Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. I would like to open this year's annual general meeting of HOCHTIEF Aktiengesellschaft, and extend a warm welcome to all shareholders as well as shareholder representatives on behalf of the Executive Board and the Supervisory Board. My name is Christine Wolff. I've been a member of the Supervisory Board of our company since 2014. Given the travel restrictions resulting from the corona crisis, the Chairman of our Supervisory Board, Mr. Pedro López Jiménez, is unable to attend the annual general meeting in person here in Essen. Therefore, the Supervisory Board has, in accordance with Section 22, Subsection 1 of our Articles of Association, appointed me as chairwoman of today's annual general meeting. I'll be speaking to you in German with a simultaneous translation into English. Speeches given in English will also be simultaneously translated into German.
You may therefore follow the Annual General Meeting on the Internet in German or English alternatively. Please select the respective language option via the button on the menu. Given the continuing COVID-19 pandemic, and with the aim of avoiding health risks for shareholders, internal and external employees, and for members of the company's corporate bodies, the Executive Board has decided, with approval from the Supervisory Board, that today's Annual General Meeting of our company is held as a virtual Annual General Meeting without a physical attendance of shareholders and their representatives. This is in accordance with the respective legislation on measures to reduce the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. I myself have joined you today from HOCHTIEF's corporate headquarters in Essen. The Chairman of the Executive Board of HOCHTIEF Aktiengesellschaft, Señor Marcelino Fernández Verdes, cannot be here due to travel restrictions.
He's attending this virtual Annual General Meeting from Madrid, and he'll be connected live throughout the entire event. Furthermore, the members of the Supervisory Board and the Executive Board are following this Annual General Meeting. The members of the Supervisory Board are virtually connected to us. You can now see them displayed from their various locations. Even if you, shareholders and shareholder representatives, aren't able to physically attend today's Annual General Meeting, I am pleased that many of you are following the Annual General Meeting via video and audio broadcast on our website, thereby signaling your interest in our company. I'd like to extend a special welcome to our many guests, of whom I know that they are following the Annual General Meeting via video and audio broadcast on our website, too. I'd like to welcome the notary, Dr.
Kreidt, here on site at the HOCHTIEF premises in Essen, who's taking the notarial minutes of today's annual general meeting. This annual general meeting has been convened by publication of an invitation in the Federal Gazette, the Bundesanzeiger, of the sixth of April, 2020, and it's been distributed across Europe by means of publication. The invitation can be viewed on our website at www.hochtief.de, via the link Investor Relations/Annual General Meeting. This is free publications, and related documents were also released on our company's website. I can thus confirm that today's annual general meeting was convened duly and in a timely manner, in accordance with the law and the articles of association. Notifications in accordance with Section 125, Subsection 1 of the German Stock Corporation Act were made available to the recipients required by law in a timely manner.
Essentially, these recipients are custodian banks and shareholder associations. The executive board has confirmed that the company hasn't received any supplementary motions to the agenda, which are subject to disclosure requirements or counter motions, respectively, from shareholders in accordance with Section 126 of the Stock Corporation Act, or election proposals in accordance with Section 127 of the Stock Corporation Act. Both a copy of the invitation to the annual general meeting, as well as a copy of the notifications in accordance with the German Stock Corporation Act, have been provided to the notary public for the minutes. Current attendance, that is, the number of shares represented at the annual general meeting, will be announced before voting begins. I will now explain the details of the voting procedure...
Voting will be announced by the sound of a virtual gong later in the meeting when it comes to the voting procedure. From this point onwards, it won't be possible any longer to exercise a voting right by postal vote or by granting authorization or instructions to the company's shareholder representatives or to authorize a third party. I am now going to press the gong for test purposes only. Until the start of the voting procedure, you, dear shareholders, can exercise your voting rights via the shareholder portal, by electronic postal vote, or by granting authority and instructions to the company's shareholder representatives. You can also have your voting and other rights exercised by another proxy. It's also possible to authorize a proxy during the Annual General Meeting, that is, during its course. For this purpose, respective buttons are provided in the shareholder portal.
