Ladies and gentlemen, I would like to welcome you most warmly for this year's press conference of Interroll Holding AG, here from Sant'Antonino, from the headquarters of the Interroll Group. This is the 21 press conference for me in my position as CEO. Unfortunately, it's the first time that I'm not able to speak to you in person at Zürich. In the first part of my presentation, I'll give you an overview of the activities of the year 2019. After this, Mr. Strüwing will inform you about new things in terms of technology and innovation, and everything that we have completed in 2019. Mr. Strüwing will be connected to us from our worldwide competence center for conveyors and sorters at Sinsheim, Germany.
Mr. Karolyi is the Senior Vice President for Corporate Marketing and Culture, and he's going to report on how Interroll is going to reinforce its brand name further and how it has been able to do so far. You're going to hear about a few interesting and strategically important projects. After this, I'm going to inform you about the business results in 2019, and I'll give you a summary and outlook to conclude. Let me take this opportunity to welcome our new CFO, Heinz Hössli. He's just started with the company, and he'll just make a few remarks now.
Thank you very much, Mr. Zumbühl. Ladies and gentlemen, I'm very happy to be here. Let me just make a few remarks on myself. I'm 51 years old. I'm married. We have two teenage sons.
My career, I'm a chartered accountant, in 2009 I took an executive MBA with the Duke University of North Carolina. I worked for Bühler at Uzwil for more than 20 years in various functions. Among other things, I was the CFO in Mexico for two years and slightly under five years, the CFO in North America at two different sites. From 2012 on, I've been the CFO of the Advanced Materials, with sales of CHF 650 million last year. I'm happy to get to know you later on in person. Unfortunately, this is not possible right now. I'm looking forward to meeting you later on. Thank you very much. Back to Mr. Zumbühl.
Thank you, Mr. Hössli. As we're not attending at Zurich in person, we will take your questions via a chat function. You can raise your questions right away.
Do send your questions in and we'll select some important questions then and combine up questions along the same lines, and we have 15 minutes then, and we will be very happy to answer your questions then. You can start putting your questions right during the presentation. 2019, once again, was a year characterized by many highlights. First highlight was our record profit, a historical record, and also our cash flow, which was increased by nearly 50%.
For our medium-term and long-term future, it's of enormous importance that we keep on working on the pipeline. By pipeline, I mean the innovation, and we have made an important step ahead. As in the previous year, you remember, last time at Zurich, we informed you that our journey is continuing. We're going to step up these [audio distorted] .
Next, we need to expand our capacities in the medium term and long term. You know our concept, it's like a Lego system. Our products are based on platforms. We've taken a further step towards digitalization so that the interfaces will work. We are expanding the interfaces among modules further. You're going to see two very nice examples of this. Our growth strategy is based on three pillars. The first pillar is innovation. Here, as announced, we were able to launch the new DC Platform. This is 24 volts and 48 volts.
The Modular Pallet Conveyor Platform, you remember. We had announced it last year in February. It has established itself very well in the market. We envisage a very good future for this. Mr. Strüwing is going to inform you about the new High-Performance Sorter.
This is a product which will also open up new market segments. Another mainstay of our growth strategy is our regional presence. We're going to expand this further on all continents. The service business is very important to us. In December, we were able to deliver the 400 sorters, and this is an excellent installed base for us. We can provide more service, rounding this off, offering additional services in the future.
Ladies and gentlemen, our business model over all these years it was really the first time 15 or 16 years ago, when I spoke about this. It has stood the test of time in an extraordinary way, and it will also bring success to the Interroll Group in future. First of all, we are in a very dynamic market, material handling, and of course, new vendors are also joining this market because this market is so attractive.
There will be some consolidation. It's important for Interroll that with every consolidation happening in this dynamic market, that we have a good position in the market on which we can build in future. Interroll, when you look at its business model, is based on three mainstays. The first mainstay is our products. I mentioned we have this platform system.
It's like a Lego system and tested worldwide. Over all the years, if you just look at the last 20 years, we have built 18 new companies. That is, we're very close to customers. We produce where we sell. This brings us very close proximity, also has advantages in terms of delivery periods. Our team is headed by Jens Karolyi. They have done an excellent job. Our brand has been established worldwide as the technology leader, conquering the confidence of all our partners.
The customers of our customers are the end customers in the various markets like e-commerce or the postal industry, airports, and so on. We started with this 10 years ago, getting ourselves to be known better for our proven products. Our direct customers, that's first of all the global system integrators, but it's also local equipment suppliers or smaller integrators. 95% of all our customers, all in all, it's 28,000. 95% are local customers, medium-sized and smaller companies who we work together closely and we enable them to grow. Mr. Karolyi will also give us a few very good examples of this. It's especially in today's times, even in March 2020, this slide here will actually be to our advantage.
