Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for being with us to attend the presentation of Groupe SEB's 2022 full year results. I will be taking you through those results together with Nathalie Lomon, our Chief Financial Officer. I will be following the current agenda, which is we will look at as an introduction, what is the Group strategy and where it's going. We'll look at the key operational highlights for 2022, the key ESG highlights. We look at financials, and we will finish with an outlook to 2023 and beyond. Right. As way of introduction, a reminder of our key figures that were published yesterday in our press release. Sales at close to EUR 8 billion- 4.7% like for like.
ORfA a t EUR 620 million for the full year. Lending and ORfA margin at 7.8%. Adjusted EBITDA of EUR 874 million, -16% year-over-year. A net profit at EUR 360 million. CapEx stood at EUR 345 million, 4.3% of sales. We landed our inventories at EUR 1.682 billion, 21% of sales. Our net financial debt stands at EUR 1.973 billion, giving a leverage of 2.3 times. Last, the board of directors which proposed to the May general assembly a dividend of EUR 2.45 per share, stable versus 2021. Of course, Nathalie will come back to those numbers.
Before going into that, I'd like to remind all of us what is the group's main strategic drivers. The first driver is a multi-category, multi-activity strategy. Groupe SEB is operating in around 80 product families, split between cookware, kitchenware, split between kitchen electrics, either electrical cooking or food preparation. We have a strong division in home and personal care. Last, we expanded since the acquisition of WMF/Schaerer back in 2016 into the professional business. The first of key pillar of the strategy is a multi-category, multi-activity portfolio. The second key pillar is we have a multi-brand, multi-brands approach. We have four kinds of brands. We have consumer international global brands. You will all know Tefal, Krups, Rowenta, Moulinex, which are those international global brands. We have some pretty strong local brands.
Supor is the biggest one of them. Supor is our brand in China, main brand in China, but we also have Arno in Brazil or IMUSA in Colombia. We have a portfolio, a growing portfolio of premium brands with WMF, Lagostina, and Artland in the United States. More recently, we've acquired professional brands with WMF, of course, and Schaerer, but also the acquisition of Curtis back in 2018 in the U.S., Krampouz 2020, Zhebo last year, and La San Marco very recently. The third pillar of the strategy is a multi-country strategy. We have a very balanced geographical portfolio. We do a third of our sales, 35% in Western Europe, which is the homeland of most of the activities of the group.
We've developed over the last 15 years, a very strong business in China, which now weighs 27% of the group. Our third region is North America with 13%, other EMEA 13%, and then other Asia, 8%, South America, 4%. We're operating in 150 countries, and what is a bit more specific about SEB is that we have leadership positions or one or two position in over 75% of our sales portfolio. The fourth element of our strategy is a multi-channel strategy. We believe that our consumers should be allowed to reach our products as and where they want in all kind of distribution channels. Our, our historical channels, mass retail, traditional or electro specialists are still the more important part of the group sales.
We have developed in the last 15 years a group own retail activity. We have some other channels with department stores, and of course, what has been developing steadily, fastly in the last five to 10 years is the online sales, and I'll come back to that to share the developments in 2022 on that front. Moving on to 2022, I will take you through what has gone on in terms of products, in terms of brands, in terms of international expansion, in terms of distribution, and in terms of investments towards increased competitiveness of the Group. Starting immediately with products. Products and innovation are the heart and soul of our business and our industry. And we have a very, I would say, simple and straightforward priorities in consumer.
We see massive expansion potential in consumer small electric appliance through new functionalities that improve consumers' well-being, that makes simpler products, better products, more capabilities. That is something that is working and will be working. We also work on the consumer experience from purchase to the end of life of the product. I would also dare to say beyond the end of life of the product more and more. We work on consumers' engagement based on a best-in-class understanding of their behavior and data collection. More and more, we try to anticipate and meet consumers' needs pre, during and post-purchase through an understanding of the way they behave with the products. Last, and again, that's maybe a point of differentiation, we do that with an ethical and sustainable approach.
As far as professional is concerned, we have, as you know, a very large range of full automatic coffee machines that is developing and that's basically aiming at offering the best service and the best product for our consumers and our customers. Now, moving into a bit more specifics for 2022, what happened. Maybe the starting point is to talk about oil less fryers. Oil less fryers is a major growth driver in 2022. Merci. The sales of this category for us has just multiplied by 4 in the course of the last three years. On this picture, you see that we operate oil less fryers under all our brands. Tefal, of course, as an international product.
Arno in Brazil, IMUSA in Colombia are key brands for oil-less fryers. Second thing we've been doing very consistently is the continued international rollout of our best-selling products. We developed our sales very substantially in versatile vacuum cleaners in the last 5-10 years, and the growth in the last three years have been 70%. We have developed and traded up the Cookeo range with the Cookeo Touch that is now 30% of Cookeo sales, twice as much as it was in 2020. Even on more staple innovations like Ingenio, like Tefal Ingenio, the stackable cookware, we've reached new heights with 25%+ penetration in our top two markets, Japan and France, which shows somewhat the potential of this category and this market segment.
We have launched successfully some new products. We have a very great range of kitchen knives, with the Black Knives collection from WMF that was launched late last year. We've developed and expanded infrared technology rice cookers in China. Rice cooker is a massive category in China, as you expect. Around 15 million pieces sold every year. Those infrared technology rice cookers now weigh up to 12% of sales, total rice cooker sales in China, which is a very, very strong result. Last, we're expanding our range of cookware through new coatings, ceramic being one, and we are expanding rapidly ceramic coating pans and pots on the Tefal brand.
Last but not least, of course, we've introduced last year the WMF Perfection that is already available in over 1,000 premium outlets in Europe, out of which 75% in Germany, promising launch. That's a great product with Pawel Wyszynski as our ageri, supporting us for these activities. That is for consumers. For professional coffee, we have a very strong momentum in machines development. We cover a wide range of products from the 9000 S, which is the kind of Rolls-Royce that makes hundreds of coffee in the same day, to smaller models.
