Ja, meine sehr geehrten Damen und Herren!
Ladies and gentlemen, as the chairman of the supervisory board, I shall open this year's AGM of Evonik Industries AG, and according to Section 19 of the statutes, I will preside over the AGM. It is also on behalf of the other members of the supervisory board and the management board that I welcome our shareholders, our shareholder representatives, and the ladies and gentlemen from the media and our guests. Shareholders, shareholder representatives, according to Section 18, subsection 6 of the statutes, the management board decided to hold the AGM of this year as a virtual AGM, according to Section 118a of the Corporation Act. Thank you very much for your attendance today. I would like to welcome the Notary Public, Dr. Galle, as well.
From your perspective, he's sitting on the right-hand side next to me, and he will keep the minutes of today's AGM. The members of the Management Board and the Supervisory Board are present. The company's proxy holders are also in attendance. Ladies and gentlemen, let me start with the formalities. I was able to check that the AGM was duly convoked and that all obligations concerning publication and information were complied with. The proof of the publishing of the invitation occurred on the eighteenth of April 2024, by way of the Federal Gazette, and this proof is included in the minutes kept by Dr. Galle. No additional requests or counter motions or other proposals for election have been submitted. You can exercise your right of speaking and information in the same way as you're used to from in-person meetings.
The difference to an in-person meeting consists in the fact that you will exercise your rights in a virtual manner via sound and image and the online service, which means that, any contributions will happen by way of video communication. This holds true also for the right to information and the right to ask questions. Any submission of questions outside video communication is not possible. Since the opening of the AGM, you have been able to register for the request for the floor in the online service. You can also indicate the topic you want to speak on, and please be aware that you have to use the shareholder's number, which you want to use to register for the floor, and it must be the same as the one you use for login in the online service.
As a proxy for another shareholder, you will have received separate access data, which you have to use to log in, and these are the data which will make it possible for you as well to exercise all relevant rights by way of video communication. Now, a few indications on the technical and functional test of your video and sound connection. It is only, and I emphasize, it's only then when your sound and image connection works without any problem, you will be given the floor. If there is any disturbance in the video communication with you, I, as the Chair of the AGM, will stop you from speaking. So upfront, I would like to ask you to solve any potential problems and stop your contribution and ask for the request for the floor again.
I would also like to point at the information leaflet with regard to video communication, which you'll find on our website. It includes very useful recommendations for an optimum functioning of the video communication, also with regard to the appropriate hardware to be used, terminals, internet connection, and the camera position for your live contribution. If you want to put a motion or submit a proposal for election, I would like to ask you to also use video communication based on the process I just explained and comply with all the conditions that we have explained. Any request or motion can only be placed in the framework of your contribution.
You can also choose the function, which is the motion and Section 131, subsection 4 of the Stock Corporation Law, which is set in the online service, and you can indicate the topic of your motion, and in the following, I can then decide when and how to give you the floor. All your contributions have to be in German language. Should you speak in any other language, we will have to stop your contribution. The discussion about all items on the agenda will happen, as usual, by way of a general discussion. In this discussion, every speaker has the possibility of coming in on all items on the agenda and raise questions. A discussion on potential procedural motions from shareholders can happen within the framework of the general discussion, unless an earlier discussion on this topic is not required.
Now, in order to proceed to a swift course of the AGM, I would like to ask all speakers to focus on the items of the agenda and to be brief. Just in case you would like to withdraw your request for the floor or your motion, I would like to ask you to act in the interest of all shareholders to use the functions provided in the online service. If necessary, I will act in the interest of all shareholders and restrict the speaking time in an appropriate manner. I will also reserve the right to prematurely close the list of speakers and the general discussion if this is deemed necessary in order to guarantee the closure of the AGM within an adequate timeframe. The AGM is transmitted live via online service.
The first part, until the end of the report presented by Mr. Kullmann on the financial statement and the situation of the company, will be transmitted live in the internet as well, and can be retrieved from there later on. Images and sounds of this AGM will not be recorded by the company, by the way. Shareholders who would like to follow the AGM through the internet must be aware of the fact that they have to log in in the online service to follow the whole AGM and the general discussion. Now, when it comes to questions raised, the management board will be supported by stenographers. Stenographers will use temporary sound recordings for this purpose, and these will be deleted afterwards. I ask you to refrain from any image or sound recording of this AGM.