We've never lived above our station. Apart from the enormous capital spending that we spent on our future in order to achieve innovation and other things, we kept ourselves fit on the other hand, we didn't want to put on any fat. In fact, we want to be able to act early on in order to avoid any restructuring. Orientating ourselves to internal and external benchmarks is extremely important to us. One example of an internal benchmark from the last year, I mean 2019, here we had the second big project from an e-commerce company, an integrator from South Korea, it was more than 12 km of this MCP, of the Modular Conveyor Platform concept.
Our European colleagues would never have thought that our Chinese friends would be able to complete this project in just, and you have to keep in mind, it's 12 km of conveyor, and they managed this in just 12 months. They did manage, they did keep their promises, and the customer paid the bill. Of course, this is an excellent internal benchmark within the group.
It shows what the market demands, not just in China and in South Korea, but in fact, it calls for this the world over. As I mentioned, our market continues to be dynamic. Everybody talks of e-commerce, but it's not just about e-commerce. All of materials handling is important. You see this especially at these times. Everybody speaks of supply chains, and you can see where the weak points are. You can see this today.
To us, this means an enormous opportunity in the long term. Customization, when you buy a white shirt today, like I'm wearing at the moment, and if you go to the Zalando website, you will find at least 50 different versions of it. That is, all of this has to be supplied, all of this has to be sorted, and above all, it has to be close to customers, and this will bring us very good opportunities in the future as well. So far, these are my introductory remarks, ladies and gentlemen. Now, Mr. Jens Strüwing of our global competence center at Sinsheim, and he's speaking from Sinsheim, is going to report on activities on innovation and production. Everything that we did in 2019. Let's now go over to Sinsheim to Mr. Strüwing.
Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Just like Interroll is a global company, we are equally global for today's press conference. I'd like to extend a very warm welcome to you from our Sinsheim location in the south of Germany, about 450 km north of Ticino. This location at present is a center of excellence for our two large product groups, conveyors and sorters. It is my pleasure to talk to you today about the key activities over the last 12 months for product and technology.
On the one hand, capacities are to be mentioned here as one key topic. Given our global growth strategy, it is also required to extend our capacities. That is something which over the last 12 months we've pursued to quite some extent in two directions. First, we took our internal existing capacities and made them more efficient. That happened essentially through automation concept.
Secondly, we also set the path for the future. We will and are already in the process of opening new locations in all of the three world regions in which we're active right now or will extend existing locations. When it comes to innovation, we have three key products that we launched over the last months. First, there's the fully digital DC Platform, then there is our Modular Pallet Platform, which was supplemented in November by two so-called interface elements, which is the Transfer Car and the tracks. Thirdly, there's our High-Performance Sorter, which is a real innovation. Later on, I'll talk about the details of it. Our third highlight certainly is digitization. It's a mega trend. Everybody talks of IoT. We are right in the midst of it.
We've started our journey already a few years ago, but over the last 12 months, we've taken essential and key steps towards full digitization when it comes to our products and processes. Let us start with the first segment, the first highlight if you want, our capacities. Global expansion, that's the keyword here. Half a year ago, we decided for the EMEA region to build a new location because specifically for conveyors and sorters, our capacities were reaching their limits.
We decided at the Mosbach location, which is 25 km north of here, north of Sinsheim, to build a new factory of about 25,000 square meters, and the investment for that is EUR 45 million, which is investments into buildings, but also into technology and equipment, machines, that is. We hope to open that factory in April 2021.
Already nine months ago, we took the decision in America to extend our Hiram facilities in Atlanta. At the moment, we are ramping up our production at that new facility, and over the next two weeks, we'll be starting to produce sorters and the Modular Conveyor Platform in those new facilities. We invested both in buildings and into equipment and plant, investing a total of $11 million. Last but not least, one of our most important growth regions, Asia-Pacific.
It was already in June 2019 that we set up a 5,000 square meters production building in Thailand, and only just last week we issued a press release communicating that in Suzhou, near Shanghai, we will take our currently leased premises and replace them by a far larger self-owned production facility, which is planned to start operation in March 2022.
Let's now turn to the second key topic, which is innovation. Our platform strategy is the starting point for each and any of our products. Mr. Zumbühl already mentioned the Lego blocks concept. I think that is best suited to describe our platform strategy. Let me show you a quick simulation to illustrate that platform strategy further. The idea here is to take individual elements such as rollers and the RollerDrive, which you can see at the bottom of the pyramid, and make them into modules.
Those modules then get supplemented by controls shown here as an MCP and a power supply, and that results in our modular conveying concept for carton solutions and pallet solutions. Looking at the very top here of the pyramid, you can see what I'd call interface elements. On the left-hand side, that's our Transfer Car.
