Hello everyone. Welcome to this first-ever virtual conference of Lectra in English to present the results of 2022. I will do the presentation with Jerome, Olivier, and Maximilien, that you all know. I will leave the floor to Jerome immediately and come back to speak about the strategy a little later.
Good morning. Good afternoon, everybody. What will be the agenda of today? We'll start by the 2022 main highlights. I will cover this part, then Olivier du Chesnay, the CFO, will cover the Q4 2022 results and the whole year results. I will come back for a reminder of the Lectra 4.0 strategy. Maximilien Abadie, our Chief Strategy Officer, will present this brand-new 2023/2025 strategic roadmap. We'll finalize this presentation with the 2023 outlook and the financial objective for this year. Let's start by the main highlights of 2022. The first one is probably the strong growth in revenues and earnings that we have had last year. We'll see more in detail in few slide, the detail of the fiscal year results.
You will allow me to tell you that it was not a very easy year, as we will see. Despite that, we have been able to achieve a very strong growth in revenues and earnings. The second highlight is the acceleration of the adoption of the Lectra's offer for Industry 4.0. You know that the Industry 4.0 is the strategic objective that we have presented since 2017. This is something that we can measure, in particular through the strong growth we have had in software orders sold under the Software as a Service, SaaS mode. This is also something we'll look at in more detail later on. Lastly, the third highlight for 2022 is the positive net cash position.
We are back to a positive net cash position and a very strong balance sheet less than two years after the acquisition of Gerber. We mentioned the difficulty that we have faced in 2022. Obviously 2022 was not a very easy year. If we look at this slide, we have had the different lockdowns in China, in particular in Q2, but also the drastic change of the policy against the COVID-19 at the end of the year that has also affected us in, at the end of December. We have had the price increase, the inflation impact, the shortage of energy and raw materials with a negative impact not only on Lectra, but also on our customers. The growing fear of recession in many countries that was discussed, you know, a few months ago.
I must admit that the situation has a little bit changed now at the beginning of 2023. Obviously, the war in Ukraine that has started on the 24th of February 2022, and this is still the case with a lot of consequences that we can see, in particular in Europe, and strong changes in the exchange rates, in particular between the euro and the dollar, as we have been able to see, and the increase in the interest rate that can have a negative impact on the capacity of our customers to finance their investment. All in all, we have been able to achieve the strong growth in the revenues and the earnings I mentioned earlier, despite this environment and these difficulties, and this one more time demonstrate the great resiliency of Lectra.
Another highlight of 2022 is the acquisition of the majority of the capital of TextileGenesis. That was announced in December 2022. TextileGenesis provides a platform, a SaaS platform that enables the fashion brand and the sustainable textile manufacturers to ensure a reliable and secure digital mapping of the textile from the fiber to the consumer. This is something very interesting. Thanks to this approach, they have already convinced a certain number of customers, of which prestigious fashion brands or luxury brands, but also a company like H&M and Lenzing, which is the leading manufacturer of sustainable fibers. This acquisition will allow us to enrich our value proposition and to accompany our customers in their sustainable objective and transparency objectives. Now I let Olivier continue with the 2022 results.
Thank you, Jerome. Good morning. Good afternoon. Just as a small piece of information, we will do a Q&A session at the end of this presentation. If you want to post question on the chatter, please feel free. You can post them at the end or now. We will answer at the end of the presentation. I will come back on the Q4 2022 results as well as the 2022 full year results. For Q4, just precision. In Q4, there is no perimeter effect because all of the acquisition had been done in Q3 2021. The actual is actually the same as the pro forma.
When we look at the numbers for Q4, we will also look at comparison at actual exchange rates. We look first at the orders. We always have two indicators to follow the orders. On the left side, the orders related to perpetual software licenses, equipment and their accompanying software, and non-recurring services. On the right side of this slide, we have the new software subscriptions. If we look at the left side, 2021 Q4 was a record year or a record quarter for orders. Fixed EUR 56 million of orders, while quite a high base of comparison. We are -13% versus Q4 2021 and Q4 2022.
That's mainly related to the activity in China, where after a couple years of zero COVID policy, there was no more constraints in terms of movement in China and most of the population has been affected. On the Lectra population, probably 60% of the population has been affected in December. That has delayed some of the signature of deals in China. On the other side, we have also countries that are closer to the war in Ukraine, mainly Eastern and Northern Europe, where we see that we have, let's say, delays in decision of investments in those customers located in those regions. On the right side of the slide, you can see that here the record quarter is Q4 2022 in terms of new software orders for subscriptions. We have done the biggest quarter here.
That's a growth of 68% versus last year, which shows that we do have a good, let's say, attraction of those offers to the market and to the needs of the customers. When we look now still at Q4, the revenue has been growing 3% and the EBITDA has been growing 8% despite the environment that Jerome has described just before. Now I come to the full year, 2022. Full year there is perimeter impact, huh? We did acquire Gerber, Neteven, and Gemini during the course of Q3 2021. We do compare 2022 with a pro forma as if those acquisition had been done at the 1st of January, 2021. We do also the comparison solely at actual exchange rates in this presentation.
The first piece of information is that in 2022 we are in line with the guidance that we gave to the market. The guidance that we had given in February 2022 was fairly large, a range of about EUR 50 million brackets on the revenue side. On the EBITDA side, the range was EUR 12 million between the low and the high part of the guidance. We had narrowed the range in July to aim for EUR 514 million-EUR 534 million of revenue, and on the EBITDA side, between EUR 95 million and EUR 102 million. In the actuals, we land basically right in the middle of that guidance, EUR 522 million of revenue and EUR 98 million of EBITDA.
