Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us this morning, and a warm welcome to Nestlé's full year results press conference. With me here today are Mark Schneider, our CEO, and François-Xavier Roger, our CFO. Before we get started, let me remind you of a couple housekeeping items. You're now all placed on mute. There will be a Q&A session after the presentations. Now, please take a moment to read the following important disclaimer. Thank you. With that, let me hand over to Mark.
Thank you, Christoph, and a warm welcome to our full year press conference participants. As always, we do appreciate your interest in our company. It's a good opportunity to update you on all the many actions that it took during a very turbulent and demanding year. I'm all the more pleased to tell you that in a year that saw lots of surprises and lots of challenges, Nestlé, one more time, with its team, proved its dependability and resilience in the face of significant volatility. Let's look at some of the key messages specifically. You're seeing the resilient financial performance with strong organic growth maintained from the year 2021. The nature of that growth has changed. In 2021 it was more volume and mix led. Now in the year 2022, obviously in the face of inflation, it was more pricing led.
Nonetheless, very positive news that we came out ever so slightly with a positive RIG, or real internal growth, which is the sum of volume and mix. That's important to us. Our underlying trading operating profit margin decreased by 30 basis points to 17.1%. That should not come as a surprise. I think we've been guiding towards that all throughout the year in the face of the significant inflation and some of the economic uncertainty that we saw. Nonetheless, given the strong impact of inflation on our gross margin, I believe you're seeing here significant internal efforts that helped us to reduce the impact by only 30 basis points then to the bottom line.
Clearly, in the face of a gross margin decline that was 260 basis points, limiting then the decline on the Underlying Trading Operating Profit Margin to an amount of 30 basis points was a significant achievement. In line with that, you're seeing that our Underlying Earnings Per Share growth was 9.4% in constant currency. This is when you compare it to the kind of range that we've given out at our Barcelona Investor Day last fall, this is a range of 6%-10%, it is towards the upper end of that range. Significant achievement at a very turbulent and demanding time. We did not neglect in that year to build for the long term.
Clearly the key investment areas of CapEx, innovation, and sustainability continued unabated, that's important because we run the company for long term, we want to be well positioned not only for this year, but also for many years to come. As part of that, as you know, portfolio rotation is a key item in our strategy, we're now at about 22% of portfolio rotation compared to the starting point in 2017. The portfolio rotation towards items that are in better demand, higher growth, higher margin items does continue. We made continued progress on our Good For You, Good For the Planet agenda. This is our label for all the aspects, all the initiatives we have underway.
Good for You, about a better nutrition, healthy and tasty diets. Good for the Planet, and that is significantly reducing the eco footprint of our activities. Significant investments underway. I'll update you on some of the progress that we've made during the past year. At a time when so much effort was on inflation and affordability, we did not step away and take a shortcut on these two longer term initiatives, but rather continue dutifully along our path and our long-term strategies in those areas. The whole thing translates also in a good dividend per share of CHF 2.95. We're sharing the benefits of our economic results with our shareholders. This is an increase of CHF 0.15.
It's the 28th consecutive year of dividend increases and the 63rd consecutive year where the dividend has been either stable or increasing. Before I move on to the more specific review of the year, let me also take a moment to specifically thank and call out our Nestlé employees and associates around the world. This has been a very, very, very demanding year, and I'm very proud of what our employees and associates around the world have done to counter the significant challenges that we've seen in so many ways. The team has stayed focused on solid operating management. When you have turbulent times, this is what comes first. Over and above high-flying strategic thoughts, solid day-to-day operating management, keeping focused on that took center stage, and I think the team has done very well on that.
You've seen countless situations where we stepped over and above that and provided first aid help and first situation, first line help on the ground in situations that demanded our efforts, be that the food and beverage help and the support of our people on the ground in Ukraine, or be it the frontline help that we've seen towards the end of the year in flood-torn Pakistan. I think both on the business side and also the social agenda, tremendous efforts from our team. Very proud of what you've done. Team Nestlé, you have every reason to be proud of yourself. With that, let me turn to the year 2022 achievements in particular. You're seeing here some categories and regions and channels that we would like to call out.
Clearly, PetCare does stand out with continued very strong growth, double-digit. As you know, this is on the back of very successful years ever since the pandemic began. We're seeing the category of PetCare going from strength to strength, which is very reassuring. Coffee, nonetheless, one of our other very, very high-flying categories, absolutely resilient with an 8.1% organic growth. Remember, this was the year when you saw a post-COVID normalization in many of the markets that we're serving, it would have been absolutely normal to expect that some of the growth comes down. Nonetheless, I think with an 8.1% organic growth, we've proven the resilience of this very important category for us.
I would also like to call out the continued strong success of our Starbucks partnership, the Global Coffee Alliance, where we've been able to generate an additional incremental CHF 1.5 billion in sales since 2018. Emerging markets proved to be very resilient in this turbulent year, +10%. There we've seen not only appropriate pricing but also continued good development in volume and mix. Out-of-home channels, I believe, they benefited certainly for the first 9 months from the continued normalization that we've seen in this post-COVID world in many markets, double-digit growth, and also above 2019 levels now for the full year. When you look at the fourth quarter specifically, I think there were some impacts, in particular from China and the COVID outbreak there.