In the center, the Stacker Crane, and on the right, that's one of the curve elements. The Belt Curve. Those interface elements will be connecting our products, and thus our product strategies and product components. That would mean that you can use a Stacker Crane, integrating the MPP solution with our dynamic storage solution at Interroll. That is something which I'd like to show you, taking the example of the MPP and the interface elements of Stacker Crane and the Transfer Car, and again, doing that with this little video.
Ladies and gentlemen, I think this video was able to show you quite nicely how we can take different product groups and combine them with our interface elements, thus creating added value for our customers. One-stop shop, one solution by Interroll for our customers, that's our objective.
Let's now look at our third highlight, and that really is the biggest highlight over the last 12 months. Two weeks ago, we presented our new high-performance sorter solution to the market. This is a project which was handled by three project groups in all of our three world regions, Americas, Asia-Pacific, and Europe.
They handled this jointly, and that's also something which, for the first time in the history of Interroll, was launched simultaneously in all of those world regions. This new high-speed, high-performance sorter allows us to enter an entirely new market segment. That is a market segment that is characterized by an extremely high sortation throughput, and that is what we achieve through a sorting speed of 2.5 meters per second, which translates into a throughput of 20,000 sorting units per hour. I'll show you another video illustrating our new high-performance sorter.
Ladies and gentlemen, our new High-Performance Crossbelt Sorter means that Interroll is entering the high-performance segment. The market for that segment is Courier Express Parcel and high-speed distribution. We are already represented in the medium segment with our well-proven solutions installed worldwide. Crossbelt Sorter solutions horizontally and vertically. In the base segment, we're currently engineering new sorter solutions, the launch of which is planned for the first quarter 2021. Prepare to be surprised. Let us now turn to the third part of my presentation, digitalization as a mega-trend. Interroll as a company is in the process of making all of its products digital, so that these products provide our customers with status information, which our customers, in turn, can then use for preventive maintenance in order to optimize their equipment and plants.
To do this, we are launching a number of products, and just recently, and this is a product I really want to stress here, we've launched a modular control concept for our sorters, parallel to our high-performance sorter. As for production, we are centered around our global SAP and PLM system and allowing for the complete integration of all of our locations and extend it further. Also, within separate locations, we go into the integration of man-machine concepts. Let me take Ticino again as an example. We're using cobots, humans, and robots working hand-in-hand, literally speaking. Also, at our Wermelskirchen facilities, we've turned our factory into a paperless one. From the point of incoming orders through production, all the way through to distribution and billing and invoicing, it's all paperless, fully digitalized.
In the next few years, we'll continue to massively invest into these premises and to improve further. To do that, as I said at the outset, we've initiated seven lighthouse projects. Ladies and gentlemen, I hope I've been able to give you some insight into our current capacity extensions, into innovation, and into digitalization. Thank you very much. With that, I'm happy to hand over to my colleague, Jens Karolyi, and also switch back to Ticino, and he'll take you through the highlights in marketing.
Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. We're back in Ticino, and we've just heard a lot from Jens Strüwing about innovation and products, and I'd like to link up to that. Interroll considers itself a world market leader, an agenda setter. We're not just a producer of a worldwide platform solution.
Most of all, what we are is a solution provider, partner to our customers, and we also are seen as somebody who carries weight in the market. With our proven technologies, with the experience we've had worldwide, with the 28,000 customers we service worldwide, we are somebody whom people believe and trust and can take our word for granted. Our strategic positioning this year was extended quite substantially. We've taken our own and also new PR channels to set our agenda. We've produced a number of interesting interviews, and as I said, been able to set some more and new trends in the market.
In the web, as we're doing right now, we've used new tools, more interaction, configurators that can be used, allowing our customers on a daily basis to download CAD data, allowing them to see how it all fits together, where they can really directly use our 3D information in order to equip their machinery accordingly.
Also, we've entered into partnerships with institutions, market research companies, but also consultants who will continue to help us extend our competencies in this field. That's also something which we're happy to pass on to our customers. Last but not least, last year, we attended 31 trade fairs. It's bound to be less this year, but last year was 31 industry fairs. Some of them were very specific specialty fairs, and we went around the world launching our products there. Moving from Ticino to Thailand, ladies and gentlemen.
There, I'd like to show you a reference project which allows you to see how we implement projects together with our end customers, but also make use of our partner network in this, arriving at true partnerships through this. As I said, we're going to Thailand, Southeast Asia, a region where we very strongly believe in further growth and into which we've also substantially invested just recently. You'll remember we built this new plant in Thailand, which started production last year. Here's the video.
Since 1927, 7-Eleven's mission has been to give customers what they want, when and where they want it. In Thailand, CP ALL is the sole operator of 7-Eleven convenience stores. In the very south, this brand-new DC was opened recently with almost infinite capacities ready for future growth. In Hat Yai, the work is done by over 300 staff members of CP ALL.