In order to ensure an undisturbed course of the AGM, I ask you to mute your cell phones during the technical test in the virtual waiting room and when you take the floor, and also not to place your cell phones on your laptop or notebook. Ladies and gentlemen, all the important information indications for the further course of the AGM, including the possibility of voting, opposition to resolutions in this virtual AGM, are included in the invitation to this AGM, and you can also find them in the online service. If you have given proxy or instructions to the company's agents or an agent from a shareholders association upfront, you do not need to take any other action.
Your yes or no votes or your abstentions can be submitted even during the AGM by way of postal vote, electronically or the online service, and you can change or revoke these as well, but only at the point in time which I, as the chairman, will have defined. I will point out in due time what this point in time will be. As far as the postal vote is concerned, these votes have to be registered in the online service, and the votes or the revocation of the votes have to be submitted electronically to the company. If you want to exercise voting rights for several shareholder numbers, you must make sure that you're registered in the online service with the requested shareholder numbers, and that you have to exercise the voting rights accordingly.
You will proceed in the same way if you give proxy to the proxy holder of the company or a proxy of, or an agent of a shareholders association if you want to change or revoke the votes. The company's proxy holders will only exercise the voting right for you if you have given concrete instructions, and instructions can only relate to resolutions by the company or counter motions or voting proposals. The proxy holders of the company will not accept any instructions with regard to exercising voting rights of any other nature, or phrasing questions, making motions or oppositions. Please make use of all your options in due time, because due to the live stream, there might be time delays despite all the precautionary measures.
Until the end of the AGM, you can also use the online service in order to make objections to resolutions by the AGM to be included in the minutes. So once again, I would like to point out that you should use this option in due time, because the live stream can cause time delays. You can also make reprimands in the online service in the context of your right for information. If you do not want to follow the AGM until the end, I would like to log out from the online service. This is the way that helps us to regularly update the list of attendance. Let us now start with the discussion of the agenda items. Let me call item one on the agenda: submissions to the AGM according to Section 176, subsection 1, sentence 1 of the Stock Corporation Law.
These are the following submissions: The adopted annual financial statement of Evonik Industries AG, as of 31 December 2023. The approved consolidated financial statement as of 31 December 2023. The combined management and group management report for Evonik Group and Evonik Industries AG, including the explanatory report of the management board concerning information according to Sections 289 and 315a of the German Commercial Code. The report by the supervisory board of Evonik Industries AG, as well as the proposal by the management board of Evonik Industries AG concerning the appropriation of profits. You will find the consolidated financial statement, including the unqualified auditor's certificate, in the financial report as of page 213. The combined management report as of page 13, and the supervisory board report as of page 103.
All the aforementioned documents have been accessible and retrievable from the website of our company since the invitation of the AGM had been published. The supervisory board has reviewed the financial statement and the combined management report of Evonik Industries AG and Group, and in its meeting on 1 March 2024, it approved these financial statements, which means that the financial statements are adopted. In this meeting, too, the supervisory board reviewed and checked the proposal made by the management board with regard to the appropriation of profits, and approved it. In the same meeting, the supervisory board also dealt with the management board report with regard to related companies in business year 2023. This report was also audited by the external auditor and was given an unqualified auditor's certificate. The supervisory board has not raised any objections to the report and the result of the audit.
In the supervisory board report, you will find a detailed description of the activity of this body, and this is why I would like to only focus on a few comments. In the past business year, the supervisory board has complied with all obligations and duty, and has done so with great diligence. Especially, it controlled the management board in a diligent and continuous manner, and also advised the management board and supported it with regard to the management and strategic further development of the group. The management board provided regular information on all substantial matters of the group, and as the chairman of the supervisory board, I received regular information in between the official meeting dates from the management board, and I was in continuous dialogue with the chairman of the management board.
The committees of the supervisory board dealt with topic-related discussions together with the management board and in the framework of the competence, they prepared specific technical matters for decision-taking by the supervisory board. The chairpersons of the committees report regularly to the whole supervisory board, which means that there's a close cooperation and an adequate flow of information at any point in time. Together with the management board, the supervisory board has prepared the declaration on corporate governance. Special focal points of the activity of the supervisory board and its committees concerned the course of business in the past business year, the situation and development of the company, including planning. Among others, the supervisory board dealt with the construction of a lipid production plant in the USA, and the divestment of the Lülsdorf site, and the related business concerning cyanuric chloride in Wesel.
