A wonderful good morning to all of you, ladies and gentlemen. I hereby open the annual general meeting of Deutsche Post AG and warmly welcome you on my own behalf, on behalf of the Board of Management, and my colleagues on the Supervisory Board. My name is Nikolaus von Bomhard. I was elected Chairman of the Supervisory Board after the last annual general meeting. I'm glad to be here today to speak, and it is incumbent upon me to lead the AGM in accordance with the articles of association. On this wonderful May morning, I would like to wish all of us an inspiring and interesting debate. All members of the Board of Management and Supervisory Board are present. I would like to welcome Mr. Pearson and Mr. Meier as new members of the Management Board.
John Pearson became CEO of DHL Express at the beginning of May, and Mr. Meier, at the beginning of April, took over the job as CEO of Post & Parcel Germany. I shall introduce both of them in greater detail in a minute. I also like to welcome shareholders that participate in the meeting online, as well as the many, many employees that are contributing to the success of today's general meeting. I welcome the Notary Public Dr. Hermes from Cologne, who will take the minutes of today's AGM, and I'm also pleased to welcome him. He's sitting to my left. The documents on today's agenda items are available at the information desk in the lobby. The general meeting will be broadcast online up to the end of Dr. Appel's presentation.
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Today, in addition to the vote on appropriation of available net earnings, approval of the actions of the members of the board, as well as the appointment of the independent auditor, we shall vote on the appointment of a number of Supervisory Board members. I will provide you with explanations on that part later on. I now ask Dr. Appel to present his reports on the last business year, the current status, and the plans for our company. Mr. Appel, you have the floor.
Dear shareholders, ladies and gentlemen, dear guests. Welcome to Bonn. Also welcome to those who joined us online in order to have several questions answered. How do we assess the past year? What are we currently working on, and what are our goals for the future? There can be no doubt that 2018 was a difficult year for us. We did not meet our forecast, and the share price took a nosedive. I'm afraid we can't blame the markets or the industry for that. In fact, our problems were homemade, and as a result, we lost trust. However, we took action. We brought some measures on the way, and we are way on track to clearly improve the situation this year. On the 8th of June 2018, we revised our 2018 forecast. We adjusted it down by almost EUR 1 billion, and that, of course, wasn't satisfactory.
The reason was that there were some weaknesses in the first quarter already, and by June it had become clear that we would not be able to meet our guidance. The reason was that we had not adequately focused on what makes us so strong, and that's our postal and parcel businesses. We try to do too many things at the same time. There were different opinions on what we should be focusing on, and that's why we also changed part of the personnel at this division. That's what happens if there are diverging opinions on how to shape the business, then sometimes you need to draw conclusions from that. Like I said, this was also reflected in the share price, very much so. We performed below the market. We were only the number 25 on the DAX 30, only the number 48 on the Euro Stoxx 50.
We are not satisfied with that. I'm not satisfied with that. Nobody can be satisfied with it, and that's why we worked intensely and brought a lot of measures on the way. The good news is that we achieved the adjusted financial targets. We corrected them in June. We achieved the revised targets. You were able to see that the group delivered on what it promised in June of last year. At PeP, Post, e-commerce, and Parcel at the time, slightly exceeded our expectations. The DHL divisions overall, where we didn't actually change the guidance, was also within the range of EUR 2.9. The group functions also achieved their targets, which means at the end we delivered. How so? We initiated a lot of measures, particularly at PeP. We adjusted the portfolio. We started cutting indirect costs.
We also worked on prices and productivity. The good news is the fourth quarter was pretty close to the record levels of 2017. We laid a very sound foundation in order to be successful this year. There were also some positive developments. For once, the divisions grew organically. Revenue grew across the board, adjusted for currency effects. There was a negative effect because the EUR actually went down. Business that is not done in EUR is losing in value. Therefore we had to adjust the figures. Adjusted for that, we grew very strongly across all divisions, very good because a company our size, of course, needs to grow. Having said that, size is not an asset all by itself. We also want to grow profitably. We want to have our share in global trade.