Constantly working to meet rigorous KPIs, the team manages dry groceries for 500 shops in eight of the 14 provinces in Thailand, catering for the needs of nine million people every single day. Intermat is one of the leading system integrators and a member of the global Rolling on Interroll community. It designed this seamless material flow solution, which can handle up to 15,000 SKUs with 40,000 cases shipped easily every day. Orders are processed in just a few hours.
Two shifts handle both inbound traffic, picking, commissioning, and sortation, ensuring that everything leaves the hub on time. Tolerances for on-time shop delivery are tight and are always managed closely. Interroll was asked to supply the mission-critical solutions to enable the facility to work as efficiently as possible. Process accuracy and smart automation was of utmost importance. It was clear that nothing other than proven technology and the highest availability of the system was required. Intermat found a future-proof solution based on the entire portfolio of the Interroll Modular Conveyor Platform and the Interroll Carton Flow solution.
It enables state-of-the-art pick-to-light commissioning of up to 80,000 goods per day. The pick-to-light commissioning on three levels is supported by the attached carton flow, a simple but ingenious solution to the robust conveying technology. Simplicity and quality pay off. Zero pressure accumulation for the most efficient throughput.
The latest control technology to handle sensors. Low-voltage conveyors and the high-performance diverts prove to be the perfect match. CP ALL has chosen this highly scalable layout while recognizing a fast return on investment due to low energy consumption and very low levels of maintenance. What's more, Interroll and Intermat have been successfully working together for years. Interroll, as the only true global supplier for key products material handling, has been operating in Thailand for more than 20 years. When picking is done, goods are ready for final sortation.
For this, Intermat has developed a material flow solution with the lowest latency of processing for the highest throughput. There is no rush, as everything is sorted perfectly. Slow movers synced with fast movers. As you'd expect in a partnership, the Interroll MCP conveying technology handles the traffic seamlessly 24/7 by 7-Eleven, a perfect equation.
Everything works as it should do. Oh, thank heaven for 7-Eleven.
Ladies and gentlemen, we're back in Ticino. I'll take you right along on the next journey to Rome. I'd like to tell you about our global partner program called Rolling on Interroll, a program that we initiated about five years ago, and it's about setting up a community that we've built up, which comprises about 100 partners worldwide by now, all of whom are characterized by enormous growth potential, and all of whom within their own industries and niches are leaders who are very much focused on innovation and quality and who've committed to exchanging experience with representatives from Interroll, but also others from the network, exchanging experiences, competencies, and trying to jointly win projects. We see ourselves clearly as the enabler in this. We are the matchmaker. We very specifically and diligently select those partners.
As I said at the outset, it was in Rome where we organized a large conference last year. About 70 of those partners attended, and that conference was all about sharing competencies, but also introducing partners to each other. We organized a matchmaking event with one-on-one sessions where partners met for the first time, talked about projects, about technologies, about joint customer projects, and a lot of business was generated from it for those partners, but obviously also for us.
Another potential that we see for this community is that we've achieved something for the industry that hadn't been there before. We've got these 100 partners around the world now setting up a network of exchange, of integration, which might actually talk about joint standards in the industry for the future that might jointly fight and strive towards new platforms and joint growth wherever it makes sense.
Something which is certainly strategically very important to Interroll, and I'm quite proud of what we've achieved over those last five to four years. My last topic is one which is actually even a bit closer to my heart, which is Interroll Academy. For that, our journey takes us to Düsseldorf, my hometown. That's the home of our academy, which for us at Interroll really is a statement. It's not just a building. Mostly it's an idea, a concept. It reflects our mindset. We want to train our staff there. We also want to train our customers there.
Not just training when it comes to products, how to sell the products, how the products work, but also when it comes to making sure that our managers, our executives, believe in our values, and everybody on the campus and in the academies to be provided with information communication that can only happen like that right there.
You might be wondering what we're doing with building at Düsseldorf right now. We're actually sending out more than 2,000 online trainings from there, which our staff can do from home at the moment, and which, by the way, we also can pass on to our customers. There's a whole separate customer learning program that we make available to our customers and which they can call off. With that brief overview regarding marketing and training, back to Mr. Zumbühl, back here to Ticino. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Karolyi. Let's now turn to the business results. Ladies and gentlemen, the results for 2019. Let's begin with the products business. This is mainly the two product groups of rollers and of drives. With both these product groups, we were able to increase sales in local currency by about 4%. It was 1.9% consolidated or 1.3%. On rollers, we're talking about strong growth. You only see one part of the sales. That's the external sales with customers buying the rollers product. There's also a major share of sales that comes from internal customers, be it MPP or MCP, which, of course, also uses rollers generating internal sales. We've established ourselves further on drives. Remember, we had a strong increase in sales last year. We established the EC5000.
