Good morning. Shareholders, 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 on behalf of my colleagues on the supervisory board. My name is Nikolaus von Bomhard. It is my pleasure in my capacity as chairman of the supervisory board to guide you through today's AGM. Due to the persistently high number of COVID-19 infections, this year's AGM is being held as a virtual meeting without our shareholders or their proxies being physically present. On my right-hand side, apart from Ms. Kreis, Ms. Kocsis, and Mr. Appel, the proxies appointed by the company are present, as is Mr. Hermann, who will take the notarial minutes of today's AGM.
We are confident that even in this format, this AGM will provide an opportunity for a lively exchange with you, the shareholders of our company. We will respond to all the questions regarding our agenda that have been submitted by our shareholders. In contrast to our practice in previous years and in addition to statutory requirements, we give you the opportunity this year to submit inquiries regarding the answers to the questions that you have submitted prior to the AGM. You can submit your inquiries by using our online service. Furthermore, and again, in addition to statutory requirements, we are granting all shareholders authorized to participate and their proxies the opportunity prior to the AGM to submit statements on the agenda, which you can view in the online service.
Shareholders and their proxies may follow the proceedings of the entire AGM via the online service that is provided at our website. For the general public, the AGM will be transmitted via the Internet up to the end of Mr. Appel's presentation. More information on the further proceedings, the exercise of your voting rights, and the right to object to resolutions of the AGM can be found in the convocation of the AGM on the company's website and in the online service. In the course of the AGM, I will also provide you with further information. Let me note here, however, that it is not allowed to make recordings of today's AGM. Ladies and gentlemen, let's begin with the agenda.
Today, in addition to the vote on the appropriation of available net earnings, the approval of the actions of the members of the Board of Management and the Supervisory Board, as well as the appointment of the auditor for 2022, we shall also be voting on the appointment of the auditor for 2023. Under the EU Statutory Audit Regulation, public interest entities are required to change their auditor at regular intervals. Accordingly, a new auditor must be appointed by 2024 at the latest.
To facilitate the transition from PricewaterhouseCoopers to Deloitte and to give the future auditor the opportunity to swiftly familiarize themselves with their new tasks, we suggest that Deloitte be elected auditor for 2023 already at this year's AGM. Also on the agenda is the election of Professor Luise Hölscher and Mr. Stefan Wintels as members of the Supervisory Board, as well as the renewal of two authorizations to issue shares, the approval of the remuneration report, and remuneration of the members of the Supervisory Board. Before I turn to the report by the Supervisory Board, I would now ask Mr. Appel to present his report on the past business year, the current status, and the plans for our company. We've already published Mr. Appel's speech and his presentation on the website of our company a few days ago. Mr. Appel, you have the floor.
Dear shareholders, dear viewers, hello from Bonn, here in our Post Tower headquarters. Of course, it would have been nice to meet face to face again. We took the decision to organize this AGM in a virtual format early on when the infection rates were much higher than they are now. Even today, the infection rates are still pretty high, which is why unfortunately, I can only speak to you today, virtually online. I think around Christmas, we were all hoping for a carefree summer. We were hoping that by summer, the pandemic would finally be behind us, and we were hoping that there wouldn't be any new challenges. However, there are major challenges. There's a great deal of uncertainty. The war in Ukraine, the invasion of Ukraine by Russia, is something that we, of course, strongly condemn.
This was clearly initiated by the Russians and, we're terrified by seeing that something like this can even happen in Europe today. Nonetheless, we need to handle the situation now. Our thoughts first and foremost go to the people in Ukraine. Here I'm talking about all the people there, but also, of course, our employees. We try to support them as best as we can in order to get through this crisis in the best possible way. Of course, we are also supporting refugees who are coming to Germany from Ukraine or to other European countries. We're not just helping our colleagues, but also a lot of other people. That's the situation we're in, and there are still a lot of, lockdowns due to the pandemic as well, which makes things worse, and this has major repercussions for the global economy.
We need to keep an eye on that as a company, and we need to make relevant adjustments. There are also some good news, especially when you look at what we achieved in the past year. Let me start by talking about what the logistics industry achieved. I think the logistics industry overall, and your company in particular, all of us, made a major contribution to keeping the world running during last year, where lockdowns and infection rates were rising. I think the logistics industry did a great job. Not just ourselves, also our competitors. I think as an industry, we've also become much more appreciated. Our reputation as an industry has benefited from what we did last year. I think our entire industry is in fact proud of what we did once again.
