Good morning, dear shareholders, ladies and gentlemen. I would like to open the annual general meeting of Deutsche Post AG, welcome you on behalf of the board of management and my colleagues on the supervisory board. My name is Nikolaus von Bomhard. After 3 virtual AGMs, I am delighted to welcome you back in person today. As chairman of the supervisory board, I am taking over the chairmanship of the meeting. I wish us all an interesting debate. I would also like to welcome those who follow our AGM on the Internet and the many staff members who contribute to the success of today's meeting. The minutes of the annual general meeting will again be taken by Mr. Hermann's Notary Public from Cologne, whom I welcome here at my side.
The documents relating to today's agenda items can be viewed digitally at the information stand in the foyer. The members of the board of management and the supervisory board are present, with the exception of State Secretary Hölscher, who is attending an urgently called appointment of the federal government, at which her participation is indispensable. You will have the opportunity to speak on the items on today's agenda throughout the general debate. If you wish to do so, please submit your request to speak in writing. Forms are available at the speaker's registration counter. In the interest of a speedy and coordinated procedure, I would ask that you hand in your request to speak at the speaker's desk as early as possible, and to use one of the 2 lecterns for your remarks after I have called up your name.
In order to relieve the general debate, the staff at the customer desk in the foyer will be happy to provide you with information about our services. You can also issue a proxy to exercise your rights during the annual general meeting. Your voting card block contains the necessary proxy cards. The participants register will soon be available on the screens to the right and left of the registration desk. It will be continuously updated until the end of the meeting. Here on site, the meeting is broadcast exclusively to the attendance area, the back office, and a few other offices within the event hall. This makes it easier for the back office staff to record your questions and compile data for our responses, thus contributing to a smooth running of the meeting. It should be noted at this point that recordings of today's annual general meeting are not permitted.
We will vote on the proposals of the management on today's agenda items by way of addition. This means that both the yes votes and the no votes will be counted. I will explain the procedure again in more detail immediately before the votes. You will also find information on the voting procedure in the organizational instructions that you received upon accreditation. The information contained therein, in particular, the instructions on the procedure for requests to speak, on motions, on the voting procedure, and on the granting of proxies, is in authoritative for this event. You can get these organizational instructions throughout the annual general meeting at the information stand in the foyer and at the speaker's registration counter. Ladies and gentlemen, we now start with the agenda.
In addition to the appropriation of profits and the approval of the actions of the members of the board of management and the members of the board supervisory board, today's agenda includes the election of 2 supervisory board members, the regular renewal of authorizations to acquire own shares, the approval of the remuneration report, and amendments to the articles of association regarding the annual general meeting. I will give you some explanations on this later. The election of an auditor is not planned this year, as the 2022 annual general meeting already elected Deloitte GmbH to audit the final statements for the 2023 financial year. Before I now ask the Chairman of the Board of Management, Mr.
Appel, to report on the past financial year, the current situation, and the plans of our company, I would first like to thank him, in particular, in view of his retirement after the end of today's annual general meeting. He has led the group for one and a half decades with strategic foresight and great expertise, and with a calm hand in often turbulent times. May I add, dear Mr. Appel, that the personal cooperation with you has always been very trustful a pleasant, target-oriented, and characterized by mutual respect and appreciation. Under your leadership, the company has developed into a world leader in logistics, connecting people and markets and pioneering global trade. We all have a lot to thank you for, I wish you, dear Mr. Appel, all the best for the future and hope that you will remain attached to this company. I wish you, Mr.
Meier, as Mr. Appel's successor, all the best of success. The entire supervisory board looks forward to working with you. Now the floor goes to Mr. Appel.
Dear shareholders, ladies and gentlemen, I'm very pleased to be able to welcome you face-to-face here in Bonn today. It's good that a lot of you have also joined us here online, and it's nice that we're able to meet in person again. Thanks a lot for your kind words, Chairman, and thanks for the applause. Now, I know that I am leaving this company in good shape, and I will talk more about that in a moment. I think we all know that the past year was very difficult for the year. There were a lot of challenges. Maybe it was even the most challenging year that I ever experienced in terms of the overall environment, because there were several things that happened simultaneously. There was a pandemic.
There was a completely pointless war started by Russia against Ukraine, which then triggered inflation and an energy crisis, which means that not just our company, but also our staff and a lot of other companies and people worldwide were facing and have been facing all sorts of challenges, including our very group. However, you will see that we have remained remarkably on course throughout this crisis. That's to do with our strategy, with our positioning, and above all, it is down to the excellent performance shown by our employees. This is why we have been able to come through this extremely difficult time quite successfully. Our employees know that they are members of a company that shows an excellent performance even in a very difficult environment, even in challenging times. That's also to do with our portfolio.