The market for materials handling is a conservative market, meaning it always takes a certain time until customers, as I said, we have 27,500 customers, and many of them are small or medium-sized companies. Of course, they want to test things, it takes a certain introductory phase. The product has met with an excellent response. If we now look at pallet flow and carton flow and conveyors and sorters, here we're first of all talking of the project business. Let me point out, it's not only the project business. Of course, if the customer just wants to buy one Lego block from us, of course, we're very willing to sell an individual sorter or an individual Belt Curve to them. The cyclic nature of the pallet and carton flow business became quite evident last year.
We had a decrease by 10.7%. In the year before, of course, we had won one or the other project, which didn't come again the year after. These things keep on changing. Let me say something in parentheses. It's been a tradition for Interroll to really be responsible for light goods units. We're talking of parcels, we're talking of jumpers which are conveyed. This could be, say, 100 grams up to 30 kg or maximum of 50 kg.
Even for the new Crossbelt Sorter, the limit is 50 kg. We never really were so active on pallets, with the exception of pallet flow for storage. When you look at all the things that you can buy at supermarkets today, at least 95% of all these goods will have been on a pallet at one or the other time.
This was the starting point for us to decide that apart from pallet flow, we would also introduce the MPP and also further interfaces, as Mr. Strüwing explained, with the Stacker Crane and the Transfer Car. In other words, the Lego kit is larger now concerning pallet handling. We're now talking of weights of up to 1.2 tons. In 2020, as of the January 1, this unit is renamed pallet handling, and this combines all the products and solutions for pallets. Looking at the conveyor and sorters business, this is really an enormous highlight for us for two different reasons. The first reason being that in 2018, we had won a project worth millions, a double-digit number of millions in the U.S.
This was quite a massive order, which of course you won't get again every year, and we don't always try for these big projects. If a customer wants to buy a big Lego kit, then we're happy to deliver it. On the other hand, in 2018, if you look at the annual report, we had growth in sales by 55% in this business unit. In local currency, sales were increased by nearly 4%, compensating for this big project by many medium-sized or smaller orders, lending us a certain stability, which we have.
If you look at the order intake, but also at the sales, here you see the impact of the really strong Swiss franc, and it's becoming even stronger at the moment. If you look at the exchange rates today, 5.7%. This is really better than what we had announced in the first half year.
In July and August, we spoke of a postponement of projects, also of one-offs. We were able to catch up on a few things and were in fact able to close out better than we'd expected. On the other hand, sales increased 2.3%. If you now take the order intake and net sales over the last five years, if you look at the years from 2014 to 2019, we had order intake which increased by more than 9% over these years, and sales per year by more than 11%.
Interroll has proved over the last five years, or you could even go back further, we can prove that we have been able to grow much faster than the market, first of all, and secondly, we have these innovative solutions which enabled us to gain more market share.
Net sales over the regions, you can see this here in this chart. Last year, or the last two years, we really said that sales in Europe should remain at about 50% of our total sales. In the other regions like the Americas and Asia, where we're also expanding now, we want to make this possible. We're on a good way.
You can see the impact of the one-off effect in the U.S. It was a CHF double-digit million order of the year before, of 2018. Let me briefly mention an advantage which we're now benefiting from in this situation. We used to talk about currencies that we invoice in the local currencies of the places where we produce. Today we speak about the supply chains, and we're glad that we have these 16 production sites worldwide, and 75% - 100% is their readiness.
Three-quarters of production is utilized between 85%-100%. China is close on 100% after two difficult years. The EBITDA, due to the better margin, also due to better productivity and efficiency, has increased further to CHF 96.1 million. This means a margin of 17.1%. We had an impact on EBIT from the increased depreciation according to IFRS 16. This requires long-term payables like rental agreements or the leasing of machines. We don't have this so much. This has to be reflected in the balance sheet and depreciated over a certain period of time. We were able to compensate for this higher depreciation by lower depreciation on the SAP system. We now reach this EBIT margin of 12.9%. The two real highlights of this 2019 results, ladies and gentlemen, is first of all the net profit.
It's based on much better operating earnings. It's based on somewhat lower tax rates. The net profit has been increased to CHF 56 million. It's the first time in our history that we are able to announce a double-digit margin. Our profits have never been that high. We've never been able to report a margin of 10%.
This is unique in the history of Interroll. This also helped us increase our equity ratio to slightly under 70%, or to keep it there. Let's not forget that the Swiss franc, of course, has an impact on certain assets abroad. All of a sudden, they're worth less. But still with this profit, we were able to increase our equity further. You can see in brackets what we had in the previous year. Now we have this ratio of 70%. We are financed quite comfortably.
The second very big highlight is operating cash flow. Of course, we can't expect this for every year. Due to the higher net profit, we were able to make enormous progress in managing our current assets by reducing the stocks, but also the outstanding payments, the receivables from customers have been reduced. It's the first time that we're close to a three-digit number of millions at CHF 99.6 million, and this means slightly under 18% of margin.