A lot of countries benefited from that. In particular, we are proud of our own contribution, and here in the context of the distribution of vaccines. I think first of all it's impressive how globalization has enabled us to develop a vaccine in record time. Of course, the challenge was how fast can we distribute these temperature-sensitive vaccines? By now, we have distributed more than 2 billion vaccines across 172 countries worldwide, and this makes us very proud as a company. There is no other company that delivered as many vaccines as we did, saving human lives because we were able to offer them vaccinations. This, like I said, makes us very proud as a company. I hope it also makes you proud as our shareholders.
We've seen what globalization can do on the one hand, and we've also demonstrated what contribution we can make ourselves. This wasn't the only positive thing. Customer feedback has also been very positive. Here you can see some KPIs showing feedback from 2019 and from last year for comparison. On a scale from one to 10, we see a very positive feedback. Feedback was always positive, even in the past. Now we've improved considerably. That is good news because it shows that despite all the challenges in our logistics chains, we've been able to deliver excellent service. We've demonstrated that we are doing what we're supposed to do, namely offering services to our customers that help them running their business.
We know who we owe that to, namely our 590,000 employees who did a great job. I would like to extend a warm thanks to all our employees here right in front of our shareholders for the great job they've done. Last year, for the second time, we paid EUR 300 to all our employees worldwide as a COVID-19 bonus. This is a lot of money, especially in some countries of the world. When you imagine the salaries paid to people who are working in poorer countries, that really means a lot. Once again, I would like to thank our employees for the excellent service quality they've provided. They did a fantastic job, and that's why our customers are so happy. The feedback we're getting from our employees is also very positive.
As long-standing shareholders, you know that we've been measuring our employee satisfaction for years, and I am proud to say that employee engagement has never been as good as last year. Last year, just like in the year before, we hired 20,000 new staff. We now almost have 600,000 staff across the globe, which is more than what most companies in the world combined have to offer, and we've created 40,000 new jobs. We received a lot of accolades for our employee orientation. For the first time, we came in first for the award given by the Great Place to Work Institute. In most countries, more than 85% of our employees have given us the certificate of top employer. This shows that our employee orientation pays off because our employees are happy.
This improves our corporate reputation, and we can all benefit from it. Over the last 10 years, we have worked a lot on our corporate culture because it provides the very basis for this satisfaction. Corporate culture is crucial to any company, and I think we've come a long way here over the past few years. That wasn't only happening here at headquarters but worldwide. We've created a positive, forward-looking, and agile corporate culture, and I think we demonstrated that it works over the past two years. It is geared to our employees and also geared to our customers' needs, and this made all the things possible that we achieved over the past two years. This comes with major competitive edges for us as well. Yes, labor markets have become tighter, but this is good news actually. Sometimes people ask me, "Mr.
Appel, do you have trouble finding new staff?" I always say, "Well, first of all, it's good that despite the pandemic, we haven't seen unemployment levels rising across the globe. Quite the contrary. The demand for labor is actually rising, and that's good news. And if you have an attractive company, then you will still find enough employees across the globe. And that's why based on our corporate culture, we have generated a competitive edge for ourselves, which is also, and sustainably so, reflected in our financial KPIs." What we did is we developed a leadership culture within a certain framework that we refer to as leading by head, heart, and guts.
I'm afraid I don't have the time to give you all the details, but I can tell you that this is of fundamental importance because it provides the very basis for the way we are guiding our employees. This is how we work as a board of management, how we rate our executives' performance. There are values associated with this like trust, a purpose, and always being confident, even in difficult times, having a clear focus, and being able to put these in the right spot in order to make the most of their skills so that they can feel that they are doing the right thing and that they can do their best for the company. This provides the basis for our success. That's why we've improved so much as an employer.
At the end of the day, this is also the reason why our service has improved so much and why customers appreciate it. As you know, there are a number of changes coming up on the Board of Management starting in July of next year. Or this year, actually, Tobias Meyer will take over some tasks from me at GBS, Global Business Services. Next year, he will then take over responsibility as CEO of the company. His successor is Nikola Hagleitner, who is currently Chief Sales Officer at Post & Parcel Germany. It's an internal solution. We are promoting a woman to this new post, and she will take over from Tobias Meyer. There will be another change on eCommerce Solutions as Ken Allen is about to retire.
