Mr. Chairman, distinguished shareholders, ladies and gentlemen. We have finally awoken to the fact that the planet is weakening and getting polluted, and we have justified reason to say that throughout all time, our major challenge will be stopping climate change. When we talk about climate change and talk about the challenges that we as people, as Finns, face in the upcoming years and decades in improving the state of this planet, it's interesting to note the fact that the majority of the environmental burden that we see is generated in areas where the K Group focuses on. If we look at the average carbon footprint of a Finn, it's over 10,000 kilos of CO2 per year, and the major sources of this are food, housing, transport, and travel.
The areas where K Group operates, not just in Finland but also in Northern Europe. In this sense as well, we have a lot to give, a lot to do, and obviously also a big responsibility to offer these trade services and solutions to consumers, to professional customers, that help everyone participate in saving the environment. In this context, it is nice to state that K Group is strongly committed to working with others to stop climate change. We have a long history behind us, long-standing traditions, which are the major reason behind the fact that, once again, we've been ranked among the most sustainable companies in the world, and we'll continue this work. This obligates us as well, not just in Finland, but more extensively in Europe, to work together with others for a better world, for a better environment.
A very essential part of our sustainability at Kesko is that we don't just talk, we take concrete action. One great example of sustainability, combating climate change, environmental issues, a great example of concrete actions is our concern for Finnish food production, for Finnish products, their status, and their future. In this context, it's also nice to state that on this front, K Group, Kesko, our retailers have taken significant action. Two years ago, we launched a Thank the Producer program, and it's been extremely well-received among consumers. Our sales in this program were already EUR 37 million in 2018, and this year we believe that we will get to approximately EUR 50 million. We've paid an additional support of EUR 1.7 million to food producers so far, and this support will continue to increase due to increasing sales.
We're also extremely happy that now we're seeing well-known Finnish brands joining the Thank the Producer model. Well-known, familiar Finnish brands will be seen more so than ever before in this program. Another great example of these concrete actions is the K-Ostokset service. Everybody can download this service on their mobile device. This was launched a couple of weeks ago, and this gives customers data on their shopping habits, on how much Finnish products they buy, so you can monitor how much Finnish products you use in your household. You can compare how well you're doing in this respect compared to other consumers, and this has also been very well-received indeed. We strongly believe that this factor and many other factors that we're promoting will further strengthen the position of Finnish food production.
As the chairman of the board of directors stated, it's nice to highlight once again that K is the most sustainable trading sector company in the world. This is the result of long-term development efforts, giving us a great foundation for the future to be an all the more sustainable operator in the future. In this context, we have justifiable reason to say that for consumers, for customers, it's a very simple, responsible act to shop at K Group stores. It's something that we can all be proud of in a healthy sense. Each day, more than 1.5 million customers choose K Group stores, and that's a great thing. K is transforming, above all because the world around us is changing and transforming at a rapid pace.
If we look at saving the Earth and our climate, that's something that will further guide us as people and companies in our activities in the upcoming years and decades. Technological developments are accelerating. This is opening up new opportunities at a great tempo, and this will help us on its part to resolve environmental issues. On the other hand, as a trading sector operator, this will open up interesting opportunities for us to offer even better, more sustainably produced services to our consumer customers and business customers. Globalization is a huge force that has changed the world in a great way, and thanks to globalization, hundreds of millions of people, especially in the Third World, have risen from poverty. Thanks to this, hundreds of millions of children gain access to better healthcare and education.
Globalization has decreased inequalities in the world. I believe that this trend will continue in upcoming years. Not to mention urbanization and population growth. Unlike we imagine, population growth will continue. It's been rapid, and there's no reason to say at this point that population growth would decrease. This is linked to urbanization, which will also continue, and as a major trading sector player, these are major changes that we have to consider in view of the future of K Group. K Group has a big impact on Finland and Northern Europe. As the chairman stated, we're the biggest retailer in Finland by far and away, and with our EUR 13 billion retail sales, we're one of the biggest retailers in Northern Europe. Looking at our taxes paid and remitted, they stood at EUR 1.3 billion last year.