Despite higher capital expenditure of slightly under CHF 34 million, the free cash flow went up to CHF 67 million, meaning a margin of 12%. Net liquidity, if you look at the annual report, stands at CHF 76.9 million at the moment. Net liquidity has also been increased gradually, and this net liquidity is important, first of all, in order to be able to implement our projects concerning the expansion of capacities, but also digitization.
It's not just about the factories. We want to equip our factories with the latest technology. The keyword is IoT, the Internet of Things, bringing the internet together with the machinery in order to achieve certain efficiencies and to be able to reduce delivery periods further. We expect that in 2020 and 2021, it will be about CHF 50 million-CHF 60 million that we are spending on capital expenditure, and in 2022 then, we expect it will be CHF 40 million-CHF 50 million, and we'll return to the normal cycle of capital expenditure then.
Of course, there may always be some shifts in the short term. This could be due to the most diverse events. Another thing we are making efforts for is strengthening governance. We hear a lot about sustainability and fairness, and we are working as a member of the UN Global Compact.
We do find it important to set an example ourselves. You will find three or four pages on annual report on this topic. You can also see what action we took on this. At the next general meeting on May 8, the Board of Directors will announce an increase or propose an increased dividend of CHF 22.5 per share, which is higher again than the previous year. The Board of Directors will also propose the election of a new member from a really leading company, a worldwide leader in a different industry, but still with many touch points. I mean, a personality from the Kärcher Group. I think everybody knows this Kärcher equipment. They're a worldwide leader in cleaning equipment.
Mr. Asch brings in global perspective and long years of experience on these modular product concepts on digitization, also concerning services that can be based on sales. If we speak of finance, it is important for us to really have these funds available. If you look at this chart, you will see that first of all, that over the last ten years, we have been able to increase our dividends quite strongly, and in some cases, quite massively.
You can see here what it was like in 2010. Let me point out to you, this was never just meant to do a favor to shareholders. In fact, it was never at the expense of the substance of the company. The earnings of the company, the earnings per average outstanding share, would always rise in line with dividends.
If you took the same chart for the last 20 years, starting in the year 2000, you would get the same kind of chart with only one exception, when we reduced the dividend, and that was in 2009. Let me now sum up. We've spoken about industrial management. We've spoken about the opportunities in different markets. We want to move ahead here full steam.
It's also about innovation. Mr. Strüwing has explained quite a few things. Mr. Karolyi explained how these concepts will be marketed the world over. For example, the Crossbelt Sorter. It's the first time in the history of Interroll that this High-Performance Crossbelt Sorter was launched on exactly the same day in February on all three continents. We never had this before. Let's not forget about this. It's not just the product, it's the whole supply chain management, the engineering configuration, and everything.
There's a lot, really a lot, behind this. Furthermore, we need to advance our capacity expansion further and digitization. When we now look at 2020 and the outlook, we started positively. When you look at the order intake in January, I was in China for two weeks, but also in Southeast Asia and even in Australia, and I came back with very positive impressions. Hardly had I returned home, the Corona crisis came, and of course, it has affected everyone in the short term, but every company needs to manage with volatility. We now have an opportunity for expanding on our market position further at this period in time and to continue with our programs full steam ahead. Of course, we want to maintain our capital expenditure.
I remember in the financial crisis in 2008 and 2009, we had also built a plant, a greenfield plant at Sinsheim at that time. This site is completely built up at the moment, and we are building on a second site now. We need to invest on these things. These are our remarks, ladies and gentlemen. As I mentioned at the beginning of this press conference, we will now be available for the next 15 minutes. We'll be happy to answer any of your questions. You have been able to already put a few questions on the chat system, and I'll read them out, and then we'll be happy to answer these questions. Let's start with the questions then. Good morning, Mr. Schirrmacher of [audio distortion].
Given the crisis in airports expected to last for years, do you see your estimated growth in the end market in that future at risk?
At the moment, as you heard yesterday, Swiss International Air Lines has grounded its aircraft. There are only a few birds left in the sky. In the short term, this will certainly also have some impact, but usually, projects are more long-term. It's big projects. That's the first answer, and the second answer is we don't have more than, say, 15% in this market. Even if this market should be reduced in the longer term, this wouldn't have a substantial impact on us. Next question.
Would you therefore need to lower your growth expectation going forward? How much of your shares is airports?
The last question has just been answered. When I look at the medium-term potential today, of which we always said, looking at the market and our growth, what we could certainly not maintain in the short term, but in the long term, we certainly maintain what we've always said. Mr. Sebastian Vogel of UBS. Good morning, Mr. Vogel.
Your question. In your guidance, you say in the core markets, there was an unpredicted short-term downward potential, some of it due to the appearance of the coronavirus. What are the other parts that were unexpected and that are not connected to the coronavirus? In fact, I've answered this question. You find this in the statement in our half-yearly report. We saw certain distortions in the global situation last year, also caused by the duties and so on, raised by China.
