Good morning, it's my pleasure and my honor to be here with you today. So I've joined the company a few weeks ago, I've traveled already extensively in many of the different locations, and it's my pleasure today to share with this important assembly the views we have about 2023, both from an outside market perspective (if the slides are moving, very good), how we've done in 2023, and then I will share the presentation with our CFO Ilkka Hara on going into more details on what was our financial performance and outlook for 2024. So let's start with 2023 and what has happened in our world, in our industry, but let's take a broader perspective and look at the microeconomic dynamics that have been around us, and they are challenging. Some things have been slightly better.
I think if we look back at what life was one year ago, two years ago, I think we all remember the high disruption coming from COVID, the high disruption coming from supply and shortages that have made the life of our customers more difficult, the rapid cost inflation, so all these factors have eased somewhat, somewhat, meaning there are still issues that we are facing daily. Some things still create uncertainty. Unfortunately, the war in Ukraine is still with us, and we are still facing challenges attached to that. We see other geopolitical tension. Actually, the list is long, and the list will probably stay long for the coming future, and we still live with inflation, and inflation being very uneven across the world, but inflation is back in our world, and that's a reality that we have to face. Some new things are emerging or getting more confirmed.
We saw in 2023, the Western construction market being more challenging - I'll try to detail that - and we've seen challenges in the Chinese market, which will probably keep going, for the future. Now, talking about China, which indeed is raising a lot of questions, first of all, China is the biggest market in our industry, so, if there is any doubt, for us, it's an absolute strategic imperative to be in China. We like to say that it's our fitness lab. It's probably the place where the market is the most competitive, but it's a place where we believe we have to be competitive, and we have to fight, say, on a daily basis to be the best of the global competitor. With that in mind, when we look at the market, the uncertainty on the new construction market remains.
Some figures, some, are concerning, and we watch them, I would say, on a daily basis, but we have also to see that in China, with the new construction being actually fairly challenging, there are still many opportunities. There are opportunities in Services where actually the markets are growing, and there are opportunities in Modernization, which, by the way, is also going in the way of sustainability, and where we see actually opportunities in excess of double digits. So there are real opportunities even in places that might look challenging. With all of this, if we take a bit of, let's say, perspective of longer term, over a couple of years, we've lost EUR 1 billion sales in China, but we've gone through, and we've transformed the company, we've adapted the company, and now China represents still a large share of our business, but I would say only 25%.
Actually, a few years ago, it was much more, and we are working every day to make sure that we stay top of the game in China because, one, it's an important market; second, it's pushing our team to be very strong also for other markets. So it remains a place which is strategically extremely important for us. Talking about our markets, we like to divide our market into 12 sub-markets. We have four regions in KONE, and we have three business lines: the New Building Solutions, and you can see that in three out of four, we see negative market trends, pretty negative in North America in 2023. Ilkka would be talking about this; it seems to be improving in 2024. Europe, Middle East, and Africa fairly negative; we'll see about 2024. APAC, meaning Asia-Pacific, without China in very positive territory.
Actually, the chance to be in that part of the world last week, really seeing cranes everywhere, so the world is not flat, and there are different realities in different parts of the world, and China again being in negative territory. Now, all the rest, meaning services and modernization, which is the time where we modernize building, is all in positive territory, and I would say the overall modernization market, which today represents EUR 2 billion sales, so close to 20% of our sales, that market is close to growing double digits, and the sum of services and modernization for KONE represents 55% of our business.
So when we look at our market, we tend to look at New Building Solutions because this is where we see in the newspaper the new construction, but the model of KONE has been built for resilience and really to also look at managing the installed base with Services and driving Modernization, and you can see that in those markets, there is growth and there is opportunity, and we in this world that is being a bit complicated, really not flat, we want to be very precise by product line, by area, so that we make the most of the opportunities that are in front of us. So that's what's in this slide, which is, yes, new building construction is challenging for many companies that are purely attached to new construction. It is a big issue.
I'm not saying it's not a point that we watch at KONE, but we try to do the best we can, and actually, even in places like China, we've been taking share last year and actually being able to grow close to double digit in Q3 and Q4, but we also want to make sure that we are very mobilized on where opportunities are as market growth, which are again services and modernization. So with that in mind and hoping that we paint a picture that is clear for all of you to understand in which environment we are operating, now I'd like to go to the second part of the presentation, which is what have we done and how well and where are the challenges that we face as KONE in 2023.
So overall, a financial performance that proves the resilience of our model, and that's really important, and to prove this, let's look at a few figures. First of all, our orders, and when we look at orders, we can look at them in a different way. Exchange rates have been changing a lot, so we try to look at with exchange rate changing, but also at comparable exchange rates, which is the value you have in the top of every graph. At comparable exchange rates, we manage in 2023 to have orders close to flat, -1, with actually a second part of the year which was much more positive than the first part of the year, which of course is encouraging when we look at 2024.