This slide is important to show the transformation of Lectra over the last two years. It gives some perspectives on those last two years. It compares the revenue on the left side and the EBITDA on the right side. If we start with the first column, that's Lectra before those acquisitions. Lectra, before those acquisitions, it was a company with a bit less than EUR 300 million of revenue and a bit more than EUR 50 million of EBITDA. The acquisition in 2021 brought to the company about EUR 200 million of revenue and only EUR 22 million of EBITDA. The pro forma at the end of 2021 or for 2021 was EUR 468 million of revenue and EUR 73 million of EBITDA.
When we look at the performance in 2022, we did manage to trigger a bit more than EUR 50 million of revenue, more than 2021, so EUR 53.9 million. On that revenue, we triggered EUR 25 million of EBITDA. That shows the interest and the importance of those acquisition, and that shows the benefit that the last two years have brought to the result of the company with now this revenue of EUR 522 million and an EBITDA of EUR 98.4 million. Now we come back on the analysis of the results through the orders. Again, we have those two aggregates in terms of or KPI in terms of orders. On the left side, the orders related to perpetual software licenses, equipments, and non-recurring services.
Here we basically have been flat between 2021 and 2022 at the level of EUR 202 million of orders. When you look at the details in the table, you can see that we've grown a bit on the perpetual software licenses, on the non-recurring services, and we've decreased 2% on the equipment. I'll come back with some more details in the next few slides. On the right side of the slide, you can see that the new software subscriptions orders has grown 34% between last year and this year. Now we reach for one year nearly EUR 10 million of new orders of software subscriptions. Those new orders, it's the annual value of the new subscriptions.
Usually the subscription are signed for a period of three years that then is automatically renewed for another three years on most of the offers that we have on the SaaS. Now we zoom on the orders without the subscriptions, we have not been able to grow in 2022, mainly because of the region called Asia-Pacific. You can see, that's the most contributive region in terms of orders, because in 2021, it was EUR 75 million of orders. We've decreased 15%, sorry, on that region between 2022 and 2021. You can see with a small graph that it's actually in China where we had the biggest growth, -23%.
At the beginning of the year because of some confinement, lockdown that we had in China, and at the end of the year because of some people being infected, sorry, in China. In the other regions in Europe, we have a contrasted, sorry, activity. You have some countries that are close to the war, where in Northern Europe and Eastern Europe, we have seen decrease in the orders. In Southern Europe, we have seen a good growth in the activity, especially in France and in Italy. In the Americas, you can see that we still enjoyed a growth of 16% in 2022. Lastly, on that slide, if you go to the far right, on the bottom right, you see the rest of the world.
Here you have a nice growth of 31% between 2021 and 2022. That's also the effect of the acquisition of the distributor of Gerber in Turkey, where now we've been able to sell Lectra brand products in that country, whereas before we were quite inexistent in that country. If we look now at the same information as EUR 202 million of orders by market sectors. Fashion remained the main market sectors of the group, and that has been decreasing 2%. As you know, China is the main country where we manufacture garments, so it's of course the decrease in China that's dropped, let's say, that number in fashion.
That number in fashion was partially offset by the growth in North America and the growth in some countries in Southern Europe. In automotive, since the beginning of the year, we've seen that we had some growth in the orders, so the full year growth is 35%, and automotive is about 30% of the total orders of the group. In furniture, well, that's market sectors had enjoyed some nice growth in 2021 after the COVID. You can see that in 2022, we had lowering in the investments, and we have -32% versus last year. That market sector represent about 10% of the orders of the group in 2022. We've seen the orders. Now from the orders, we move on the left to the revenue of non-recurring revenue.
That's the revenue triggered by the orders that we just commented. You can see that the revenue has grown 10%. As I mentioned, the orders have been flat. The orders have been at EUR 202 million. As you can see, with EUR 202 million of orders in 2021, it triggered EUR 190 million of revenue. In 2022, with the same number, EUR 202 million, it triggered EUR 209 million of revenue. As you can see, each of the line have grown in terms of revenue in 2022, and this is the effect of having had in 2021 some of the orders that went in backlog at the end of the year.
The reverse happened in 2022, where we had a reduction overall for the year on the backlog level. The backlog at the end of 2022 is basically at a normative level. When we are at the end of 2021, we had a bit of excessive backlog. The second part of the revenue is on the right side, where we see the recurring revenue. As a reminder, recurring revenue is 60% of the revenue of the group. As you can see, the two natures of the recurring revenue, recurring contracts and consumable and parts, are both growing, respectively 13% and 12%. If you see the details below the graph, you can see that on the recurring contracts, we have had a strong growth on the software subscriptions. That the first line.
Sorry there is a mismatch in the line, but the first one is the software subscriptions. We reach EUR 21 million of software subscriptions, a growth of 58% in 2022. The second line that is only growing 5% is actually the maintenance contract on software, the one that goes with perpetual licenses. Here it's normal to have only a growth of 5% because all of the new offers that we are selling to the market, they are done on software subscriptions, which is the first line, which is EUR 21 million. On the equipment and accompanying software maintenance contract. Here it's a contract going with the equipment. Here we enjoy the nice growth of 11%, which is a bit higher than usual.
Because on the maintenance contract, we do have clauses that enable us to pass on the inflation at each of the renewals. That growth also benefited from those inflation factors in 2022. With the non-recurring revenue plus the recurring revenue, the total revenue grew 12% in 2022 to reach EUR 522 million. As you can see from that slide, we had a higher growth on the gross profit. We add on the revenue plus 14%. That means that despite the effect of inflation on raw materials, inflation on salary, inflation on transportation costs, all of that, we managed to increase the gross profit percentage between 2021 and 2022. That's the first effect of the synergies that we had with the acquisitions.