Nonetheless, even for the full year, we're seeing a very, very significant performance. In the year, we also made progress when it comes to fixing underperforming businesses. The most notable one I would like to call out is China, where I think in infant nutrition, we've done exactly what we told you we were gonna do, and that is take a very detailed look at our operations there, and in particular, at our distribution system, distribution channels. I think within a year, that resulted in very significant improvements in the face of nonetheless very low birth rates in that market. It shows you that when we focus on a business, I think we can truly bring tremendous operational improvements to it. This one, of course, is significant because China remains the largest infant formula market in the world.
We were also systematically addressing low-margin businesses. We streamlined our SKU portfolio around the world. More on that later, because I think from something that was very much initiated due to supply chain limitations, we've now blown this up into a full-scale strategy that is giving us significant organic growth prospects. On portfolio management, two key items. One is the focus of Nestlé Health Science on consumer care and medical nutrition. We did share with our investors at the Barcelona Investor Day late November that our 2020 acquisition of Aimmune has not fully met its objectives, and we're exploring options for that business. Clearly the best prospects for Nestlé Health Science going forward can be found in our long-standing medical nutrition business and also consumer care, which comprises two subsegments.
One is vitamins, minerals, and supplements. The other one is called active nutrition. Both of those continue to perform well. In food, we've created a new business-to-business fresh food platform based on our Freshly business, which we also acquired in 2020. We merged that business with a different company called Kettle Cuisine. We're addressing here the very important North American need at a time of labor shortages. That is to supply centrally made fresh food products to all the food service operators that do have staffing issues out at the places that they serve. They prefer to actually do business with a company like Kettle Cuisine and Freshly to have a high-performance, tasty, and balanced diet available for their customers, but a safe label with the food preparation on-site.
Before I move to the next 2 slides, which will focus on Nestlé's role in society, and in particular, Good for You, Good for the Planet, let me also take a moment due to the sad events of the past few days and talk about the devastating earthquake in Türkiye and Syria. We're all very saddened by this tragic news, and I'm glad to report that Team Nestlé and all of our team members in Türkiye are safe and that they're fully focused on doing what Nestlé stands for, and that is with its food and beverage items to help at moments like these and go over and above just the sheer scope of business. Within a few days, we started to work together with World Central Kitchen.
We started to work with the International Red Cross and Red Crescent, we're also bringing our own logistics capabilities and food supplies to the table to provide first aid. This goes over and above just writing checks. It's more about providing specific logistics support and help on the ground. I'm very glad that one more time here in this situation of need, Team Nestlé is rising to the challenge. It's a good example. These situations, sad as they are, will continue to occur, and it's good to see that Team Nestlé is there, not only to sell its food and beverage products, but also help at moments like these in the communities where we're present. Moving on to Good for You and the continued progress on our nutritional portfolio.
As you know, this builds on 25 years of our nutrition, health, and wellness strategy, where we were successful over the years in reducing sodium, sugar, and saturated fats in our diets. We realized, of course, that in addition to these important ongoing initiatives, we need to do more. One aspect that the public increasingly demanded was transparency. What we announced last fall, and we're putting it in place now in the next few weeks with our Creating Shared Value report, is a new initiative on transparency when it comes to our global portfolio.
To our knowledge, we're the first global major food company that will provide on its entire global portfolio a consistently applied Health Star Rating so that you can see what the entire global portfolio is made up of when it comes to the gradation of the Health Star Rating system. In addition to that, for 14 major markets that we're serving, we're doing the same on the national portfolio, and we're using for those, of course, the national rating systems that apply in those markets. We also upgraded our responsible marketing initiatives, and we implemented and announced the market initiatives that will come in place this year that will go from 0 to 16. Here again, we're among the industry-leading companies when it comes to the age brackets that fall under this new policy and guideline. We don't stop there.
We have work to do for this year, and one of the initiatives for this year is to work on a specific target for the future size of our plant-based product portfolio. Plant-based is an area, whether you look at food or beverage, that holds tremendous promise for us. We've seen continued and sustainable success in it. We believe it's one of the best areas and one of the best initiatives to square the public's demand for a healthy diet with also a lesser eco-footprint. We believe it's time, after we've seen now this business develop successfully for a number of years, to develop and publish a specific target that we're working towards.
We are also, in the interest of continued transparency, are working on a target globally for how we would like to increase the share of our products that are rated 3.5 or above in the Health Star Rating system. This is the one that would be deemed to be healthy under the Health Star Rating system. There also, later in the year, we're publishing a specific sales number that we are attempting for future years. Overall, we are not stopping there. I think under the responsible marketing set of initiatives, in addition to the guidelines that we published last fall and implementing those this year, we will also unveil further initiatives that help consumers make the right choices when it comes to healthy and tasty diets.