Furthermore, there was a comprehensive review of past investment and divestment projects. The business year 2023 was affected by geopolitical crisis, high energy prices, and a worldwide inflation. The supervisory board, therefore, dealt in a very intensive manner with the impact of all these on Evonik and any measures to counteract. The shareholders' representatives and the employees' representatives of the supervisory board were newly elected in fiscal 2023. Therefore, there was a new constitution of the supervisory board in the past business year, and the composition of the committees was adjusted as well. In order to do justice to topics like financial and investment committee tasks, we renamed the competent committee, and the new name is Investment and Sustainability Committee. This renaming is to be included in the statutes as well.
In order to implement the renaming, we would like to ask for your approval under item eight on the agenda. Since the last AGM and the related new election of the supervisory board, there have been three changes in the supervisory board on the employees' representative side, as it were. Mrs. Karin Erhard, Dr. Thomas Sauer, and Mr. Harald Sikorski have resigned from their offices with effect of the end of thirty-first of August 2023. They are replaced by Mrs. Alexandra Boy, Mr. Alexander Bercht, and Mr. Thomas Meiers. I would like to take the opportunity to thank Dr. Sauer and Mr. Sikorski for their commitment in the interest and for the benefit of the company and the employees. My special words of thanks are to go to Mrs.
Erhard, who's been a long-standing supervisory board member, and since 2020 she's been the Deputy Chairperson of the supervisory board, and she has always committed herself in order to find good solutions within the spirit of a real social partnership. Cordial thanks to you. I would like to give the three new supervisory board members to introduce themselves today. Dear Mr. Bercht, I would like to ask you first to take the floor. After that, Mrs. Boy, and at last, Mr. Meiers. Mr. Bercht, you have the floor.
Right. Dear Mr. Tönjes, dear shareholders, ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much for the opportunity to introduce myself today as employee representative and Deputy Chairman of the Supervisory Board of Evonik Industries AG. I am Alexander Bercht. I am 45 years old and studied economics at Münster and Hagen. I started my professional career in 2004 as scientific associate in the State Parliament of North Rhine-Westphalia. Afterwards, for several years, I was an employee in the party board of the Social Democratic Party. I worked in the politics department. I managed the office of the Secretary General, it was then the Head of Department for Communications. Since 2016, I've been working for the Mining, Chemicals, and Energy Trade Union, IG BCE, and at first managed there the trade union's executive board office at Berlin.
In 2001, I became the board secretary of the chairman of the IG BCE, and in 2023, I was appointed to the Managing Executive Committee of the IG BCE. Since September, I've been a member and Deputy Chairman of the Supervisory Board, and I'm a member of the Executive Committee, as well as the Investment and Sustainability Committee, which was mentioned before. At a time of an unprecedented coincidence of crises and challenges for industry, in particular, this is true of the chemicals industry, given the geopolitical situation, the economic environment, the changes in the labor market, the shortage of skilled workers, I want to contribute actively with my expertise to the work of the Supervisory Board in the best interest of this company and the employees. Thank you very much for giving me your attention.
Thank you very much, Mr. Bercht. Mrs. Boy, you have the floor.
Dear Mr. Tönjes, shareholders, ladies and gentlemen, I'm very happy that I have the opportunity today to introduce myself as a new employee representative of the executive staff in Evonik Supervisory Board. My name is Alexandra Boy. I'm 58 years old, and I studied Business Administration, Literature, History, and Economics at the Bielefeld University. After my studies, I started my career as the press and media spokesperson with Henkel in the financial area. Then I went through other professional careers, then became self-employed, and since 2003, I have been in several management functions within the area of communication with Evonik. Since 2016, I've been the Head of Site Communication for the Chemical Park Marl and the sites Herne and Witten.
Simultaneously, since 2021, I have been the chairperson of the Executive Staff Committee of the joint works council in Marl, and since this year I've been chairperson of the Central Executive Staff Committee. In this function, I represent the executive staff in all matters which are of company-wide interest. Especially in times of transitions and transformation in the chemical industry, we need a constructive dialogue between executive staff and management board in order to support sustainable development of the Evonik company. If the transformation succeeds, the importance of the chemical industry and the economic side of Germany will grow. In this times of transition, executive staff are especially challenged in order to give orientation to staff members and to motivate them. It is necessary for this purpose to have the external framework conditions.