We have the WMF Barista on the bottom right, which is a machine that looks and feel like a barista machine, but gives the convenience and practicality of a fully automatic coffee machine. Schaerer also has a very strong product activity. Top right corner, you see the Schaerer Soul machine that is a new launch for this year. On the top right, you see the showroom of Schaerer in Surville in Switzerland. We've also put you a picture of Luckin Coffee. Luckin Coffee is the number one coffee shop chain in China. They have over 8,000 outlets, and we are a preferred supplier of coffee machines in that banner. A very strong development of Schaerer. Last, I mean, I cannot finish on that part without mentioning our latest acquisitions.
We acquired last summer, Zummo, which is a Spanish-born company in Valencia, which is the global leader in juice extraction machines, expanding its business in Spain, of course, but also France, U.S., and many other countries. You see those machines typically in supermarkets or in small convenience shops. Most recently, we've acquired an Italian company called La San Marco. Italy is a country close to my heart, as some of you may know. La San Marco is a traditional coffee machine maker. They are based in Provincia di Gorizia in northeastern Italy. They are manufacturing and marketing traditional coffee machines. Over 100 years of existence, marked by innovations. They are the leaders in the traditional lever coffee machines, lever-operated coffee machines.
They have exclusive patents and trademarks on that. They turnover around EUR 20 million, half of that out of Italy. They have close to 100 employees. It's a very, very nice complement to a portfolio of professional coffee machine, and we are delighted to welcome the San Marco employees into Groupe SEB.We've worked a lot in 2022 in developing our brand portfolio. As Supor has passed the EUR 2 billion mark, we now can say that we have two, over EUR 2 billion brands, in the, in the group, Supor and Tefal. Tefal is the most international brand of the group. Supor is very Chinese.
Both brands operate on a very large variety of categories, cookware but also kitchen electrics, food preparation, and both brands are a leader in many of the markets they operate in. Beyond Supor and Tefal, we have Rowenta that is helping us lead the way in categories like home cleaning and linen care. We have Moulinex, who is the number two global brand in food preparation globally. Moulinex, that was born and developed in France and Western Europe, is expanding across that geography. We have IMUSA, which I mentioned. IMUSA is our leading brand in Colombia. It's the number one brand in Colombia, operates in both cookware, kitchenware and kitchen electrics, food preparation in particular. IMUSA is a key pillar of our brand development in Colombia.
This is one we like particularly, SEB, which is the origin of the group. We've taken this picture because today or this year is the 70th anniversary of the production of the first pressure cooker in the SEB factory in Saulnes. We produced over 50 million pressure cookers in that factory. We still produce them, and SEB is one of those very strongly rooted local brands that populate the portfolio of brands of the group, and that is a very nice complement to our portfolio. We have as a reminder, All-Clad, number 1, premium brand in cookware in the United States, probably the most premium cookware brand in the world.
We have WMF, which is again, also born in cookware, born in Germany, but that is expanding as All-Clad into kitchen electrics. You see a steam cooker under WMF brand, very beautifully designed products. As a reminder, we have this fantastic Italian jewel called Lagostina, which is one of our preferred premium brands. Very different distinctive assets and values for this brand. A very strong and dynamic brand portfolio. A lot of things happening on that front. We've also worked very hard in 2022 to enhance our international presence, and I will cover three parts, maybe starting with a deep dive on China. China is an ongoing success story for the group.
We've reached in 2022 sales of EUR 2.1 billion, 5% up on last year like for like. If we step back, our sales in 2006 were EUR 145 million. That means, I've done the I spare you the calculation, 15 times growth in 16 years. We can say that it's a pre-established success story. Supor is a very strong brand in China, has, enjoys 84% brand awareness. If we dig into what happens, what goes on, and how we got there, well we've reached number one position. This is breaking news. This is breaking news. We've reached number one position across all our categories in kitchen electrics in China, both online and offline. We were number one online, not offline.
Now it's done, with 25% market share, and that is driven through innovation. 40% of our kitchen electric sales are made on new products every year in China, so a very strong product. I mean, you see beautiful products. You see a category, a coverage of different categories of products, which is vast and growing. That, that's a first element is our success in kitchen electrics and the growth we've been able to generate in kitchen electrics. The stronghold of Supor was originally into cookware. We have maintained a very high share position. We have 35% share in cookware in China, leader of course in online and offline. Again, that's driven by a wide range coverage, the ability to cover all price points, innovation.
You see some material innovations on the left side of the corner. The first pillar of the success of Supor in China is its product portfolio and it's its ability to innovate. This success is also based on a highly competitive manufacturing base. We have five state-of-the-art plants in Supor in China, plus one in Vietnam. We have a capacity of more than 150 million units production capacity. We serve the local Chinese market, and we serve the international markets through these production capacities. Our 10,000 employees are a very strong support to the development of the business. Maybe the last point I would like to highlight is a remarkable ability of our teams in Supor to access and adapt to very fast-changing market conditions.
You will have followed our ventures in China to realize that over 70% of our sales now are online. Online distribution picture moves very fast. We have marketplaces, we have social networks that become trading, and Supor has a remarkable ability to adapt. We're using over 2,300 influencers to help us day in, day out do that. We are penetrating the on-to-off stores. Now, what is an on-to-off store? It's a store that has been created by Tmall, Alibaba or Jingdong to be a local relay of online sales. The rarity of China is that the online platforms create physical stores. We've been able...
That started, I think, two, three years ago, and we've been able to penetrate 64% of those stores in the span of the last two years. Better than any speech, let's watch this, around two-minute video on Supor.
Supor has been listed on Shenzhen Stock Exchange since 2004. Hangzhou base, Shaoxing base, Wuhan base, Yuhuan base, Vietnam base. Supor is an ideal partner that helps you take care of your family. Hundreds of thousand square meters finished good storage space. Export business lead time down to 28 days. More than 1,000 R&D staff. More than 10,000 square meters R&D laboratory. Cookware, kitchen electric appliances, household electric appliances, large kitchen electric appliances, kitchenware, vacuum cup. Hundreds of millions families around the world are using Supor products every day. Four Supor products are sold around the world per second. Where there is home, there is Supor.