We also grew the overhead by 7%, the EBITDA grew by 35% between 2021 and 2022, reaching EUR 98.4 million in 2022. We can also see that the net income has grown 64% to a level of nearly EUR 44 million of net income. That waterfall try to illustrate the evolution of the EBITDA between 2021 and 2022. As you can see from that graph, you can see the strengths of the model that we have. The two first brick, the green bricks that you see on the left, they are the effect on the EBITDA of the increase of volume of recurring revenues. When we grow the recurring revenues in 2022, it brought us EUR 26 million more EBITDA than last year.
The third brick is the volume coming from the non-recurring revenue. As we had stable level of orders, you can see that this brick is usually higher in terms of contribution. Still here you have a positive contribution to the volume effect of the non-recurring revenue. On the fourth brick, the effect of the gross profit increase, so the gross profit margin. Item by item, they have increased between 2021 and 2022. That enable to finance the investments in fixed overheads. The last brick is actually the decrease in variable overhead costs. It's because in 2021 we had an exceptional year with high level of salary compensation and bonuses due to the results that we had in 2021. We had less of that in 2022.
Those elements is the waterfall that explains the evolution of the EBITDA. On the free cash flow. I told you that we had made EUR 44 million of net income. As you can see in 2022 on the red bar, we are making the same level of free cash flow than the level of net income. Again, one of the strengths of the business model of Lectra. That EUR 44 million here has been done by still financing a temporary increase in working capital requirements. One of the element is related to the variable portion of compensation that I explained before. We had high compensation in 2021. They were paid at the beginning of 2022. That's an impact of EUR 10 million on the free cash flow of 2022. We also increased inventory.
We increased inventory to face the different difficulties to get parts on some of the machines, on some of the equipments. We had to finance more inventory for that and also to fuel the growth on the recurring revenue on the maintenance contract. That impact is EUR 15 million. The last piece of information on that slide is that last year, in 2021, we had cashed in the reimbursement of the R&D tax credit from 2017 that we get reimbursement for four years after, so for EUR 4.5 million. This year, in 2022, we have not yet received the R&D tax credit of 2018, which is about EUR 5 million, due to the fact that we still have an ongoing tax audit. Until this is closed, we don't get that reimbursements.
On the balance sheet. We still have very important cash in our balance sheet, EUR 130 million of cash. We have a debt of EUR 140 million that we started to repay for EUR 21 million. Basically the debt is EUR 119 million. EUR 130 million minus EUR 119 million, we have a net cash of EUR 11 million. That net cash is done only 18 months or two years after the purchase of Gerber, and we have a growth on the shareholders' equity that is now reaching EUR 450 million. On the evolution of the share price. We do have a market cap which is around EUR 1.5 billion two days ago. We have an evolution that map basically the evolution of the CAC Mid & Small.
We are doing better than the Tech Leaders, which is an index to which we were added in the last, 18 months. With that, I will lend the mic to Daniel that will talk about the strategy for the year.
Thank you, Olivier. The Lectra 4.0 strategy was launched in February 2017. It's the fourth strategy in Lectra history. Lectra is 50 years old today. This strategy is to be a key Industry 4.0 player by the end of 2030. On our three major sectors, fashion, automotive, and furniture, these three strategic market sectors are going into profound changes. Not the same in each of the industry, but very significant. In fashion, part of the brands put the focus on reducing costs. The other half put focus on working capital. The one who used to focus on reducing costs are in trouble today because there is a limit to the cost reduction. They produce in Asia with long-term commitments. They had a lot of stock during the COVID and after. And today they are short of cash.
On the opposite, the one that had an agile approach with smaller stocks, smaller series, and producing close to the consumers are in good shape today. When we look also on the-- their position on the internet, the one who sell a lot on the e-commerce sites are in good position, and the one who sold only in physical store are in bad position. In fashion, we can see them. There will be winners and losers, and there will be a restructuration of the market in the coming years with some players investing a lot to achieve their transformation and some others in trouble that will try to survive and will not invest. On the automotive part, the situation is different. Automotive is very optimized. As we know, they have applied lean manufacturing methodology for years.
There are limits because today they do what they can to optimize, but they need profound change to get there and to apply the Industry 4.0 means reviewing the way they produce. There will be also an in-depth transformation on the automotive part. When we look at furniture, during the COVID years, furniture was selling both on inventory and on demand, and most of our customers realized that when they were selling on demand, once they had the order from the consumer, they did not need to finance the production, finance the inventory, and they had a much better business model than producing to stock. Therefore, there is a switch in the furniture industry to produce on demand more and more.
We should add that the CSR constraint on this free market and mainly in fashion is something which is very important today and which creates a lot of constraints on our customers. A few words about the Industry 4.0. Just as a reminder, the Industry 4.0 is the fourth industrial revolution. The first one happened in the eighteenth century with the steam, the creation of steam that enabled to start producing and create the industry. In fact, the second revolution happened at the beginning of the twentieth century and was all about electricity and the capacity to do mass production. The computer and the automation came, and with this, with the electronic IT systems, there was an acceleration in term of automation in the 1970s.
Now the Industry 4.0 is a major step forward in interconnecting creation centers, manufacturing centers, and selling points and the consumer. It is a way to make the company more agile, more smart by having integrated smart equipment, smart software that enable the companies to take decision faster. This Industry 4.0 is based on four technology, the cloud, big data, Internet of Things, and artificial intelligence. When we look at this, we see that it will create an acceleration of the adoption of the key Industry 4.0 in the coming years, it's a journey.