With this, I would like to move on to the Good for the Planet section. There I would like to focus on the continued progress we have seen with greenhouse gas reduction. Last year, I told you that peak carbon is already behind us. We see that as a significant achievement that only a few companies have graduated to. This year, we can take it one step further, that is that our greenhouse gas emissions are now below the level of our starting point in 2018. 2018 was the starting point of our net zero roadmap, the one that we had developed in line with the Science Based Targets initiative. As you know, somewhere in the timeframe 2019, 2020, we had seen peak carbon.
We're beyond that. Now we are below the 2018 levels, and we are on track and on our way towards the -20% intermediate target that we have called out for the year 2025. We will stand specifically in the year 2023 to benefit from some of the early steps that we have put in place that will give us continued greenhouse gas reductions. As you know, some of these initiatives, for example, when you think about planting trees in our supply chain, in our farming operations, those have lead times. When you plant, you have to wait for 2 years till you can start to count the greenhouse gas reductions of that specific tree. We've done a lot of groundwork over the past few years and stand to benefit from that now in the years 2023, 2024, and 2025.
We're on track on this very important initiative, and I think looking back at the year 2022, which was not only one of the hottest years in history, but also saw a significant amount of freak weather patterns in all parts of the world, the whole need and the notion of climate protection and addressing that at the greenhouse gas emission situation has become more apparent and more open to many of us. Let's look for a moment at the key focus areas for 2023. Let me start on purpose, not at the top, but with the operational side because in a time that continues to be very volatile, let me also very clearly tell you that solid, good operational management eats strategy for breakfast every single day.
Clearly, this is what Team Nestlé is focused on right now. We are working very hard on protecting our volume growth, which is an important driver of long-term market shares and the growth of the company. We're working on continued cost efficiencies in order to shield our consumers around the world from the impact of inflation. Of course, after tactically adjusting our market, marketing expenses here and there in the face of supply chain constraints, it's important over time now to step up these marketing investments again. Coming to the strategic side, we will continue and accelerate, in fact, our portfolio optimization. We will drive and continue to drive fast, relevant, and impactful innovation, which to us is the driver of our mix component of Real Internal Growth.
Mix is an area that we have a lot under our control, whereas some of the other factors are more influenced by outside influences. Of course, we will continue to lead on climate sustainability and nutrition agendas, and that what we told you on the earlier slides. From a financial point of view, François-Xavier Roger will go into that in more detail. Clearly, restoring our gross margin and improving the cash flow generation after a deliberate attempt here to improve the supply chain stability and work with high inventory levels will be key priorities for 2023.
With this, I would like to spend a moment on a major initiative that we started to unveil as part of our Q3 conference call and that we also elaborated on as part of our Barcelona Investor Day at the end of November. This is our portfolio optimization and in particular SKU optimization that we run under Project Tasty here in this company. Originally, this initiative was born about a year ago under the impact of some of the supply chain constraints that we saw around the world. When you had these constraints, we were forced to think about where we channel and focus our resources to be sure that we serve our consumers and retail partners the best way. That led to this whole notion of SKU rationalization. We labeled this, cutting the tail to push the head.
Basically cutting out some of the less wanted, less favorable, and lower rotation products in favor of products that were in strong consumer demand and saw high rotation on shelf. That project has given us tremendous benefits. It helped us certainly navigate the era of supply chain constraints very well. Once we went into it, we also saw that over and above what we were doing there tactically to navigate the supply chain situation, there is promise in there to drive longer term growth and profitability. It's a win-win-win situation. It gives consumers the products they want. It gives retailers the products that are high rotation and makes their shelf really efficient.
It gives us the products in which we can, with more simplicity and in a leaner way, focus our supply chain and focus our efforts, and that gives us better growth and better profitability over time. That project was significantly scaled up even during the fourth quarter, and we will continue to scale it up during this year and also go beyond SKUs to brands, segments, and entire geographies. You're seeing some examples here of what we mean, and one of the items refers, in fact, to an announcement we made a few weeks ago, early now in 2023, and that's the frozen food business in Canada. Here is a business that was served without its own local manufacturing from the United States.
Import requirements and currency made it a very difficult proposition. We announced that we would be, in a responsible way, of course, and in line with our partners, unwinding this business over the next two years. It's a book of business of about CHF 150 million. Because it didn't have its own manufacturing, it was not a business that was separately sellable. You see here our willingness to walk away from business because we are eyeing, at the end of the day, longer term benefits on our own growth and our own profitability, and that makes it a very worthwhile business proposition. As we go through the year, you'll see more of these examples.
We believe that this exercise, while it was started by supply chain constraints, clearly is one that we hadn't done for a long time and hence a long tail had been building up. Hence we believe that there's continued good upside coming from it. As I look around, some of our peers are now engaging in similar exercises. I think we're onto something very, very valuable that is gonna be, as I mentioned, a win-win-win for consumers, for retailers, and for us as well. With this, let me turn to the 2023 guidance. I think we're seeing for the year continued strong development of the business. Organic sales growth in the range of 6%-8%.