Pablo Ciano, who comes from Argentina, he will take over as CEO, eCommerce Solutions. He's worked in various positions before, most recently, as EVP Corporate Development and Strategy. He will succeed Ken Allen. I am really looking forward to working with these fantastic colleagues, one of whom is already here. I mean, these are all in-house staff who are getting new roles like Mr. Meyer, some of them on the board of management. I think it's important for you as our shareholders to see that we've been able to find, you know, to recruit these candidates from within our own organization. Which brings me to Ken Allen, who will be leaving the company next year. We owe a lot to him. He's worked for the company almost 40 years, over the past 15 years as a board member, initially responsible for Express.
Some of you will certainly remember the situation our business was in when Ken Allen took over the Express Division, which today has become the most profitable division by far, which is mostly down to the work done by Ken. He took over eCommerce Solutions some time ago, which is a smaller division, but it is on a growth path as well. I would like to expressly say that Ken Allen has done a great job. We owe a lot to him, and I would like to thank him very much for that. This is the last time, in fact, that he is attending an AGM of Deutsche Post. Ken, all the best for the future, and thank you very much. Which brings me to the next subject, which is finance.
I mean, having so many committed employees who are offering such excellent service obviously means that the financial KPIs are in good shape. Yes, our company benefited from the major increase in eCommerce and from the recovery of the global economy. EBIT, earnings before interest and taxes, amounted to almost EUR 8 billion last year. When you look at the various divisions, you will see that they all came up with record results. DHL Express, for instance, made as much profit as the entire group in 2019. Global Forwarding, Freight for the first time made more than EUR 1 billion, doubling their result. DHL Supply Chain recovered very quickly from the crisis back in 2020 and also delivered record results. Revenue and EBIT are up considerably. DHL eCommerce Solutions more than doubled its EBIT. I already mentioned that, which is excellent.
Also P&P, Post and Parcel, ever since we lost the monopoly, which was in late 2017, they've come a long way. They now generated the best operating results ever since we lost the monopoly, which is why we are very happy with the way our business has developed. I think it is fair to say that the group delivered excellent figures last year, which means that we can now also propose a higher dividend. Here, you can see the development of the dividend over the past few years. It either remained stable or went up. This year, we are proposing to increase the dividend to EUR 1.80, which is a major leap. It's because our free cash flow rose significantly. In line with our finance policy, we will now be able to pay an even better dividend.
In addition, we already launched a share buyback program. Over the next three years, we are going to buy back shares to the tune of EUR 2 billion. We want you, as shareholders, to have a share in the company's success. In fact, you already benefited from the way our share price developed since 2019. You know, the return here compared to the DAX has improved considerably. At the same time, however, there's a great deal of concern because the overall economic situation is difficult. There's a high level of inflation. Energy costs are up, so we don't know whether this positive trend will continue. For now, there's a decline, but we are convinced that our targets are still realistic and attainable. At any rate, we outperformed the DAX considerably. Here you can see the targets that I already mentioned.
We believe that this new level, EUR 8 billion in EBIT, can also be achieved this year. Here you can see around EUR 8 billion ±5% across the various divisions. At the beginning of this week, we announced the figures for our first quarter, which was better than the first quarter of the past year, even though that was a record as well. We also confirmed our guidance at the beginning of the week. We believe that our targets are still attainable, and we believe that we can maintain the high level of profits that we've already achieved. Possibly, we can even go beyond that. We always need to look ahead. Does the group have a clear-cut strategy after this successful year? Well, here you can see our strategy that we adopted in 2019.
Our colleague, Pablo Ciano, was very helpful in developing this strategy. We reviewed the strategy again, and it'll be in place until 2025. That's the right strategy, and it comes with a lot of fundamental aspects. I already talked about our corporate culture, which is part of the roof that you can see here. We want to push ahead with digitization. We will continue to focus on our core business. This strategy was launched at the right time, and it proved to be the right strategy. Let me just shed some light on some of the aspects of our strategy which are of particular importance. First of all, this strategy and our financial power make it possible for us to keep on investing.
