Thank you, Chair. Ladies and gentlemen, esteemed shareholders, once again. I intend to give you an account of our perspectives for 2013, but perhaps even more interestingly, take a look into the future so that you get a feeling of what we intend to do as we move along. Let me begin briefly by giving you a review of 2013 in summary. It was a very special year in terms of the weather. We often talk about the weather, and perhaps it's a bit unfortunate that the seasons are so different from one another, especially last year. We had a late spring in Europe and North America, but we also had the advantage of a good end to the season.
We had an extended season, which was a bonus for us, and in total, we had an increase by two percentage points to a net turnover of SEK 30 billion approximately. Something that was very positive for us was that we had a black zero for the U.S. We had a positive operating margin. It wasn't anything in particular, but it was certainly different from the very deep chasm that we had in 2011, which improved in 2012, and which had now recovered to be positive, if only a little, for 2013. The operating result for the group was SEK 1.6 billion, to be compared with SEK 1.9 billion if you remove irrelevant posts. We had some very strong headwind, in the form of currency effects of SEK 350 million. There was underlying improvement, but it was counteracted by this fact.
If we are going to give ourselves some credit for one thing, or at least one thing, that we worked very well with our employed capital. We reduced our inventory by SEK 820 million in comparable currencies, and the whole employed capital by SEK 1 billion. This is not unessential, because it releases capital, and our net debt ratio was improved from 0.75 to 0.58, which must be seen as a positive aspect, and it also means that the board of directors can propose an unchanged dividend of SEK 150. In October, I introduced the Accelerated Improvement Program. We started working with that internally in September, and from October, we also launched it externally, and I will come back to this later. These are some of the comments I can make about the group in general. Let me touch upon the different business areas. Europe and Asia Pacific.
The net sales was SEK 15 billion, which is 1% higher than 2012. I mentioned the strong end of the season, and I think it's worth noting, if we are going to bring up some positive aspects, that we had very good sales in the situation there was to professional users. It was actually a few percentage points higher than the average. This group is strategically important for the Husqvarna Group for professional and semi-professional products. It was a result of SEK 1.5 billion, to be compared with SEK 1.9 billion, and the exchange rates effects that were negative for us came from Europe. Our production pace was somewhat reduced, so we had some under-absorption or under-coverage of fixed costs, and that amounted to approximately SEK 100 million. These two components explained our loss, if you wonder how that happened. We confirmed our leading role in robotic products.
We introduced our third generation of robotic lawn mowers. Many competitors are on the market with robotic lawn mowers today. However, most of them were the first generation, and we have launched our third generation. This is an amazing success for Husqvarna because we launched this invention the first time, and it's actually 20 years ago next year that we introduced the first solar-powered robotic lawnmower, and I hope I can come back to that at next year's AGM. North America. We had net sales of SEK 12.4 billion, 3 percentage points higher than 2012. The same pattern as I described before with the late spring, but a good seasonal extension. We had some problems with making full use of the sales increase during the extended season, which occasioned some improvement activities that I will come back to.
I will particularly like to mention the very good development among professional users in North America. We managed to improve our position by 11%, and the North American market, unlike the European market, is dominated by retailers. There we have about one-third of our sales go to professional users as against two-thirds in Europe. Nevertheless, it's important to acquire market shares in that segment, and we still have a long journey to complete in North America. We had a very good introduction of our first, and it was a launch in good Husqvarna spirit, of our first four-wheel drive lawnmower by Husqvarna, and it was received very positively by the market, and we managed to put a good price on it. We carried out a large number of measures to improve our results.
The first one, which may sound banal, but the most important thing was that we decided that profitability was the most important aspect, and not sales. It mustn't be underestimated. We should also talk about the cost reductions, but there were also a number of other efficiency-raising measures on the retail side. We've also worked with what we call sales and operations planning, i.e. how do you transfer a change in the prognosis on the customer side back to the manufacturers that we can respond to it in an efficient manner? That's taken us a great leap forward. For construction, that was a good year with an increase in net sales by 6%. We had profitable growth globally. It was geographically very well distributed between North America and Europe, but also in Brazil, where we have multi-wire and stone cutting activities. That was very positive.
During 2013, construction also invested in sales capacity to improve our market penetration in a good way. Construction also launched a very good generation of products called PRIME, based on high-frequency technology, which provides extraordinary performance in terms of effect per kilo, i.e. you get a very light product. It's a modular system, and we expect major successes when we look to 2014 and 2015 for construction. We've also had successes with the so-called demolition robot during the year and taken market shares there as well. Let me continue with our financial targets. The financial target of the three that we haven't been very successful with is the operating margin target. This is our main priority in the operational management to improve that this year, and the Accelerated Improvement Program is intended to lead to a 10% improvement in the operating margin for 2016.