I would like to commit myself for all these matters in the Supervisory Board, and I thank you very much for your attention. Dear Mrs. Boy, thank you very much to you as well. Mr. Meiers?
Dear Mr. Tönjes, dear shareholders, ladies and gentlemen, thank you for giving me the opportunity to introduce myself today as a new labor representative on the supervisory board of Evonik Industries AG. I'm Thomas Meiers. I'm 51 years old. I have a hoarse voice, unfortunately, and completed my training as an I&C mechanic before I worked for 4 years as skilled worker at Saarbergwerke. Afterwards, I completed my studies of economics and labor law at Hamburg, before I joined IG BCE in Hanover as a trainee in 2001. Following completion of the trainee program, I worked at first in the Codetermination Department of IG BCE, before I went through various positions in Rhineland, for instance, as district manager for Cologne, Bonn. Between 2017 and 2020, I returned to the headquarters, where I supported the board division of digitalization, labor, and members....
Following another return to Rhineland as deputy regional district manager for North Rhine, I have now settled down in the Ruhr area since 2023, where I manage the Westphalian regional district. Ladies and gentlemen, dear shareholders, the present worrying global developments and events have far-reaching consequences for us, too, which have to be met by society, labor, trade unions, and companies alike. Supply chains are changing. Energy is becoming structurally more expensive and heavily affects energy-intensive companies. These are often the starting point of many more supply chains in the manufacturing industry. Without their products, no electric car would drive, no semiconductor would be produced, and no wind turbine would be turning. Against this backdrop, I'm happy that with my long-standing co-determination experience, I can help shape the future development of Evonik going forward, together with my colleagues on the supervisory board. Thank you very much.
Thank you to you, Mr. Meiers. We do hope that your voice will recover quickly. To all the two gentlemen and the one lady, I'm looking forward to the continuation of our good cooperation. Ladies and gentlemen, let us now come to the management board report concerning the financial statement and the situation of the company and the group. The management board report, including the most essential contents, have been accessible since thirty-first May 2024, under www.evonik.de/HV-services, via the online service. I would like to emphasize once again that the presentation follows the principle check against delivery. Mr. Kullmann, you have the floor.
Good morning. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, dear shareholders, dear guests. A warm welcome to this year's annual shareholders' meeting of Evonik Industries. Ladies and gentlemen, 2023 was a challenging year for our company. The year got off to a weak start, and the recovery we had hoped for subsequently failed to materialize during the rest of the year. Persistent inflation, the ongoing war in Ukraine, and the energy crisis were compounded by a global recession, the weakness of the Chinese economy, and the brutal Middle East conflict. As a result, ladies and gentlemen, for the first time in the history of the Evonik group, we issued a profit warning in the summer of last year and revised our forecast downward. 2023 was therefore a year of consistent cost savings and liquidity safeguards. A word on the format of today's meeting.
In light of last year's good experience, we decided to hold the meeting in a virtual format again. The format that the lawmakers have made available to us gives virtual annual shareholders' meetings the same status as in-person meetings. So we made a move towards the future, made a good step with this format. At today's meeting, you, our shareholders, are able to speak, obtain information, and ask questions in real time from a location of your choice around the globe. At the same time, we make considerable cost savings in the interests of our shareholders. We therefore are looking forward to the dialogue with you in this format. Ladies and gentlemen, reviewing 2023 in the German chemical industry is hardly a pleasant task. In a nutshell, it was a bad year for our sector, for our industry overall.
Output declined by 11%, and sector sales were down 12%. We felt the weak demand in all markets around the world. Our sales volumes declined for seven successive quarters. In this environment, it was not possible to raise our prices. Even worse, prices actually fell by 3%. At the same time, we were impacted by inflationary cost increases in raw materials and in respect of energy costs. In this situation, we had to act decisively and had to make difficult decisions. We did that with determination and looking ahead. We saved EUR 250 million to compensate for rising costs. In other areas, we implemented short-term contingency measures to safeguard our liquidity. That can be seen in particular from our CapEx and working capital discipline.