That's important because, you know, this there's still a crisis, and it may become even harder to deal with it, but we have the financial power to keep on investing in our business. Nonetheless, we even believe that we will emerge from this crisis stronger than before as compared to our competitors. Yes, there may still be challenges, but with our financial power, we have what it takes to continue investing. This year alone, we want to invest EUR 4.2 billion in our activities, and I would like to give you a couple of examples of the fields in which the group will continue to invest. It starts with our investments in sustainability. You already saw it in the trailer. By 2030, we want to invest EUR 7 billion in sustainable fuels in the ocean freight and sea freight sector.
60% of our delivery vehicles will be electric in the future. All new buildings that will be set up should come without a carbon footprint. We already embarked on this journey, and we can see the first achievements, and I will show you a couple of highlights later on. Here's the first one, in fact. In the first quarter, for the very first time, we did a big contract with BP and Neste, who will provide us with sustainable fuels for our aircraft. We are going to buy 800,000,000 L . You may wonder, what does that mean? Well, it's hard to imagine that, but this is about the equivalent of 400,000 passenger cars per year.
When you look at the entire airline industry, then you will find that before the crisis, they produced around 320,000,000 tons of jet fuel. Now we have 800 ,000,000 L . It may not sound like a lot, but it's just 0.25% of the annual emissions of the entire airline industry. For the entire airline industry, we need, you know, 400 of these aircraft to achieve our target. We did something great here, and it's also feasible, and therefore I'm confident that we'll be able to conclude similar agreements in the future in order to make sure that we can use more sustainable fuels in the future. Electromobility in the air is another important subject.
A long time ago, we entered into relevant contracts here, and we will be getting the first aircraft before long. Electric aircraft certainly is an important subject for short-haul flights. Batteries are still very heavy, which is why you can't use them for long-haul flights because the battery capacity is not sufficient. There is an aircraft called Alice that we are going to use for short-haul flights in the US. We will be the first one to do this together with a partner from Israel, and we are very pleased that we've achieved this. I'm looking forward to see the first of these aircraft up in the air. The third subject that I would like to mention here is digitization. Again, we are investing a lot of money here.
We already announced that by 2025, we want to invest EUR 2 billion, and we want to benefit from these investments by EUR 1.5 billion per year. Here you can see a couple of things that we are investing our money in. This is just a couple of things. There's the robot called Stretch that will help us to unload parcels from containers, which is high tech. You can see that increasingly we can make such investments in these sort of technologies. On the right-hand side, you can see some of our activities. These are the teams at headquarters that are working with all sorts of systems, be it blockchain solutions, the Internet of Things or the interfaces we use to exchange data with our customers, analyzing data with our data scientists.
You know, these are things that will make our industry and our company better in three ways. First, it'll simplify our interaction with customers. Secondly, it will simplify the way we are interacting with our employees, and it will make our processes more effective and leaner. That's what we will invest in here, EUR 2 billion by the year 2025. Another field that we want to invest in and where we want to grow even faster is acquisitions. We closed the acquisition of the Hillebrand Corporation at the end of March. The integration is currently ongoing. There are clear-cut rules for us when it comes to expanding our portfolio. All our acquisitions, and yes, we have more financial power for future acquisitions, always need to meet three criteria. It needs to strategic fit, enhancing our product portfolio.
It needs to come with a realistic price. Such actions must include companies that we can easily integrate into our corporation. Your company can produce a lot of organic growth. You know, revenue was up more than 20% last year, so we proved that we know how to make it grow. If there's a good opportunity like Hillebrand, a company that expands our portfolio in the Wine, Beer and Spirits segment, then we rise to the challenge because we believe that it makes us better as a group. I think Hillebrand is a very good case in point here, and you will certainly see the positive effects in our reports over the next few quarters. Which brings me to the end of my talk.
We are going through difficult times because the pandemic is not yet behind us, which still has major repercussions for the global economy and a lot of people. We are shocked by the war in Ukraine and strongly condemn it. That said, there's also good news. The logistics industry has demonstrated what it is capable of doing. We've supported the global economy. Your company has delivered record results across all dimensions, be it employee satisfaction, customer satisfaction, or the financial KPIs. Thirdly, your company has a very clear plan for what we intend to do over the next couple of years. We have a great team in place. There will be a couple of changes on the management team, as I said, and I am convinced that it'll still be a great team and that this company will still be successful.
Finally, I would like to thank you very much for your trust, and I would like to extend another warm thanks to our employees for the great job they've done. Thanks a lot for your trust, and now we are looking forward to taking your questions.