Kesko and K-retailers here are taking a big responsibility in society for Finland and Finland's future. I'm very proud of K Group also due to the fact that our purchases from Finland stood at approximately EUR 6.6 billion last year, so we have a huge impact on the Finnish economy. We have 41,000 people working for us, and when we include these massive purchases from Finland, we can all understand how important our role is in society. I dare say that we acknowledge this responsibility, and we carry it. We have a growth strategy in place. We are transforming, we already have transformed, and we will continue to transform. In everything we do, in all our development, a guiding force is our strategy, which is summarized here. We're striving for growth in all three divisions.
We're focusing on things where K Group is already a strong player through our traditions, so where we already have a lot of expertise and competence, so grocery trade, building and technical trade, and car trade. At the same time, we're seamlessly cooperating as one unified K Group, Kesko and K-retailers challenging and supporting one another. This seamless cooperation goes across borders in our organization in Kesko. In 2015, we defined a growth strategy which is working, and its execution is going well. So far, we've invested in growth of our core businesses with EUR 1.7 billion, and we can see that. We can see that in our store services, in our efficiency, in increasing productivity and profitability. We've been focusing and divesting by EUR 1 billion, so we've been releasing more poorly performing capital and focusing further.
This strategy has led to acquisitions and divestments on a broad front, 28 acquisitions and divestments so far in the execution of this strategy. About a week and a half ago, most recently, we announced the acquisition of XL-BYGG in Sweden. We carried out the divestment of Onninen's contractor business recently, and we've gone about several other significant steps throughout this past year. We also divested the K-Rauta business in Russia in the first half of the year. It's very nice to stand in front of you and state that our strategy is working and yielding results. Looking at K Group's retail sales for continuing operations, almost 30% growth there in four years. Looking at Kesko, just like the chairman stated, reported its all-time best operating profit of EUR 332 million. Again, significant growth there, plus 43% in four years.
I'm most delighted about the third point here, K Group's reputation and trust. Consumers trust us significantly more according to the T-Media research. This score has gotten higher in the past four years, and this provides us with a great foundation for further development. If we look at how we work in the K Group, how competitive we are, it's very important to see that our one unified K Group is visible and it works. K-retailers' profitability has developed well in all chains, K-Citymarkets, K-Supermarkets, K-Markets, the Neste K chain, not to mention our building and home improvement and specialty goods chains. At Kesko, we're very happy about the fact that according to research, there's strong trust towards Kesko among the K-retailers, increasing trust.
Looking at our situation through figures, it's nice to state, getting started here that K Food stores' market share is rising strongly. This is the way it's been for several years already. There's a new calculation method adopted by Nielsen recently, and according to this method, market share was 36.1% in 2018, and we were at just below 32% in 2014, according to this same method. Our outlook is promising because our sales growth was much bigger than among our competitors, and we believe that this will be seen in our future increasing market share. Similarly, we can state the same for K-Rauta. Its market share has also been growing well. This has been the case for several years. We've risen from 39%-42%, and we are the biggest building and home improvement chain in Finland by far and away.
For K-Rauta, our sales growth was much bigger than among our competitors in the industry. These are strong messages from Finnish consumers, from customers, as to the fact that they like how we're transforming at K and that they're shopping at our stores all the more actively. It's very important for us to be a good investment target for our shareholders. If we look at our transformation in this sense as well, it's been a success. Looking at our dividend yield, on average in the past four years, it's been over 5%. Increase in value has been over 100%. Looking at total return, almost 160%. As the chairman of the board stated, the board will propose today to the annual general meeting that a dividend of €2.34 per share be paid. Our net sales developed very favorably in 2018. Just under EUR 10.4 billion in net sales.
