Hello from our Munich office. Matthias Täubl, CEO of AURELIUS Equity Opportunities here. I'm here together with our CFO, Richard Schulze-Muth. Yesterday, we have published our full year statutory accounts for the financial year 2021. Therefore, welcome to today's earnings call, where we will lead you through the numbers and what was going on in 2021. Let me go straight to the highlights of the financial year 2021. Mainly three topics. The first one, performance of our existing portfolio companies. The second topic is about M&A activities, and the third one is about our focus on the shareholder value. The first topic, performance of our existing portfolio companies. We were quite pleased with the solid and strong performance, which is a nice indicator for the resilience of our AURELIUS business model.
Three KPIs that are underlining this strong performance. The first one is operating EBITDA up by 50% to EUR 250 million for the full year 2021. Cash is pretty much the same level as it was by end of 2020, despite that we were paying out nearly EUR 30 million of dividend payments and also have acquired more companies than the year before. The third one is that the net asset value gross went up by 32% points YoY to now EUR 1.3 billion. We will talk about this in a couple of minutes in more detail.
Let me, at this point, also say thank you to our team, our employees at AURELIUS on the holding level, our employees in the task force who made sure that in the stormy water, we were very close to our portfolio companies and supported them in sailing through the coronavirus pandemic and the labor shortage topics, the supply chain issues. Thank you very much to all our employees and also the employees in the portfolio companies. M&A activities, strong transactions executed in the full year 2021. We have seen three platform deals, three add-on acquisitions, and two co-investment deals together with the fund. We were also able now in the Q1 of 2022 to even accelerate the speed of our transactions.
We have seen four add-on acquisitions already and three co-investment deals, and we are very confident that we will be able to announce further deals in all the pillars. Which means platform, add-on acquisitions, and co-investments in the near future. Then the last topic I've mentioned before, shareholder value. Very pleased that we were able last week to announce that we will be able to increase our dividend for the financial year 2021, even more to 1.5 EUR, which is above what we have initially announced, 1.25 EUR. Therefore, we will bring forward the increase to 1.5 EUR by one year already, and this will be our proposal for the general meeting this year. Let me now move on to the acquisitions.
In 2021, three platform deals. Hüppe, producer of shower enclosures and shower trays, based in Bad Schwartau in the north of Germany, around EUR 70 million. Remi Claeys, carve-out from Hydro, around EUR 75 million in revenue, producer of precise aluminum tubes. UNILUX, around EUR 45 million. They are a producer of high-end windows and doors based in the western part of Germany, close to the Belgian border. All three of them, typical specialty carve-out deals, exactly how an AURELIUS deal should look like. It's a carve-out from a bigger corporate. It's a lot of operational improvement potentially around on a standalone basis, which means our task force, they will turn around every corner and make sure that we will take this company on a standalone basis to the next level.
We do see all three of these platform deals as nice acquisitions to add-on acquisitions once we have stabilized the company, to add-on acquisitions in a very heterogeneous market, and therefore accelerate the transformation and the growth and the profitability therefore of these portfolio companies. Two co-investment deals, APS, how it is now called, the consumer battery business from Panasonic, around EUR 200 million-EUR 220 million turnover. Innoveo, as it is, has now been rebranded as the former SSE contracting business based in the U.K., around EUR 300 million in turnover. All the co-investment deals we have seen in 2021 and also with the deals we have signed this year already, again, similar ingredients than what I've mentioned before for the platform deals, carve-out deals.
A lot of operational treatment needed to make sure it will become a sustainable standalone company and therefore then also increase the profitability from a 2-4 percentage points EBITDA, where it is typically at the point in time when we acquire a company to a 10% points EBITDA at the point in time when we will then think about exit these companies again. Add-on acquisitions, this is something I have put on the top of my agenda besides other topics when I have been appointed as the CEO in November 2020. We would like to accelerate the transformation and the growth of our portfolio companies and therefore have a very specific focus on add-on acquisition for our portfolio companies. Three of them we were able to execute last year.