All right. Supor is clearly a big success, and 2022 is another record year for this company. Not only... Sorry, I'm moving too fast. Tack. Voila. We also have some blossoming markets. We've taken three out of our top 22, Colombia, Mexico, and Poland, that are all part of our top 20 countries, that all post double-digit growth consistently over the last three years, that have reached number one position in cookware, number two in SDA, for two of them. That's to say that the group geographical strategy is also made of, yes, big countries, but also the ability to penetrate and grow our business in smaller countries that are bound to become bigger markets for us. Do it through strong local or global brands.
We do it through products which are designed to match local consumer habits and needs, category range extensions. Those countries now significantly contribute and support the growth of the group. Another key element of the geographical development of the group has been in the Professional business. When we acquired Schaerer and WMF, they were majority sold in Germany and Switzerland. We see a few years later, a much more balanced portfolio with North America, Europe and Asia, sharing pretty comparable stakes of the business. Asia is a bit behind. Europe is still a bit ahead, but the international expansion of the coffee business is clearly there, with some specifics.
In China, in Asia, we are pushed and helped a lot by Luckin Coffee, which is the number 1 customer. We have a strong rebound in the U.S. with Wilbur Curtis, which is a nice addition to the Schaerer brand that allows us to expand and widen our customers' portfolio. In DACH, sorry, in Deutschland, in Germany, Switzerland, Austria, we've been able to see a strong acceleration both of WMF and Schaerer, and that growth is driven both by machine sales and service, which is also something we're very interested in. We've developed substantially our distribution in the last year or so. Online sales now represent over 40% of our total sales.
Of course, when we speak and talk online, we think of pure players, Amazon type or click and mortar, like Darty, darty.com, boulanger.com, mediamarkt.com. We have expanded in the last year, our presence on marketplaces in China and beyond China. We are more and more expanding our direct-to-consumer capabilities. We have developed in the last 3 years, 70 brand.com websites. A brand.com website can be, for instance, rowenta.fr or tefal.uk. We have 70 of those. We received 55 million visitors on our websites last year, and we have 20 new store opening in the sole 2022.
A growing business, a growing capability that allows us to give our customers access, our consumers access to our products as and when they visit us. We've also used 2022 to keep investing and developing our competitiveness. Our industrial footprint comprises over 40 factories between France, Germany, and Asia. This is a global portfolio of factories that has allowed us to maybe serve or be a bit more immune to out of stock issues or supplies issues in the last two years. Having our own manufacturing footprint and setup allows us to secure the supply chain in a moving environment that's an euphemism.
We are currently increasing our investments in Egypt, in Czech Republic, in Vietnam and in Colombia to diversify our sourcing bases. That allows us to improve diversification, that allows us to improve our agility and global competitiveness. You will have seen, I won't come back to that we are reorganizing our activities in Germany, putting together the sales activity of WMF and SEB in DACH. That plan is currently being discussed with the social partners, we should hopefully reach a conclusion and then move into execution in January 2024. Maybe, the last point on that one is, we've been investing to optimize our supply chain and our distribution setup in France and in Western Europe.
We are opening this, now, those days, this new warehouse of 100,000 square meters in Bully-les-Mines in the north of France, that will be serving Western Europe with SDA small domestic appliance products. That was for the operational highlights. I thought it useful to remind ourselves and to look at what have been the achievements in the environment, social, and governance matters. Starting with the carbon neutrality trajectory, we aim that by 2050, we've reduced at the end of 2022 by 30% our carbon intensity in scope one and two, that is mainly our plants, starting from a base of 2016. We are on track to achieve our objectives of 2023 on that matter.
The second point I'd like to share is the focus on circular economy. We've been talking a lot in the last years of those two matters. We have today 90% of our small domestic appliance products out of China, which are repairable for 15 years. We hold inventory of pièce détachée spare parts in Faucogney-et-la-Mer in Les Vosges. We have our own inventory of spare parts for 15 years. We have 42% of recycled materials in our products and packaging. Today, 42% of what you buy is made of recycled material. That's on the environment part. We have a strong activity also on the social part.
We've been measuring ourselves in lost time injury rate, that is safety in our setups, be it factories, logistic centers or retail stores. We have reached, in 2022, a lost time injury rate of 0.84. People say that below one starts to be a very, very good performance. We've reached 0.84 coming from 2.6 back in 2018. We also, being an industrial company, we also look carefully at our women manager ratio. That is the number of women who are managers compared to the number of women in the workforce. Today, this ratio is at 95%. That means women are 43% of the staff, of the workforce of the group, and 41% of our managers. Combining environmental and social matters, we are developing a RépareSEB activity.
RépareSEB is this atelier de réparation, this workshop to repair products that we've opened Porte de la Chapelle 3 years ago in Paris. That is, combining, repairing and reconditioning products with reintegrating people in the work society. We take people that have no work left and no, no mission to work. We bring them back into a professional life. That activity has been recognized by a few rewards. Of course, as these ESG matters are very important, we are being audited and followed by quite a few companies that are providing ratings. Those ratings put us in a very nice position in many instances. The last part of ESG is the G for governance. 2022 has been a very eventful year.
After 20 years of tenure as Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Thierry Latour d'Artaise has moved on to become Chairman of the Board. As the board has appointed me as Chief Executive Officer of the company. It's a very nice way of dissociating the activities between the Chairman and the CEO, and we have a great understanding of the respective roles of one and the other. Beyond that, we have created a strategic committee, as one of the board committees that started in July 2022, chaired by Thierry Latour d'Artaise, comprising of 5 board members.
Its main responsibilities are corporate social responsibility, strategy, M&A, and competitive intelligence. Maybe the last point on this ESG is, we've increased three times the share of ESG criteria in the variable compensation of the corporate officers and the senior leadership team. Those are quantitative criteria relating to carbon environment, relating to health and safety, and relating to ethics and compliance. Obviously in 2022 has been a very eventful year, but it's also been a year marked by.