Global trade also increased last year, also shown by our own studies. The world has never been as interconnected as it was last year, despite all the protectionist tendencies out there and the prophecies of doom. We are still very well-positioned, also reflected in our figures. Let's take a closer look at the various divisions. You can see that a lot of the trends were, in fact, positive. The PeP division in the parcel area was growing at 7.5%, above the industry, very good news. It is also to do with the excellent quality that we are providing. Express, 12.1%. For the first time generated the best margin in the industry, outperformed its competitors, excellent. Ken Allen did a great job over the past 10 years and has led us to that point.
Global Forwarding, Freight also improved considerably. The measures that we initiated over the past few years proved to be right and helped us to improve EBIT, earnings before interest and taxes. There was a clear-cut improvement. Tim Scharwath and his team focused on simplification. We can see that this really paid off. In Supply Chain, we can see that in five of the six regions where we have a footprint, the development is positive. There was a challenge in Great Britain. We reported on that extensively last year. Ultimately, the problem in Great Britain did not really impact very much on our overall financial result. I'm very pleased to say that Supply Chain is also way on track and laid a good foundation for a successful 2019.
Despite all challenges, we are proposing to the shareholders meeting today that the dividend remain unchanged at EUR 1.15. This is in line with our financial policy that we've pursued since 2011. We set out on a strategy, 40%-60% of net profit will be paid out. This means that we will ultimately pay out EUR 1.4 billion, which corresponds to 55% of net profit. We are very confident as far as the future is concerned. There is a piece of legal advice that I would like to mention here. In August, the waiting period for our first tranche of the Performance Share Plan ended. This is a share-based executive compensation program. We introduced it in 2014. The previous program had expired. The company surveyed this tranche in September 2018 with 2,420,108 new shares.
This was done from contingent capital in 2014, and it corresponds to around 0.2% of the share capital. Which brings me to the outlook for this year and next year. We took a lot of measures last year, paved the way, that's why we are confident that we will meet our guidance both this year and beyond. I just showed you EUR 2.9 billion this year. We want to achieve more across the DHL divisions, EUR 3.4 billion-EUR 3.5 billion. We would have to achieve another EUR 300 million-EUR 400 million. Last year, we added around EUR 300 million-EUR 400 million from 2017 to 2018 to our EBIT, and we want to also improve our result in 2020 as compared to this year. Within P&P, we have to make some big steps within the group.
Last year, we made around EUR 1 billion, adjusted for special factors, this year, we want to achieve EUR 1.0 billion-EUR 1.3 billion. We are very confident that we initiated the right measures in order to achieve that. The first quarter was a good start. As we announced last week, we had a very good start to the new year. Let me talk about Post & Parcel Germany. As I said, we refocused. PeP was split up into three parts. One section is managed by Mr. Meier, who took over on the 1st of April. Mr. Meier had been working at Global Forwarding, Freight beforehand, supporting Mr. Scharwath in taking things further, he also supported myself when I was still responsible for this division, developing a plan in order to get this division back on track.
The focus is the German mail and parcel business because we believe this is what makes us so strong in this country, that's why we need to focus on it, and we drafted a comprehensive plan to do so. The challenges as such have not changed. There's still a major structural effect, which means that fewer and fewer people actually write letters. Letters are increasingly substituted by messaging services such as WhatsApp and electronic mail. We are also benefiting from this trend because more and more residential customers are using parcels, which boosts e-commerce, and we are profiting from that. In this context, postage plays a major role. We are now waiting for a final decision on the part of the Federal Network Agency, telling us to what extent we can actually increase postage. The latest proposal was by 10.6% on the 1st of July 2019.
This should help us to cover increasing costs for wages and transport, and also to offset the negative trend in mail volumes. When you look at that over three years and you are losing 2%-3% every year, while at the same time transport costs and wages are increasing by 3%, then 10.6%, I think, is not excessive considering the cost pressure that we are facing. That's why it's important that the Federal Network Agency make that decision. Also considering that the average household only spends a good EUR 2 on letters every month. The average financial burden for the household would be something like EUR 0.64 a month. We want to be able to continue paying good wages in the future. The Postal Act also needs to be reformed. It hasn't been changed over the past 20 years.