Let me pick one of them, maybe, Movement, which is an add-on for our portfolio company, Conaxess Trade. They are a distributor of fast-moving consumer goods based in Sweden. Movement, the add-on, not that big in size, EUR 20 million, but post synergies will contribute with above EUR 2 million to the overall profitability of the Conaxess Trade group then. This is exactly these kind of deals where we will see more of them. We have seen four of them this year already. We will see more of them in the near future. We do believe that what we can see in the market is that some smaller competitors to our portfolio companies, they are struggling currently in this very difficult market circumstances.
Also when the coronavirus pandemic is slowing down, if they have to ramp up the business, have to increase their working capital, that some of them are struggling, and therefore, these are highly likely that we will therefore see more add-on acquisitions for our portfolio companies. On the next page, two exits we were able to perform last year. We have sold the remaining businesses of Office Depot in Europe to the strategic buyer, RAJA Group. We have seen the first exit of our portfolio in the third quarter last year. Wychem, a manufacturer of chemicals for pharmaceuticals and specialty applications based in the U.K. We sold this to Ascensus, which is a U.S.-based producer of specialty chemicals.
We were able to sell this company, Wychem, for a money-over-money multiple of 10.6, which is quite significant. Also what is very important to us is that the disposal price has been significantly above our latest net asset value for this specific portfolio company. The portfolio status on page seven. On the X-axis, you can see the year when we have acquired a portfolio company, and on the Y-axis, the three different phases, how we do cluster our portfolio. Improvement phases, this is when we acquire a company, optimization phases and then growth phases. Typically, this is the phase when we are starting thinking about an exit of this portfolio companies again. By nature, the companies are moving from the left-hand side to the right-hand side.
Based on our treatment, operational involvement, and on our task force engagement, the companies are typically stepping up from a 3%, 4%, 5% points EBITDA to a 10 percentage points EBITDA at the point in time when we'll then think about a disposal. It's a very balanced portfolio, very robust, as I've mentioned before already. As you can see, quite a significant amount of companies in the growth phases. We are talking here about companies all together in the north of EUR 100 million operating EBITDA. Typically, these are the companies where we will see an exit in the near future. Let me now hand over to Richard Schulze-Muth, who will lead you through our key figures for the full year, 2021.
Yeah, welcome also from my side to our financial year 2021 earnings call. Richard Schulze-Muth, CFO of AURELIUS. Let's have a look at our financial year 2021 figures that came out yesterday, beginning on slide eight. Our total consolidated revenues came in with almost EUR 3.3 billion. On an annualized basis, the revenues from continued operations end up at almost EUR 2.7 billion, compared to EUR 2.2 billion in 2020. This increase is mainly driven by the acquisitions we made in 2020, and which are included now with the full year effect and our newly acquired portfolio companies in 2021. The EBITDA of the combined group is EUR 358 million after EUR 431 million in 2020.
The decrease was mainly driven by the lower bargain purchase in 2021, but compensated gains on exits and the strong operating EBITDA of our portfolio companies. Also, we have three different sources of earnings and bargain purchase. This is shown in our price that we paid for a company is lower than the net assets we acquired. With regard to our acquisitions in 2021, a bargain purchase of EUR 36.4 million has been booked. The 2020 bargain purchase was EUR 292.2 million, and that is also the main reason for the decrease in total EBITDA.
The restructuring expenses went down from EUR 107.4 million to EUR 91.5 million and reflect, once again, the good operational performance of our portfolio in 2021. Gains on exit went up from EUR 78.7 million to EUR 163.7 million, mainly due to the successful exits of Office Depot Europe and Ycam in 2021. Finally, we end up with an outstanding operational performance EBITDA of EUR 249.7 million, and that means an increase of 50% completed compared to the last year operational result. This result once again underlines the statements we made back in November when we had our conference call for the Q3 figures. Our portfolio has come through the pandemic very well.