Most of our customers are just at the beginning of this journey, which is described on our website and invite you to look in more detail about what we say on the Industry 4.0 that will become the next big thing, in our opinion, in the coming years. Why do we believe that Lectra is in a good position to become a key Industry 4.0 player? For three reasons. We have started being in the Internet of Things 16 years ago. Our equipment was connected through the internet 16 years ago, and today we have 7,700 cutters that are connected and send information daily. It's a goldmine in terms of information. We also have an offer which combines software, data, services, and equipment, and the addition over the last few years has been the data.
The fact that we enable our customer to access to very detailed information about their operation, about their sales, about the creation model, and this enable to take better decisions. We also have a strong team in term of services and customer success to accompany our customers with 850 people who are specialists of our technology or of the business of our customer. When we look at all this, we are in a very unique situation to be a key partner to accompany our customer for this journey.
In addition, the Corporate Social Responsibility is now more and more impacting our customers, especially in fashion, through first the expectation of the consumer, which is increasing year after year, to more and more regulation in the different countries, and also to internal pressure from their own employees. The companies are pushed to be more and more sustainable, and for that, they need to reassess all their processes to eco-design their products and also to adjust the way they work in the different sites and the way they work with their partners to implement this sustainability. When we look at the strategy Lectra 4.0 that was announced six years ago, it was based on four pillars, a premium positioning.
Whatever we do, we want to offer more to the customer with more value product. Our cheapest product are 30% to 100% above the most expensive product of our competitors. This premium positioning is in our DNA for some years. Then we want to focus on three strategic market sectors and not disperse our energy on other sectors, automotive, fashion, and furniture. We also want to put more and more the customer at the heart of our activities. It has always been the case, we have reinforced this position over the last few years by naming customer success managers, person in charge of guaranteeing the satisfaction and the success of the customer. We set with customers objectives, their own objectives in terms of productivity, quality, fabric saving. We put in place dashboards, we help them to improve the numbers.
The fourth component is 4.0 services that we just start to release at the end of 2022. These services are based on data, artificial intelligence, and expertise from our people, and we use these services to help our customer to improve their operation. It's a very strong product for us, and it's very important because we can deliver these services from remote. Most of what we do is automatic, and the value brought to the customer is very important. At the beginning of 2023, we add a fifth pillar to these pillars, is the committed CSR policy. CSR has always been in Lectra DNA, but we never communicate so much on this.
This time, we have decided to take a certain of commitments, 12 commitments, which are going to be described in our annual report. The way we have executed our strategy was through three years strategic roadmap. The first one was from 2017 to 2019, it was mainly to introduce Industry 4.0 products. We were doing zero in SaaS and zero with these products in 2017, nearly zero in 2018, where we introduced the first product. The three years after, for 2020 to 2022, the goal was to expand the presence of this product and cover more customers with these new solutions. We now have a new roadmap for 2023, 2025. Max will tell you more about this in a few seconds.
Thank you, Daniel. Good morning, good afternoon, everyone. Pleasure to be with you. As Daniel said, the Lectra 4.0 strategy remains valid, more relevant than before. All the pillars, they are still relevant for our future, and this is the third chapters in our history of the Lectra 4.0 strategy, the 2023-2025 strategic roadmap. For this roadmap, we are convinced that at the end, we will achieve in a better position our long-term objective, which is to become a key Industry 4.0 player in the three market sectors we serve. For this roadmap, we have set three ambitions. The first one is to take the full advantage of the new dimension we have now following the acquisition of Gerber, notably to accelerate our growth.
The second one is to significantly, sorry, increase the volume of the SaaS revenues in the group's total revenues. The third ambition is to seize all the acquisition opportunities we will have in the coming years. Of course, as Daniel said, we have always been very focused on CSR, and we have always been trying to be at the forefront in building a more sustainable future for our customers, but also for the planet. To achieve these three ambitions, we have set six strategic priorities, and I will detail each of these six strategic priorities. I will start with the first one, which is to reinforce implementation of ethical, social, societal, environmental best practices, both internally and for our customers. At Lectra, as Daniel said, we have always been trying to be a responsible company.
We are also viewed by our customers as what we call a sustainability enabler. It's part of our DNA. We help our customers to become more responsible, to save also the resources, the key resources of the planet. We help them to optimize the usage of the fabric, the material. We help them digitize their processes to not use papers, as an example, to connect people wherever they are located in, to lower the footprint also of the CO2, et cetera, et cetera. We have been not so vocal about that, and this is something we want to change, and we want to go one step further. As you know, at Lectra, we always have an unfailing respect for ethical standard. We have always cared for the environment, and we have always cared also for our employees, even in tough times, even during crisis.
To give you one example, we have already increased by 3 x the salaries of all our teams all around the world to help them face the, I would say, difficult living cost, which is increasing because of the inflation. We have framed a CSR policy, and we have set commitments which will be detailed in our annual report, which will be issued in about two months from now. We have set commitments in five categories. The first one is to have a strong respect of the highest ethical standards. It's something on which we are very good already, and we want to go one step further. Second one is to eco-design all our offers.
We have already been working on the equipment side, but not enough on the software side, on the data side. There are many things we can do, notably to lower the impact of the cloud infrastructure on the planet. The third one is to promote what we call an inclusive, diverse, and vibrant work culture, notably to adapt the culture of Lectra to the new generations which are more and more present within the company. The fourth one is to reduce the environmental footprint of all our activities at Lectra. We do not pollute a lot. We do not have a lot of CO₂ emissions, but there are many things we can implement all around the world because we have a huge network of subsidiaries, as you know. There are things we can do quickly and in an agile way.
The last category is about providing support for the next generations, notably to the fashion students. As you may know, we have had a program for education for about 20 years now. We provide, for free, software licenses to the fashion schools, fashion universities, so that they can train the students to the Lectra Group solutions, Lectra brand solutions, Gerber brand solution, and Gemini solutions. We want to go one step further to empower the students to really master well all the Lectra Group family solutions. If we now move to the second strategic priority, it's to leverage all the synergies arising from the acquisition of Gerber Technology. I think you will agree with me, this acquisition has had a tremendous impact on Lectra. We have reached a new dimension, and we have already implemented the very short-term synergies.