This continues to be led by pricing in a world that still needs some catching up when it comes to repairing our gross margin. Underlying trading operating profit margin is expected to be between 17 and 17.5%. That also is in line with what we laid out in Barcelona to our investors last year, where we see a gradual repairing of our underlying trading operating profit margin towards the year 2025 and the original band that we set out a few years ago of 17.5% to 18.5%. That combination of sales growth development and underlying trading operating profit margin should add up then to an underlying earnings per share growth situation in constant currency of between 6 and 10%.
Also within that corridor that we laid out in Barcelona. Needless to say then that we also fully confirm these 2025 intermediate targets that we had laid out at that time in November. With that, I think we're starting the year with strong prospects for the year 2023, but also confirming fully our outlook for the next two years. This concludes my prepared remarks. Let me turn it over to our CFO, François-Xavier Roger.
Thank you, Mark, good morning to all. Let me start with some of the key highlights for 2022. In a year shaped by volatile macroeconomic and geopolitical events, we delivered resilient financial results. As you can see from the chart, organic growth was strong at 8.3%. Our underlying trading operating profit margin, while slightly down versus 2021, continued to be resilient at 17.1% in the context of significant input cost inflation. Underlying earnings per share growth was robust, increasing by 9.4% in constant currency to CHF 4.84. Next, let us look at the breakdown of our sales growth components. Organic growth was 8.3%. Pricing increased to 8.2%, reflecting significant cost inflation.
RIG was positive at 0.1% following a high base of comparison in 2021, supply constraints, and portfolio optimization actions. Net acquisition increased sales by 1.1%, largely related to the acquisition of the core brands of The Bountiful Company, as well as Orgain. Foreign exchange decreased sales by 0.9%, turning negative in the second half. Total reported sales reached CHF 94.4 billion, an 8.4% increase versus last year. These slides illustrate the development of our sales by geography and includes both our zones as well as our globally managed businesses. As you can see, our business is geographically diverse. We operate in 186 countries, and we maintain a global footprint. North America is our largest region in terms of sales.
Organic growth was positive in all geographies, with particular strength in the Americas. North America reported close to 10% organic growth, building on strong sales development in 2021, while Latin America saw continued double-digit growth. Growth in Asia, Oceania, and Africa reached a high single-digit rate. Europe posted mid-single digit growth in a challenging economic environment. Greater China recorded resilient mid-single digit growth in the context of the pandemic and in the context of limited inflation. Turning to the distribution of growth between developed and emerging markets, organic growth in developed market was 7.1%, in line with the level of 2021. Growth in emerging markets reached 10%, driven by Latin America, Africa, and South Asia, with continued momentum for affordable offerings. Turning next to the breakdown of sales by channel, organic growth for retail sales remained robust at 7.2%.
Within retail, e-commerce sales grew by 9.2% and now accounts for 15.8% of Nestlé's total sales, up 150 basis points versus the prior year. Growth was broad-based across geographies and categories, with particular strengths for North America and Pet Care. Organic growth for out-of-home channels was 23.5%. While sales of our out-of-home business now exceeds 2019 levels, growth decelerated throughout the year and moderated to a mid-single digit rate in the fourth quarter. This trend reflects a normalization of consumer demand post-pandemic. Let's now look at product categories. As the chart shows, organic growth was positive across all categories in 2022, demonstrating the relevance of our diversified portfolio in fast changing trading conditions.
As you can see, our largest category is powdered and liquid beverages, which accounts for more than a quarter of our total sales. Coffee, the largest component of this category, posted high single-digit growth, supported by a strong recovery of out-of-home channels. Within coffee, sales of Starbucks products grew by 12.9% to reach CHF 3.6 billion, meaning that we have generated an additional CHF 1.5 billion of incremental sales compared with 2018. PetCare, our second biggest category, was the largest contributor to growth, driven by strong momentum for science-based on premium brands, as well as continued robust e-commerce growth. Nutrition and health science posted 7.4% growth. Nestlé Health Science saw mid-single digit growth over a high base, with two consecutive years of strong double-digit growth during the pandemic.
Growth in Nestlé Health Science was supported by innovation, by geographic expansion, and by market share gains. Our infant nutrition business reported 10.1% organic growth with a strong recovery and market share gains across most geographies, particularly China. Infant formula growth was supported by continued robust demand for human milk oligosaccharide products, which grew at a double-digit rate, with sales reaching CHF 1.3 billion in the fourth year of marketing. Prepared dishes and cooking aids saw 3.1% growth, driven by strong sales development for ambient culinary, particularly MAGGI, in Zone AOA. Vegetarian and plant-based food products posted mid-single digit growth led by Garden Gourmet. Milk products and ice cream recorded 5.4% growth. The key growth contributors were coffee creamers, affordable fortified milks, and home baking products.