That represents growth in comparable terms of 3.5%. Our sales growth has been clearly bigger than among our competitors in grocery trade and the building and technical trade. Kesko reported a record operating profit of EUR 332 million in 2018. This is a significant improvement compared to 2017, and we're very happy about the fact that all three divisions were able to improve their profitability once again. This is a great achievement for the grocery trade, building and technical trade, car trade, and our specialty goods trade did well in a tough competition as well. Looking at our comparable return on capital employed in 2018, it stood at 14%. As the chairman stated, we achieved our long-term goal, and we can be happy about that. Looking at comparable return on equity, a clear improvement there. Year-over-year, we achieved 11.7% there.
If we look at our success and our successful strategic choices and strategic execution. All this is linked to our strong financial position. Our equity ratio improved once again, and we got to 51.4%. Irrespective of major investments, our liquid assets stood at EUR 250 million, and we're almost net debt-free. Interest-bearing net debt to EBITDA stood at 0.4, which means that through normal cash flow of operating activities, we can pay back our debts in about five months. This gives us a great foundation for executing our strategy in the future and focusing on growth in our three core businesses. 2018 was a great year, as stated, and you can see that in cash flow from operating activities, which stood at almost EUR 440 million. That's, again, a significant improvement compared to the previous year.
As the chairman of the board of directors stated, we have moved on to adhering to the IFRS 16 standards. For us, and for other groups in trade, this makes a big difference in our key figures. The biggest change here is that if we look at store sites, how they'll be dealt with in accounting in terms of their leases, that has drastically changed. In the future, we will look at rental leases as capital spending, and our EBITDA will increase significantly as a result. If we look at 2018 figures, we used to stand at EUR 472 million, now it's rising to EUR 876 million. Operating profit improving as well as a result of this. Profit before tax, however, almost remains at the same level. Nothing will change as such. We will be just as good and financially sound as we were before this change in accounting.
If we look at non-current assets, about EUR 2 billion there, they will move on to be at EUR 4 billion. We will remain on the same level in terms of our capacity to keep developing this company. Finally, I'd like to further underline the fact that the execution of our growth strategy will continue in a determined fashion. Looking at our grocery trade, strong growth will continue there, led by Ari Akseli. We will continue to focus on improving the customer experience in all chains. K-retailer entrepreneurship is essential for us. It's a competitive advantage. It's a way for us to stand out, and we will cherish this in the future. Then the foodservice business, we will continue growing the foodservice business under the Kespro flag. That has a very important role in the growth strategy in our grocery trade.
As for the building and technical trade, we will continue keeping up the good work led by Jorma Rauhala in all our eight countries, improving profitability. We've taken a more country-specific focus, and in just over a year now, we've seen a great deal of success through this sharpened focus. We're still interested in strategic acquisitions and divestments under the building and technical trade. Again, in this trade division, there will be further consolidation in Northern Europe, and why not on an even broader front in Europe? We are already a leading player in Northern Europe, and this position provides us with very interesting opportunities to further strengthen ourselves, our position through acquisitions in Northern Europe and in Europe in general as a major player.
I do have to underline the fact that the core of our development lies in Northern Europe, in profitable growth in the solid markets in Northern Europe. As for the car trade, the cornerstone of our strategy there is our partnership with the VW Group, the biggest car manufacturer in the world. We're continuing to work through this partnership led by Johan Friman. We're making use of new technologies and services, creating new mobility services. A great example of this is the K-Lataus charging system. We're going to continue growing our dealer network. That's also an important strategic objective in car trade. One unified K, once again, I want to underline, has already provided us with significant synergies. It's helped us improve our internal efficiencies.
It has increased and improved cooperation between Kesko and K-retailers, and we still see a vast amount of potential in one unified K in terms of the customer interface and internally in the K Group. Finally, Mr. Chairman, ladies and gentlemen, I'm delighted to thank you shareholders and thank the board for this great cooperation we've engaged in. I'd like to thank all K-retailers, everyone in K Group, not to mention our great vendors. Thank you all for your great cooperation and all your efforts in transforming the K Group. Finally, some images from the K -Kampus in Kalasatama, which will be completed in May to June. Thank you very much