Details on the exercise of voting rights by postal vote or by granting authority and instructions to the company shareholder representatives, and on granting authority to third parties, are explained in the information sheet, which is available on the company's website at www.hochtief.de via link Investor Relations/Annual General Meeting. The voting procedure is based on what is called the addition method. In other words, the votes cast for and against items on the agenda will be counted. Abstentions don't count to establish the result and are therefore not included. I shall provide details on this later, directly before the voting at today's annual general meeting. I reserve the right to determine a different method of voting where this should be appropriate. This annual general meeting is broadcast on the Internet.
In accordance with the new legal stipulations, questions for this virtual annual general meeting had to be submitted by electronic communication via the shareholder portal until the end of the 26th of April, 2020. Questions may not be asked at the annual general meeting itself. Motions may also not be submitted during the annual general meeting. Your submitted questions will be answered by the Chairman of the Executive Board, Mr. Fernández Verdes, who can give you detailed first-hand insights. Mr. Fernández Verdes is electronically connected to us from Madrid because of the travel restrictions. He'll speak to you in English with a simultaneous translation into German. I shall explain further details of this later. Ladies and gentlemen, let us now start with the agenda.
The contents of today's agenda, including the complete wording of the proposed resolutions on agenda items 2 through 8, and the reports of the Executive Board on agenda items 7 and 8, were published and made available in the aforementioned form with the convening of this annual general meeting on the sixth of April, 2020. Since that date, they can be accessed at and downloaded from the company's website. In addition, the agenda items have already been explained in the agenda, published together with a convocation notice. I now call agenda item 1: Presentation of the adopted annual financial statements of HOCHTIEF Aktiengesellschaft, and the approved consolidated financial statements as of the thirty-first of December, 2019.
The combined management report of HOCHTIEF Aktiengesellschaft and the group, the report of the Supervisory Board for fiscal 2019, as well as the explanatory report by the Executive Board on disclosures under sections 289a and 315a of the German Commercial Code, the HGB. Documents and papers required for agenda item one have been available for inspection at the company's business premises since the date the annual general meeting was convened, and the same original documents are now available to the notary public. The required documents and papers can also be inspected on the Internet at www.hochtief.de via the link Investor Relations/Annual General Meeting from the date the annual general meeting was convened.
Ladies and gentlemen, I'd now like to inform you briefly about the work of the Supervisory Board in the past year and the adopted financial statements for 2019, which the Supervisory Board has requested and authorized me to do. With regard to the financial statements of 2019, the Audit Committee of the Supervisory Board had discussed all the pertinent documents in depth prior to the meeting of the Supervisory Board and recommended to the Supervisory Board that it approves them. Those documents included: A, the annual financial statements of HOCHTIEF Aktiengesellschaft, prepared by the Executive Board in accordance with the regulations of the German Commercial Code, B, the consolidated financial statements under IFRS, and C, the combined management report for HOCHTIEF Aktiengesellschaft and the HOCHTIEF Group. All of them have been audited together with the bookkeeping by KPMG AG, which issued them with an unqualified audit opinion.
The auditors who granted the audit opinion took part in the discussion of the documents by the supervisory board and the audit committee. They reported on the key findings, the key results of their audit, and they were also available to provide supplementary information. Following its own examination and taking into consideration the report of the audit committee, the supervisory board approved the results obtained by the auditors. The supervisory board raised no objections following the final results of its review. It approved the annual financial statements in accordance with Section 172 of the Stock Corporation Act, which are therefore adopted. The consolidated financial statements were also approved by the supervisory board. The supervisory board also endorsed the proposal by the executive board for the appropriation of the unappropriated net profit.
A resolution by the annual general meeting on these documents is not required by law, and for this reason, it's not provided for. Shareholders. All along 2019, the supervisory board dealt intensively with the economic situation and development of the company. In addition, the supervisory board dealt in depth with the corporate governance of HOCHTIEF Aktiengesellschaft and monitored the development and application of corporate governance at all times, because good corporate governance is an essential ingredient of the way of doing business in all areas of the HOCHTIEF Group. The report on corporate governance and compliance can be found on pages 80 through 89 of the group report, which also include the compensation report.