Because of this, we said that in the second half that this would in fact be demanding, and it has become so. At the beginning of this year, we felt that this has come loose again, and now we started quite positively until then, well, the coronavirus appeared. Good morning, Mr. Rotzer of Credit Suisse. You're right.
How did the order book evolve in the Q1? Any impact from e-commerce from that past holiday season and the current COVID-19 crisis?
What we can say is that the order intake, depending on region, has developed positively in principle. Of course, there have been certain delays, postponements of projects, and so on. It's clear if you can't call on customers or our customers can't call on their customers at a vital juncture of a project, when you really have to negotiate on site, it is difficult then to make decisions on these things, and at times, this is really about a lot of money. This will certainly also have its impact. When you look at order intake, we're doing better than we would have thought in the first two months. Of course, this may change. This is as of March 20, and on sales, we're behind expectations. Mr. Rotzer had an additional question.
Level of incremental growth for gross CapEx.
I've already answered this question. In fact, it was answered in the presentation. Mr. Bosse, good morning. The impressive progress on cash conversion that you've made, I suppose you mean our current assets, will they be in the long term, or have you reached too low a level with the 30 days? What were the impacts?
Well, as I said, if sales doesn't grow rapidly, it lies in the nature of things that current assets should also become better, which is the case, in fact. Of course, we're working on accounts receivable, and it's quite clear that we have some clear rules in China as well. In fact, we discussed this even before coronavirus in China when I was there. We work for customers 24 hours, but we also want to see cash then. Cash flow as you've seen it here.
Of course, this won't come in every year just like this. It also depends on what phase you are in and your capital expenditure. Mr. Rosenau of Helvetische Bank. Good morning, Mr. Remo Rosenau. You're asking if we were to assume that the general economy in 2020 would take a dive like in 2009, would you expect comparable sales decrease as in 2009?
It was 35% at that time. Thank you, Mr. Rosenau, for remembering this so well. In fact, it's still a pain in the neck to me, although we really did make it through the crisis more or less well. Let me pass on this question to Mr. Strüwing, what he is now doing. Not just now, this has been on the strategic program to do something about the volatility of our costs. That's what your question is about.
Let's go to Sinsheim, to Mr. Strüwing.
Mr. Rosenau, thank you for that question. What we do is we try to become a lot more flexible in all of our facilities. That means smaller batch sizes. Flexible, however, also means using different working hour models and making use of different ways of adjusting working hours of employees in different ways, using long-time banking accounts, for example. Also, we try to mitigate peaks by using temporary workers. At a global level, we try to balance capacities. We can manage to do so because the specifications of our parts and the quality of our parts are kept at the very same level in all regions, so the same look and feel to the customer. That allows us to allow for such peaks in different regions and support them, say, with shipments from other regions.
Thank you, Mr. Strüwing. Mr. Bosse of Baader Bank, good morning. In the Crossbelt Sorter business, how are the market shares distributed among high performance, the medium segment, and the base segment, and what are the market shares of Interroll? Let me immediately hand over this question to our global competence center at Sinsheim, Germany, to Mr. Strüwing.
Mr. Bosse, thank you for that question, and it is a question that's not all that easy to answer. At the moment, what we're seeing is a massive shift in the various segments. In the past, we've very much been active in that middle segment. Now, given that e-business activities are strongly increasing, particularly in the area of distribution and Courier Express Parcel, we can see a drastic change going on, and it's more and more towards the so-called Hub-and-spoke concept. Very large central distribution centers, plus small local distribution centers. This kind of shift is something you can also observe in the pyramid that I showed earlier. Therefore, to Interroll, it is very important in that high-performance segment to be on a sound footing there, which we've done now with our new High-Performance sorter.
Also, we need to go into the base segment, into these so-called spokes, which is exactly what we plan to do and are preparing for early 2021.
Thank you, Mr. Strüwing. Let me add, if I may, these high-performance sorters, as in the past, are a good door opener, a latch lifter for Interroll, because, of course, we could also offer what's to the left and to the right of the sorter and sell it. In addition to these new opportunities, we can also sell more other products from our Lego kit. Next question from Mr. Farnholz, Good morning, Mr. Farnholz. Let me read out the question.
Your annual increases in market share, do you see these continuing at 2%-3% at Group level or even somewhat higher at the moment, thanks to your innovation, to your advantageous organization of your production compared to local peers? The function of our innovative products also is not just to conquer market share from existing competitors, but also from competitors threatening to substitute our technologies.
That is, substituting our own technologies by new technologies, and this offers us new potential. I don't know whether it's the case in this area, but it's certainly our intention. This is what we're accelerating in, particularly now. Sebastian Vogel then of UBS: What share of your sales comes from the service business? Mr. Karolyi could answer this.
