I'm happy to present you the 2022 figures. I will do that together with Burim Maraj, our CFO. To get started, I would like to show you the overview or the agenda of the call. We will talk quickly about the overview of the business year 2022. I will give you a few insights about our strategic, the progress of our strategy. Financial results will be presented by Burim. I have some words about sustainability in SKAN Group and the quick outlook into the future. At the end, we are happy to answer questions.
When we look at the year 2022, I think we can say we had another very successful year with a record order intake, a nice growth of 18.2% on the net sales side, but also nice profitability at the upper end of our guidance. Basically, I think we can say that the order intake and also the sales and profitability were achieved despite the headwinds from our supply chain issues that we still have and we still expect to continue into 2023. By adjusting our production scheme, by basically changing our process, adapting our processes, we were able to more or less, yeah, turn these challenges into a, like, a good thing so that in the end we could meet our targets.
As you remember, in the first half year, we had kind of weak six months from a revenue recognition and profitability point of view. As we have forecasted, the second half year was strong because the projects were in a different project phase. As we basically presented six months ago, we are happy to show you that the figures are now as we said, and that basically shows the visibility of our business. I can say that the win rate of our quotations remained high. Also in 2022, we were able to win additional market share, and we could expand our position as number one.
The order backlog, the record order backlog gives us a very nice book-to-bill ratio of 1.5, and basically gives us good visibility into the future and also confirms the investments that we made last year, into capacity expansions were well invested. We will propose a dividend of CHF 0.25 per share to the general assembly meeting in May. Basically, that's the proposal, and that's well in line with our dividend policy. To, again, to look at, the, let's say the progress of the company, we have again achieved a double-digit organic growth. The delays in supply chain, basically, we were able to manage them.
I can say that one of the reasons why we were able to manage them properly is also because our lead times are pretty long and because we have adapted our processes as such that we buy components earlier in the process to make sure that we finally can meet our delivery expectations. We had some price adjustments that we had to do in 2022, mainly due to the inflation. We had and still have inflation on labor, but also on raw materials. Strategic investments are well on track. Continued investments into the expansion in SKAN Stein and Germany, our two production sites, have been completed last year, and currently the expansion in our Belgium site of Aseptic Technologies is still ongoing.
Our decentralization strategy, or in other words, closer to the customer, is ongoing, and we are investing also a lot into decentralizing our know-how to make sure that our subsidiaries, either in fabrication but also in sales and service, are in a better position for the future. When we look at our, let's say, our subsidiaries and our company, I think most of the subsidiaries or all the subsidiaries you have also seen last year. The difference is that for SKAN Stein, now we have a real photo and not a graphic anymore. This facility is in operation. With it, I would say our E-beam competence center that allows us to also continue to invest into developments of new E-beam applications.
We have in 2010 to two, or until now, we have three new members in the management board. Starting from the right side, we have Ralf Krämer, who succeeded Bernd Naumann, our CTO. Ralf Krämer started his career in Tetra Pak and joined SKAN several years back in several functions and was kind of the deputy of Bernd Naumann. This was a, let's say, a natural transition, if I may say so. Marina Häni, our Chief People and Culture Officer, is started at SKAN also several years back and took over the role of Fabienne Schmid, who was in that position before. Bernd retired due to age. Fabienne retired herself onto a endless world around trip, which we are all happy for her.
With Marina, we have a very competent partner there. A new hire from external is María Cuevas Otero. She's a Spanish citizen that lives in Switzerland also for many years. She has a technical background as well, and is our new Chief Service Officer as of February 2023. I think with these three new, let's say, new hires or replacements of existing positions, we were able to, on one hand, to have two out of three covered from internally, which also confirms kind of the strong base we have in the company. With María, we were able to find a very good replacement for the previous Chief Service Officer. Looking at the strategy execution, you all remember this slide from our IPO. Basically we have our strategy on these four pillars.