These are our priorities in the short and medium term. Let me say a few words about the Accelerated Improvement Program. It consists of five points, and the first one is an expression on focusing on our two core brands, Husqvarna and Gardena, but it's also focusing on leading product areas where we are leaders today, but where we also see profitability. It's handheld products, it's the robotic lawn mowers, and irrigation products. In addition to that, we've also added what we call spares and accessories, because these are also highly profitable, and we feel that we have great opportunities to further increase our shares in these areas. In total, this is our basis for our profitability, and that's what we want to focus on, and we've done that very clearly.
When I visit the sales managers in different countries, I can see that they have really taken this to heart. The first part is differentiation of business models. It's very different being successful when you direct yourself to professionals. It's a matter of specifications, high performance, premium brands, and services for professionals. This is quite different from going to a major retailer who tells you, in principle, that we want a chainsaw that costs $29 and one for $149 and one possibly for $199. That is a completely different situation, and then you have to work with economy of scale and be extremely cost-efficient. In our Accelerated Improvement Program, we emphasize the importance of differentiating between these two business models in the future.
You may have noted that we reorganized our business in February in North America, where we launched two profit centers for the two business areas, professionals and retailers. We did so because we are convinced that this will help us accelerate improved profitability in the future. There will be several differentiating steps during the year. This was an organizational example, and there are other examples as well that you may see during 2014. North America is crucial to our business, and we've decided on the target that by 2016 we will have an operating margin of 5% so that the group as a whole can manage 10%. That means that mathematically speaking, the rest of the world will be slightly above 10%. On the whole, this program was launched in October, as I said, in connection with our third quarterly report.
Nothing has happened since the third quarter that would make me look at the plan in another way. We believe as much in it today as we did then, and we have been running this program at full speed since last autumn, and we will continue running it during 2014 and 2015 to be able to reap the full benefit in 2016. We need both seasons ahead of us to get the full effect in 2016. I also mentioned operational excellence, and I lack a good Swedish word, but what this is about is reducing the cost of material. We buy components for approximately SEK 12 billion plus raw materials in addition to that, and we have decided on the target that we are going to reduce that purchasing amount by 10 percentage points. This is doable in cooperation between development and purchases.
It's not a matter of purchases, but it's the combination of reducing costs in existing products. That's the solution to the problem. What do we mean by that? Well, we are a fantastic entrepreneurial culture. We are good at innovation, and we've been that for a long time. At the same time, this could lead to us being better at times at launching products than to phasing out products. We want to take a very close look at our product ranges. We have decided that we are going to reduce the number of products by 30% towards the end of 2015. This is a slow process. It means that it won't be in our catalog for 2016. It will still be in our inventory, although it will not be in our product catalog, and it will simplify our lives.
We also talk about sales and operations planning as a component in operational excellence because we find ourselves in a very challenging situation. It's perhaps difficult to understand how stuck we are in the seasonal pattern, but you may have noticed that any profit we make, we make it during the first and second quarter, and then we break even during the third and fourth quarter. It's really a matter of being good and on the mark when it comes to sales and planning. The last point doesn't really help us all that much in order to solve the 10% profit margin to 2016. It's very important for our future, and that is to grow in emerging markets in first hand loan.
These are the five points in our program. It's really the first four that will solve our profitability problem. I particularly like to emphasize points one and four, which will carry the burden in 2014 and 2015. Let me now proceed with something slightly different, a different aspect of our business, but equally important, and that is sustainability. We had the pleasure at the beginning of this year to be the award winners as one of the world's 100 most sustainable companies. That was very inspiring and very encouraging. It's 100 companies globally. They don't advertise all their criteria for their choice, so I can't tell you exactly why we received this award. Let me try and explain to you what we've done. You may be able to draw your own conclusions.
During 2013, I think this was announced at the AGM last year, we decided to affiliate ourselves with the UN Global Compact, which includes work environment, corruption, and the social environment. We take this area very seriously. If you look at the way we work in the field of sustainability, we do this in many different ways. If we look at the period 2010 to 2013, it's been highly focused on the use of products and at reducing the emissions from the products. Why do we focus on that? Well, because emissions from the use of product is about 10 times as large as the emissions from our factories and from the transport to and from factories. When I talk about emissions, I'm talking about hydrocarbons and nitrous oxides.
This has been a rather natural start for us, we managed to do this through good use of technology, the X-Torq technology in our two-stroke engines. We also have more recent examples when the third generation of robotic lawn mowers are considerably more energy efficient than the previous generation of robotic lawn mowers, about 70% better, if I'm not mistaken, and I'm looking at our development engineer here. For the future, it's still more and more important that we work in a more structured way with our own production plants, we will do that. It's a pleasure for me to mention in this context that the investments that I was talking about will be a so-called closed-loop at the McRae plant. There will be no emissions to the air or water from that plant when we have finished that program.