We've further extended our concept, as explained earlier. We now have more than 400 sorters running, which we also have in our maintenance. We've certainly been able to extend market share here and increase our service business. Moreover, we've developed concepts as to how to also go into spare parts management and become better, and obviously, we'll also look at maintenance and also retrofit as areas to be addressed now.
Thank you, Mr. Karolyi. Let me add, if I may, concerning the specific percentages, it's about 8%-10% at the moment, and in the long term or medium term, it will be 10%-20%. The next question now from Mr. Barile: Are there any problems in obtaining important electronic components? Let me pass on this question to Germany, to Mr. Strüwing.
Mr. Barile, thank you very much for that question. What I can tell you at the current point in time, and again, I'm referring to today's day, 20th March, I can tell you that we don't have that problems at the moment. What we are doing is taking paths to be flown to Europe and partially also into the U.S. I certainly am referring to the Corona crisis and its effects on China. At the moment, we are fully able to produce and also our suppliers are fully able to supply. We certainly hope it will stay that way, but we have installed an emergency warning system that we're monitoring on a daily basis, are in close contact with our suppliers.
Next question. It comes from Mr. Rotzer.
With three new plants going live in 2020, U.S., Germany, and China, could you please give us a CapEx update for 2020, 2021, 2022, split maintenance, and gross CapEx?
As I mentioned, it's about CHF 50 million-CHF 60 million for this year, and for 2022, it's CHF 40 million-CHF 50 million. Then we are returning as planned today. We're returning to the ordinary cycle of capital expenditure, which is at CHF 25 million-CHF 30 million. The difference compared to these CHF 25 million-CHF 30 million is due to this strategic spending. The rest is for maintaining the existing. One last question, which we also received.
This is also on the share of material. When you look at the P&L, you can see that the share of materials has really decreased. That is the gross margin. That's good news. On the other hand, it had some one-off effect in 2018 when the material share was much higher. This was due to this double-digit project from the U.S.
Although EBIT was good, there was above-average purchased material, and this, of course, pushed down the margin. In 2019, we didn't have this one-off effect anymore. This share is now lower. The last question which we received now, why the other cost in the profit and loss account under other expenditure, why was this reduced by about CHF four or CHF five million? Basically, there are two explanations for this. First, we didn't use certain external partners for innovation projects because we didn't have these innovation projects. This was certain costs which we didn't have. On the other hand, with IFRS 16, it's like this, that certain long-term liabilities due to rental agreements are no longer reflected as costs worldwide, but are reflected on the balance sheet.
This is also the CHF 6 million-CHF 8 million of long-term liabilities, which you see on the balance sheet without really reducing this liquidity of CHF 83 million. It was deducted from this. We had cash of CHF 83 million, and we deducted the CHF 7 million. The net liquidity was then CHF 77 million because these long-term liabilities from rentals, 90% of it is from rental agreements, is now reflected on the balance sheet. The cost then, some of it will be reflected as depreciation and the other part as interest. We have now received one last question from Mr. Likwa from Vontobel.
Can you provide details on the new market, like tire industry or fashion clothing? Do you see any new markets that you want to develop?
Let me pass on this question to Mr. Karolyi.
Thank you, Mr. Likwa. Yes, indeed. We've been able to clearly increase our business in the tire industry. There were large projects in the previous year and also the year before. We've already identified some very interesting projects for this year. That's quite a success. Although the automotive industry isn't doing all that well, but still, we all need to buy tires for our cars. Secondly, fashion, clothing. Fashion and especially e-commerce in this respect and the e-commerce segment, that is also something in which we have grown quite strongly and will continue to grow strongly because obviously we'll be seeing people changing their behavior. They'd rather shop on the internet at the moment because they can't go into the shops.
We believe that that will continue to be the case in the future, and there'll be less brick and mortar retail trading rather than online retail. If you're asking whether we also want to venture into new segments and invest into new segments, then I can maybe answer it in this way. We continue to very closely look at the topic of food and want to continue to invest here in the future. At the current point in time, we are seeing that hygiene issues are of very high importance, and Interroll, not just with the drum motor, but also other things, can certainly achieve quite something.
Thank you, Mr. Karolyi. Let me add, the interfaces between production and logistics are becoming more and more blurred. There are bigger potentials here. In production logistics, we'll also be doing things, and we'll tell you more about this next year at the next press conference. Ladies and gentlemen, I would like to close this year's analyst conference. We would like to thank you very much for the interest you're taking in Interroll at these turbulent times.
You can see that we are able to communicate with each other in this virtual format, so you can see progress in this event on virtualization. Although we're at different places, it's still working. I would like to thank you, and hopefully we will be available again in person to discuss questions over a coffee or an aperitif with you at Zurich.
All the best to you, and have a nice weekend.