Don't forget that the acquisition was done in June 2021, in 18 months, we have already achieved some of the synergies Olivier showed you before. It has already had an impact on the EBITDA. Now we move to the second step, which is to work on the medium-term and long-term synergies, and more in particular, on four key synergy levers. The first one is to leverage the potential of the expanded install base. If you think about the fashion brand, nearly all the fashion brands in the world, they are Lectra group customer. It's also the case for the largest fashion manufacturers. If you think about all the leading automotive supplier, delivering car seats, interior, and airbags, they are all Lectra customers. It's the same for the largest furniture manufacturers we serve all around the world.
The Lectra base and the Gerber base, in terms of products, in terms of software licenses and equipment, they are about the same all around the world. Gerber, in the past, didn't focus a lot on selling the value of the services going together with the software and the equipment, which is a key component of the value proposition we have had now at Lectra for more than 15 years. It's something we want to work on to improve the coverage rate of all the Gerber solutions, software, and equipment, and bring back these solutions under maintenance contract. We want to improve the service level of all the Gerber solutions by applying the Lectra best-in-class standards. The second main lever is to unify the R&D effort. In the past, Lectra and Gerber were competitors. Now it's no longer the case.
We are one and single company, one group focused on the same R&D roadmap. As you know, when you want to develop new solutions for the Industry 4.0, you need to integrate new resources, new talents, expert of the cloud, expert of the artificial intelligence, expert of IoT, of big data. It has a huge cost, a cost Gerber was not able to finance and to fund. If you remember, in 2019, Lectra was investing EUR 32 million in R&D, and last year it was almost EUR 53 million. It's a huge investment. Now we have merged all the R&D teams, and they are all working to deliver new solutions and new innovation to the larger install base. The third lever is to launch new joint offers.
Short-term, as you know, we have worked on the compatibility between the Lectra and Gerber solution, software, and equipment. It was, I would say, quite an intense work because it's very difficult to ensure a perfect consistency of the data between the Gerber solution and the Lectra solution, but now it's behind us. We have delivered a perfect compatibility between all the solutions. More importantly, when we acquired Gerber didn't have the Industry 4.0 solutions we have launched since 2018. All the new offers, Fashion On Demand, Furniture On Demand, the Quick Offer, the Flex Offer, Algopex, and so on, these are products Gerber didn't have in its portfolio before. Now that we are working all together as a group, we can offer these solutions to the larger install base of the family.
Of course, the more we move on, the more we'll bring to the market new offers coming from the unified R&D effort that will address a bigger and larger sales potential than before if Lectra was alone. Last but not least, the 4th lever is to reorganize all the industrial operations around three sites. As you know, the Lectra historical industrial operation site was in Bordeaux, in France. It was addressing all the world from Bordeaux. Gerber had a different strategy. Gerber, when we acquired the company, moved to a fabless strategy. It was a decision notably driven by AIP, the previous owner of Gerber, and Gerber contracted with manufacturers outside of Gerber in the U.S. and in China. In 2022, we took the decision to re-internalize the production done by the U.S. manufacturer of Gerber back in Tolland.
Tolland is the headquarter, former headquarter of Gerber, and this is the place where now we assemble some of the Gerber brand equipment. Now we have really a strong industrial footprint in the three main and most important geographies in Asia, in Europe, and in Americas, which will enable us to think about different things to improve our supply chain operations, our logistic operations, to produce things more closer to the customer location, and of course, to reduce the environmental impact of all our industrial operations. The third strategic priority is to accelerate the transition of software sales to the SaaS model. As you know, we decided back 6 years ago to introduce to the market all the new software only in SaaS mode. SaaS, it's not only a financial model, it's really about repackaging completely the offer in a new way.
The software offer, the service offer in a new way. It's not just about selling on a subscription mode. It's really a transformation, a deep transformation on the way we package the offer and we support the offer. When the customer subscribe to the offer, it's not the end of the journey. It's really the beginning of the journey. A journey which will last five, 15 years maybe in the future. It's really a different way to work and to exchange with our customers. We started from zero in SaaS revenues six years ago, and even in 2018 it was zero-point-something million EUR. Last year, 2022, we achieved more than 21 million EUR revenue from software subscription, a figure that many company of the size of Lectra couldn't achieve, I think, in a short period of time.
We have set a very ambitious objective to achieve EUR 70 million in software subscription revenues in 2025. How we do that? By increasing the sales and marketing programs to encourage our customers to adopt more and more all the SaaS offers. Second, to intensify the prospecting activities and actions because all the offers we have been introducing for five years now, they are brand new. They are at the beginning of their life cycle. They have been adopted by dozens, hundreds of customers, but the sales potential is far bigger. Last but not least, we will keep accelerating the R&D investment for these offers so that we can bring more value to the current offers already available, but also we'll launch new solutions that will address more needs around the Industry 4.0.
The fourth strategic priority is about accelerating the transformation of the group customer relationship and customer engagement model. It's a journey we started in 2019 when we initiated the introduction of the customer success. Customer success, it's both a philosophy which aims to empower our customers to use well our solutions, and it's also a team at Lectra which comprise support people, expert people, technician, professional services, trainers, consultants, and also people helping our customers to integrate our solutions. Today, we have also introduced a new profile in the customer success team. It's called the customer success managers. These people, they are helping on a daily basis our customers using Industry 4.0 solutions, so the ones we have been introducing for five years, to use well these solutions.