Looking at the financials of the company, starting with the sales. In 2022, the group has delivered around EUR 8 billion sales. When compared to 2021, it's a decrease of 1.2% on a reported basis. This is coming from an organic decline of 4.7%, minus EUR 378 million. A positive effect from the conversion of currencies for 3.3%, plus EUR 269 million. You see on the right-hand side of the chart, the contribution of Sumo that Stanislas mentioned earlier. The Spanish company specialized in juice extraction for the professional segment that we have acquired in August and consolidated in the fourth quarter. Looking in more details into the currency impact.
First, globally, currencies have impacted reported sales throughout the year. As you can see, we had positive impact in all quarters, with very strong impact coming from the revaluation of the Chinese yuan, the US dollar, and the Russian ruble against the euro that you would see on the green part of the chart, and a negative impact coming from the constant devaluation of the Turkish lira that you would see on the right-hand side in red. Later in the presentation, I will further comment the adverse impact of the evolution of the Chinese yuan and the US dollar on the operating profit of the company. As you know, the group had short positions in those two currencies.
They're coming from our purchases of raw materials, of components, of sourced products that are all labeled into those two currencies. On sales, looking at the performance of our two segments, the consumer delivered EUR 7.2 billion sales. It's a decrease of 2.6% when compared to 2021. The professional segment delivered EUR 725 million sales, it's close to a 16% growth. We're really back on track after having strongly suffered from the COVID crisis. More details on how our sales have developed in the year. This chart is an extract of the detailed presentation that we have shared with you on January 30th. First starting with France and Germany.
After a buoyant performance in 2021, obviously the group faced very high costs. Combined with the decrease in demand with high inventories in the trades and with the increase of B brands, the two countries are the largest contributors to the sales decrease in 2022. The war in Russia between Russia and Ukraine also had a negative impact, -EUR 77 million on our business in those two countries. On the positive side, our sales in China have increased by EUR 241 million despite the lockdowns. For the first time ever, Supor crossed the EUR 2 billion line in terms of sales, that's a record for this subsidiary.
The Professional business, as I mentioned previously, saw sales increasing by close to EUR 100 million. All the other countries combined have delivered quite a resilient sales performance in 2022 after the record 2021. Moving to the operating results from activity. The group has delivered EUR 620 million ORfA with an operating margin of 7.8%, slightly higher when compared to our latest margin expectation. In the next slide, I will walk you through our margin bridge to help you understand how this has been delivered in the year. First of all, the group has been impacted by a clear decrease in the volume sold, which has started in the second quarter and has accelerated in the second half.
This is representing a negative impact of minus EUR 359 million on the operating profit. If I were to refer to the slide I have commented previously, altogether France, Germany, Russia, and Ukraine represent 70% of this negative volume impact. We also have seen throughout the year the supply and production costs in, of our sales increase by EUR 367 million. The major items explaining this increase are the cost of raw mat components purchasing for EUR 137 million, the freight, mainly sea freight for EUR 91 million. On top of that, as announced earlier in the year, as a consequence of the action plan to reduce our inventories, we have adjusted our production level to accommodate to a lower demand.
These adjustments in our production capacities has had a negative impact on our manufacturing cost absorption of EUR 75 million. While we were decreasing our inventories, we have encountered additional storage costs for EUR 45 million. These are the bulk items explaining this increase in cost of sales. All these negative impacts have been compensated by price increases, in average 5% when compared to last year, and mix enrichment. This positive price mix impact is EUR 600 million, actually EUR 598 million, and it reflects the pricing power that stems from the group's leading position that Stanislas has commented earlier on. Now moving to the growth drivers and the SG&A expenses.
You may recall that at the end of the first semester, we saw an increase of EUR 101 million of growth drivers and SG&A when compared to H1 2021. We had announced at that time that we would adapt our cost base to the change in the environment. We have decreased our expenses by EUR 82 million in the second half of the year when compared to H2 2022. We're closing the year with a limited increase of growth drivers and SG&A of EUR 24 million when compared to 2021. Currencies. The positive impact on sales that we have seen previously is more than offset by the increase of costs denominated in US dollar and in Chinese yuan, despite the benefit of the Forex hedges that we have contracted before the devaluation of the euro.
In total, in 2022, we have faced very strong headwinds totaling approximately EUR 270 million. They compare to the EUR 300 million that we originally announced. EUR 137 from raw mats, EUR 91 from freight, EUR 41 from currencies. In this slide, I want to give a further deep dive on the headwinds and how they have impacted the profitability of the group in the past two years. Back in 2021, headwinds amounted to EUR 300 million. As you can see here, you have the breakdown between raw mats, freight, and currencies. On top of that, we have experienced another EUR 269 million of additional weight headwind. It's a total of EUR 569 million of headwinds that the group has faced for the last two years.
In 2020, the group has delivered an operating profit of EUR 605 million. In 2022, the operating profit is EUR 620 million. It means that between those two years, the group has offset this amount of headwinds, EUR 260 million of raw mats, EUR 245 of freight, and EUR 65 coming from currencies. The resilient operating results between 2020 and 2022 acknowledges the fact that the group is absorbing, it's compensating for those headwinds in the very short time frame, and the group is in a position to use its pricing power to contribute to the offset of those headwinds. In 2023, we expect that some of the past headwinds will turn into tailwinds between Q2 and Q3. We see costs decrease in freight, in raw mats, and in components purchases.
Those cost decrease will materialize later in the P&L in the year when the current inventory, which has been built with 2022 cost base, will be exhausted. As our FX is concerned, the benefit we had in 2022 coming from hedges is fading. We expect that the impact of tailwinds from freight and raw mats, and the impact of headwinds from FX and especially hedges that we do not have anymore, will globally offset. We have almost a neutral impact of headwinds in our P&L in 2023. I'm now moving to growth drivers. This slide is showing the same trend as in the ROPA bridge that about the FX impact, I won't get into details.
I would like you to note that despite the headwinds, we have increased our innovation spend by 6.4% between 2022 and 2021. Without jeopardizing the future, we are adjusting our cost base. If you look at the increase versus 2020, it's a significant increase of 24%. Now to the operating profit. Between the operating result from activities and operating profit, we are distributing EUR 18 million of profit sharing. That's a decrease when compared to 2021, but it's reflecting the lower profitability of the perimeters in which we distribute profit sharing, and that's mainly France. We have other operating income and expenses totaling EUR 55 million. They would include EUR 33 million of restructuring costs, mainly in Germany, with the cost of the reorg between WMF and Hufsel Deutschland.