The cash compared to last year has increased further to EUR 444 million, despite of the payment of the 2020 dividend of almost EUR 29 million and the acquisition of our new portfolio companies. Matthias just introduced the three new platform deals, three add-ons, and the two co-investments. Free holding cash in AO and holding companies was over EUR 200 million, and holding cash has improved further, in particular due to the successful exit of AKAD in February. Even if we deduct a EUR 50 million cash buffer for holding costs, there is more than EUR 183 million cash for acquisitions available. Finally, the equity ratio went up to 26% from 21% at year-end 2020, despite the dividend payment we made last year. Yeah. Let's go to the next slide.
On slide nine, you see a split of our portfolio in terms of consolidated revenues and operating EBITDA by three categories: segment, portfolio status, and vintage. The key messages are by segment, operating EBITDA margin of all segments, i.e., Services and Solutions, Industrial Production, and Retail and Consumer Products, reached over 10% each. Revenues and operating EBITDA of the segment Industrial Production increased significantly with strong contributions from VAG, moveero, Zentia, and Briar. We still have a sizable exposure in Retail and Consumer Products, but with interesting winners of the COVID-19 pandemic, e.g., European Imaging Group, Distrelec, and Silvan, as you can see in the numbers. By portfolio status and vintage, portfolio companies in the improvement phase contributing already good operating EBITDA of EUR 49 million, while portfolio companies in the optimization phase contributing an EBITDA of EUR 87.8 million.
Over 50% of revenues and operating EBITDA are coming from companies with a holding period of more than three years. We see the continued strong development of our portfolio companies that are longer with AURELIUS. However, it is worth mentioning that our recent acquisitions, so companies in the improvement segment or with a holding period of less than 18 months, have already a good contribution to our operating EBITDA. On the M&A side, we've acquired the right companies, especially in the last two years and in the COVID-19 pandemic. Now, I would like to move on to page 10. The net asset value calculation of our portfolio compared to year-end 2020, the total gross NAV went up to EUR 1.277 billion, a significant increase of 32% compared to year-end 2020.
This increase comes generally from all segments and the strong operational performance of the respective portfolio companies. In industrial production, we had a material increase of approximately 46% from roughly EUR 343 million up to EUR 500 million. This is mainly related to the Q4 2020 acquisition of moveero that was included with the purchase price at year-end 2020, but we meanwhile performed the DCF valuation for this portfolio company. Furthermore, Hüppe, Unilux, and Remi Claeys, the three new platform acquisitions are included for the first time. Remi Claeys and Unilux still at respective purchase prices, Hüppe at fair value.
Besides the valuation of Moveero and the inclusion of the three companies, we have a very good operational performance of Sentia and very positive contribution from VAG, as mentioned earlier. In the sector retail and consumer products, we also have a 7% increase from EUR 345 million up to EUR 369 million. This is due to very strong operational performances of Silvan and Distrelec. Furthermore, the new add-on acquisition Movement Group for the Danish Conaxess Trade group is included at fair value for the first time. Finally, sector services and solutions. Here we had an increase from EUR 82 million up to EUR 143 million, so plus of 75%.
This is coming from a strong operational performance for the Rivus Fleet Solutions and AKAD, our distance learning university we successfully sold in February, as well as, BPG, the Building Partners Group, and the first time including the 2020 add-on acquisition GSB Gerüstbau at fair value. For the segment other, you see an increase of roughly EUR 60 million compared to year-end 2020. The valuation of the segment other consists of the cash of AEO and the non-operating holding companies and the brand company Blaupunkt. The nominal amount of our Nordic bond is deducted in the segment, and this includes the EUR 45 million tap under the existing bond frame we did back in Q4 2021. Lastly, we have our co-investments together with the newly launched AURELIUS European Opportunities Fund IV.
