[Foreign language]
Ladies and gentlemen, 2024 was not an ordinary year for the world. The inflationary environment continued, while conflicts and geopolitical instability created even more uncertainty. This context had an impact on consumer confidence on a global scale. Dear shareholders, 2024 was also a year like no other for Nestlé. This has impacted you as well. You felt the effects of it, and we care deeply about this. As we saw Nestlé's growth engine lose some pace last year, something precious to us has suffered, namely your trust. We recognize that trust is fragile, it's hard to earn, and so easily lost. We are determined to earn it back fully.
Dear shareholders, Nestlé's Board of Directors is responsible for the strategy of our company, and it is fully engaged in reviewing, refining, and overseeing the strategic direction of your company, the alignment and efficient execution behind it, and, moreover, in taking decisive action on measures whenever necessary. Last year, the board took one of the most important decisions a board can take. It decided to nominate a new CEO, Laurent Freixe. I'd like to take this opportunity to thank Mark Schneider for the years he spent with Nestlé. Laurent is the right leader at the right time. With almost 40 years of experience at Nestlé and in our industry, he knows our company inside out. He knows its culture, our values, and our people. He knows what works now and what is needed for our future. He embraces new opportunities, and he knows how to align and motivate the organization.
Laurent is all about performing today while we transform to ensure our long-term success. Together, we're working hard to reinforce and consolidate our reputation as a dependable, reliable company that consistently creates value for all stakeholders. Since his appointment, Laurent and his executive team have moved quickly to align and refocus the organization. They've developed a strong plan, and they've already taken decisive actions to accelerate our growth. All these actions are anchored in the Nestlé Virtuous Circle, and Laurent will tell you more about this later on. I'm happy to say, and you may have noticed it yourselves, that for several months now, we've seen promising signs linked to these actions. As I've already said on other occasions, we are going forward to basics. We're moving ahead with the emphasis on moving forward, going ahead, moving forwards.
The basics is the engine that has always driven Nestlé: a good strategy, our people, our brands, our innovation, our execution. It's about playing to our strengths. Forward to basics, above all, is about focusing on the future, being open, being agile and curious and enthusiastic to embrace new opportunities as they arise. Dear shareholders, Nestlé's 2024 performance was robust and in line with our latest guidance. We delivered this in a challenging microeconomic context and a soft consumer environment. Our CEO will comment on these 2024 results in greater detail in a few moments. At this point, I would like to express my warm thanks to the entire executive board and all Nestlé employees around the world for their commitment and tireless work. Based on these results, the board of directors today proposes to you a dividend of CHF 3.05 per share.
This represents an increase of CHF 0.05 compared to last year. Nestlé remains committed to the long-held practice of increasing the dividend in Swiss francs every year. If today's proposal is approved, Nestlé will have maintained or increased the dividend in Swiss francs over the last 65 years, including the last 29 years where there was a consecutive increase in dividend. Ladies and gentlemen, with our people, with our global presence and our strong portfolio of iconic brands, our focus on consumers, and our research and development capabilities, we are confident in our ability to unlock growth through our Nutrition, Health, and Wellness Strategy, combined with our Creating Shared Value approach to business. We are the Good Food, Good Life company. Nutrition has always been our raison d'être.
It's always been the driving force at Nestlé, from Henri Nestlé's infant cereal almost 160 years ago right up to the present day. Across the communities that we're part of, the need for nutritious, high-quality, accessible, convenient, and affordable foods remains as relevant today as ever. It's a need that plays to our strengths and projects us forward. We are unique in this sense because there's no other company that offers products and services for every phase, every moment of life, for every moment of the day, and this all around the world. In that respect, we are pretty unique. Our ambition is to help billions of people to enjoy tasty and balanced diets. Thanks to our extensive research and development and innovation, we are ideally placed to respond to the needs of today and also to the evolving needs of the future.
In today's world, with the rising obesity rates, undernourishment, and food scarcity affecting millions of children and adults worldwide, it is more important than ever to widen access to balanced and affordable nutrition in full transparency and to create sustainable and resilient food systems. We will continue to play our role in helping to address these challenges. We have been and will continue to be part of the solution by, first of all, leveraging our scientific and nutritional expertise, our manufacturing excellence, and our strong supply chain experience, and also by using high-quality ingredients and offering a wide choice of safe and affordable, convenient, and tasty food all year round. Yes, we are all about Nutrition, Health, and Wellness. We are also the company that creates shared value, that wants to be a force for good.
It is our conviction that a company should create value for all its stakeholders, for you, our shareholders, as well as for society at large. This is deeply embedded in our company, and it's been our way of doing business ever since our company was founded all those years ago. In today's ever-changing world, a world which is unfortunately also increasingly polarized, the role of a company like Nestlé is even more important. Our steady and reliable presence spans right across the globe. We focus on feeding and nourishing people and pets, and we produce locally in partnership with local communities. We understand the significance of being there, even and especially in challenging times. We are a global company, but we firmly believe in our responsibility to serve local communities and local customers, local consumers, local communities. This commitment fosters trust, and it creates lasting connections.