That's Stanislas as presented, and that we have commented in detail in Q3. Net profit for the year is EUR 316 million coming from operating profit of EUR 547 million. Financial results is minus EUR 81 million. It's a deterioration of EUR 16 million when compared to 2021, which is coming from two items. The first one being the higher cost of funding our business, totaling EUR 6 million, and the second one is more technical. It's a change in the mark-to-market value of options that we take to cover our share purchases for long-term incentive plans. Non-controlling interests pertain to our minority shareholders in Supor, in Stoberns, and in Zaran. Our tax charge has decreased. Our effective tax rate is down 21%. When compared to 2021, it was 21.9%. Moving to the balance sheet.
With the structure which is strengthening year on year, you can see that the total equity of the company is now close to EUR 3.5 billion. Provisions have decreased. This decrease is related to our liabilities for pension schemes. They've been revised downwards because of increase of long-term inter-interest rate that we use to discount our liability. I will comment with further detail the change in operating working capital and the evolution of the net financial debt.
Starting with the change in operating working capital, our working capital requirements is EUR 1.4 billion at the end of 2022, so it's an increase of EUR 278 million when compared to last year, but it is a significant decrease when compared to June, when we reported a working capital requirement of EUR 1.8 billion. Since June, the major decrease came from the inventories. At that time, we had in our balance sheet EUR 2.2 billion of inventories, and we're closing the year with EUR 1.7 billion. This significant decrease is the result of the action plan we have implemented to reduce our production and our sourcing to accommodate for the reduction in demand that has materialized in the second quarter.
As a consequence, our payables have decreased as well as a consequence of lower purchases, lower manufacturing, and decrease in growth drivers in the fourth quarter. We're closing the year with a working capital on sales ratio at 17.5%, which cannot be compared to the performance we delivered in 2020 and 2021, because the level of activity of those two years at the year-end was heavily impacted by the consequences of the COVID crisis and the level of demand for our products. As such, the ratio we have delivered this year is more comparable to the ones we delivered back in 2018 and 2019, and we could consider that delivering a working capital on sales ratio between 16.5%-17.5% of sales for the company would be a normative value.
I'm coming to the free cash flow generation. We come up with a very strong EUR 664 million free cash flow delivery in the second half, and a total cash consumption of EUR 20 million in the year. In 2022, we have delivered EUR 874 million of EBITDA to cover for the change in working capital to pay for the capital expenditure, which remained pretty stable when compared to 2021 in percentage of sales. We have also paid taxes, interest for EUR 186 million and we also have a change in non-operating working capital, which is mainly coming from fiscal and employee-related liabilities. Very strong cash flow generation in the second half of the year. The impact on the net debt of the company is as follows.
we're closing the year with a net debt of EUR 1.973 billion. The increase from 2021 comes from the cash consumption of EUR 20 million, payment of dividends to SEB shareholders and to Supor minority shareholders for EUR 204 million. Some change in the currencies between the year-end balance sheet numbers in the two years. The last item, other, EUR 197 million comes from the acquisition of Sumo that we did in last August. The investments we do in SEB Alliance, which is our venture capital vehicle, and some share buybacks in SEB and in Supor stock. More details here on our financial debt. We have in our balance sheet EUR 2.7 billion of financial resources.
As you can see on the chart, they're broken down by by instrument. You can see that we have access to a very large array of funding instruments. Well-balanced in terms of in terms of maturation and duration. 90% of this debt, long-term debt is fixed term. We have no covenants on the debt. We also have a very large headroom made of an undrawn syndicated credit line of EUR 990 million, and the capacity to issue new CPs and new NTN for EUR 750 million. We also have EUR 1.3 billion in terms of cash and cash equivalents in the balance sheet. Looking at the financial ratios over a long period.
We're closing the year with a gearing of 0.6 and a leverage of 2.3, 2.1, excluding IFRS 16, which is impacted by the increase of working capital, for sure impacting the level of net debt. We're looking for further de-leverage in the year to come. Last, but very important, the dividend. As announced by Stanislas, the board has proposed to the general assembly or will propose to the general assembly a cash dividend of EUR 2.45, which is a stable dividend when compared to 2022.
As you can see on the chart, with the exception of the 2020 distribution, which was reduced because of the COVID crisis and the recommendation from AFEP, the group has delivered a steadily growing dividend over time. I remind you that shareholders who have registered their shares and own them for more than two years benefit from a 10% bonus on this cash dividend. Over to you, Stanislas.
Merci, Nathalie. I will conclude in a couple of slides. Grommir, pas encore. Maybe to remind ourselves of two facts. The first one is we see our industry with very positive long-term prospects. Positive because we have strong trends in both mature and emerging markets. In emerging markets, we see first equipment levels, we see sophistication and increasing sophistication of the needs. Same as in mature markets. Despite having strong consumption levels, we see trading up happening, we see multi-equipment happening, we see new categories popping up very regularly in our industry. We have a strong long-term growth potential for the industry. We also see some very favorable long-term consumer behavioral patterns.
We hear and see healthy cooking, we hear and see healthy living, taking care of your home, homemade, my home castle. There's a lot of concepts where people take care of their own home. They take care of their families, they take care of what they eat. Our products are very well positioned to meet those consumer trends. Beyond that, I think the group, we believe the group has some very strong assets. We have a proven track record of long-term value creation that has been consistently proven year-over-year over year. We have, as you see, leading market shares worldwide. That gives us a unique position to benefit from those trends. We have a very balanced position in categories, in markets, with brands, in distribution.