We co-invest in the European mid-market. The number of EUR 3.1 million listed in the table you see on slide 10 shows our co-equity funding only. However, we've included a respective discount of 8% based on a DAX reduction as of the tenth of March 2020 to our NAV in connection with the Ukraine crisis for potential negative impact on portfolio companies and related inflation risks. Furthermore, as part of our transparency initiative, we are showing you for the first time net NAV deducting estimated transaction costs and management compensation. The NAV net was EUR 1 billion as of thirty-first December 2021. These are the expected proceeds of AURELIUS Equity Opportunities out of the sale of the respective portfolio companies.
The valuation leads to an NAV net per share of EUR 35.26 at year-end. Treasury shares were not included in the calculation. Besides this, our NAVs are calculated consistently and have been audited by KPMG for year-end 2021. Our NAVs are based on the DCF model, and we use actuals as of December 31, 2021, including the budgets of the portfolio companies until year-end 2024. We still assume the conservative growth rate of 0.5% and have a WACC of 10.34% on average. This WACC is a bit lower than for year-end 2020. At this point, it was 10.88%, but, yeah, that includes a risk premium for a lot of our portfolio companies.
As already mentioned, we've included a general discount of 8% due to the Ukraine war and potential negative impacts here on energy cost and supply chain. On slide 11, you find an additional detailed analysis regarding the different sectors of the NAV I've just presented. Now I would like to hand over to you, Matthias, again.
Thank you, Richard. Let us take advantage of having you on the call and give you some more color on what's going on in the first quarter of this year. As outlined already, we have seen a significant amount of different transactions. Let me give you some more color on some of them. First one on page 13, AKAD, a nice success story for the company itself under the ownership of AURELIUS when it was acquired back in 2014, but also for AURELIUS. We sold this company for EUR 48.3 million, which is significantly above our Q3 net asset value for this company with EUR 25 million, finally translating into a money multiplier of 15x. Quite a nice outcome for AURELIUS.
Another indication of in which direction potential exits of our portfolio companies or how they could look like. The company itself is the German, Germany's oldest private distance learning university, and under our ownership and based on the treatment of our task force, has come and undergone a significant repositioning. We have implemented a lot of additional study programs, a lot of them more future-focused, like for example, management of home care services. Also what we have developed here is a platform which is more based on different modules you can choose and therefore customize your study. Today, AKAD is offering 78 different studies, bachelor's, master's, MBA degrees to around 12,000 students, so quite a significant amount of students.
This is a typical case of how we transform a company, reposition this company, and finally, this has ended up in a very nice exit and significant proceeds for AURELIUS. On the next page, an add-on acquisition we have just announced recently in February for our portfolio company, European Imaging Group, formerly known as Calumet and Wex. Here we have acquired the largest independent omnichannel retailer of cameras and associated products in the Netherlands. It's a family-owned business. The shareholders will keep a substantial minority share stake in the company and therefore will also become part of the group management team. We are more than happy to welcome CameraNU to our portfolio company European Imaging Group. It is quite decent in size.
EUR 65 million is a very profitable business and therefore will contribute significantly to the overall profitability of the European Imaging Group. Of course, there are a lot of additional synergies we can bring to the table once we will combine both of these businesses, either on the purchasing side, but of course also how we do then set up different initiatives when it's going to the market. How we can, for example, take advantage of having the different platforms and the Omnichannels. This will lead to quite a significant stake of synergies. On page 15, the elephant in the room, definitely this deal has taken us to the next level, playing in the Champions League now. McKesson in the U.K., it's a deal which is not closed yet.
We're talking about revenue in the north of GBP 5 billion. It's one of the main UK healthcare providers or service providers in the UK healthcare sector with four different divisions. They have a retail, digital home care and wholesale arm. It's a typical AURELIUS transaction. McKesson, based in Texas in the U.S., has decided some three or four years already that they would like to pull out from Europe. In general, they have sold their German business a couple of years ago already, and therefore, the UK business was the remaining stake in Europe, in their portfolio. They have decided that they would like to dispose it sooner than later, and therefore in one chunk, which means all the four divisions.
