Before we proceed to listen to the president's address, I'd like to inform you that Authorized Public Accountant, Jan Berntsson, will tell you about the external audit work and present the auditor's report under item 8. The nomination committee's proposal will be introduced under items 11 through to 14, and questions can be asked in connection to each of these items. Now I'd like to give the floor to Jonas Samuelson. Jonas, you have the floor. Esteemed shareholders, I, too, would like to warmly welcome you to those of you who are present and those who are with us online. Welcome to this year's AGM. 2018 was a very eventful year, with raw material costs that spiked, trade tariffs that we're all familiar with, and negative currency effects. In spite of that, in 2018, Electrolux delivered its second-best performance, excluding non-recurrent items ever.
SEK 6.7 billion in EBIT, sales of SEK 124 billion. The margin amounted to 5.4%, slightly below our long-term target of 6%, but still one of our stronger results. Earnings per share, SEK 13.24, and cash flow, SEK 3.6 billion, leads us to a proposed dividend, which is raised and which is currently proposed to be SEK 8.50 per share. Historically speaking, this is a good performance. We continue to execute on our very clear strategy, the three-phased strategy towards profitable growth. 2016 of emphasizing stability and focus for the company in market segments, geographies, product segments, et cetera. To create predictability and clarity, in 2017, we focused on execution with better profitability, sustainable profitability.
In 2018, we took the first few steps in three of our business areas towards growing the business over time in Europe, Asia, and our professional products. In the other areas of operations, we're still in the stability and focus and/or sustainable profitability phases. We've focused on raising our profitability and having better stability in our operations. You can see that historically, we've been around 4%. We were at 6% and then delivered 5.4% in 2018. We had a lot of headwinds, cost increases, SEK 3 billion in total in increased costs and negative currency effects, which we compensated for to a very great extent by price increases, launchings of new innovative products, and continued focus on costs and efficiency improvements. We're somewhat below our target when it comes to the EBIT margin, 5.4%, excluding non-recurring items.
Our RONA numbers are 23. The target is 20. The return on capital employed is excellent. The sales growth, 1.7%, is below our 4% target. However, in the three business areas that I mentioned earlier, where we're moving towards growth, we're above 4%. We expect more and more of the operations to come into the growth phase as we move forward. Very important to us is to reduce our carbon footprint. We launched in 2010 a target to reduce our carbon footprint by 50% compared to 2005 by 2020. We're well on the way to this target. We're not there quite yet. We're working hard on it. Our employees, they are our most important asset. Having involved and true engagement amongst our employees is important.
We have a target of, to index at 80%. That would be world-class for employee engagement index. We make annual measurements with all our 53,000 employees. Last year, we came in at 72, which is a very good number, but we still have a little bit left to go to get to world-class level. We focus our strategic work. This, in turn, has allowed us to give good returns to shareholders, whether you look at it over a 5-year, 10-year, or 20-year perspective. Electrolux is in a very good place when it comes to creating shareholder value, with efficient balance sheet, good cash flow generation, and continued focus on innovation and cost efficiency. Stefan mentioned that the board is proposing and initiated at the end of January, the preparatory work for a split, with professional products becoming its own unit. its own company.
We want an enhanced focus for the customers and the company, professional products as such, for their, in terms of their suppliers, their customers, et cetera. They're very different to that of a consumer-focused company. Increased focus gives more flexibility and agility and better opportunities for growth. With their own balance sheet and their own access to the capital market, professional products can accelerate their non-organic growth even further. We see this as a potential to create lots of value for the shareholders. The work with the split is ongoing. We expect the board to be able to give us an update on the progression of the work towards mid-year 2019. If all goes according to plan, we'll get back to you, shareholders, for an approval.
Provided that we receive that approval, we look forward to a listing on the Nasdaq Stock Exchange in the first half of 2020. Provided that we proceed in this manner, where do we focus in terms of consumer business? We're very well-positioned to drive profitable growth in our consumer business. This is why we've kept our targets over 6% in EBIT operating margin over a business cycle, 4% sales growth, and 20% return on capital employed. We do this with strong focus on innovation in consumer experience, strong focus on modularization and automation in production, and with the support of a strong balance sheet and strong cash generation, it gives us the possibility to continue to invest in innovation and productivity. The focus on customer innovation and customer experience are nothing new.
These are no new concepts to Electrolux. We have 100 years of experience, in keeping the customer in focus. Here are some of the pictures showing our history. This is a product, Electrolux One, older than the actual company, dating back to 2010. The Flying Wing, the first washing machine, 1951. One of our first refrigerators from the early 1930s, and Datalux, a revolutionary cooker from the mid-1970s. All of these innovations have been driven by a total focus on customer experience. It's been part of the biggest change in Electrolux in terms of how people change their lives. We've been part of that process, changing people's everyday lives, freeing up time and resources to devote to family, and that's going to remain our focus for the next foreseeable future. The world changes more rapidly than ever before.
We know this. We all know this. We, as consumers, have more access to information. We've higher demands and requirements, both in terms of speed and experience, than ever before in the history of the world. The consumers control our work and our success, more so than ever before. The strong base we have with innovation in the customer experience gives us strength in the work we do, but we need to continue to change how we work and how we organize our operations. That's the reason why we have made additional changes to sharpen our customer offering. We've combined our whiteware or our major appliance and small appliance areas to four consumer-focused business areas.
There's Europe and North America, focusing on our core markets, and Asia, Pacific, and Middle East, and Africa and Latin America to accelerate the focus on our growth markets in new consumer groups that are growing. I think many of you know that the expectations are that in the next 15 years, 1 billion new middle-class consumers will come, will emerge in the growth markets. That's more than all of us living in Europe and North Africa right now together. We need to focus on being as strong as we can in, giving a truly strong offer in the growth markets for all these people. We've also made some changes to our focus and, put more emphasis centrally on accelerating our customer innovation.