We have expanded, six, seven years ago with the acquisition of WMF into the Professional business. After this hiccup of the COVID, we see in 2022 that Professional restarts its journey towards a very strong growth, profitable growth contributor to the group. Innovation was, is, and will be at the heart of the group's core development. Last, and that maybe was one of the more specific unique points of the group, we've made sustainability as one of our pillars many, many years ago. Repairability is something that is more and more popular, and we are convinced that this will only increase over time. Now I know that we are all enthusiastic and excited about the future, but there's also some strong interest in current trading and 2023. Well, maybe, four points.
The first one is 2023 starts slow. Q1 will be below Q2. That's on the base of Q1 last year that was still on par with a very strong Q1 2021. It's a comp, comparative number, issue. That is, that's confirmed in what we see today. We see from Q2 onwards a progressive recovery of sales in the consumer segments. We see throughout the year a strong growth in the professional sales. When it comes ORfa margin as and based on assumptions of tailwinds being compensated by currency, by negative currency hedging impacts, we see an increase in the full year group ORfA margin. That's what we can say at this stage of the year.
Maybe I will conclude by thanking by giving a massive thanks to all the teams in the group that throughout 2022 have helped us navigate what has been a very shaky year in a very shaky environment. Our second half is very different from our first half, and that's all credit to the group's teams throughout the world that have been able to unite as one to curve down inventories, to make sure that we adjust our cost base to our business requirements and needs. Big thank to the teams for navigating through 2022 and looking forward to having a 2023 that will be a bit less shaky, hopefully, but that will bring some better prospects. Thank you very much. We've taken 55 or whatever minutes.
We have now, a lot of time for your questions. Well... Yes.
Sorry. Good afternoon. Just a small question for me. I'm here.
Okay.
For Nathalie. Perhaps in this slide.
Can you stand up so that we see you?
76. I'm Cyril from Kepler Cheuvreux.
Bonjour.
76.
Just to perhaps detail the 158 other non-cash items.
You said slide?
76.
Yes. It's broken down between, well, the two biggest contributors of this slide. The first, you know that we have acquired a business in 2020 that was which name is StoreBound in the U.S. it's a partial acquisition that we have made. At that time, we acquired 55% stake in the business, and we have a put option given by the current shareholders to buy back the 45 remaining. A part of that is that the valuation of that put option. The second part is a draft that we issue in China to pay for our suppliers.
It's considered as another non-cash item, and that would be the two major components of these numbers. If you want to get more detail, there will be more detail in the in the publication.
I have a question there.
Yes.
Do you mind standing up for us?
Yes. It's not easy to stand up.
Pardon.
Yes.
Don't stand up. There you go.
Two questions on my side. The first one is on China. Could you share with us the outlook in the short term for the country for Supor? China is reopening. Consumers are reported to have double the excess savings. Is it going to boost your revenues over there? My second question is that in the second half, you return to the cruising 10% ORfA margin. Is it something to extrapolate for the next year or is it too soon? Thank you.
I knew someone would ask that. Thank you, Mourad. Nathalie will take the difficult question on ORfA margin. I will take the easy question on sales trends in China. Right. China has gone through a very peculiar moment.
I mean, we saw China reopening, a la grande back in December. We saw massive and very fast rate of infection. There were some concerns about the impact of this massive flow of infections on the Chinese population. Then Chinese New Year happened. What we can say, one, is there is no perturbation on our activities. All our workers are back, our factories are up and running, the supply chain is functioning, things are working. That's the first thing that we can say. Second, yes, there has been a lot of savings in Chinese consumers throughout the COVID days. Today, we see consumption booming. Consumption today booms on services and leisure and travel. Today we don't quite see an impact on our consumption and our current trading in China is negative.
That's okay. That was expected. Yet we see China around mid-single digit evolution through 2023, probably a slower start to the year as the rest of the group. We see that building from strength to strength. Remember that China last year in Q1 was up 10% versus year ago. We see steady consumption. We see our business mid-single digit. Today we don't see a direct strong impact of those articles on the resumption of consumption on our categories. Je réponds à cette question, Nathalie? Does the ORfa margin, is it predictive of back to 10% full year?
There are many, many ways to answer to your question. First, I will confirm you that ORfa margin is the target for the company, and this is the area we're comfortable with for managing the profitability of the business. You know that there is always a 4%-5% difference between ORfa margin in the first semester and in the second semester. That is coming from the fact that we have a significant part of our cost structure which is fixed. Whereas we deliver between 44%-46% of our sales in the first half, and the difference in the second half. By construction, there is always operating leverage delivered in the second half when compared to the first.
What we can say about this performance in the second half, that it's very characteristic from the business model of the group. That's very, very happy with the fact that we have managed to deliver 10% in the second half despite the headwinds. As Denis has said, Q1 will be a tough quarter because of the comparison base of last year. We do not expect to see a change in the pattern of the offer delivery between H1 and H2. Do not expect H1 being at 10%. That will not be the case, and there will still be a significant difference as per what we have delivered in the past between the two quarters.
We said that we'd deliver or we expect to deliver an increase ORfa margin in 2023. That is to compare to the 7.8% that we deliver. For sure, we confirm that the midterm target of the company is 10%.
Question?
Yes. Good afternoon, Charles-Louis Scotti from Kepler Cheuvreux. For the consumer sales, you expect a rebound, a gradual rebound from Q2 onwards. What makes you confident about this rebound beside the easier comparison basis? The second question on the Professional business, when you say strong growth, can you quantify this growth? How much visibility do you have? Have you a very high backlog? Can we expect the profitability to come back to pre-pandemic level? Thank you.
Can we expect the profitability?
To come back to a pre-pandemic level in the high teens.
To what?
To the pre-pandemic, pre-COVID level-
Ah.
in the high teens.
We will not be much more specific on the numbers, because if we didn't give numbers, it's because we don't want to give numbers because we don't have numbers to give. Just to be very, very clear and specific, what leads us to believe in a rebound from Q2 is several factors. The first one is easier comps. I mean, we know that Q2, Q3, Q4 last year have been impacted in consumer sales by bad comps or tough comps. We think that cycling that will allow us to have a better performance. We will have some recovery. We see some recovery in our ailing markets, France and Germany.