Ladies and gentlemen, at this point, I could further explain the report of the supervisory board, but since this report is a part of the group report that you have already, or which you can read, retrieve on the company's website at www.hochtief.de, via the link, Investor Relations/Annual General Meeting, I refrain from any further remarks on this matter. I now ask the Chairman of the Executive Board, Mr. Fernández-Verdes, for his explanations of the proposals of the executive board and for his comments on the development of the company. The speech will be simultaneously translated into German. Mr. Fernández-Verdes, may I ask you to speak?
Thank you, Mrs. Wolff. Good morning, meine sehr verehrten Damen und Herren, liebe Freunde von HOCHTIEF. On behalf of the executive board, I would like to welcome everyone to our virtual annual general meeting. I'm sorry that we cannot host you all in Essen this year, but I am confident that we will see each other in person at next year's HOCHTIEF AGM. When logging into our annual general meeting, you may have noticed that we have completely modernized our corporate homepage. You're cordially invited to make use of our website to discover the many interesting aspects of your company and the world we are building. Let me begin by addressing the corona crisis. The global spread of the coronavirus presents us all with difficulties and challenges which seemed unimaginable just a short time ago.
But the more we have seen the severe consequences for the share prices around the world, and the market capitalization of HOCHTIEF has been sharply impacted. In normal times already, our employees deliver unique projects and top performance. In this challenging time, they are making huge efforts in order to keep the pandemic's impact on our projects as low as possible. They therefore deserve all recognition. We have introduced a whole series of preventive health measures, because safety always comes first. Whether our construction site, in the office, or in home office, I'd like to sincerely thank all HOCHTIEF teams. I'm glad and proud that in many places, we can support government action to mitigate the pandemic. As the leading builder of healthcare projects in the United States, Turner's healthcare projects are moving forward and even accelerating to meet the surge in the hospital demand.
Turner was called upon to build space to deliver urgent patient care in 20 locations across the United States. More than 200 Turner staff members, in some cases, working in shifts around the clock, are leading efforts to complete work, resulting in 4,000 patient care beds in a matter of weeks. In another project, Turner donated its services to deliver beds for the St. Thomas Hospital and the city of Nashville to serve homeless people in the community. It is also providing trade partners with information on resources available to them through the Federal CARES Act stimulus package to support their ability to remain strong, viable, and sustainable partners. CIMIC, CIMIC is also supporting community efforts to reduce the spread of the coronavirus. Just two examples.
CPB Contractors is redeveloping, expanding, and building hospitals in New South Wales, Australia, and is also delivering the Christchurch Hospital in New Zealand by bringing in additional resources from neighboring CPB Contractors' projects. Let us take a brief look at how corona is impacting our business. As a global infrastructure group, HOCHTIEF is focused on its core, main core markets of Australia, North America, and Europe. During the first quarter, operations and the vast majority of our construction, mining, and services sites have continued despite the corona crisis. Overall, the group's activities continue to progress within the framework of the restrictions which have been put in place, and we are continuously monitoring the risks and responding to the changing conditions to ensure the safety of our people. Before we review our operational results for 2019, I want to address our exit from the Middle East.
Following CIMIC's decision in January to exit the non-controlling 45 financial investment in BIC Contracting, a company operating in the Middle East, HOCHTIEF has recognized a one-off post-tax impact of negative EUR 833 million after minorities in our financial statements for 2019. The post-tax impact represents all our exposure in relation to BICC. Notwithstanding this non-recurrent impact on our 2019 results, leaving the region, the region is the right decision for our business and for our shareholders. The decision to exit followed an extensive strategic review of the investment in BICC, including a confidential M&A process. Discussions continue with a short list of potential acquirers for all or part of the company. In addition, in the context of an accelerated deterioration of local market conditions, BICC is engaging in confidential discussions with its lenders, creditors, clients, and other stakeholders.