Growth in confectionery reached 9.4%, reflecting strong demand for KitKat, seasonal products, and key local brands. Sales in water grew by 11% despite temporary capacity constraints for Perrier in the fourth quarter. This capacity reduction follows our recent decision to upgrade our Perrier production facility. Underlying trading operating profit, which increased by 6.5% in CHF. As a percentage of sales, it decreased by 30 basis points to 17.1% on a reported basis. Our gross profit margin decreased by 260 basis points to 45.2% as significant input cost inflation more than offset a step-up in pricing and realized savings. In the second half, we saw a further gross margin decrease as inflation was higher than we anticipated in the summer, primarily due to energy as well as labor cost.
Distribution cost as a percentage of sales decreased by 20 basis points, mainly as a result of the disposal of the Nestlé Waters brands in North America. Marketing, administration, and R&D expenses as a percentage of sales decreased by 210 basis points, supported by sales growth leverage and disciplined cost control. Overall, sustainability investments, which are mainly recorded in cost of goods sold, were around CHF 700 million. Our cash generated from operations before changes in working capital remained solid and dependable at around 20% over the last 6 years. Free cash flow decreased from CHF 8.7 billion to CHF 6.6 billion, reflecting our decision to temporarily increase inventory levels in the context of supply constraints, the energy crisis in Europe, as well as elevated capital expenditure.
As working capital and CapEx normalize, we should see an increase in free cash flow trending back towards 12% of sales by 2025, in line with our midterm financial targets. Finally, at this year's Annual General Meeting in April, the board of directors will propose a dividend of CHF 2.95 per share, an increase of CHF 0.15. If approved, this will be the company 28th consecutive annual dividend increase in line with our practice to increase our dividend in Swiss francs. The company has maintained or increased its dividend in Swiss francs over the last 63 years. This year's increase reinforce our commitment to return cash to shareholder, many of whom rely on the steady, reliable income earned through their investments in Nestlé. This concludes my presentation and now I hand over to Christoph, who will moderate our Q&A session.
Thank you, François. Now, let's move into the Q&A. If you wish to ask a question, please click on the yellow hand icon in the bottom toolbar of your screen. As soon as I call on you will be asked to unmute, so don't forget to unmute yourself. When your question is answered, then you will be placed on mute again. There's a first question I see from Dasha Afanasieva, Bloomberg. Dasha, please go ahead.
Hi, thanks very much for the presentation. I've got two questions. One is about the decline in the marketing and administrative costs of 2.6%. I was just wondering where that came from and how you'd answer the, you know, any concerns about there not being spent enough for marketing, because obviously now if the branded products are losing market share to supermarket brands, now is probably the time when marketing heavily is important. Just my second question is a bit more involved. Some of your competitors who are still operating in Russia have said things like if you know, basically if you do anything, you're just handing over your factories to the Russian state.
If you know, if you stop producing, if you try to sell anything, if you just are at, you know, make changes. Obviously Nestlé has stopped producing certain products in Russia. I wanted to ask you for a bit more color on what the cost of that has been, both financially and in terms of, sort of politically domestic in Russia. Has there been any blowback from the authorities from that? Have you had any problems 'cause you don't make confectionery in Russia anymore? That's assuming I understood those changes correctly. Thank you.
Good morning, Dasha. François speaking. Let me take the first question and Mark will take the second question. Indeed, we have reduced our marketing spend last year. This is not a major point of concern. First of all, we should not look at marketing on its own. That what I explained in our Capital Market Day in November in Barcelona. We always look at the combination of trade spend and marketing. At the end of the day, we can arbitrate in between these two lines. It happened that the total of trade spend on marketing did increase in absolute value last year. It doesn't mean that we disengage from marketing activities, not at all.
We decided to put a little bit more emphasis on trade spend because it's important in the context of today when affordability matters to consumer, to make sure that we are really accessible from a financial point of view for many consumers. We reduced a bit our marketing spend, on the other hand. This came primarily because we're facing some supply constraints during the year, more specifically for categories like PetCare and frozen food, for example, in the U.S. This is the reason why we adjusted our marketing spend. We already started to increase our trade spend in the second half of the year versus the first half, and we are really committed to increase significantly our marketing spend as well in 2023. In terms of market share, we did not really lose market share globally.
I think it has been relatively stable with more than 50% of business sales, as we call it. It's a mix of a category and a geography, gaining or holding market share last year. If we look more specifically at our billionaire brands, which account for 70% of our sales, we in 60%, almost 60% of the cases we did won market share or stabilize our market share.
Dasha, good morning. This is Mark. Referring to your question on Russia, I think we have done exactly what we announced late March last year. We have significantly reduced our number of SKUs in this market by about two-thirds, and we're focusing on basic and essential food and beverage products. Demand, of course, for food and beverage product is still very strong, and so it's not surprising that the shelves then with these basic and essential products are full, and that the volumes also have been increasing on some of these essential and basic brands as some of the others were discontinued.
While it's hard for me to comment specifically on where competitors are going, I think what we announced there, last March is very much in line with our values and the importance of food, which like medicine, as you know, is usually not covered by sanctions. I think the approach is very much in line.
The next question is from Stephen Wynne-Jones, European Supermarket Magazine. Go ahead, Stephen.