Our ambition is to increase the number of customer success managers so that they can help our customers dealing with more and more offers we have on our portfolio. We have always been careful about the customer satisfaction and loyalty. We have disclosed the customer satisfaction scores, the Net Promoter Scores on a regular basis. There are things we can improve to one step further, notably on the Gerber base, to serve in a better way and improve the quality of service for the Gerber customers. Last but not least, we will finally adjust the responsibility of some of the sales teams so that they can focus on prospection by transferring some of the responsibilities which were previously under the sales team to the customer success team. The fifth strategic priority is to continue to pursue our external growth strategy.
I think you will agree with me, we have been quite busy in terms of acquisitions. Over the past five years, we acquired Kubix Lab, Retviews, Gerber, Neteven, business assets of Glengo Teknoloji, a previous distributor of Gerber in Turkey, and lastly, as Jerome said, TextileGenesis. These acquisitions, they have enabled Lectra to achieve and reach a new dimension following notably the Gerber's acquisition to increase also the technological advance and capabilities of the team at Lectra to also acquire new expertise, new talents on areas we were not covering before, and also to change the image of Lectra in front of our customers. The company, our customers, and maybe some of you knew in the past five years ago, is totally different from the company we work in today.
Lectra before was viewed as a company selling CAD solutions, equipment solution, but it's not the full story of today. We have really changed dimension, and now we cover many processes from the creation, production, and sales activities of our customers, notably in the fashion industry. We will keep being active in terms of external growth by focusing on companies which could complement our product portfolio, and also we want to build new expertise in areas which we do not cover today in the fashion market. The last strategic priority is to prepare Lectra for the period after this new roadmap, 2026, 2030. Because as any tech company, if we only look at the short term, the coming two or three years, we may lose some opportunities for the future.
We have to think about the next five to seven, 10 years, and we need to start working on this future right now if we want to be on time and we want to address the future challenges of our customers. That's why we'll work on an R&D side, and we'll dedicate a huge portion of the R&D investment to work on new offers that we will bring to the market in 2026. We'll keep the R&D investment, the annual R&D investment at 10% of our revenues. As we want to increase the level of total revenues, it's part of the key financial objectives I will detail in two slides from now. The annual R&D expenses, they will increase. As I told you last year, they reached almost EUR 53 million.
In the next three years, the annual average amount of R&D investment will be close to EUR 65 million every year. We'll also work on several activities, notably to phase out some products which are non-strategic for Lectra. All these products, they account for less than 5% of the group revenues. Some of these products, they are not relevant for the Industry 4.0. They have been there for 15 years, 20 years sometimes. They are not compatible with the Industry 4.0 principles, some others are coming from acquisitions we did from Gerber, from Neteven, as an example. They are not strategic for us, they do not focus on the three strategic market sectors. As Daniel told you, we want to focus on fashion, automotive, and furniture.
The board of director will work on the evolution of the group governance, notably to ensure that Lectra will keep applying its long-term strategy after the period 2026. We are really starting this new phase, this third chapter in our history of the Lectra 4.0 strategy with a very ambitious roadmap, with many changes. As I told you, we want to integrate well and communicate more and do more in terms of CSR to be really here as a key player and to build a more sustainable future for the planet. In terms of financial objectives, we have set three financial objectives. The first one is to achieve revenues of more than EUR 700 million, both through organic growth and also from external growth. The second one is to achieve 10% of our revenues coming from SaaS.
Today, software subscription, so SaaS, they represent 4% of total revenues. We want to move that percentage to 10 while increasing the total level of revenues, as I told you. The third financial objective is to reach more than 20% of EBITDA margin, which is an increase, of course, compared to what we are doing today. We will keep our attractive shareholder payment policy by distributing a dividend, which should represent about 40% of net income, which is in line with what we have been doing for years now. I will leave the floor to Jerome to tell you more about the 2023 outlook.
Thank you, Maximilien. Now that the 2023 to 2025 roadmap has no secret anymore for anybody listening to this presentation with very ambitious objective, let's go back to 2023. First of all, even though it has been said already, it has been said by Daniel and by Maximilien, I just wanted to come back to this new dimension. I think it's important because basically this new dimension is something that will enable us also to accelerate, you know, in 2023. More than that, it's important to understand that this new dimension has not deteriorated the financial fundamentals that Lectra had before the acquisition of Gerber and before the other acquisition.
As an example, as you can see on the left side of this slide, you know, we still have and we have now a breakdown in revenue, with recurring revenue representing 60% after the acquisition. This is something that is coming from the EUR 522 million revenue that have been presented and explained by Olivier. We still have 60% of the revenue that are recurring and known basically, you know, with few percent uncertainty only at the beginning of the year. We came back to a very strong and we have always had, but yeah, even after the acquisition of Gerber, we still have an even stronger financial situation with more than EUR 450 million shareholder equity and the net cash situation as mentioned.
Obviously we have a capacity for innovation that is very strong. We need to be very confident that with this new dimension, you know, we have all the strength and asset to reach our objectives. If we come back to the few topics or situation that have affected, you know, 2022, that were sometime a little bit difficult to manage. Okay. Let's look at the situation now. We still start 2023 with a low visibility, we have to be honest with that, on a certain number of market sectors. We have to acknowledge the fact that if the environment is still degraded, you know, we can show and we can see some signs of improvement.
If we start by China, obviously, even if 2022 have been particularly difficult in China, the fact that now China is fully open since January 8th is something positive. Positive for us, but also positive for our customers. We have a lot of customers with operation or suppliers in China, and the fact they will be able, you know, to resume some travel discussion with their partners, you know, is something very important. We can see also the situation that is improving on the shortage. This is something we can see on the price of the energy and the raw materials and that had stabilized in the past weeks, okay? The fears of recession is a little bit behind us. You know, even though-As I said, there is still uncertainty, but the situation seems to be stabilized.