Shareholders, ladies and gentlemen, we faced up to the challenging conditions by making a concerted effort as a team in 2023. As a result, we got off relatively lightly. We got off lightly, fortunately. I would like to take this opportunity to thank all our employees for this achievement, and especially for their tremendous efforts and their discipline. In the end, we achieved the lower forecast issued in the summer. Adjusted EBITDA was one third lower, but at EUR 1.66 billion, it was within our target range of between EUR 1.6 billion and EUR 1.8 billion. Group sales fell 17% to EUR 15.3 billion. In view of the exceptionally high impairment losses and the charges for structural measures, net income was negative for the first time in our history. However, on an adjusted basis, Evonik posted positive earnings per share of EUR 0.79 per share in 2023.
I am particularly pleased that we reported free cash flow of EUR 801 million, which was actually higher even than in the previous year. That provides a secure basis for our dividend. Ladies and gentlemen, dear shareholders, we will continue to be affected by the crisis context, therefore, we are continuing to work systematically on Evonik's resilience. We drove forward the fundamental reorganization of the group in 2023. In fact, to achieve our midterm aspiration of profitable growth, we rigorously pursued Evonik's strategic development and introduced significant adjustments to prepare for the future. Three basic conditions are necessary for the transformation of Evonik. First, we need a powerful organization. Second, we have to focus on the most attractive growth businesses. And third, the transformation we are going through must be sustainable. Allow me to give you some more details, ladies and gentlemen. Simply making short-term savings is not enough.
We are positioning ourselves for the future, so that we can operate fast with agility and cost effectively in the market. That means also streamlining our organization and adjusting our infrastructure as needed. To make our organization leaner, we introduced the Evonik Tailor Made program six months ago. As part of this program, we analyzed and examined which organizational structures could make the operational chemical businesses even more successful in terms of hierarchical levels, responsibilities, workflows, and team size, in order to make the operations in the chemicals business even better and even more successful. This analytical phase is now over, and the results are promising for our future organization. Wherever possible, we will be cutting out administrative activities that do not directly support our operating businesses. We are reducing the number of hierarchical levels from 10 to six.
We are also extending the span of control from a median of one to four to one to seven direct reports for the future, and we are strengthening regional responsibility. That is the target picture for 2026. We will also be reducing our headcount by 2,000 employees. We will reduce our costs by EUR 400 million. In short, Evonik will be leaner. Evonik will be faster and better than ever before. We will also be adjusting our infrastructure. To this end, we have analyzed our service division, technology, and infrastructure at our biggest production sites. The outcome of this is that in some cases, non-Evonik companies at our sites use a higher proportion of site services than we do. It is clear that technology and process technology are mission critical and have to remain at Evonik in order to operate on a cross-site basis.
However, it is also clear that standard services at our sites, such as logistics, technical service, and facility management, will be run in a different manner in the future. We will open-mindedly consider the best operator model for each site. Continued operation by Evonik, alliances and cooperation, or complete outsourcing are all possible. Ladies and gentlemen, so much for the structural aspects of our transformation. Our portfolio focus remains clear: offering sustainable solutions that generate above average growth and higher margins. That includes also divesting businesses that no longer fit Evonik, that do no longer fit in with this target picture. In the past 18 months, we've made good progress with our plans to withdraw from the Performance Materials division. We completed the first step, the sale of the Lülsdorf site to International Chemical Investors Group in April 2023.
In March of this year, we signed an agreement to sell the superabsorbents business to the same reliable investor. We have therefore taken two more steps. The next one will be the disposal of the C4 Chemicals business. The preparations for that have been completed. The start of the sale process depends on the further recovery of the economy and the C4 business. The realignment of our portfolio also includes, ladies and gentlemen, adjusting business models whenever the key financials diverge from our aspirations. We have placed animal nutrition, for this reason, on a more efficient footing that will give us annual cost savings of EUR 200 million by the end of 2025. Half of that will be achieved by the end of this year. On the market side, we are currently benefiting from a recovery in methionine, in the methionine business.
Above all, ladies and gentlemen, success requires profitable organic growth. The world is changing. Industry needs to transform itself. This means that profitable growth needs new ideas, innovations, and the right investments. Only in this manner can we help our customers achieve their own climate protection, circularity, and biodiversity targets even better. We refer to products that offer our customers proven, superior sustainability benefits as next-generation solutions. In 2023, they already accounted for 43% of our sales. By 2030, we want to increase that to over 50%. We are investing strongly in this, but with focus and always with a good measure of prudence. Moreover, for some products, we have gained the support of governments and customers. Both enable a lasting and structural reduction in our investment spending. Nevertheless, or perhaps precisely because of this, we are realizing important future projects.