Sales growth at comparable exchange rate of 5% reaching EUR 11 billion of sales, which I would say is very encouraging in those market conditions. A very disciplined approach on our profitability, both on the selectivity we had in terms of which project to take and managing our costs, helping us to reach a very healthy improvement of our profit to 11.4%. Actually, Q4 was reaching 12.8%, and we are very clear that we need to further work to improve our profitability, all of this ending into a cash flow generation of EUR 1.5 billion for 2023. If we look in more detail at the three product lines I was mentioning, so a very strong performance in services. We've been growing north of 9% overall our services.
We are looking every year, we are working every day and we're looking every year at how many lifts in services we are adding to our total, and we are now in excess of 1.6 million lifts in services, and within this lifts in service, we are also working on connecting those elevators so that we can actually deliver an even better service for our customers. On this one, we are reaching roughly 17% of connected elevators, which is a figure that has been progressing, but I wish we could progress faster, and that's probably a theme that will be reinforced in our communication going forward.
Modernization—I was mentioning this as a big opportunity—it's a place where we've been delivering very well, growing in excess of 20%, which is really excellent, and again, we are reaching now close to EUR 2 billion sales in modernization, close to EUR 4 billion sales in services, so the sum of the two, EUR 6 billion, makes 55% of our sales. On New Building Solutions, in spite of markets that you've seen have been, let's say, negative in 3 areas out of 4, we've managed to keep a stable order book, which I would say is pretty, pretty good in those market conditions. Strategic agenda: Five directions that have not changed in the past four years. I will not comment on the first one because we didn't measure last year with all the organization change, our employee engagement, but on the four next one, still very solid on customer.
Customer loyalty: A few points to watch in China. We've been growing faster than markets. We've been improving our profitability, and, and long is the way, and we have a roadmap to keep going there, and still a very strong focus on sustainability, which actually is a place where I'm personally very committed. I know there are some questions in the room about this, and we welcome those questions, but we think that part is a signature of KONE. That's actually one reason why also I was excited to join the company because there is a very clear guidance from the board to bring the sustainability bar very high, and I'm committed to make sure that we'll keep raising the bar when it comes to sustainability.
In a few territories, one is energy and environment, of course, where KONE was the first company to take public commitment, science-based commitment, science-based targets both on Scope 1 and 2 , -50% by the end of 2030, -40% on Scope 3 , which is the biggest part of our carbon footprint, where we are on our way to reaching our targets. It's a marathon with no finish line. It's a humbling experience because every day you keep learning, but I'm glad to see the momentum, and I'm committed to make sure that we keep raising the bar. We've been in 2023 the first industry carbon neutral company having carbon neutral manufacturing units in our industry, 18 months in advance to our planning, so pretty good job here. Again, it's never over, and we need to keep working on this, working hard on diversity and inclusion.
So quoting here one of our targets, not the only one, but one of our targets where we reached 25.2%, women at director level. Some might say it's not enough, and I agree with that. Our goal is 35%. Actually, our ultimate goal should be 50% to reflect the diversity we're in the world, but every step goes in the right direction, and we are very resolute to make progress here, and of course, safety. Safety is a very important attribute of our business, and we have, I must say, have been impressed by the mobilization in a company, when it comes to safety, all of this resulting into external recognition, which has been very encouraging and rewarding the hard work done by our teams.
We said a year ago we wanted to build a new operating model which would allow us to save EUR 100 million, but I would say even more importantly, actually operate faster and closer to our customers. We did. We launched this project, or we pushed on the button in July 2023, and the company now is operating with this new operating model with more empowerment in our areas and global functions, supporting our area leaders in front of our customers. It's a journey, but we've done exceptional progress, I would say, in the past six months. Still some work to do, but most of the key items have been delivered. Innovation: very important. We are a technology company. We are a company that goes in the 21st century with more digital inside.
These are two directions that are important for us: one on the digital transformation, second on the cost competitiveness in markets like China, for instance. In that construct, Hyvinkää is very important in our setup to drive the right innovation. I'll spend personally a lot of time on that topic because I think we can still keep raising the bar, to in the end delight our customer and make success with our customers, which is what makes us exciting every day, and I wanted to end up that part with a few commercial successes which makes us very proud on a daily basis.
Three of them actually are modernization projects, in the US in an infrastructure project, in China in a commercial building, and in London, with Citigroup, which is a great example of sustainability commitment, and the last one, which is in, in Malaysia, is the second tallest tower in the world equipped with a KONE elevator, and we are very proud of this success. So with that in mind, I'm gonna pass the mic to Ilkka Hara, our CFO, to go in more detail about our financial performance. Thank you very much, Nicolas.
Thank you, Philippe, and, it's my pleasure to go a bit more in detail with our financial performance in 2023 and also look, towards 2024 and our outlook for the industry, as well as our business. But let's start with orders received development in, 2023, and we'll wait for the slide to turn. Hard press, yes.
So, for orders received in 2023, we had EUR 8,578 million, orders received for the full year, and as Philippe already said, on a reported basis, that's a decline of 6.1%, but when looking at it on a comparable basis, a decline of slightly over 1%. Where we did see good development clearly was on the modernization that we already talked about, providing good opportunities and significant growth in orders received. At the same time, in New Building Solutions, given the market weakness in construction, we did see our orders received declining in the year, but overall, from an order book point of view, we're in a good place, as I will talk about when we look at the 2024, going forward. Then about the sales and our sales for the year 2023. Now, we're at EUR 10,952 million.
