announce respective voting results of this resolution.
If you allow myself, I will not read them out loud today, as they were already presented and detailed in this meeting. Taking into account the vote received by correspondence, the proxies granted to the chairman and the number of shares held by the shareholders present in this meeting group, we can state that these resolutions are adopted or rejected. The first resolution is accepted. The second resolution is accepted. The third resolution is accepted. The fourth resolution is accepted. The fifth resolution is accepted. The sixth resolutions as well is accepted. The seventh resolution is accepted. The eighth resolution is accepted. The ninth resolution is accepted. The 10th resolution is accepted. The 11 th resolution as well, and the 12th resolution is finally accepted. The detailed voting percentage of each Resolution will be available after final treatment by our bank.
They will be at your disposal for consultation at the end of this meeting and posted afterwards on our website. Regarding the resolutions concerning the topic 10- 13 of the extraordinary general meeting, I will also announce their respective voting results. These results are as follows: 13th resolution accepted, 14th resolution accepted, 15th resolution accepted, and 16th resolution accepted. Like before, the final exact percent for each resolution will be available after final treatment by the bank, and they will be at your disposal for consultation in this room and on the internet. It's now time to move to the Q&A part of this session. Before the beginning of this Q&A, I would kindly ask you to summarize your question as the time slot allocated to this is limited to the next 30 minutes.
If you have further question in mind, I encourage you to write to our investor relations department, which will revert to you directly. Mr. Joachim Kreuzburg, our Chairman and CEO, will answer your question by video conference. In this room, are there any question regarding to this particular topic of the agenda that we went through? Yes, sir.
I have two questions. The first one is about the capital structure, shareholding structure of the group, starting with the foundation and then Sartorius, Bio-Rad, holding some shares in that, and then SSB. Could you make a little comment about that? How is the structure today, and how could it evolve in the three or four years ahead? Secondly, could you give us some color on how business is by geographies, products, orders intake, and the mix of the three items? Thank you.
Yeah. Thank you, thank you very much for these two questions. On the capital structure, briefly, or maybe before I start to try to explain that, there is quite a lot of information available in our, you know, public documents, particularly also on those for Sartorius AG, the majority shareholder of Sartorius Stedim Biotech, which would answer these questions. However, Sartorius AG, a German-listed Company, is, as I said, the majority shareholder of Sartorius Stedim Biotech. The share ownership is around 75%. At Sartorius AG, we have a share structure which is quite typical for, or you find it quite often in Germany with two share classes: ordinary shares bearing voting rights, preference shares bearing no voting rights, but which are entitled to get a little bit of higher dividend.
Talking about the ordinary shares, those with voting rights, a little bit more than half of those are executed by the executor of the last will of basically the grandson of the founder of the company. This structure will run until 2028. The next, the second largest shareholder, is Bio-Rad. You mentioned that already. They hold a good 30% of those ordinary shares. When this structure expires, there are beneficiaries, to some extent, the children of this aforementioned person, partially also other investors who have acquired the titles from those children. When this structure expires, these investors slash family members will get their respective part of those shares.
That is what will again then happen in the year 2028. Regarding business development in more detail, also here, I would actually encourage you to take a look into the respective documents that are very easily available on our website, where, for example, we have published several charts on details at the end of January on the year 2022. Of course, you find them also in detail in our annual report and the quarterly reports, everything available at our website. Maybe bear with me when I give you a high level overview. We have shown earlier in my presentation that in the last fiscal year, the growth was the strongest in the U.S. and Asia, a little bit lower in the European region.
However, Europe also had a bit of base effect because a lot of the vaccine manufacturing took place in Europe, so there was a very strong growth in the years before in that region. Therefore, I think one can say that the differences in geographical growth rates are not that substantial. Yeah, it's a bit more in Asia and Americas, as you would expect, but it's still a very healthy growth also in Europe. Then you asked for products. I guess you can imagine that we don't go into much detail here also because of competitive aspects. We are happy being able to say that we also in regards to products or product segments, we have quite an evenly distributed growth.
It's not that we have just two, three product segments that grow very, very strongly and others are laggards. We rather have a healthy growth across the board with quite comparable growth rates in those different segments. I hope this helps. Again, you find a lot of details on our website, or as Anne-Marie said before, of course, investor relations is also happy to take individual calls.
Any other questions from anyone in the room? Well, okay. Thank you then. I think that now we've reached the end of this 2023 Annual Combined Shareholders' Meeting of Sartorius Stedim Biotech S.A. I declare this shareholders' meeting closed. Thank you very much for your attendance, and see you hopefully next year. Take care. Thank you.
Thank you.