Thanks for the presentation. I've a question about the frozen foods business. Obviously, we wound it down in Canada. Why was that decision taken? There's some speculation this might pave the way for exiting frozen food in general. Maybe you could provide some color on some of the challenges Nestlé sees in frozen food.
Yeah, Stephen, fair question. As you saw from my slide on SKU rationalization and specifically calling out this 2023 item of the Canada exit, this is clearly a tactical move under this program. This is not a wider reflection on what we think about the frozen sector. As you know, from many of my comments in the past, we see value in the frozen sector. I think it's one of the best ways of preserving food and in a good way, bringing people a high value, a good nutritious offering if you use good ingredients, which is something we're committed to doing. We believe in that sector, having said that, like any other sector, like any other category, you have to be very targeted on where you have the best chance to win.
As I explained with that particular setup, which means no local manufacturing capacity in Canada and then the currency and import situation, we felt that it was better to withdraw from it. As mentioned, we do it in a gradual manner so that our retail partners and consumers can adjust. We will do that going forward to all categories, and that is we will have a very targeted review, SKU by SKU, brand by brand, where we have a good chance to win and what the size of the price is at the end of the day. This is not a reflection on the frozen category overall.
Next is Richa Naidu, Reuters.
Hi, good morning, and thanks for taking my question.
Good morning.
Thanks for the presentation. Real quick, I've got three questions. First off, how much of this year's 6%-8% organic growth do you expect to come from pricing, and how much do you expect to come from volume? My second question is, when it comes to pricing negotiations, what would you say the main differences are between the way European and U.S. retailers have been negotiating? My third question is also on Russia, because another big consumer company said last week that it might start considering a write-down on Russia, and I wonder if you have started thinking about the same. Thank you.
Richa, thanks for your questions. Maybe I'll take the first two and then hand you to Francois. Clearly for this year, while we believe that most of this growth is gonna be pricing-led, we are not providing a specific breakdown between the pricing and the Real Internal Growth. As you know, traditionally, we guide on organic growth. As much as we're trying to be helpful, I think at a turbulent time like this, to provide a specific breakdown then of organic growth into pricing and Real Internal Growth ahead of time is probably not incredible. The second part also regret not to be able to be very helpful here.
As you know, these dealings we have with our retail partners, that to me is a business-to-business dealing between the companies that are negotiating, and it would not be constructive to speculate about that in the media.
Sorry, Richa, I missed the third question. Could you say it again?
Write-downs. Write-downs in Russia.
sorry, it was about write-down in Russia. Yes. we did some impairment in Russia, which is essentially linked to.
Yes. So sorry. I was muted again. Yes, my third question was, another consumer company last week said that they might consider writing down their business in Russia. I was wondering if that was something you had considered as well.
Not to the full extent, but we did some adjustments and some impairments, last year for some asset that we are not using, and given the fact that we reduced our number of SKUs and the number of product that we use. This was a relatively limited amount, but we have no plans to write off our entire operations in Russia for the time being.
The next question is from Ivo Ruch, Finanz und Wirtschaft. Ivo Ruch.
Good morning. Thank you very much. My questions, the first two regarding the volume decline in Q3 and Q4. Do you think you did too much pricing there, or was this more the result of an overall deterioration in consumer spending? Can you give some concrete examples where you saw downtrading? The other topic is, can you mention the turnover from plant-based products in 2022?
Ivo, let me try and start, maybe François can chime in here on some of the examples of trading down. Overall, while it is tempting, of course, to create this push-pull relationship, like we're doing pricing and then the volumes go back. As we explained, what you saw in the second half is a number of other factors at work. Some of it was the deliberate plan as part of our Project Tasty to discontinue a number of SKUs, that plan was significantly ramped up during the fourth quarter. As François explained, we also saw the normalization in our out-of-home business, which had seen significant growth the first three quarters of 2022 as people in this post-COVID world in many markets flocked back to out-of-home environments.
Q4 over the Q4 of 2021 didn't offer the same growth prospects. As I had explained in my prepared remarks, we'd also been seeing the downturn in Q4 out-of-home consumption in China, where, of course, starting from November, you had seen that significant COVID outbreak. The third item that we'd flagged was the curtailed water supply in Perrier as part of the upgrading of the factory there. I think it was more like those items than a general reaction, push-pull reaction between pricing and the volumes. Obviously, everyone's volumes in this environment have suffered somewhat. I don't see it as such as a relation to pricing.
When you compare our pricing to our industry peers, I think it doesn't stand out as something that has been going above and beyond. As you see from the gross margin, we still have some repairing to do because the pricing done to date is not fully repairing the gross margin. For trading down, what comes to mind is a few dairy products particular in our zone, Asia, Oceania and Africa. I don't know, François, if you can think of some others.
No, indeed, Ivo, to complement what Mark said, if we look at it even historically, we had volume growth, which was around 1%. Exceptionally last year, it was in 2021, it was 3.7%. It was almost three times higher, the volume growth, than it used to be in the past. As a consequence of that, with a high base of comparison, we had a negative volume development in 2022. No specific concern because the high base of comparison combined with some supply chain issues is, in our opinion, the main reason why our volume went into a negative territories last year and even more so in Q4 last year.