On a reported basis, a slight growth of 0.4%, but on a comparable basis, growing 5%. New Building Solutions sales declined 3% given the order development in the market already earlier. In Services, we saw very strong growth, over 9% growth, and that's clearly above the trend line that we've seen in the past, influenced by, of course, inflation enabling us to escalate prices slightly more than before, but also digital solutions providing growth opportunities for our Services business and overall elevator base in our maintenance developing positively. But maybe the highlight for the year was, and not maybe, but certainly was the Modernization, which saw its growth in sales being over 20%, and it is something which continues to provide good opportunities for us going forward as well. Then how did this sales turn into profitability?
Our profitability for the year, as already covered by Philippe, was 11.4%, and the total profits, Adjusted EBIT was EUR 1,248 million. We did see 1.5 percentage point improvement in our profitability, which has been very much the focus after the cost increases that we saw in 2022. Now we've seen pricing improving, and also our costs have been managed quite well in the year. If I look at the key drivers for this profitability improvement, first, growth, particularly the growth in services and modernization supported our profitability. Also, as said, pricing for the orders that we have booked continues to develop positively, and as we're delivering those into sales, then we also see a positive contribution to our profitability.
Also in 2023, we did see overall material cost declining, mainly driven by raw material development in the markets, but also a continuous focus on product cost competitiveness, as covered by Philippe on the innovation part already. And then we, with the operating model renewal that we implemented last year, we did see about half of the EUR 100 million savings materializing into our profits in 2023. The rest will then contribute positively in 2024. At the same time, overall inflation broadly impacting negatively our profitability in this environment. Then from profits then to cash flow, and our cash flow for the year continued to develop positively. Now I don't seem to get the slide turning. Can—yes, thank you.
So cash flow for operations for the full year was EUR 1,485 million, and we did see overall our net working capital being roughly stable when adjusting for the currency changes, and given the fact that in orders, they were slightly down, that's to me a very good outcome. We did a good job in managing our receivables; they came down, and at the same time, payables actually contributed negatively. Their payables are on a fairly low level right now, but in this environment, this cash generation is good and healthy for the business for the year 2023. So that's 2023. Then looking forward and our market outlook for 2024. So as already covered in 2023, we did see our New Building Solutions market being quite challenging.
In the year 2024, we expected to be still challenging but less than in 2023, so especially the markets in North America, in Europe, and in China. There's still a slight decline but clearly less than what we had experienced in 2023, and we continue to see good opportunities in Asia-Pacific, Middle East, and Africa. The markets in services continue to provide good growth opportunities across the globe, the biggest growth more being in the Asian side, China continuing to grow well as well as Asia-Pacific, Middle East, and Africa. In modernization across the globe, we see good opportunities for growth.
It's also good to note that with this, geographical markets now, we're reflecting also our operating model, so now we split our operations to four geographies, also within KONE, so North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, Middle East, and Africa being one of the areas, and then China the fourth one. But if I look at this total 4x3 matrix, we continue to see nine of our 12 end markets providing good opportunities to develop the business positively going forward. Then moving to our business outlook, for the year. So first, in sales, we expect our sales to be stable or growing slightly when measured in comparable exchange rates, and also we expect the improvement in Adjusted EBIT to continue in 2024, albeit with less tailwinds in 2023. If we look at the then drivers for this performance, so first, what is supporting our performance?
We continue to see strong growth, both the market but also for KONE, in Services and Modernization business contributing positively. We continue to have order book providing these orders with better pricing and margins now coming into sales and deliveries, which contributes positively to our performance. We have a strong order book to deliver on, for the year 2024, and we will see the benefit of the rest of the operating model renewal savings coming into our P&L. Then on the other side, what is burdening our performance? First, the decline that we expect in the New Building Solutions market in China, as well as the uncertainty around the markets in North America as well as in Europe.
We expect the inflation, although coming down, to be persistent in our cost base, and we've also made the decision to increase slightly our investments to R&D and IT to support the innovation that we talked about already earlier. But with that, I'll hand over, Philippe, to you to close the presentation.
Thank you, Ilkka, and we're going to try to go to the next slide. I'm going to try, and we made it. Wow, good. So to wrap it up, we are very happy and very proud with the performance that we've been able to drive in service and modernization. We will drive for more, but we think that the performance we drove here in conditions that were not always easy is solid.
We are satisfied with a stable order book, and looking at the majority of our market, we see opportunities, and we'll try to unleash and find those opportunities, and we are really committed on offer competitiveness, customer focus, having a stronger local accountability in line with our new operating model, and we think that these are the best guarantee for long-term profitable growth, which is our motto as we are driving the company forward. So with this, we thank you for your attention, and we are more than happy to take questions whether at the board level or at the executive team level, to bring as much clarity as we can to this assembly. Thank you very much.