We are the most global country in the world. We have a footprint in over 220 countries and territories. We have a large footprint. We are transporting containers throughout the world, as you know, across all sorts of different locations. We are pretty much everywhere. We are transporting goods that have been ordered online, containers, industrial products. We even transported animals from a national park in Ukraine to a reserve in South Africa. Our company can do all that. That's why we are so well-positioned. This made it possible for us to invest around EUR 4.1 billion in our business last year and to make the biggest acquisition, which was the freight specialist, Hillebrand. However, another important element is our strategy, and this is the third strategy that we defined under my leadership.
The first one was announced in 2009, then 2015. This is when we created the umbrella of today's strategy. We said it's about respect and results, and we also have a purpose by connecting people and improving lives. Our 3 bottom lines that you can see here were also introduced back then. The most important asset we have is our employees and employee satisfaction, because if they're happy, then they provide excellent service to our customers, which enhances customer loyalty, then we can be successful and work profitably. We've reviewed this strategy several times. As part of that, we then also launched digitalization. I'll talk about that later on because it is also an important factor.
On the basis of this very strategy, we have improved a lot over the past 15 years, which is particularly down to the fantastic job on the part of our employees. We now have around 600,000 staff, so our group has expanded considerably over the past few years. We have far more employees than in 2008, far more than before the pandemic as well, and that's to do with the excellent service provided by our staff. Employee satisfaction has also improved very much over time. Our goal is to be at an employee satisfaction of at least 80%, and we achieved that 3 years in a row. These are the numbers for the group worldwide.
In some countries, you know, we are even at a higher level, I'm very proud that we have been rated as Great Place to Work twice as well. This is the basis for our success. Since 2009, we have pursued our strategy quite consistently. This has always been the focus of our management team. We need to motivate our staff. We want people to come to work with a great deal of enthusiasm, and that very, very much provides the basis for our success. Here you can see how our customer satisfaction has evolved since 2019. This is for 3 divisions. We do not have the numbers for eCommerce Solutions across all countries yet. We are working on it. We'll be able to compare it later on.
You can see that in the other divisions, we are already at a very high level. I'm not showing any figures here because they are competition relevant. You can see the overall result here. Even in Germany, most of our customers have given us very positive feedback, despite the criticism that has been expressed from other sides. In fact, customers in Germany tend to be more happy than customers in a lot of other countries, which is very good news. Even though there was some criticism last year, part of which was justified, and you can see that customer satisfaction overall is still at a very high level and has not actually decreased, and we are very happy about that. Again, for all divisions, the reasons is that employee satisfaction has risen considerably, and this is also reflected in the record result.
When I extended my contract in December of 2021 until today's AGM, I wasn't actually expecting this. I expected the earnings situation to be even more difficult. The result in 2021 was phenomenal due to the pandemic, we didn't really know what to expect for the year after that. It's very good, and it's also to do with the crisis. Companies such as ours. The fact that we've benefited from the fact that we can manage complexity. The result was excellent, which doesn't make life easier for Mr. Meyer. I was actually expecting the result to be slightly worse last year. We raised the bar again, which is good news for the shareholders. Makes it slightly difficult for my successor. You never know what's gonna happen in the future anyway.
This record result is attributable to several factors. First of all, DHL Express delivered another EUR 4 billion result. Some of you may remember that back in 2008, this was a loss-making business by about EUR 1 billion. Management under John Pearson and previously under Ken Allen has done a great job. They now account for around 50% of the profits, and it's good that we are the best player in this industry. DHL Global Forwarding, Freight, which I was leading for a certain period of time myself. Results have been sensational. We have continued to close the gap to other competitors in the industry, and I hope that we'll continue to close that gap this year, even though overall results may be in decline due to the overall economic situation.
Supply chain have also developed very well, even though this was the most difficult year, but there have been significant improvements. E-commerce solutions couple of years ago did not produce any earnings. Now they made almost EUR 400 million, Pablo Ciano took over this business, so we have a new manager in place for this business, and I'm very confident that we'll see more good news here. Which brings me to our most difficult business, which is our business in Germany, which is declining. When I started out in 2008, I remember that I promised that we would stabilize this business at a level of more than EUR 1 billion. Back then, I don't think anybody really believed me. Now, over 15 years, we've made that possible.
Nonetheless, it is kind of unsettling that the result was declining last year, and especially after the new wage agreement, which came with very high wages. We need an amendment to the Postal Act that really focuses on competition, so that Mr. Meyer can continue working well on that with his team. I would have liked to work with this new Postal Act myself, but it is still in the making. For 15 years, we've been able to make enough money with this business that we were able to reinvest a part of the profits. The mail business is in decline overall. Ever faster so. There is a challenge also in connection with prices. The group functions. They've always been in this range of around minus EUR 450 million.