With a presence in 185 countries and over a billion products sold each day, we take great pride in the positive impact we're making globally. Allow me perhaps to share a few examples with you. We continue to reformulate our products all the time and to enrich them with micronutrients such as iron, vitamin A, iodine, and zinc. In 2024, we provided around 200 billion servings of micronutrient-fortified foods and beverages, addressing nutritional needs of all kinds. Because we care for the environment, we continue to make strong progress in reducing our absolute greenhouse gas emissions within our supply chain. We reduce our net greenhouse gas emissions by over 20% compared to 2018. With the challenges food systems are facing, and we're completely aware of that, we continue to foster regenerative agriculture practices.
Already more than 21% of our raw materials are sourced from farmers who adopt such regenerative agriculture practices. There is so much more. These examples represent only a fraction of our global impact. You can find further details in our extensive non-financial statement, which you will be voting on later on today. With the publication of this document, we continue our tradition of transparency in accordance with Swiss law and also already in anticipation of the future requirements which will come in with the European Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive. Moreover, I also have the pleasure of presenting to you the Creating Shared Value at Nestlé 2024 document. It is a document which concretely, but in a simple way, with examples, stories, and testimonials, shows how our Creating Shared Value approach to business is coming to life around the world. I hope you will find this publication useful, informative, and inspiring.
Before concluding, I would like to address the membership or the composition of our board of directors. Over the years, we have been continuing to strengthen our board by adding new independent directors who bring diverse experience and skill sets which are directly relevant to Nestlé. These areas include, for instance, fast-moving consumer goods, marketing, digitalization, food systems, sustainability, geopolitics, and of course, also financial and operational expertise. On September 1, 2024, Laurent Freixe was nominated CEO of the Nestlé Group, and today we are proposing to elect him to the board. Under Nestlé's governance model, the board delegates the operational management of the company to one of its members, the so-called administrateur délégué. This ensures the CEO's complete strategic alignment with the board, and it gives him full authority.
The board of directors we are proposing that you elect and re-elect today is well equipped to guide Nestlé towards a successful future. It's a board of directors that possesses the expertise and experience needed. It's a board with the ability to write the right questions at the right time, considering all perspectives of our industry and society. It's a board of directors that will ensure the right strategic direction and structure to keep our company healthy now and in the future. Distinguished shareholders, let me close now by repeating what I said at the beginning. We're working tirelessly to reinforce our reputation as a dependable, reliable company that consistently creates value for all stakeholders. We will do this because we have a relevant and compelling strategy, Nutrition, Health, and Wellness. We have unmatched strengths, products and products and portfolio, iconic brands, global presence, local knowledge, and in-market capabilities.
We also have the R&D expertise required to develop the products that our customers want and that meet their needs. We also have, above all and most importantly, the people committed and passionate. As a company, we all have the willingness, the determination, and the agility to succeed, looking for new opportunities and permanently challenging ourselves. On behalf of the board of directors, Nestlé's executive management, and all employees around the world, I thank you for your trust and ongoing support. Together, we will continue to build a sustainable and successful future for Nestlé. I would now like to invite our CEO, Laurent Freixe, to share more details about our performance in 2024, as well as on our plan to accelerate growth. Thank you for your attention. Thank you. Laurent.
[Foreign language]
Thank you, Paul. Chers actionnaires, mesdames et messieurs. Shareholders, ladies and gentlemen.
Thank you for coming here today. Également la bienvenue à tous ceux. I would also like to warmly welcome all of you following us on the live stream. Paul has already touched on Nestlé's many strengths. Allow me once again to emphasize what has contributed to our company's success over almost 160 years. We have iconic brands and products. We have an unmatched global presence. We have a deep understanding of the locations where we operate. We are simultaneously the most global and the most local company that there is. We have leading innovation and execution capabilities, and most importantly, we have the commitment of our employees at every level of the company. It's absolutely exceptional, and it fills me with pride every day. Thank you.
As I address you for the first time, dear shareholders, I would like to say how honored I am to lead our great company. It's a tremendous privilege for me. Je suis cependant conscient. I am aware, however, of the magnitude of the task ahead of us. Nestlé has faced challenges in recent years, and trust in our company has suffered as a result. We are determined to regain this trust and to once again become the benchmark in our industry. That's what I'd like to talk to you about today. I want to tell you about our plan of action to speed up our performance and our transformation. We have a plan, we have the resources we need, and we have the teams to implement the plan. Before we get into the details of the action plan, let me quickly review 2024.
The macroeconomic climate was a tough one. Inflation did normalize, but food prices remained high. Geopolitical tensions grew, and in this environment, we saw consumer demand dropping off. Last October, we revised our guidance for 2024 to a more realistic level. Since then, we have met and even slightly exceeded expectations, achieving organic growth of 2.2% for the year as a whole, with a marked acceleration in the final quarter of the year. I'd like to highlight the fact that Real Internal Growth, in other words, the growth in the volume and mix of our sales, returned to positive territory last year, with a noticeable improvement in the second half of the year. The Underlying Trading Operating Profit margin was in line with our latest guidance, reflecting an increase in raw material costs, which part of the industry is currently facing, as well as our investments in growth drivers.