Well, thank you very much for your presentation, Mr. Appel. The public part of the live stream ends now, and I would like to bid farewell to all those who cannot follow the further proceedings of our AGM. Thank you very much for your interest in our company.
Wir haben's mit einem Paket zu tun. 40 x 30 x 15 Zentimeter. Geld. Es wurde gestern mit einer mobilen Paketmarke frankiert. Mithilfe dieser Post- und DHL-App. Der Absender hat dann das Paket einfach mitnehmen lassen. Clever. Das Live-Tracking in der App sagt uns, wo es sich auf dem Weg zum Empfänger befindet. Die Benachrichtigung verrät, dass wir minütlich mit der Ankunft vor dieser Tür rechnen können. Um den Vorgang nachzustellen, werde ich nun selbst ein Paket digital frankieren.
Hallo Herr Vogel, ein Paket.
Sie scannt einfach meinen QR Code und druckt die Paketmarke aus. Pakete-App, verschicken und verfolgen. Läuft.
I sold my car to pursue my dream of making Undercover Boots a reality. With just an idea written on a napkin, I moved back home to my childhood bedroom to start my new life. With a little help from my friends, my idea started to come to life. Boots that were fun, colorful, and inspired by the natural beauty of Panama. Sure, I made some mistakes. Like when my first shipment turned my mom's home into a warehouse, she almost kicked me out. I persisted, and I grew with the business. We are creating jobs, happy customers, great relationships, and donation initiatives. With great partners like DHL, we are leaving positive blueprints all over the world.
Die Leute von Deutsche Post und DHL haben jemanden gesucht, der das mal checkt, wie das bei denen so funktioniert. Jetzt, wo alles digital ist. Ausgerechnet ich. Ich habe ja früher wirklich selbst für die Post gearbeitet. Sind die auf mich gekommen. Sieht heute natürlich alles ein bisschen anders aus. Klar, Sortierzentren für Millionen von Briefen und Paketen jeden Tag. Das muss ja irgendwie mega digital sein. Was bringt die ganze Digitalisierung für dich und mich? Die sagen, nur so können die all das hier am nächsten Tag bei uns im Briefkasten haben. Sie wollen für uns Kunden alles noch viel einfacher machen. Zum Beispiel eine App für alles. Damit kannst du dein Paket verfolgen. Oder auch einen Brief ohne Briefmarke einfach nur mit dem Kugelschreiber frankieren. Schauen wir mal. Das mit der Digitalisierung bei Deutsche Post und DHL? Läuft.
I'm Lottie, and I'm the social media manager at ASOS. So much goes into producing and delivering a garment. In fact, I'm heading into the office now to show you what's going on. Hey, Katie.
Hey, Lottie.
For inspiration, we look on socials. A lot of our inspiration is customer-led. What happens once your designs are finished? The tech team do all the measurements. We'll hand over to the stylists and production team.
Our job is to help the customer visualize how they can wear something. We add little touches like a bag or a hat, knowing when to add something, trying not to subtract from the product.
Now I'm going to go speak with someone in our performance center. Hey, Luke.
Hello. You all right?
Just how busy are you, Luke?
Very busy at the moment. We're now sending out over 1.8 million orders a week across all of our sites. Having someone like DHL helping us out is great to us. It's just that ability and agility to react to what we need and what the customers need.
E-Fahrzeuge testen jetzt ja wohl viele wegen Nachhaltigkeit. Bei Post und DHL haben die längst über 16,000 E-Bikes und Trikes im Einsatz. 15,000 E-Transporter. Die grünste Flotte der Branche. Die stellen überall diese Packstationen hin, bald über 12,000. Wenn wir die alle nutzen, sparen wir noch mehr CO2. Wenn ihr privat Pakete mit DHL verschickt, machen die das einfach CO2-neutral. Seit 10 Jahren. Läuft.
I want young Black girls to grow up believing in themselves, imagining that they can be anyone they want to be in this world. I started Malaville Dolls because I saw a lack of diversity in the fashion doll market. Black and brown children with naturally curly hair were not very well represented in that space. I also noticed there were not that many Black characters in coloring books. I decided to have my dolls illustrated, and I've been able to start distributing with DHL almost immediately. Every doll that gets ordered off the website gets delivered through DHL services. Since my dolls have various shades of brown, I wanted to get crayons that matched the different tones of my dolls. My name is Mala Bryant, and I am a businesswoman.