Exiting the region will allow CIMIC to focus its resources and capital allocation on growth opportunities in its core markets in Australia, New Zealand, and Asia Pacific. The overall BICC impact includes an expected cash outlay net of tax of around AUD 700 million during 2020 and beyond, as CIMIC's financial guarantees of certain BICC liabilities materialize. A separate AUD 1.5 billion dedicated facility was set up this January to cover the BICC impact from a liquidity perspective. Following the announcement of our withdrawal from the Middle East, CIMIC's solid investment grade rating was reaffirmed by the rating agencies. Moody's highlighted the exit from the Middle East as credit positive, while Standard & Poor's described it as consistent with group strategy. Furthermore, Standard & Poor's BBB investment grade rating for HOCHTIEF is unchanged with a stable outlook.
As a consequence of the EUR 833 million impact from exiting the Middle East, HOCHTIEF recorded a nominal net loss of EUR 206 million for 2019. Excluding this one-off impact, nominal net profit stands at EUR 627 million. Let's have a look at the operational highlights of last year. Meine lieben Aktionäre, operational business continued to perform well during 2019, with solid advances in profits, sales, and order book, and significantly higher underlying cash generation. Operational net profit, which excludes non-operational effects, rose by 146, or EUR 146 million, or 28% year-on-year to EUR 669 million euro. All three HOCHTIEF divisions achieved an increase in the group's operational net profit, which also includes a first-time operational contribution from Abertis of EUR 122 million euros.
Sales increased by 8% year-on-year to EUR 25.9 billion. The group delivered net cash from operating activities of EUR 1.6 billion, and this corresponds to a significant increase of EUR 1 billion year-on-year pre-COVID. We have expanded our capital expenditure by EUR 174 million to EUR 580 million to take advantage of growth opportunities in mining and job cost mining work.... ended December 2019, with a net cash position of EUR 1.53 billion, after distributing EUR 450 million to all shareholders. We have a strong level of liquidity, with cash and cash equivalents of over EUR 4.5 billion, further supported by committed and drawn credit facilities of EUR 3 billion across the group. Currently, our liquidity position remains robust.
As we highlighted earlier, this strong level of operational liquidity is not impacted by the expected cash outlay for BICC, for which a separate additional liquidity facility has been put in place by CIMIC. Now let us take a look at the divisions. Americas. Americas achieved a strong performance during 2018. Operational profit before tax increased by 6% year-on-year, to EUR 321 million, at the top end of the guidance range for the division of EUR 305 million-EUR 320 million. Sales of EUR 15.3 billion were 17% higher compared with the previous year. The operational PBT margin reached 2.1%. Americas delivered an outstanding increase in cash generation from an already high level in 2018.
Net cash from operating activities of EUR 730 million was over EUR 350 million higher year-on-year. The end order book rose to a new all-time high of EUR 23.6 billion, up EUR 2.5 billion, or 12%, compared with the end of 2018. The division brought in new contract value at EUR 16.9 billion, up 11% compared with the prior year. Our subsidiary, Turner, has been named the leading U.S. general builder by the highly regarded publication Engineering News-Record. Turner is also one of the top providers of green or sustainable buildings. In New York, for example, we are building The Spiral, a green skyscraper. Now let's move to Asia Pacific. In 2018, the operational profit before tax of Asia Pacific was stable year-on-year at EUR 629 million.
Sales of EUR 1.9 billion were in line with the comparable period in 2018. The operational PBT margin remained solid at 6.9%. At the end of the period, the divisional net cash position was EUR 559 million. The division's robust EUR 23.5 billion order book has increased by 4% year-on-year, with new orders during the period of EUR 11.1 billion, up 4% year-on-year. Let's move to Europe. The Europe division continued to increase its profitability during 2019. Operational profit before tax increased by EUR 4 million year-on-year to EUR 66 million, in line with the guidance range of EUR 65 million-EUR 70 million. The development was driven by high construction profit and a solid operational PBT margins. Sales reached EUR 1.2 billion, compared with EUR 1.4 billion in 2018.