We also work actively with our suppliers because this has to go through the whole chain. We've also carried out 15 audits at our suppliers in China during last year when we look at these environmental aspects. Health and safety is another very important area, an important item on our agenda. If I'm allowed to mention a few positive examples, I would like to emphasize our plant in Nashville that hasn't had an incident in 11 years. Our plant in Kawagoe in Japan, which hasn't had accidents or incidents over the past five years. We keep looking at that aspect in all our production plants. I could talk a lot more about this, I think there is a limit to what I'm expected to do. Let me then continue with product design.
I guess that everyone here knows that to have a user-friendly design, that is actually something that makes a difference. It makes a difference for consumers, for users. There is an association called Red Dot, they have presented awards for product design innovation, if I've understood things correctly, they've been doing that for some 60 years. If you're in this type of field, you know that it's important. They look at the number of criteria like innovation, functionality, environment, industrial design, et cetera, we were presented six different awards in two categories. One was best of the best, the other one product design. That this is especially interesting because we got an award for our battery-powered products. That's also success worth mentioning.
Needless to say, we have many new products, let me say that services become more and more important step by step. Needless to say, our product, that is the heart of what we do and the product cycle, we invested last year 3.2% in product development. There are many dimensions in our business that related to product development. These are a few examples worth mentioning from 2013. We have a small compact chainsaw. We have a trimmer, 25cc, lightweight for professionals. It's very much in demand, not the least in the U.S. and Asia. We also have a battery-driven hedge trimmer for professional users. We also have a backpack battery so that you can bring a battery with you for an entire working day. There are other things as well that are not in the slide.
We have improvements also for riders with SmartSwitch, for example, and blades that can quickly be exchanged. I also mentioned earlier the PRIME products for construction. Here we have not even mentioned the third generation of robotic lawn mowers. I don't have time for that now. We have to talk about that another time. The investment in the chainsaw plant. That's very positive for the town of Husqvarna, not the least that that decision was made. Why Husqvarna? Because it's close to research innovation of the product chainsaw and also the production of chainsaws. That is to ensure a rapid, good start. We also have the infrastructure and the skills and competencies in our group in Husqvarna, and that was the reason as to why. Why doing it at all?
Because if we make the best chainsaw in the world, we also want the best chain for that saw. We have been purchasing chains. We still do so today, and there's nothing wrong with those chains, but we want to take everything one step further so that we do become the best, and that is the ambition. Of course, we can make the entire product system more efficient if we do have both components. We also think that this is a good idea business-wise. Today, we have some 10% of the world market and the aftermarket for this product, and we have a market share of chainsaws that is much higher, which means that someone else is selling chains for our saws. To give you an idea as to the timing, we believe that we will launch this. It will be launched in 2015.
We hope that we'll see a positive operating income as of 2016. Very positive. Let me just mention as well about this investment, that this is in addition to the 3.2% that we usually spend on research and development, so the total will be higher than that number. To summarize our focus, we step up our improvement program. We want selective growth, we want lower material costs, we want improved efficiency, and enhanced differentiation between the business models. The world is never just black and white. We can't do just one thing and forget everything else. We've also said that in parallel to this work, we have to focus not just on profitability, but we also want a strategy for 2020. Here we want to bring in a number of factors.
We need to look at what happens in the world around us and combine that with our convictions and our feeling as to how to be the winner. I cannot tell you anything about the outcomes of that strategy work today. This will become clearer this spring, and perhaps you will get information this year, but no later than at the next AGM, you will be given the opportunity to learn a lot more. These are the two most important pieces of the puzzle looking ahead, what you can expect. To conclude, 325 years of innovation, that is an amazing industrial history. Not many companies can say that they have something like it, and this is something we want to safeguard and bring with us into the future. These 325 years, needless to say, a lot has happened. The world has changed.
There have been many reorientations. You need to have that ability to renew yourself as well. It is important that we can look ahead. We have amazing strengths. I've highlighted some of them, our strong brands, our leading market positions, and we also have very strong product positions, a strong distribution, and not the least, we have skilled and competent coworkers. To talk about a 2020 strategy, some of you might think that's not much to talk about with this history. That is the horizon that we are looking at at present. We have this in our horizon. I hope that you now have a feeling of what we're planning. Thank you.
Thank you so much Kai.
Thank you, Kai. The floor is open. We have Jan-Åke Karlsson from Aktiespararna, who has said that he would like to be the first one out. Of course, we'll let him. Please. Anyone with a question or a comment is welcome.