We are backed in France by a strong loyalty program with a big customer. We don't put a number, but we see that we've gone through that tough part of the sales performance. That's, of course, in the current macroeconomic context. I mean, if something happens like another war or whatever, I don't wish for that, but of course, that's not taken into account. Strong growth in Professional is over 10% just to be to state that. When it comes to margin recovery, I won't give you a number. What I can say is that yes, there is a seasonality in the margin realization in the business. I mean, Q4 is 35% of the full year sales.
When you look at our P&L co-cost base, of course, the breakeven point is much faster reached in Q4 than in Q1. You won't have a number, but it's, it is, it is a progressive recovery. What we see in the papers today is not completely stupid. Yes. Question on the right.
Marie-Line Fort, Société Générale. Could we have got an idea about the deleveraging trends that you target for 2023, probably in terms of leverage? Can we've got also an idea about your CapEx envelope for the year? Lastly, could you comment also the big launches that you are targeting for 2023 in terms of new products? Thank you.
Nathalie, you take the first two, and I will talk about the big launches.
Yes. You know that we don't give any specific or clear guidance regarding deleveraging. Obviously, this year has been a bumpy one in terms of cash generation, and that mainly pertains from the fact that our working capital requirements have increased. We had to cope with that and adjust our setup to have it decrease. We're still working on the decrease of our working capital, and that will be one of the trigger to come back to a positive free cash flow generation.
I don't want to give you a specific target regarding deleveraging. We expect to come back to something that what we have seen in the past, whereas we confirm that, you know, the situation that we had in 2022 has to remain exceptional. Regarding the CapEx, that would be in the same average trend that we also had in the past. Consider 4% of sales is what you should have in your model.
Okay, thank you. On the big launches, we are very active in many categories. Starting with oil-less fryers, which is the one that is developing fastest. We're expanding the range with oil-less fryers that have a grill function as well. We're expanding that also with double drawers, with ability to cook two things with two different programs at the same time. That's coming in the second half of the year. We have, of the Optigrill range, we have a 41 grill version with a grill barbecue oven, and a kitchen assistant, so something that is very sophisticated and very nice. It's more something that is actually popular in Western and Eastern Europe than in France.
Strangely enough, Optigrill has not really performed in France ever. We're expanding the WMF Perfection coffee machine range with models between 1,400 EUR and 1,600 EUR. That's on the kitchen electric side. We're expanding our vacuum cleaner robot range with the X-Plorer Serie 220. That will be. Of course, it has all the navigation that we have on our range of robot vacuum cleaners. You also have a dust emptying station that is when your robot goes back home, it needs a charging station. It can discharge the dust automatically for 40 or 50 cycles. That prevents you from having to do it with your hands. Very practical.
We're expanding in garment steamers in the United States with a full range of garment steamers from, I think $59-$109, something like that. That's, that's big for the U.S. We are expanding a lot our ceramic coating products in the Tefal range. Tefal has expanded in new materials with a stainless steel, with a cast iron, with cast aluminum, and new coatings with ceramic, and we are expanding that range very substantially, tripling the number of markets selling ceramics. All right? In professional coffee, we have, that's a bit farther away from consumers, machines.
We are developing a bean to batch machine in Wilbur Curtis that mixes the technologies of bean-made coffee into a batch production, which allows to have a jug of 1 or 2 L of coffee and serve it in one shot. All right? Question on the. One here and one there. Daisy?
Yeah. Good afternoon. Christophe Chaput from ODDO. I just want to come back on the organic that you are supposed to post, let's say, on 2023. Obviously, you do not give any figure, but would you say that it's going to be, let's say, a mix between volume and price or volume and mix? How is it going to evolve, let's say, the price mix and the volume? Thank you.
Yeah, you got it. Nathalie?
Starting or building on what Denis has said, have in mind that, you know, Q1 will be a difficult one. Obviously, because of the comp base, we still have decrease in volumes in the first quarter. That will be partially compensated throughout the year. What we have for sure in our basket is the impact of the price increases that have been placed over time in 2022, and that will deliver on a full year basis in 2023. The mix improvement, so the latest products that have been launched in 2022, and where we see also the full year impact in 2023, plus the innovation and the mix improvement that we have in 2023.
What we consider now is a significant part of the growth will come from the full year impact of mix enrichments and price increases.
Maybe to give a bit of color, we won't have price increases this year, except in those countries where there is a very volatile currency. I mean, when you have a 25% currency devaluation, there's no option but price increase. Our pricing will be pretty stable. Our mix will keep improving and our costs will be what Nathalie described.
Supor. Thank you.
Okay.
Okay.
Pardon.
Daisy?
Sarah from J.P. Morgan . I was wondering if you had a clear idea about the inventories in the retail so far. Maybe it differs on region. Could it postpone the recovery that you expect on consumer to Q2 because you depend on selling?
Yes.
Okay.
Okay. Thank you. Well, first, it varies from region to region. Inventory has been a hot topic in retailers' reports in the last few weeks in Europe and in North America. We don't see excess inventory on our categories. We have a very regular conversations with our customers. We see some hiccups in deliveries because not because they are overstocked, but because they manage their inventory levels. Not in one category specifically, but throughout the range. If a retailer has too much of refrigerators or televisions, well, he may order less blenders and heating food processors. It's not because he has too much of that, it's because he has too much of inventory. We do see some irregular sourcing.
I don't see, and I don't foresee, excess inventory as a way, or as a way to delay, recovery of sales. It may have an impact of what goes in that month or this month, but I think those days of excess inventories in our categories are past. Now, again, we know what they have in terms of holding our products, a bit of what they have in terms of holding our categories. We have not a very good vision of their total inventory. That's. I need to put a disclaimer on my quote.
If an American retailer starting with a B and with two more Bs in its name decides that they have too much of I don't know ironing boards then it will reduce his purchases of our products. Okay? You're welcome. Yes. Mourad?
Yes, thank you. I have two follow-ups. The first one is to jump on Christophe's question on pricing. How much of the pricing that you took last year will be embarked in 2023? You should have pretty good vision of that. And some high-level thoughts from you guys on the rumors of Midea acquiring Electrolux.