Net cash from operating activities came to EUR 42 million, in line with the division's nominal net profit, and driven by the construction and PPP businesses. At the end of 2019, the division had a strong net cash position of over EUR 110 million, up EUR 36 million year-on-year. New order rose substantially by 15% to EUR 2.2 billion, and the order backlog at the end of the period climbed significantly by 20%, to EUR 4.3 billion. HOCHTIEF Building, which is our building construction unit in Germany, has increased new orders by over 50% to nearly EUR 1 billion. HOCHTIEF Infrastructure, our European civil engineering unit, has steadily increased its percentage of German business in recent years. Now, let's take a look at Abertis.
Since 2018, the earnings contribution from Abertis, the leading toll road operator that we acquired jointly with ACS and Atlantia, has been considered part of the operational result. Our 20% stake in Abertis, again, had a positive effect in 2018. A contributing factor here was the efficiency improvement program Abertis has adopted, which targets savings of around EUR 150 million per annum, and the average daily traffic volume grew by around 2% last year. In total, sales increased by 4% on a like-for-like basis, and EBITDA rose by 8%. Net profit amounted to approximately EUR 1.1 billion, up 9% year-on-year on a comparable basis.
The Abertis profit contribution to HOCHTIEF in 2019 reached EUR 122 million, while we received a dividend from Abertis of EUR 173 million for the business year 2018. In October 2019, Abertis and the Sovereign Wealth Fund, GIC, announced that they had reached an agreement to acquire a 20% stake in the toll road company, RCO, Red de Carreteras de Occidente, one of the largest transport operators in Mexico, which manages 176 kilometers of toll roads. Abertis will fully consolidate RCO and will invest EUR 1.5 billion for a 50.1% stake. RCO is a high quality asset with a good strategic fit and a source of long-term cash flow generation, which extends Abertis' portfolio duration and further diversifies the company geographically. Now, let's take a look to our group order book.
The group's order book reached a record high of over EUR 51 billion at the end of 2019, an increase year-on-year of EUR 4 billion or 9%. The quality of our order book is enhanced by the high level of visibility, which our construction, management, mining, alliance style contracts, and services activities provide, and which account for two-thirds of HOCHTIEF's order book. A strong level of new orders, EUR 30.4 billion, was secured, up 9% year-on-year. Again, all divisions contributed to the positive overall development of the group. Now, a project overview. I have to say that our successful delivery on project reflects the group's engineering and project management know-how, based on a long-term local presence in our core markets.
Currently, we are progressing well with a 15-kilometer subway tunnel under Sydney Harbor, as well as with the improvements we are making to public transportation in California, Copenhagen, Munich, and Brisbane, to name just a few. Specific projects we have completed or started operating in 2019 include a 3 km bridge across the St. Lawrence River in Montreal, the restored Opera House in Prague, and the first autonomous metro in Sydney. We secured several major contracts, such as a PPP highway project in the Netherlands, A12/A15, a power tunnel in London, the extension of Nuremberg's subway, a large number of highways, railroads , and bridges in locations such as Melbourne, the Czech Republic, the US states of Washington and Virginia, and in Calgary, Canada. Extensive building construction projects in New York, Seattle, Munich, Düsseldorf, Hamburg, Basel, and Berlin. A PPP project for the police in the German state of Hesse.
A series of service contracts for public transportations, transportation in Australia, and mining projects in Australia and Botswana. Now, let me say a few words about safety. Safety is of the top priority in our daily work. The health of both our employees and of our business partners and subcontractors is paramount for us. It is with the greatest regret, I have to inform you that despite all our efforts, three fatal accidents occurred on construction sites for the HOCHTIEF Group last year. On behalf of the supervisory board, the executive board, and all HOCHTIEF employees, I'd like to express my sympathies to the families and friends of the colleagues that passed away. We are working continuously on identifying workplace-related risks early and on improving our prevention, because every accident is one too many.