Overall, this is the best result that we've ever had in the group, which makes us proud. It was only possible to achieve this because our employees are so extremely motivated. We want you to have your share in this success as well. We will increase the dividend this year again by EUR 0.05. Over the past 15 years, we always either kept the dividend stable or increased it, which also shows just how stable this company has been and how much value it has. Our goal is a payout target range of 40%-60%, and the current payout equals 41% of net profit.
We are increasing the dividend again, and we have also increased the share buyback program from EUR 2 billion-EUR 3 billion, just to make it quite clear that we are very confident about the future. Last year, the share price recovered after record numbers in 2021, where we reached the mark of EUR 60. There was a decline, but now the share has bounced back. Since 2019, shortly before the pandemic, the share price has outperformed the market, and we're proud of that because we're not only producing good results, but we are also very sustainable in doing so, even though there have been fluctuations in the wake of the pandemic.
Ever since I took over, we've had an annual shareholder return of 8% every year since 2008, which is almost twice as much as the DAX. Not only have we been able to improve employee and customer satisfaction and to increase our profits, but we have also created sustainable value for you, our shareholders. We are kind of cautious with our forecast for this year because we can't walk over water, which is why we have come up with this guidance here. We don't know what's going to happen. We don't know how long it will take for the company to bounce back, which is why there are 3 scenarios. It says here EUR 6 billion-EUR 7 billion operating result. We don't know what's going to happen. We are prepared for whatever scenario.
We will be able to generate at least EUR 6 billion, possibly EUR 7 billion. That'll depend on the overall economic development. Mr. Meier and Mrs. Kreis announced the quarterly figures yesterday, which were above market expectations, down anyway. This was in line with our expectations, and that's why we confirmed our guidance yesterday. We had a good start to the year, and I'm glad about that. It'll still be a challenge for us to achieve our targets, and we'll have to wait and see where we're going to end up. We'll continue investing in our business. We will continue to generate considerable cash flow, as you can see. Obviously, the results are not going to be the same as last year and the year before that. We want to achieve our goals by 2025, and I'm confident that we'll be able to do that.
Let me talk about the outlook. There are 4 major trends: globalization, digitalization, e-commerce, and sustainability. We've talked about those trends time and again. They provide the foundation for our strategy, partly since 2014. In 2021, when Mr. Meier was still responsible for the strategy, we said these are the trends that will impact on our business in the long run. That still holds true. These are the 4 fundamental trends, and that has not changed. Therefore, we need to tackle them. How do we do that? First of all, globalization. You may have read in the press that globalization has come to an end, et cetera. There are no facts and figures that would corroborate that. A lot of people claim that, but they don't have any proof.
What we are seeing is that a lot of our customers are trying to make their supply chains more resilient. They are shifting production sites or splitting them up across different locations. That's what we've learned from the COVID and the energy crisis. You need to have a supply chain that is resilient to disruption. The factor cost disadvantages in North America and Europe are partially offset by way of subsidies. However, such factor disadvantages will continue to exist in North America and in Europe. Therefore, why would we be able to produce at the same cost as people in, say, Latin America or Southeast Asia? Consumers are what they are.
They say, "If I buy a smartphone, then I want to get value, and I want to get a good price." If you were to tell a customer, "This product has been manufactured in a more resilient way, but it costs 15% more," that the customers will say, "Oh, that's great. Then I'm happy to spend more money on it." That's not gonna happen. That's why the overall streams will not shift fundamentally. Things will remain complex, and that's good because we know how to manage that complexity on behalf of our customers. That's why we'll continue investing in our systems. We'll do that very consistently as we would in order to systematically support our customers in dealing with the challenges that come with globalization. Digitalization. We announced that in the context of the Strategy 2025.
We said that we want to invest EUR 2 billion by 2025, and we want to achieve 3 things. First of all, we want to improve customer experience, which includes the apps that we are offering. If you're a parcel customer, for instance, then that enables much better interaction. You can figure out when your parcel will arrive at home or the digital stamp that helps you keep track of your parcel. These are things that have a very positive effect, and such elements are also offered by our other divisions, or we are making life easier for our staff. We have integrated the largest communications platform of any corporation out there. The good thing is that the board of management, all senior executives can interact with the organization overall. You don't even need a laptop for that.
If you're an employee, you can interact with us, and that's precisely what's happening right now. Yesterday, we announced our results. Today, I sent out my last letter to the employees, everybody can read that on that platform. That's important because we are a global company with 600,000 staff. This makes life easier for our employees. The third thing is, we are using digitalization to become more efficient in our operations. Here on the slide, for instance, you can see a robot in one of our warehouses. We are exploring technical opportunities to improve our processes, to make them more efficient and more effective at the same time. There are countless examples of that which I can't talk about today.