In March 2023, for instance, we held the groundbreaking ceremony for our new production facility for pharmaceutical specialty lipids in the US state of Indiana. Our production plant for biosurfactants in Slovakia has now been completed. It is an excellent example of how we have driven forward a production process for a highly sustainable product from the original idea to commercial production and gained access to a new market in the United States. We are building a new production facility for specialty silicon dioxide, a key material for the fast-growing semiconductor industry. In Japan, we are investing in a new production facility for fumed aluminum oxide, which is geared to solutions for lithium ion battery technology for electric vehicles. Moreover, we are continuing to invest in our strong, established businesses.
In the U.S., we are increasing production of precipitated silicas by 50% to serve the high demand for more environmentally friendly tires. Dear shareholders, in our innovation growth fields, we are gaining access to new future-oriented areas of businesses. We want to generate additional sales of more than EUR 1 billion a year by 2025, compared with 2015, and we are making good progress towards this. Even in the year 2023, which was an extremely challenging year from an economic perspective, our innovation growth fields increased sales from over EUR 600 million to more than EUR 650 million. This is impressive, given that elsewhere in the chemical industry, double-digit sales declines were recorded. Our membranes business is continuing its successful growth.
With membranes for the treatment of biogas and the extraction of hydrogen, Evonik is making a contribution to the defossilization of the energy sector. In October 2023, a further production facility for SEPURAN hollow fiber membranes came on stream at our site in Schörfling, in Austria, and the next investment at this site is already planned. You see, ladies and gentlemen, another area that is leveraging our transformation is renewable energies. It's not only the transformation of our economy or the global economy, but it is also the transformation of Evo, Evonik, because as a specialty chemicals group, we are an important driver and a strong catalyst for this transformation process. We intend to achieve a further reduction in our ecological footprint, and especially our emissions. Here, too, we made good progress last year, despite the crisis.
The independent Science Based Targets initiative examined our measures and confirmed that our corporate targets make a contribution to reducing greenhouse gas emissions, to limit global warming to well below two degrees Celsius. We were able to implement an important measure in March of this year. The coal-fired power plant in Marl, which we had to continue operating last year due to the energy crisis and at the request of the federal government, was finally taken out of service now and could be replaced by highly efficient gas-fired power plants. We've... Excuse me. We've also made further progress in switching the external sourcing of electricity to 100% green power by 2030. In 2022 and 2023, we concluded agreements on sourcing green electricity from wind farms. This year, we are pleased to report the first major agreements to source solar power from Vattenfall.
Moreover, this year, we have managed to secure further capacity from RWE's Kaskasi Wind Farm, our neighbor. Worldwide, about 35% of the externally sourced electricity comes from renewables. As a result of the latest agreements, we will be well above the 50% threshold in a few years. In this manner, we are not simply making a contribution to protecting our environment, we are also making Evonik less dependent on fossil fuels and are reducing our energy costs on a global basis. Dear shareholders, you may be aware that our long-term dividend policy is aligned to continuity and reliability, even, and especially in times of crisis. Admittedly, adjusted earnings per share came to 0.79 EUR, which is below the proposed dividend. However, even in such a challenging year as 2023, we were able to generate a free cash flow of over EUR 800 million.
As in previous years, that ensures that our absolute dividend payout of EUR 545 million is covered, as in the years before. Today, we are therefore proposing a stable dividend of EUR 1.17 per share for fiscal 2023. Of course, we want you to be able to rely on us, and we want you to be able to rely on us in the future, too. We can propose the dividend. Excuse me, the air is obviously somewhat dry in here. We can propose the dividend. But our share price is also influenced by external factors. As in past years, the impact of geopolitical crises dominated the stock markets in 2023. Moreover, the economic situation in China recovered far more slowly than originally predicted. Persistently high inflation around the world and the resulting restrictive monetary policy held back investment and consumption.