In 2019, the group-wide accident rate, which captures the number of accidents per million hours worked, was 1.19, after 1.37 the year before. So we have improved, but we are not satisfied with what was achieved, and we will continue to work intensively on ensuring that our employees can work in a safe environment. In 2020, we aim to improve this rate to 1.15, and by 2030, we want to reduce it to 0.9. Now, let's look at the market outlook. Across our markets, we expect the government and the private sectors will continue to invest to meet sustained demand for critical economic and social infrastructure, notwithstanding the impact of the corona crisis. Doing so facilitates economic growth, employment, and productivity, factors which will be even more important in today's environment.
With a robust pipeline of identified projects worth around EUR 600 billion in our core markets of U.S., Canada, Asia, Pacific, and Europe, and a PPP project pipeline of about EUR 230 billion, we are well positioned. A strategy. Let's talk about our strategy. Key for our future performance is our strategy. As a leading infrastructure group, HOCHTIEF today covers the entire life cycle of infrastructure projects in developed markets. That gives us a balanced business profile in terms of cash flow visibility, capital intensity, profits, and margins. Our strategy is to further strengthen our position in our core markets and leverage growth opportunities. At the same time, we are committed to cash backed profitability and rigorous risk management. Operationally, we adapt our divisions' strategies to the market environments on an ongoing basis.
For example, CIMIC has significantly increased the number of lower risk alliance-style contracts with the public sector industry. This improves our risk return profile. Overall, we further developed our low risk profile and enhanced the quality of our order book with construction management, mining, alliance-style contracts, and services activities, accounting approximately two-thirds, EUR 34 billion of the total. Active and disciplined capital allocation is a high priority for us. We are focused on a sustained increase in our profitability, attractive shareholder remuneration, as well as investing in strategic growth opportunities in order to generate value for all stakeholders. To that end, it is worth highlighting that, over the last seven years, we have increased HOCHTIEF's dividend per share at a compound annual growth rate of approx 30%.
In recent weeks, we have invested about EUR 100 million to increase our stake in CIMIC by close to 3% at an average cost of AUD 19.2 per share. Our stake in CIMIC currently stands at 76.7%. In March, we launched another share buyback program at HOCHTIEF. The sustainable nature of our strategy is underlined by our commitment to maintaining a solid investment grade rating. I want to inform you on the use of the authorization of the company to acquire and use treasury shares in accordance with section 71, brackets 1, number 8, German Stock Corporation Act, granted at the annual general meeting of May eleventh.
2016, since the last annual general meeting, after a new share buyback program has been announced on March 9, 2020, the company acquired 678,799 shares of treasury stock in March and April 2020, equivalent to approx. 0.96% of the registered share capital and representing EUR 1,737,725.44 of the registered share capital at an average price of 59.06 EUR per share, and a total purchase price of EUR 40,087,177.52.
The purpose of this share buybacks is limited to use the shares that are bought back for any purpose set forth in the authorization resolution of the annual general meeting of May 11, 2016, and for any purpose permissible under applicable stock corporation law. Ladies and gentlemen, we want to remunerate our shareholders attractively. This is a key element of our capital allocation strategy, and just like focusing on attractive opportunities for organic and strategic growth. In view of the solid performance in the operational business and on the basis of our strong consolidated balance sheet, the Supervisory and Executive Boards, under item number two of the agenda, for 2019, propose the distribution of a dividend of EUR 5.80 per share. This represents an increase of 16% of the previous year. It is important to put our focus on shareholder remuneration in context.
So years ago, at May 2013 AGM, we reinstated the HOCHTIEF dividend by fixing a payment of EUR 1 per share for 2012. This compared with EUR 5.8 per share for 2019, that we are proposing today. During this seven year period, we have increased the dividend per share at a compound annual growth rate of approximately 30%, underlining both the strong improvement in HOCHTIEF's fundamental performance and management's commitment to reward our shareholders.... This means that including the proposed 2019 dividend, HOCHTIEF has distributed almost EUR 22 per share since 2012. In absolute terms, this equates to EUR 1.6 billion, which has been paid out to shareholders. The remuneration has been further augmented by several share buybacks, which we have carried out over this seven year period. In total, we have invested EUR 630 million in acquiring our shares.