Obviously, the war in Ukraine is still a concern, okay? We don't know the way it will move in the next weeks and months. We have seen through the analysis that was done by Olivier that some of the countries, some of the market that are very important for Lectra, close to Ukraine, you know, this is the case in Poland, in the Baltic countries, are still affected because customers in those country are still hesitant to invest. Lastly, you know, we still have a situation that may affect the decision of our customers, which is the increase in the interest rate that may have an impact, you know, on their capacity to invest. Some comments. You know, 2022 was a particular year. If we look at the different quarters of 2022, they have been very heterogeneous for different reason.
First of all, just come back to Q2 in 2022. Q2 was not a good quarter in 2022 for one main reason, which is the strong lockdown in China that has affected our capacity to deliver the products, the Gerber brand products. You know manufacturer at the contract manufacturer of Gerber in this country. We have booked a certain number of orders during this quarter or even coming from Q1, but we have not been able to deliver because of the lockdown and the fact that this contract manufacturer was closed during six to eight weeks. It has improved the Q3 results that have been exceptionally high because the delivery that we could not do in Q2 have been much done in Q3 and have improved the situation in Q3.
We will need to be very careful when comparing the quarterly 2022 results to what happened in 2022 because 2022 was a little bit strange. It will start in Q1, because Q1 2022 was a very good quarter. It came from the fact that the backlog of orders on January 1st, 2022, coming from the very strong level of orders that we have had in Q4 2021, as explained by Olivier. This very strong backlog has helped to increase the revenue of Q1 2022, whereas the backlog on January 1st, 2023, came back to a more normative level. Let's just say that we need to be careful when comparing the quarterly performance of 2023 to the same quarter of 2022.
If we look at the overall 2023 financial objectives. Let's look at those objective that has been set by Lectra. First of all, as you can see, and for the revenues and for the EBITDA, you know, we are first started to correct the impact of the exchange rate, you know, between the actual results of 2022 and the same results computed with the exchange rate we have used to prepare the scenarios for 2023. As a reminder, the exchange rate have changed a lot during 2022. It was the case for the euro dollar. In average, the euro dollar exchange rate, which has an importance on our operation and on our P&L, was 1.05.
To build the scenarios and the objective for 2023, we have used the exchange rate, the euro dollar exchange rate of December 30, so the last exchange rates of the year, you know. We have done the same for the other currencies. If we just retreat, you know, and calculate the 2022 revenues and EBITDA with the exchange rate that we have used, sorry, for the 2023 scenarios, we can see that it has a mechanical impact on the revenue, -EUR 8.3 million, and it has also a mechanical impact of -EUR 3.8 million on the EBITDA.
If now we start from the 2022 results converted using the 2023 exchange rate just to ensure a like-for-like comparison as far as the exchange rates are concerned, our objective is to reach revenues between EUR 522 and EUR 576 million , which is fairly large, you know, because still of the uncertainty we have on the non-recurring part of our business, of our revenues. It represent a +2% to +12% growth in the revenue. If we look at the impact it will have on the EBITDA for the scenarios at EUR 522 million , it would represent a EUR 90 million EBITDA going slightly down 5% compared to 2022.
For the scenario at EUR 576 million of revenue, this would mean a EUR 113 million EBITDA growing 20% compared to 2022 results. That's the end of the presentation. You know, I let you look at the financial calendar. You know, we will have in 2023 with the next annual shareholders meeting, but also the release of the quarterly results in 2023 and beginning of 2024 for the fiscal year 2022. Together with Daniel, Olivier, and Maximilien, we are now ready to answer to your questions.
Thank you, Jerome. We'll take the first questions.
Yes, we have a few question here. The first one will be about 2025. What portion of the EUR 700 million revenue in 2025 is coming from organic versus external growth?
We've built scenarios. Based on these scenarios, most of the increase could come from organic growth or from external acquisitions. If times are tough, the internal growth will be lower, but there will be more opportunities for acquisitions with companies that are priced at a lower value. Our capacity to bring to the Lectra family some of the startups and some of the company that could bring a lot will be higher. On the opposite, if the economy is doing better, the internal growth will be higher, and we may acquire less company. The mix between internal, external growth depends on the scenarios, but in all the scenarios, we are above EUR 700 million in revenue and above 20% in EBITDA.
We have a second question here. It's about the SaaS model you talk about. Are the SaaS offers only dedicated to the fashion industry?
No, it's not the case. It's mainly dedicated to fashion. It was the case for the first products we have developed and introduced in 2018. It was the case also for the SaaS offer that is coming from the company we have acquired, you know, Kubix Lab, Retviews, and Neteven. We have also developed, and we have launched recently, it was in October 2022, a brand-new offer of software dedicated to the automotive industry. You know, this is name that have been used by Maximilien, Algopex, Valia, Empower. Our intention in the next quarters and years is to launch products, to launch software product that will be sold under the SaaS mode that will be for three market sectors.
At the end of the day, that's true that it will remain, you know, mainly for fashion, even though we will also cover the other market sectors.
The first product launch in 2018 were for Furniture On Demand and Fashion On Demand, furniture was already one of the first markets.
Another question about the activities. Can you be more specific on the activities that you plan to discontinue between 2023 and 2025?
When we acquired Gerber, you know, had already other activities that came from long time ago when it was when Gerber Technology was a division of a bigger company listed on the New York Stock Exchange and called Gerber Scientific. They had kept within Gerber Technology an activity called Sign and graphics. You know, what you can see behind me is an example of what they are doing. You know, I don't know if this is the word in English, kakemono. They also cut and develop things that you can put on helmets, you know, for the different... This is not something strategic, okay? This is something with new non-recurring sales, but also consumables.