Therefore this is pretty much a nice platform for AURELIUS where we can put in place our operational improvement program. We have identified a significant potential how we can accelerate the growth of these companies, but especially also the profitability. Not needed, to be honest, that we will keep all these four divisions under one umbrella and manage them as they are as of today. For example, digital not necessarily needed to manage them in the same way than the home care services. This is where we will put some more focus on it. It's overall an enterprise value.
Once it will be closed, we will expect an enterprise value in the north of GBP 100 million, three-digit million number, and then operating EBITDA with a mid-double-digit million GBP. Definitely a very nice deal for AURELIUS. It takes us revenue-wise to the next level and also another proof why this co-investment agreement together with the fund makes a lot of sense for us that we can do these kind of deals on a regular basis besides our own platform deals. On page 16, we will do three further transactions. Mentioned before already, add-on acquisitions, definitely a very specific focus on. We have seen another acquisition for our Building Partners Group based in Berlin for the scaffolding business. CHB, a nice fit and also a geographical expansion.
We have done the first add-on acquisition for our new build and improve business in Belgium with De Rycke. Definitely another nice typical add-on acquisition for an AURELIUS platform deal where we do see a lot of synergies attached to it. Also for European Imaging Group, not only CameraNU has been acquired, but also another business in Poland. Quite significant in size as well. Therefore really make sure that European Imaging Group is becoming more and more European, pan-European player for high-end photography program products or cameras and associated products. Two more exits. We have sold Ideal to Hochanda and also the handcrafting business of Ideal to LoveCrafts.
Both of the deals been closed already as well and therefore gives you an indication of our exit pipeline, as I've mentioned before, in the north of EUR 100 million operating EBITDA companies all together in the north of EUR 100 million operating EBITDA, which will be ready for exit somewhere in the nearer future. On page 17, three co-investment deals we have signed and some of them closed already as well. McKesson, I've mentioned before already. Then, Minova from Orica, which are quite significant in size, EUR 300 million in turnover and just recently announced CTD, which is ceramic tile distributor based in the U.K. Company with approximately EUR 100 million-EUR 120 million in revenue. We bought this company from Saint-Gobain.
It's again a typical all the ingredients I've mentioned before already a couple of times. It's the carve-out from a bigger corporate. It's a lot of improvement potential on a standalone basis, but also again for CTD and Minova the same than what I've mentioned before for some of the other portfolio companies, a nice platform for doing add-on acquisitions in a very heterogeneous market. This is about the deals, M&A activities year to date. Let me talk about one important topic, ESG, environmental, social, governance. Topic which is becoming more and more important to all of us. We took the last third quarter and fourth quarter of 2021 to set up this ESG initiative. What does it mean for AURELIUS? What does it mean for our portfolio companies?
We have put in place our organization where we have appointed the responsible people for ESG in every one of our portfolio companies, but also on a group level at AURELIUS. We have done a very detailed benchmarking exercise and had a very lengthy discussion with our stakeholders, what exactly is the expectation, where shall we focus on. We have therefore now set up our project in the first quarter of last year. The first visible outcome of this project is online since yesterday on our homepage. Please have a look. It's now under the sustainability folder. You will see all the details of what exactly does ESG mean to AURELIUS. What are the focus areas for AURELIUS when it comes to environmental, social, and governance.
We have also decided that we will join two of the United Nations initiatives when it comes to ESG. The first one is the Principles for Responsible Investment, PRI. This is an initiative which has been launched by the United Nations to foster sustainable investing. Needless to say, this is an important one for us as well, and therefore we have been able now to join this initiative. The second one is the United Nations Global Compact, which is an initiative for how we set up sustainable and responsible corporate governance. More to come when it's about these two topics in the near future from Aurelius side as well. Finally, we have decided what exactly does ESG mean to us. As I've mentioned before, we have identified the different areas we are focusing on.