But no real evidence of downtrading at this stage, even if there was a little bit of it for sure, but in the context of pricing, because we did material pricing last year at 8.2%, but no real clear evidence. In addition to that, as Mark said, we did some portfolio pruning. We gave some examples like, you know, some dairy products in the Middle East, some dairy products in Brazil as well. For example, we pruned as well our offering in direct-to-consumer operations in Japan, for example. Comes now this Canadian frozen food business as well. We are actively working in order to do the same across the entire organization, but no very clear evidence of downtrading. By the way, I can complement it as well.
If you look at downtrading, we can see it as well to a certain extent with our mix. If you look at our mix component, it has remained very, very stable over the last five years around 1.5%-2%, which is the evidence that we maintain a good capacity to innovate and to premiumize on our market, even during the difficult time that we experienced during COVID and with the inflationary times we go through today.
Regarding your second question on plant-based, for the plant-based food range, that is about 800 million CHF. As mentioned, we're seeing continued strong consumer interest, in particular in Europe and in particular for our Garden Gourmet product range.
Pearly Neo, Food Navigator Asia is next. Pearly, please go ahead.
Hi. Thanks, Christoph, and also thanks for the presentation, everyone. I do have three questions actually. The first one focuses on the Good for You initiatives. First of all, there was a Health Star Rating model mentioned, I believe. I'm wondering whether this is in relation to the one in Australia, New Zealand, or is it your own sort of rating? Secondly, I'd like to ask whether of the 14 markets mentioned that are, you know, set for piloting this, are there any APAC markets that will be involved? I guess the last one is I wanna ask, just confirm the emerging markets that were mentioned, where quite significant growth came from this year. Thank you.
Pearly, thank you. I'll try to be helpful, but I also don't want to front run some of the disclosures that are coming then with the full report in March. The Health Star Rating we have picked as a globally recognized rating that is also, for example, used by the Access to Nutrition Index. We felt that here's a rating system that is globally well-respected and understood. As we looked for the best one to pick for the global one, this clearly offered itself. Yes, there will be APAC markets included as well. Again, more details coming on that. On the third question, François?
Third question, Pearly. In emerging markets, we did well. We grew by 10% last year in 2022, with a very resilient business. We were very happy to see that actually innovation responded very well to consumers. Even our RIG was very resilient. Maybe with a slightly different composition between volume and mix, maybe a little bit less volume as in the past, as commented earlier, and a little bit more mix as well. We were very pleased to see that even in a context in emerging markets where affordability matters, in spite of the fact that we had to pass on price increases, our business has been very resilient across emerging markets.
The next question is from Hanna Ziady, CNN.
Hi there. Thanks so much for the presentation and taking my questions. Just to come back to pricing, Mark, I think you have really said this, perhaps not in so many words, but could you just be a bit more explicit about whether Nestlé does expect to increase prices further this year, more so than what it has already done? Firstly, maybe, you know, has it already put price increases through early on in the year? Does it expect to increase prices further? Can you maybe speak a little bit to which categories in particular will be affected? A second question on your main drivers of cost inflation and how those are changing or not. A third question, just on your negotiations with retail partners, are those taking longer than, you know, typically...
than they typically would, because there is perhaps a bit more pushback? Thank you.
Hanna, thank you. Here again, there's a limit as to how specific I can be because we always need to be careful about the competitive signaling involved, whether it's by category or geography, and ask for your understanding on that. Obviously, there is a number of price increases that we have announced, even sometimes late last year, that will go into effect during the first part of this year, they will provide for some additional pricing. Obviously we will have to stay flexible throughout the year as we see a number of our input cost factors develop and then see how to reflect that.
When it comes to certain input cost factors and how they develop, it's important that you separate between the spot prices that you're seeing, which of course move up and down in weekly fashion or monthly fashion, and then our situation, which is much more of a year-over-year situation because in some cases you have forward contracting that then creates cost pressures going forward. In other cases, you still have catching up to do because on a full year-over-year basis, even though the price may have eased a little bit over the last few weeks or months, you're still north of where we were a year ago, and the pricing so far has not fully reflected that.
This is where spot price development, whether it's on a number of commodities or energy costs, is not always an indicator of what our pricing then is gonna be the week after. I think that situation applies to most manufacturers. When it comes to the retailers, as mentioned before, this is a relationship and a conversation that I do not want to talk about in public. Suffice it to say, I mean, this is a time of inflation that has been unprecedented in most of our professional career here when it comes to advanced markets.
This is new, in a lot of talking to old hands, you know, experiences from the 1970s and early '80s, but this is new for many of us, and everyone has the same goal, and that is to shield the consumer from excessive inflation. Obviously in that context, it's clear that intense negotiations are taking place.
The next question is from Peter Stiff, The Wall Street Journal. Go ahead, Peter.