Our free cash flow also improved. Overall, our financial performance was solid given the environment in which we were operating. Thanks to the hard work and the commitment of our teams, we were able to return to positive momentum, and we intend to build on that in 2025. I'd like to thank all my colleagues at Nestlé for their unwavering support and for the decisive contribution that they make to our results. Over the past few months, we've taken a number of measures to accelerate our growth while continuing our transformation. We've acted swiftly. To start with, we've simplified and restructured our organization, moving from five zones to three zones and streamlining our executive board as well as rejuvenating it. The CEO of Nespresso has joined the group's executive board, and we have also brought IT and digitization, as well as strategy and sustainability, directly under my responsibility.
Having these departments report to me ensures that I am able to better control the levers of our performance and transformation, to take decisions faster and to more effectively drive our global initiatives. Furthermore, we've created a standalone global division for Nestlé Waters. This will allow us to take full advantage of our iconic brands, such as San Pellegrino and Perrier, and to develop a new partnership for the future. We have extensively communicated our strategy internally, placing the focus on Nestlé's Virtuous Circle. This Virtuous Circle model allows us to strengthen our investment policy with the aim of accelerating growth. We are generating the resources required for this strategy through major initiatives aimed at increasing productivity and reducing costs. Last November, we announced a new three-year CHF 2.5 billion cost savings program. By the end of 2025, our goal is to have saved CHF 700 million.
This program is well underway, and we will be communicating regularly on its progress. The bulk of our efficiency gains come from our supply chain. We are leveraging our critical mass and using technology and artificial intelligence to optimize our purchasing. Our digital transformation is crucial as well. By utilizing the most advanced technologies, we can become more agile and improve our performance. We see the impact of new technologies at all the stages of our value chain, from real-time analysis of consumer expectations to research and development, planning, supply chain, and, of course, the generation of demand. To implement these technologies and achieve this level of efficiency on a global scale, we will be investing decisively in an ambitious program. We intend to act with an enhanced sense of urgency to accelerate Nestlé. It's vital that we do this right now and that we do it aggressively.
With this in mind, we've defined three pillars of growth: developing our core business, deploying innovative products with strong potential, and seizing future opportunities. First of all, it's essential for us to invest in our core business and not to allow ourselves to get distracted by non-essential activities. We are investing in our highest-performing and most profitable brands. We're looking to expand them to new regions and into new geographies while trying out new formats and new offerings, which we think will be popular with our consumers. We're also intensifying our communication around our iconic brands by increasing our advertising and marketing spend. Our goal is to reach 9% of sales at a steady pace by the end of 2025, a significant increase compared to the current level of 8.1%. KitKat is a good example here. It's one of our best-known worldwide brands with a strong potential for growth.
We're committed to promoting its expansion by partnering, for example, with Formula 1, a spectacular high-profile global event where people naturally want to have a break, have a KitKat . When it comes to rolling out innovative new products, we are focusing on those where we see growth. It is more than CHF 100 million in annual sales. Our guiding principle here is fewer but bigger and better launches. We refer to these areas of investment as our big bets. Our Nescafé Espresso Concentrate is one of them, and it is capitalizing on the iced coffee trend, which is driven by younger generations around the world. We recently launched this new product in Australia, China, the USA, Japan, and the United Kingdom, and other European markets will follow soon. Another good example is our pyramid-shaped wet cat food under the brand names Purina Gourmet and Fancy Feast.
This innovation is particularly popular with cats who, as we know, are particularly exacting consumers. Our third area of investment is in the future of nutrition. Consumers' needs are changing. Areas of healthy longevity, women's health, weight management, and affordable, high-quality nutrition are growing in importance and will offer significant opportunities for us in the future. With our scientific knowledge and the offering that we have for every stage of life, from birth to old age, Nestlé can effectively address these trends. Ladies and gentlemen, dear shareholders, Nestlé is uniquely positioned to play a key role in the lives of our consumers globally and at all stages of their lives. Nestlé has the ability to help solve the major challenges facing our planet, from climate change and food security to the transformation of agriculture towards regenerative practices.
Our shared value creation model and our long-term focus make us the major player and the leader in our industry. We have a strategic framework guiding our actions. That is the Virtuous Circle, which supports our investment policy to accelerate Nestlé, our performance, and our transformation. We have clear goals, and we have the support of our employees. We have the privilege of being able to rely on the best talent, on an outstanding portfolio of brands, top-quality products, as well as unparalleled research and development capabilities, many of which are based in Switzerland, particularly in Lausanne. We have a global presence coupled with extensive local expertise. We can capitalize on a historic legacy that has made us the foremost company in our sector.
We act decisively in the present to build a bright future driven by our talented people, our brands, our capacity for innovation, technology, and sustainability in order to be the global benchmark, the engine of our industry, at the service of our consumers and customers. Thank you, shareholders, for your attention, and thank you for your support.