We've created a new organization entirely focused on consumer experience, where we've combined marketing, design, product lines, and digital consumer solutions to accelerate product and ownership solutions and innovation. Those of you who have followed us over the past few years, you know that we've focused our innovation work in three different areas: taste, care, and well-being. The taste experience, first of all, focusing on innovation in responsive kitchen equipment, giving better results with less of an effort. That is our biggest area. Care. Child care, smart solutions for perfect care of clothes, and then well-being, where we talk about innovation to maintain surfaces and the air clean, creating better chances for well-being in the home and everywhere. Those are our three areas of innovation.
I thought I'd tell you a little bit more about the different and the newest products, but before I do that, let me show you this. I would like to focus on our most important brand, which is Electrolux, celebrating 100 years this year, and we felt that this was a good opportunity to sharpen the offering that we have even more, what we have with Electrolux. We will be very clear about the fact that we're from Sweden. Our values will focus on family, sustainability, the heritage, and the professional heritage that we have, that gives us this opportunity to innovate. That stronger brand, together with the more innovative products and the 100th anniversary, that will give us a stronger platform for the next few years.
I would like to show you a little film to show you what we have to offer. We will launch our new Intuitive Range, our kitchen range, where we have many innovations. I would like to present a few examples.
First of all, we have steam, and I do believe that all cooks know that steam is the best way to get the best possible taste if you prepare something in the oven. The problem is that we consumers, we do not feel quite sure about what to do, how to do this. We have created innovations, so that it will be even easier for consumers to use steam for cooking. Everyone may not know that this way you get steak juicier, for example, if you use 25% steam together with the conventional heat that you have in the oven. As I said, this is something that consumers are a bit hesitant to try, but with this steaming function, you can use the oven just as you usually do, and then you can just add that.
Another track that we're working on is to use electronics to make it even easier to use our products, and we work together with Google, for example, in order to accomplish this.
Imagine you're in the middle of making bread, and your hands are full of flour and dough, but you have to somehow preheat the oven. You can do that thanks to the Google Assistant by just talking with it, and I'm going to show you how. Okay, Google, set the oven mode to bake.
You got it. Setting the oven to Hot A ir.
Okay, Google, set the oven to 200 degrees.
Sure, setting the oven to 200 degrees.
Hey, Google, increase the temperature by 23 degrees.
Sure, raising the temperature of the oven.
Hey, Google, turn off the oven.
Sure, turning off the oven.
Perfect!
These are products that will not be launched in five years, but now, and all of this to make it easier to use the products and give people more opportunities to cook when they want and how they want. Another example, and I do think that this is something that many of you will recognize, this is the dishwasher. Normally, in such a modern washer, you have maybe 10 different buttons and program choices that you are to choose between. I believe that you, like I, have a hard time understanding what is the ideal option for your specific needs at a specific point in time.
That is why we have now introduced a new way to interact with the dishwasher, so you can get that balance between how much in a hurry you are and how environmentally friendly you want to be. I do think that most of us consumers, we do not know that one of the most energy-efficient programs to use is also the longest. You have to decide whether you're in a hurry or whether you have time and can choose the most environmentally friendly alternative. These are examples. Unfortunately, I cannot go through all the innovation that we will introduce with Intuitive Kitchen Range, but this is the biggest launch ever, globally, and we'll have this strong new platform with the brand Electrolux, and that will give us an opportunity to differentiate ourselves vis-à-vis the competitors.
Sweden will be the center, sustainability will be a message. Another example, when it comes to revolutionary innovation within our oldest segment, is Pure F9. This is the first cordless vacuum cleaner that will completely replace the traditional vacuum cleaner with a cord. This is a vacuum cleaner that has won many taste tests, and one of the most innovative, best vacuum cleaners that has ever existed. Regardless of your needs, the Pure F9 can meet your needs. Here as well, the focus is completely on creating better consumer experiences with products that are easy to use, that are used to create a better home environment.
This is a beautiful product, I dare say, that you can have visible in your kitchen, and as soon as you need to clean, you have immediate access to that vacuum cleaner. As I said, these are just a few examples to show you some of the innovations that we are bringing to the market. I've talked about the Electrolux brand, and that it is to represent sustainability. I do think that you all know that we, Electrolux, have been leaders within sustainability for many years now. Sustainability, to us, it's not just something that sounds nice, but a core value for Electrolux. It's something incredibly important, and it's also profitable. Our most sustainable products are also the most profitable products, and our sustainability work at the same time, in total, reduces our costs. Nevertheless, that is not enough.
We want to do more in our sustainability work, a few years ago, we showed our purpose with Shape living for the Better, where we had tried to develop and improve taste, garment care, well-being, so that we get a better and more sustainable life globally. We wanted to accomplish that with the sustainability and more well-being. When we celebrate 100 years this year, we're going to introduce our next step in these efforts, the Better Living Program, which will be an initiative to give us all the opportunity to have more sustainable life with good taste experiences and better food habits, garment care. We want to be the leaders in helping consumers to have that sustainable garment care and also to create a better environment. Of course, we should do this with a sustainable company.
The specific objectives that we have for Better Living Program, we'll tell you more about when we celebrate 100 years on 29th of August this year. That will be a very exciting day, where we'll also have a very exciting program in better living, the Better Living Program. That being said, I would like to say thank you for your support in 2018, and I promise you that all of us working for Electrolux will be doing everything we can to continue to deliver value and deliver value for you shareholders as well. Thank you. I would like to ask my colleagues to come back up here, and then we'll open up for questions.