All this had a particularly strong impact on chemical companies, including Evonik, in particular. As a result, Evonik's share price ended 2023 only 3% higher than at the end of the previous year. It is still at an unsatisfactory level. This year, our share price performance has successively distanced itself from the continued weak external factors. In March, our outlook showed that even though conditions remain challenging, we will continue to grow significantly. In mid-April, the early publication of our key financials showed that our first quarter performance was significantly above our expectations. As a result, our share price increased significantly and topped the EUR 20 threshold at the start of May. Our employees show unbroken interest in our shares. This spring, we launched another tranche of our share employee share program around the world.
Once again, more than 9,000 employees acquired shares in Evonik. This is equivalent to a participation rate of around 35%. Through all the programs run since 2014, our employees have received around 6 million shares. That is just over 1% of our capital stock. In 2024, we purchased a total of 707,251 shares for the employee share program at an average price of EUR 17.24 per share. This is, this is equivalent to around 0.13% of our capital stock of EUR 466 million. For the purchase of these shares, we used the authorization granted by the AGM of 2020. All the shares have now been transferred to the eligible employees, and the remainder have been sold. And now, ladies and gentlemen, let us look ahead towards the future.
We assume that 2024 will be another challenging year. There is no sign of any fundamental upswing so far. The global economic situation remains uncertain, and a recovery is not in sight. Nonetheless, Evonik will continue growing even faster, even more strongly than the economy overall. In the first quarter, our adjusted EBITDA was EUR 522 million, a significant year-on-year increase. Having declined for seven quarters, volumes were above the prior year level. We therefore made a strong start to the year, not least thanks to our consistent cost measures. We anticipate that the operating trends in the second quarter will be similar to the first quarter, even though there is still no sign of a broad-based macroeconomic recovery. EBITDA should therefore, and this is a good message, should therefore come in at a similarly solid level in the second quarter.
This means, in other words, that in the first six months, we should report EBITDA of over EUR 1 billion, providing a sound foundation for our full year guidance of between EUR 1.7 billion and EUR 2.0 billion. Nevertheless, we are not altering our forecast range for the full year, quite simply because visibility for the second half is still low, and we prefer to be cautious and conservative. We prefer a sound basis when it comes to the planning of our guidance. Ladies and gentlemen, we are still facing challenges. Germany does not have a coherent energy policy, and industrial policy is inadequate. In Europe, there seems to be a misconception that Europe is an island. The Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism is a case in point.
It's a complicated word, and it stands for what Europe is at this point: a temple of bureaucracy. At the same time, Germany and Europe are also under threat from a completely different quarter. We should all be concerned about the rise of the far right and populists. These forces do not want to change or modify Europe. They want to abolish the successful European model, quite simply. We cannot allow this to happen, ladies and gentlemen, because democracy lives on democrats, and the destruction of the EU or exiting the Euro would threaten our economic future and our well-being, the well-being of our country and of Europe. This would not just be a threat, it would be destruction. A strong economy is essential for a strong Europe. A weak national economy frightens people because they are afraid of the future, and they are afraid of suffering prosperity losses.
However, as you can see, Evonik, this company, does not allow itself to be held back, to be impressed by external hindrances. We are taking action, and we are raising our voice as a company. We consider that our responsibility clearly also includes being an active member of society, to safeguard the interests of our employees, to protect them, and we also have to protect a democratic and liberal culture. Therefore, we will not remain silent in the future when there is a need to articulate our interests. Here, ladies and gentlemen, I would like to thank the supervisory board, you, our esteemed shareholders, and of course, all the employees of Evonik for your continued support and trust and your dedicated work.
I would be delighted if you would continue to place your trust in Evonik in the future, and together with my colleagues on the executive board, I would like to thank you all for your interest and your kind attention. Thank you very much.
Yes, thank you, Mr. Kullmann, for your comments. The whole management board of Evonik Industries AG has done an excellent job again in 2023, despite all the difficult surrounding conditions. Ladies and gentlemen, I would not only like to thank the management board, but explicitly extend my words of thanks to all employees of our company for the excellent work they have done in the past business year and for their commitment, and I think I can do so on behalf of the shareholders as well. So I'd like to ask the management board members to submit the words of thanks to all the employees, please. Ladies and gentlemen, those amongst you who are following our AGM via the internet, I would like to point out that the public part of the live transmission is ending now.
Thank you very much for your interest, and I would like to bid you farewell.