How can we make sure that legal regulations are adjusted to the new situation? We haven't had a monopoly for the past 10 years, but still the Postal Act has not been adjusted, and we will also look into that over the next couple of months. We set up a comprehensive plan for P&P, Post & Parcel, together with Mr. Meier, as I said, and we want to have the best team. In terms of training, further training, empowerment for our employees, we want to be very strong. We set up our Certified and First Choice programs in order to do that. We also need to be able to provide our staff with the right working tools. As a result, we want to have the most motivated staff in the industry, and based on that, we'll be able to provide the best quality.
Yes, last year, we were facing some quality issues. We weren't always satisfied with that, and there were also quite a few complaints. That's why the focus now is on improving quality. We can tell that quality is getting better already because the number of complaints is actually declining. Needless to say, we are measuring that. We are keeping track of it across all divisions. That's why every letter, every parcel that does not arrive on time is one too many, and we will work hard in order to continue improving our quality. At the same time, we are working on our productivity in order to achieve the best results. Last year, our productivity was actually declining, and you can't lose profits on that basis. There are some first indications that our measures are gaining track. We will invest a lot of money.
We already invested a lot of money last year, EUR 150 million are to follow now in quality and productivity. Last year, we did not invest enough in our core business in Germany. There was a strategic debate about that, and this year, this will be different. We will be improving the resources, update our vehicle fleet, provide better equipment to our various locations in order to boost productivity. I think we are well on track. We also recently reached an agreement with ver.di on the re-transfer of the delivery employees to the parent company on the basis of a new collective bargaining agreement. I think we found a good compromise that combines the interests of the employees with the interests of this company. We have in-house collective agreements for 98% of all our delivery staff in the corporation.
There has been a lot of criticism as regards our competitors, and we will have to wait and see how this will develop. We believe that our collective agreement is very sound, and it will enable us to maintain our competitiveness, because on the one hand, we want to offer good working conditions and pay good wages, but at the same time, we do not want to put our competitiveness at risk. I think this collective agreement will help us to safeguard that. We re-transferred a couple of employees from the PeP division. e-commerce was one area. Ken Allen has made this division very successful. e-commerce is a very exciting but also difficult business. There are barely any companies out there that are making money with that, far less any new market entrants, and that's why we need to find new rules.
We need to come up with new ideas. Ken Allen and his team will be doing that, and I am confident that we will find good solutions that will not only help us to boost revenue, but to also safeguard profitable growth. However, it's not easy, and that's why we set up a dedicated board post for that, because these complex challenges need to be dealt with separately, and I very much appreciate that Ken Allen took over this task. Let me talk about DHL overall and the three big DHL divisions. First of all, we are celebrating the 50th anniversary of DHL. As you can see, we are supported by Bryan Adams in celebrating that. A lot of you may know his most successful hit, which was "Summer of '69." As a matter of fact, in 1969, DHL was founded.
The "Summer of '69" song is not the only thing that we have in common with Bryan Adams or the love of that song. He also supports sustainability in every sort, and for every ticket sold, we will plant a tree. We already said that we want to plant 1 million trees a year anyway. Let me take a look back at 1969 again. Some of you will remember this was the year of the moon landing, and back then, part of your company was actually founded by gentlemen Dalsey, Hillblom, and Lynn. It was only three people back then. Today, we are talking 380,000 people who are working under this umbrella worldwide. We are the most global corporation, one of the largest corporations worldwide, as a matter of fact, and we are proud to look back at the past 50 years. However, that's not the only name.