You know that there are many of them out there, so we had to pick the agencies which are important to us and to our stakeholders and our shareholders. Five of them are out there. Most of them they are in general the biggest ones out there and the main agencies out there. We have identified, as you can see on page 21, the focus areas for each of these different segments of social, governance, and environmental. Have identified what exactly does it mean to AURELIUS in this all of the three focus areas. What are the different measures to really make this an alive product.
In the next step, in the next phases, what we will now do is making sure that we as AURELIUS, as a group, will take advantage of our impact we can have on our portfolio companies. In the next phases now we will work together closely with the responsible people in the portfolio companies to make sure that they will take on what we have identified as being important in the focus areas and also contribute therefore to the overall ESG positive impact of the AURELIUS group. This does bring me to the end of today's call's outlook for this year. First of all, we are of course also impacted and our portfolio companies are impacted by what is going on currently out there in the markets.
It's about the inflation, it's about labor shortages, it's about supply chain issues and of course the Ukraine war. We'll have, as also in the past, a very close look at our portfolio companies. Our task force guys are very busy in supporting them, making sure that we will deal properly with the inflation, with the price increases where possible pass them through. But also how do we deal with the labor shortages. This is exactly where we have a strong focus on overall optimistic as we have seen in the past when the corona pandemic was around.
Some of these topics like supply chain issues in the past, in 2021 as well, that our portfolio companies are quite robust and resilient, are able to deal in a resilient basis with these different indicators out there. Definitely something we are cautious about and have a close look how this does impact our portfolio companies. Second topic, M&A activities. As I've mentioned before already, we have seen some this year already. Very confident that we will be able to announce some more transactions in the near future. Of course, the big topic, shareholder value. It's about the transparency initiatives.
Very happy that we were now able to provide you and our shareholders with the net asset value on the net basis to really let you know what exactly is the net proceeds for our shareholders. Also very pleased, as I mentioned before already, that we were able to increase our dividend or at least this is what we will propose at the general meeting and the ESG strategy as I've just outlined. Stay tuned. More to come in the near future here. This is it from our side. Thank you very much for listening. Now I would like to open the line for questions on your side.
Thank you. We will now begin our question-and-answer session. If you have a question for our speakers, please dial zero and one on your telephone keypad now to enter the queue. Once your name has been announced, you can ask the question. If you find your question is answered before it is your turn to speak, you can dial zero and two to cancel your question. If you're using speaker equipment today, please deaf the handset before making your selection. One moment please for the first question.
Yes, this is from Alina.
The first question is from Alina Köhler of Hauck & Aufhäuser.
Thank you and good afternoon, everyone. I have two questions, actually. One is on the NAV for the co-investment. It has come down since the nine-month reporting, and I'm just wondering why, because I was actually expecting it to go up, considering that it should now be included at the proportionate share value rather than the proportionate purchase price.
That is right. We've, it's now included with the fair market value in the numbers here. This was a little bit down from the initial part or the initial EUR 3.3. Background is here that we still think this is the best estimate pursuant to the valuation. There were some changes in management, and they were involved in the budget process. Last year, unfortunately, the CFO of Ener died due to COVID-19, and therefore we stick to conservative market valuation and that's the slight decrease here.
Okay. Thank you. Sorry to hear. My second question would be on the cash available for M&A at holding level currently, so including the proceeds for AKAD and also how this compares to the net cash at holding level.
That's right. As I just mentioned, the total liquidity here at year-end 2021 was over EUR 200 million, and now with the AKAD exit increased again. I mentioned that in my presentation. If there is a EUR 50 million buffer for cash, there's over EUR 180 million firepower for M&A activities.
Great. Thank you.
As a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please press zero and one. If there are no further questions, I hand back to the speaker.
Thank you very much for listening. That's all from our side. Stay tuned. More to come in the near future. Wish you a good day and stay healthy. Thank you very much.