The phase out of these activities and the impact on the revenue will be progressive. All in all those activities, you know, will be phased out, you know, in the next three to five years progressively. All in all, they represent a little bit less than 5% of the total revenue, so around EUR 25 million revenue. We'll not really see it. It's just that it will allows us to really focus on resources, on what is strategic and what will bring us more than those activities that are absolutely not strategic.
Another question about the governance of the group. Can you give us more color on the evolution of the governance plan after 2025, please?
Already in 2023, we have two new board members that will replace Bernard Jourdan and Anne Binder, who have been board members for 12 years. They have already been selected by the board and will be presented to the next general assembly. They have strong background and should reinforce the board for the coming years. We also have a succession plan for some of the executive committee board members that will retire in 2025. Jerome will retire in April 2024, and we'll present Jerome as a board member for the next assembly in 2024. I'm 68, I won't be there forever. Well, I feel like a teenager.
I still want to be there for some years. The goal for me is to stay in my position for the next two years, and then I will act only as chairman. If I also stay CEO, I will focus more on strategy and acquisition and less on day-to-day operations. We also have in one of the committee of the board, we review one or two times a year the position of each of the executive committee members to decide on the continuation plan in case something happen, if somebody's ill or is impeached to work. Also if people resign or if they come to retirement on a more planned logic.
We don't publish these details because it would be damageable for the company, but we have plans for the replacement of each of the executive committee members.
Question about inflation. What are the consequences of the inflation on your costs and selling prices?
We have had an impact on the manufacturing cost of our products. Obviously, last year, you know, that was around the level of inflation that we have had in Europe or in developed country, because as we all know, the level of inflation in Asia was much lower. When we speak about the products, the Gerber brand products manufacture in China, they have not really suffered of the inflation. The increase was only 1%-2%. When we speak about the products that are manufacture in the U.S. or in France, they have suffered from the inflation rate.
The good news is that we have a pricing power that is strong enough, you know, to transfer the impact of the inflation that we have had on our manufacturing costs and even on our overheads to the customers. What we have done in 2022, for the first time probably in the past 20 years or even in Lectra's history, is to increase the public price of all our products two times, one in January 2022 and another time in July 2022. It was 5% and 4% in developed countries in Europe and in the U.S., it was much lower in China for the same reason I mentioned earlier, which is a lower inflation rate.
At the end of the day, if you remember the part of the presentation of Olivier on the main indicators of the P&L at the end of 2022, the fact that when revenues have grown 12% in 2022 compared to 2021, the fact that the gross margin rate has increased 14% is also a good, you know, feedback and a good proof that we have been able to transfer the impact of the increase of the cost to the price invoice to the customers.
We should add that our business plan for the next three years is based on inflation plus a certain percentage. We have growth objective that are independent of the inflation.
Now a question about the EBITDA. How will evolve the EBITDA margin every year until 2025?
I think that we have not disclosed, released the detail of the evolution of the P&L from 2022 to 2025. I think we have given our objective, you know, at the end of the three-years roadmap, EUR 700 million revenue, 10% in SaaS revenue, and an EBITDA margin of 20%+. We have also given the guidance, the financial objective with a range for 2023, knowing that we still have some uncertainty, we may be able to narrow the range at midyear this year. We have not given the details. Obviously we are starting around 18%. We'll go to 20%.
If the situation is improving, we may accelerate stronger and earlier, but there is no detail of the evolution, you know, from 2023 to 2025 of the revenues and the EBITDA.
I think it will be the two last question. The first one, it's about the, your profit margin. Will you be able to increase the gross profit margin and go back to the level of 70 +, which was the level before Gerber acquisition?
We'll do that in two steps. The first one is in the coming three years, where we will improve mainly the recurring revenues by selling more contract on the Gerber install base, selling more SaaS software, which have a better margin, and also improving slightly the gross margin on the equipment by selling more Lectra brand equipment or higher-level equipment in the product mix. For the periods 2026, 2030, we'll have new equipments which will be based on Lectra's technology that should have better margin. Yes, we will progressively reach back the 70%. Not sure that we'll do that before the end of 2025, we should improve in the coming three years.
Maybe the last question is how has evolved the competitive environment?
Very differently on our main activities. Around the cutting room, what we call the extended cutting room, from planning to cutting, to what happens after the cutting, today we have a unique position. We are the only premium player. Our competitors are mainly low-cost players in China. We don't fight on the same business model. They sell low-cost cutters with no services, and they want to catch customer that are very sensitive to cost. We are focusing on customer that focus on their profitability. We bring the customer the capacity to develop sustainability and improve their margins. Therefore, we don't expect this position to change a lot.
We are not afraid of having any competitors catching Lectra because we have invest a multiple of what they invest in R&D over the last 10 years. It's very difficult for them to catch us. The second product line is around what we traditionally call CAD. We call this now product development, which is all around what brands do to develop their product. Here, the customer are very captive. The worst year of our history, we lost 1% of our customer to competition. Gerber lost 1% of its customer to competition, and I believe it's the same for everyone. The cost of change is too high, and therefore we don't expect any change in the market, and we have a majority of the customer we target now in Europe and in the U.S.
The third business line is around everything we do new, around e-commerce, around PLM, around the sustainability. Here we are more challengers than leaders. We are in new markets that we don't know so well. Here, this is where we believe we have to take care about where the competition is, how the competition will grow, and this is where we really have risks.
No more question here, so I'll let you to conclude this meeting.
Thank you, everyone, for being with us today. I hope you enjoyed the presentation. We are available should you want one-to-one meetings or to know more about our new strategic roadmap and our strategy. Thank you so much, and enjoy the rest of the day.
Thank you. Bye-bye.