Actually, in forwarding business, we have been active for more than 200 years, and as a postal provider, we've been in the business for some 525 years. We have a lot in common with the three founders of DHL. Excellence simply delivered. They set up a premium service. The goal was always to offer the best possible service using motivated staff. Excellence simply delivered. That is still our motto today, and that's why we continue investing in our networks. Here you can see a picture from Leipzig. Our Express division has been in place for 10 years. We have invested some EUR 600 million there. John Pearson took over responsibility for this division on the 1st of January. He has worked successfully in this area for decades, and that's why I'm confident that he will continue the positive trend, which was initiated by his predecessor.
Our claim is quality and quality again. If we continue focusing on that using our highly motivated employees, then there's no way around being successful. Leipzig is growing very strongly. We are one of the first corporations to actually set up a business in Leipzig. Today, Leipzig is a boom town. A lot of young people go there, not only because it's a nice place to live, but also because it offers a lot of good working prospects, and we are part of that. We have a lot of successful customer examples at DHL. For instance, a longstanding partnership with BMW that we expanded last year. Today, BMW receives a status update every 15 minutes. We have a very intense cooperation with BMW, not just in different countries, but we also offer maximum visibility of whatever happens. That's what excellence simply delivered is all about.
Customers want to be offered simple, transparent solutions in order to keep track of what's happening. BMW is one successful example that we are very proud of. There is another example that you may not even be aware of. For one and a half years, we've been working with easyJet. We are providing ground operations for easyJet at London Gatwick. We are checking in passengers' luggage. We maneuver aircraft, we load and unload them, and we process and sort the luggage. We did that so successfully that now Manchester and Bristol have also been added to complement this network. The feedback that we got from the customers has been overwhelmingly positive. I'm very impressed. Our colleagues are doing a great job because they very much focus on what really matters.
We are continuously improving processes. That is precisely what our customers are also feeding back to us. DHL Supply Chain is also very active in the area of contract logistics. There are lots of examples that show how we are improving the work in our warehouses. Last year, we announced that we'll be investing some EUR 300 million in the U.S. in order to automate our warehouses and make them more effective. That will make us more effective. At the same time, it increases employee satisfaction because this is very well-received by our staff. You may have read otherwise. People are very fond of digitization. I don't see any negative reaction. Quite the contrary, really. A lot of people are saying, "It makes my life easier.
It makes it easier for me to get my work done." Not only do we see clear-cut improvements in productivity, but also in service. There are a couple of examples, I'm afraid I can't talk about all of them. Also at DHL Supply Chain. We also launched similar programs in other divisions. There's one thing that may be particularly interesting to you. It's the partnership that we set up for our supply chain business in China with a company called SF Holding rather. They are active in the Chinese parcel business. We said we want to continue growing in China, we need to have a strong partner in the supply chain business. We found a premium partner for that. We are a premium partner ourselves. We received a non-recurrent payment for divesting our asset there. We believe that there is new leeway.
That's what's referred to as an ecosystem nowadays. SF Express is also a competitor of ours, but dear shareholders, rest assured, we will always break new ground wherever necessary when we believe that this will help us to move forward with the company. Then there is what we refer to as Corporate Incubations now. Thomas Ogilvie is responsible for that in addition to human resources. We are working on several things here, one of which is the StreetScooter. We now have more than 9,000 electric vehicles in operation. Over 75 million kilometers have been driven, and more than 11,000 charging stations have been set up in Germany, which makes us the biggest provider of charging stations in this country. These are the two founders of Corporate Incubations trailer. So basically, we are using solar energy on trucks, trailers, and other vehicles.
You can use solar energy for a lot of systems out there rather than using an engine. This trailer technology has already won a couple of accolades, and this is a good example of an idea that came from a startup lab being turned into reality. This is what we want to work on in the future as well. I dare say that we are the most global company. We are certainly the most versatile company out there. We have 550,000 employees worldwide, and that puts us in a very special spot. In 2018, we hired around 7,000 new employees in Germany and around 28,000 worldwide. 28,000 people, that's about the size of a medium-sized enterprise. All that in one year. Yes, this is a highly versatile company, and we never get tired of saying that.