Well, I'll take the last one. That's easy. We have no. It's a rumor. There is no. It has been debunked by Electrolux. No comment on the second one. As I've taken the second one, you take the first one.
We've made the assumption that, you know, bulk of the price increase that we have placed in 2022, we'll be able to keep them in 2023. We'll have tough discussions with distribution, and actually they've already started, because they see, as I mentioned earlier, they see, the cost of freight decreasing. They see the cost of raw mats, of electronic components decreasing. They expect, that we are in a position to give back a part of this decrease to them, very quickly. As I mentioned as well, that impact will materialize for us later in the year. We have to exhaust, you know, the inventory that we have built on 2022 cost base first.
We have made a bit of assumption, regarding, what we can do to help distribution sell our products so that we would give back a bit of the price increase that we have placed last year. Our, I would say our principle or major scenario is that we will keep, the bulk of it in 2023.
Yes. Eric Blanc, HSBC . Just a few question about, is energy an issue for the group? How long it take for purge the inventories on all the costs you have? Because you have inventories, but you have an aging strategy which can delay also the decline in cost, in cost quantity. Just one question I will try. Can we have an idea, some color about the room of improvements you can have in term of profitability by region on geographic area?
We, I mean, we don't communicate our profitability by region. What I can say is that we're aiming at improving co-profitability in all regions based on the fact that the structure of our P&L will be improving globally, it will apply to all regions. I will leave the energy question to Nathalie. Our inventory coverage is between 3-4 months. It's different in Asia to what it is in Europe, of course. If there is to be a lag, that's probably the size of the lag, unless you have another view, Nathalie.
No, no. I said that, you know, those, you know, cost decrease that we see in the market, they will materialize for us in our P&L between the second and the fourth quarter. Maybe longer than you want, but that's probably the idea. Regarding energy, we're not, you know, an industry that is very high in terms of energy consumption. Of course, we are impacted by the increase in energy costs. You know, the impact from one year to another is between EUR 10 million-EUR 20 million. I would not say it's not insignificant. It has nothing to do with the headwinds we had to face on the sea freight and on raw mats.
Maybe to qualify that, it's impacting a bit more those activities like WMF Retail, where, of course, we have a lot of square meters that needs heatings and with open doors in a cold country, so that's that doesn't help. The cookware activity where we have some, we use heating a bit more than in many of our factories in electrical appliance. It's, it's a topic. It's not a major topic by far for us. Yes.
Chinmay from ABGSC. I have two simple questions to you in terms of future outlook. Based on the exchange of words that we have been having till now, I observed that you were more stressing upon the coffee-making machines. In the upcoming days or years that, would we be seeing a range of coffee maker machines? Also, speaking about the other products, are you looking for any acquisitions in terms of your future prospect? Thank you.
We, I mean, there are two kinds of coffee machines. We have the Professional business, which is over 90% coffee machines. Here, of course, we are very focused on that category. When it comes to consumers, the big inroads we make through innovation this year is on coffee machines. We have hundreds of new products. Oil less fryers are growing faster than coffee machines last year and this year. We like to be balanced and covering all categories in our innovation, portfolio innovation strategy because categories have a very volatile destiny and being where things happen is very important.
Yes, the theme of the day is coffee machines because it happens to be what we talk about today, but our innovation portfolio is much more widespread than coffee machines only. Now, of course, the acquisition of La San Marco only reinforces the fact that coffee is important for us. Yes, coffee is important for us. It's not the only one. When it comes to acquisitions, we cannot comment on future acquisitions, of course, because they are confidential. Otherwise, they are disclosed. What I can say is that what we've done in the last few months and years, which is acquiring, expanding our portfolio of professional, distinctive, competitive professional businesses is something that we aim at pursuing.
Yes, we'll be active in the world of acquisitions. Okay?
Hello. One follow-up question. Charles-Louis Scotti again from Kepler Cheuvreux. A question on your D2C business. Can you give us more color on your D2C online business and how much it represents in your total revenue? What's your ambition in this channel? Also, another even more precise question on the profitability of this business. Is it margin accretive today, or are you still lacking scale to absorb, for example, the IT investment, platform investments? Thank you.
The answer is no. I will not give you details, detailed questions for a very simple reason is that we are building capabilities and capacities. Today it is not big enough that we can elaborate on that as a big segment of the company. We are learning. We have decided to make D2C online because we have consumers visiting us, and consumers visiting us don't really understand why they can't buy it when they're on our site. Then to enter a bit more in the specifics in the way how it works, if you don't advertise your site, it's gonna be a hugely profitable business. If you have to pay for traffic, it can be a very dilutive business.
There's no, there's not one answer on relative or accretive or dilutive on this business. We are developing our capabilities. We're expanding our knowledge. We are expanding geographically to check if that knowledge that we've acquired in France and Germany applies also in Eastern Europe and Asia. It's a bit early for us to say, "Hey, there is something big happening at SEB." First, because it will not be like other players in the small domestic appliance industry. It will not be our number 1 or central strategic part of our development. It is something that is complementary, that is serving a specific well-understood consumer need, and that we're expanding geographically through our brands. That's, that's what I can tell you at this stage.
We will, as we get up the learning curve, we'll elaborate a bit more on, as and if there is a strong business ambition, we'll share that with you. It's not the case today. Okay? It's somewhere in the document. I think total D2C of the group is around 10% between offline retail and D2C online, just to give you a sizing of the total piece. Pardon? Yes.
Ah.
I have a question. Thank you. From Franck Stassi: Could you describe your current and planned investments in Saint-Lô? Yes, I can. Saint-Lô is a factory of the group that is in Normandy, that is making electronic cards. We're expanding our capacities to serve more products from the group. We are expanding for electrical cooking products. We're expanding for professional coffee machines and for coffee machines. We see that as a good asset for the group to have this capacity to make electronic cards in home. Probably that's also a way to protect ourselves from some disruptions in the this world of electronic components.
Yes.
More questions?
We're done.
No? Okay, thank you very much for your attendance, for your questions, and for your interest. I think we'll see each other at the end of April for the first quarter results. Thank you very much, have a good evening.
Thank you.
Bye-bye.