Hi. Good morning. Thanks all for your time. Two questions if I may. Sorry. The first one is on pricing. Just to be crystal clear, you seem to be saying that there's been no impact on volumes from your pricing measures at all in the fourth quarter in particular? It just seems quite surprising, given this, the 8th consecutive quarter of price increases, obviously it would be stand to reason that some people might cut back if things are more expensive. Secondly, my second question is about cost inflation. Could you give a bit more color around what you're seeing go up? What specific inputs are rising, how do you see that evolving into the new year? Thanks very much.
Yeah. Peter, just to put this in context, I think what François didn't suggest to say is that we didn't see any volume impact at all. I mean, as I explained in my prepared remarks, while 2021 was mostly volume and mix driven in its growth, you're seeing in 2022 a growth that is much more pricing driven. Everyone, I think, in the face of economic uncertainty and high inflation, everyone in the industry has seen some volume reaction. The response was specifically to the question that we had received before, and that is when you look at the second half, and in particular Q4, you know, was that pricing driven mainly? Our point was, no. There were a number of specific circumstances and initiatives that led to this volume reaction, more than the pricing situation.
That was the point we were trying to make. Going forward, again, it's important that we stay away in this turbulent world from speculating about which commodity or where energy costs exactly are gonna go. I think this is a little futile. This is where we all have to stay very flexible. One thing, of course, we are watching, like everyone with interest in the first half of this year, as many country markets negotiate labor contracts and wage contracts for the year 2023. Everyone is watching to what extent now an inflation that was by and large commodity and energy driven is now translating into one that is wage driven. Again, the verdict is out and like everyone else, we're watching with interest.
We have 5 minutes left, maybe for one or two questions. The next question is from Johannes Ritter, Frankfurter Allgemeine. Please go ahead.
Good morning. Thank you. Last year, Nestlé had to write off CHF 1.6 billion on Aimmune Therapeutics. What lessons do you draw from this for your general acquisition strategy? Will you be more cautious in the future when it comes to buying companies? Secondly,
Follow-up on Russia. A recent report in Neue Zürcher Zeitung said that you are still very active in Russia, and that there are still a lot of products in Russian supermarkets that are not only essential nutritions. What is your comment on this?
Johannes, thank you. On the acquisitions, it's very clear we regret that our Aimmune acquisition did not meet its objectives. We've been very open, transparent about this as part of our Barcelona Investor Day. I think when it comes to Nestlé Health Science and its future direction of growth, we didn't only offer our regrets, I think we also offered where the focus of that future growth strategy is gonna be, and that is in medical nutrition and consumer care. I feel, you know, on this particular business segment, we've attached a good and credible and meaningful consequence to this situation. Going forward, it's also important to point out acquisitions are an important part of our growth strategy, just like the organic growth component.
It is when the two together that things really become interesting, that is something that we are committed to. When you look at the acquisition track record, over the past several years, here again, I can only point you to some of the slides that we published as part of the Barcelona Investor Day. It has been, even in spite of that situation, a very successful one, where net, a lot of value was created for our shareholders. While, of course, we do a deep dive into every specific situation that doesn't meet objectives and then try to do better going forward, it should not take away from the underlying success that we've had with our acquisition activity.
Regarding the report that you referenced by Neue Zürcher, I can only tell you that we've done exactly what we were saying last March, and we're focusing on these necessary basic food and beverage items. The fact that we have continued activity in those is no contradiction to what we had announced last March.
There is time for one last question, very short. Olivia Détroyat, Le Figaro. Olivia, are you on mute?
Okay. Do you hear me?
Yes. We can hear you.
Oh, okay. Sorry. I was muted. One question about pricing, because this week, other companies like PepsiCo said that they won't raise its prices anymore. I'd like to understand, how are you able to manage price increases in that environment, and which category do you still have pricing power and which category you don't? One last, and, question about plant-based food, because I not right did get well your objective on that category. Can you repeat it? Thank you very much.
Yeah, Olivia, thank you. Look, on the pricing, as mentioned, it's not productive, not in the interest of our stakeholders and shareholders if we go into specifics on where exactly we're gonna be doing what. I ask for your understanding on that. Obviously, you're absolutely right. We need to be very, very targeted where we do our pricing, and that applies to categories and products, and it applies to specific geographies. We owe it to our retail partners and the public to explain why that is, and we typically do that very well. As you see from the summary numbers, again, we're still in a situation where we're repairing our gross margin and where, like all the consumers around the world, we've been hit by inflation, and now we're trying to repair the damage that has been done.
We will be very targeted and, of course, only do the pricing where the input cost situation justifies that. It'll be a very targeted situation, product by product, market by market. On plant-based, what I was trying to say is that we've seen continued success with it. We believe in it as something that has merit for public health, but also for the eco footprint of food and beverage around the world going forward. What we're trying to do then, in order to give you more clarity on where this is going, later in the year, give you a more comprehensive target where we believe we can take this from a sales point of view over time.
It's 10:00 A.M. We need to close the call here. Thank you so much for joining us. As always, the media relations team is available for you. Either send an email or call the hotline. We will answer your questions. Thank you very much again. I wish you a very pleasant day.