It's a lot of small things as well, mind you. They have all made a major contribution to improving our financial results. One big advantage for us is that we can test things in one country or one region to see if it works. We have standardized most of our processes in the divisions, which means we can then roll out such processes across other divisions as well, if need be. That is another major benefit of digitalization. The third topic is e-commerce. E-commerce is not over. Yes, growth has slowed down as expected, but we'll continue to see more growth. I think a lot of us have learned just how easy it is to order something online, to then send back the merchandise if you're not happy and to get your money back.
That's why the customer base has expanded considerably in this field. We've also learned a lot about our B2B business and how it has changed. I recently talked to an online retailer, and he said that his business is not so much about. He's dealing with cable and electronics. He said it's not only about standard customers. He said that a lot of traders, and a lot of craftsmen are ordering products from him now, which is another major advantage. This B2B business, just like the B2C business, is set to grow more, quite significantly so. That's why we are investing a lot of money here. Last year, we decided that we want to invest EUR 500 million in our capacities in Great Britain.
We announced a joint venture with Shangyao for a parcel station in Poland. We are investing in our Packstations in Germany, very much so. There's a large number of ideas and opportunities out there. In the Netherlands, for instance, we bought a fulfillment center for our customers that does not only support big customers, but also smaller ones. You can wrap up your business quite quickly. We then warehouse these products on behalf of our customers, and then you can ship them anywhere. This is how we can, you know, improve our B2B and B2C businesses considerably. The last aspect that I'd like to talk about is sustainability. This has been on my agenda since 2008 as one of the first activities that we triggered under my leadership.
I said that by 2020, we want to become 30% more efficient. Carbon emissions per mail, per parcel, per pallet were to be reduced by 30%. We already achieved this target by 2016, 4 years earlier than planned. As a result, we said in 2017 that by 2050, we want to reduce our carbon emissions down to zero. In 2021, we announced our new ESG strategy saying we want to invest EUR 7 billion by 2030 in sustainable fuels, electrification of our fleet, and carbon-neutral buildings. We are well on track. We've received a lot of positive feedback from investors, politicians, also institutional investors, and last but not least, consumers and new and current employees who can see that we are really taking this seriously.
Which doesn't mean to say that we want to solve all these problems overnight. We want to be in line with the target set in Paris, and we want to make sure that the climate, that the overall temperature does not increase beyond the 1.5 degree mark. We are aware that this requires considerable investments. We are investing a lot, and if there are more ideas in this context, then we are very open towards them. Let me sum up my presentation. This company is in a better state than ever before. We have the best financial results, the highest cash flow. You have a very strong balance sheet. This enables the company to be very active in a difficult situation rather than just having to respond to what is happening out there. We are growing profitably.
Yes, there are some challenges in the Germany business, as I said. This is kind of the package that I'm handing over to my successor. I'm very pleased that Dr. Meyer is taking over. I've said it time and again, you know, if a new CEO should either be different or better. It would not be good to have a successor who does the same thing as I do or who's worse than myself. That would just be a bad copy. What you need is a CEO who's either different from me or better. The good thing is that Mr. Meyer is both. With Mr. Meyer, you will get a CEO who's not only better than me, but who will also do things differently. This is the best kind of news that I can pass on to you, our shareholders.
This company will be in very good hands. Which doesn't mean to say that Mr. Meyer will not be making any mistakes. I made mistakes, and I had to correct them, and I know just how difficult that is. Yes, mistakes will always happen. But despite the odd setback that we've seen, we've always moved in the right direction, and I'm very confident that that will continue. To wind up, I would like to first of all thank our employees for the support that they have given me over the past 15 years, as CEO and my 20 years on the board of management. I'd also like to thank my colleagues on the board of management who are doing a great job. A big thanks goes to the supervisory board for the support. You need the support.
You've elected this supervisory board because they also know a lot about our day-to-day business. I would like to thank Dr. Von Bomhard, the Chairman of the Supervisory Board, who has always supported me over the past difficult years. Whenever the going gets tough, you need to have a chairman in place who then says, "Okay, that sounds plausible. Go ahead with it, and then we'll wait what's gonna happen." He did that. I would like to thank you, last but not least, for placing your trust in me. You always approved my actions over the past 15 years, but that is a major responsibility, and I'm glad that I won't have to bear it any longer starting tomorrow.
You are the owners of this company, and, well, I have yellow blood in my veins, so to speak, and I will always remain very closely attached to this company. Thanks a lot.
Thank you very much for your address, Mr. Appel, the 15th address in a row, and we will certainly miss you. Mr. Appel's speech can be viewed at the information stand and has also been available on the company's website for several days. This concludes the public part of the live broadcast, and I take this as an opportunity to say goodbye to all those who will not be able to follow the rest of the meeting. Thank you for your interest in our company.