Now, a few words about sustainability. We have achieved to further improve sustainability, building a reputation as a provider of choice with our clients and creating a positive legacy for our stakeholders underlies our approach to sustainability. Operating sustainably for us means that we are part of the solution to address mitigation of climate change and work as a partner to clients while transitioning to a low carbon future. For example, during 2019, we have generated total sales of EUR 5.9 billion from constructing certified green buildings in the US, an increase of more than 20% compared to 2018, and a strong trend that we have meanwhile seen for some time. In 2019, we were again listed in the international renowned Dow Jones Sustainability Index, DJSI, for the fourteenth time in succession, acknowledging our economic, environmental, and social performance.
For the 10th year in a row, we took part in the CDP Climate Change Assessment and received a solid rating. Moreover, in 2019, our company has maintained its positive rating in the MSCI ESG Rating assessment. This is one of the world's most important providers of sustainability analysis and ratings. Just a few weeks ago, Deutsche Börse included us in a newly created index for sustainable companies. The DAX 50 ESG takes into account the biggest listed German corporations, not only in terms of market capitalization and trading volumes, but also evaluates how intensively companies deal with environmental protection, social issues, and good corporate governance. Sustainability is integral for our future and for the value we create for our shareholders, our people, and our clients. Now, let's move to innovation. Investing in innovation and digitalization is essential to maintaining and enhancing our competitive advantage and resilience.
Our group-wide innovation platform, Nexplore , is both generating value from technology today and exploring how it will transform our business model for tomorrow. It has again made good progress in 2019. Nexplore no longer only operates innovation centers in Europe, North America, and the Asia Pacific region, and we have also set up research centers to be at the forefront of technological advances to deliver our solution rapidly. We work together with renowned IT companies, develop new industry standards, and optimize construction processes using artificial intelligence, AI, sensor control, Internet of Things, IoT, technology, and blockchain, to name just a few. We cooperate with institutes such as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, MIT, in Boston, the Technological University of Madrid, UPM, UPM, the Minnesota State University, and the University of Amsterdam. In addition, Nexplore cooperates closely with the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence, DFKI.
Nexplore ultimate goal is to enable our people to continuously seek better ways to solve problems, adapt to the future, and evolve in everything we do. Digitalization will enable us to increase safety, boost efficiency, and minimize risks. I can say that by the end of this year, more than 100 sites across the globe will be running some of the processes from our Nexplore platform. At the same time, we are stepping up our use of building information modeling, BIM, which we have been working with for years. We introduce this digital transform of design and construction across the board in the future. In Germany, we are working with the universities of Bochum and Munich to train up and coming BIM specialists. In addition, we have been supporting the German government in introducing this technology since 2016.
We have also significantly stepped up our training efforts for BIM. During 2019, we have trained more than 3,000 employees, up from just over 1,000 a year ago. As we increasingly roll out BIM technology across all our businesses as a standard tool to improve project efficiency for all stakeholders. The future is full of opportunities for us, for HOCHTIEF. We have a strong trend pipeline. In total, our local teams have identified, as I said previously, a pipeline worth about EUR 600 billion of relevant projects coming to our markets in North America, Asia Pacific, and Europe in 2020 and beyond. Our strong position in developed PPP markets is reflected in the PPP project pipeline that the group has identified, which stands at EUR 230 billion.
I have to say to all of you that once we have better visibility of the consequences in our markets due to the corona crisis, we will provide an update on our 2020 guidance if required. I want to personally thank all of our employees, over 53,000 at the end of last year, for all their hard work and dedication. I want to thank all of you, our shareholders, for your attention today and ongoing support. Please take care of yourselves and your loved ones. I'm convinced that we will overcome this unprecedented situation together. I'm looking forward to seeing you all in person at our AGM next year.