We are quite proud of the accolades that we've won. Great Place to Work being one case in point. Others are probably wondering how we do that. We are number 6 now with Great Place to Work. We also won the Catalyst Award because we promote women in leadership, and we are a top employer in many fields. We are getting these accolades, and we are talking about it in order to illustrate that not only do we believe this is important, but we are doing something about it. You can check on it based on facts and figures, and then you can determine yourself whether we are a top employer and a great place to work. This makes us, this makes me very proud. I've been doing this for eight years, and I always said we need to do three things.
We need to focus on our customers, we need to boost employee satisfaction, that will make us financially successful. That's what we refer to as the three bottom lines, and we are getting more and more successful here. At the same time, we are always mindful of our social responsibility and the importance of sustainability. In this context, I would like to mention our activities in the context of humanitarian logistics. We've been active here for about 10 years now, particularly in areas where such services are not available otherwise. For instance, you need certain competencies in connection with warehouses, the loading and unloading of planes. We have disaster response teams. We set up another team in Dubai, and we have now 10 years of global volunteering. More than 1,000 volunteers in this company are engaged in all sorts of social activities out there.
In this way, we are giving something back to society. Last year, we made more progress in terms of making the most of what we have. We are connecting people, and we are improving their lives. That's what your company is doing. Yes, we are providing services to a lot of customers, but ultimately, we are improving the conditions of living for a lot of people out there, sometimes in a very difficult environment because there are lots of protectionist movements out there. Brexit is looming, which certainly will not be good, neither for the U.K. nor for Europe, which is why we positioned ourselves very clearly over the past few weeks with regard to the European elections and motivated and encouraged people to take part in the election.
The more people actually take part in European elections, the more we can support the role of democratic institutions. We believe that populist movements don't have any answers. They may come up with simple answers, but they're not the right answers to the complex problems out there. I'm not aware of any case where complex problems were solved using a simplified answer. That's what we are telling people at every roadshow. I always explain also to our employees why globalization is good for us, not just for our company, but for the people out there. The same holds true for digitization. I always tell people why the European Union is good for us, good for the people out there. We need to do more. We need to stick to our guns, and I always do that. Finally, what's in the pipeline for now?
We are going to take the next step in our strategy. You know we had the Strategy 2015, then the Strategy 2020. 2020 is looming now. That's why I myself and my colleagues on the board are now working hard to prepare the next step in our strategy. There are four things that play a central role here. First of all, what are our answers to globalization? How can we make the most of it? We are already the most global company, but how can we improve the effects of globalization even further? How can we generate profitable growth from e-commerce? We are already doing a lot in the divisions, but can we do more across the group together? How are we digitizing our processes? How can we make them more efficient and more customer-friendly?
What can we do in addition in order to support sustainability with our services, regardless of the fact that we want to be carbon-free by 2050? Apart from that, we all are constantly trying to figure out what we can do in order to support a sustainable economy. We always want to be customer-centric. We also want to be a company that very much focuses on results. That has always been our claim, and that's what Excellence. Simply Delivered. is all about. Let me sum up by saying that 2018 was a difficult year. It was not down to the market or the industry. It was down to the mistakes that we made, but we corrected them. We laid the foundations. The fourth quarter 2018 was a very good one. We had a good start to 2019.
I myself and the board of management are very confident that this year will evolve as announced, and that this will help us to pave the way for a successful 2020 and beyond. I would like to extend a warm thanks to our 550,000 employees worldwide who did a great job. Last year was also a difficult one for them, and I'm pleased to see that regardless, employee satisfaction actually improved last year. It shows that we took our employees on board in whatever we did. Together with the board of management, we brought a lot of things on the way. Finally, I would like to thank you, our shareholders. Thank you for placing your trust in this company. I know that the last year was not easy for you either.
Thanks a lot, and we are very confident of achieving our targets both this year and next year. Thank you very much.
Thank you, Mr. Appel, for your address, which was critical and optimistic at the same time, but it was certainly very passionate as well. This speech, ladies and gentlemen, will be available for your consultation at the information counters shortly, and you can also download it from our website. We would now like to say farewell to those of you who are following us online. Thank you very much for your interest.