Fortify market leadership, Pillar 1. Expand the addressable markets towards integrated process systems, Pillar 2. The whole services business, Pillar 3, and digitalization as Pillar 4. What we have achieved is shown on this slide here. In 2022, we can say in Pillar 1, we had a very solid project pipeline that ensures our growth, right? We have reorganized our structures internally to make the organization more suitable for the growth. Remember, we're growing 15%-20% every year, so this is significant growth also in personnel that requires some new alignment inside the organization. We have also defined specific focus points like standardization that is now a dedicated group focusing on standardization, just to mention one example.
We are continuing our collaboration with our technology partners, we have also launched several new products to the market. I think on Pillar 2, it's important to see that the third drug filled in AT-Closed Vial has received commercial approval in 2022. We also have increased the number of products in stability in our vials at our customers by about 30% to about 400 substances, which is kind of a, the pipeline for future potential commercial products in the closed vial. We also increased our stake in AT to 80% and will continue to do so by another 5% this year and 5% next year, to the 90% as it has been agreed with the Belgian owner of the minority. First project that's come offering the total solution was also a kind of quite successful last year.
In services, I think besides of the service business, that growth with our installed base, we can say that we are also progressing very well on our Pre-Approved Services project, where we are in line with the plan and are expecting to be operational in 2025, 2026. On the digital side, I think also here we made great progress. Virtual customer support is now available globally, so we don't have to fly across the ocean for every single problem. All our machines are digitally connected or are at least able to be digitally connected. The One Button Release project, so this initiative that should make the whole documentation of a pharmaceutical production easier, is also progressing well. Now I would like to hand over to Burim for the financial results.
Hello also from my side. I just want to guide you through the finances. All as you know the figures, but let me guide you through it. The order intake, as mentioned already, we had it again another record year. We have a growth rate here about CHF 46.9 million from CHF 280 million - CHF 411.7 million. The main driver for this growth is driven or the main driver is the high-speed equipment that we're selling.
The other effect is that we have a kind of a catch-up effect of small volume systems where our customers was during the COVID period or the pandemic period, they were not focused only to have high-speed production lines, and now they are again focusing on small batches, on new substances, and this has a really huge impact in 2022. Another driver is also the life cycle support, where we had a retrofit business, but also the Aseptic Technologies business has also contributed very well to this growth. What I have to mention here positive is that also the currency, the developments in the currency markets, the high inflation rates, the increasing interest rates had really no impact on the order side of our business.
Also, the different or the various bankruptcies that you maybe or maybe hear, that of different cell and gene companies, we don't feel it in our order intake situation. The reason is why we do not see that is because they are located in the value chain, in the upstream. They are not in the fill finish phase where they need our solution. That's the main reason why we don't see them. What we really see is that the underlying market is really continuing to grow.
The first reason where we see it is the growth rate that we have, about 46.9%, and the other reason is that our winning rate, when we place offers, winning rate is exceptionally high again, also in 2022. When we look at the regional split, Europe with CHF 200.8 million and U.S., the U.S. market remains the main markets of SKAN. This was also in the past the same situation, and now we see it again. The fluctuation in Asia is mainly driven by some, how to say, some smaller or no some bigger projects. In one year, we have a big project in our books. Another year, there is maybe a lower one.
That's the fluctuation of this order intake by region. When we look at the net sales, we also have a very solid growth rate here with 18.2% to CHF 277 million. If we look it at the constant exchange rate, the growth rate is around 19%, which is on the upper end of our guidance. The main driver, as Thomas shortly mentioned for this growth, is that we, in the first half of 2022, we had a lot of projects in the closing phase and numbers of projects in the beginning phase, and both are phases which not trigger in absolute figures, do not trigger a lot of revenue and also not a lot of EBITDA.
In the second half of the year, these projects came in the value-intensive production phase, where we generated 1.3 times higher net sales in the second half year. Also, the effect that we have completed more than 80 projects contributed also to this, to this growth rate, but also the life cycle support or let's say the international service business and also the national service business with our laboratory equipment contributed very well to this growth rate. Order backlog increased again about 59.3% to CHF 360 million, and this gives us very good visibility.
The also a positive point here to mention is that in the past we have increased prices in stepwise, and now in 2022, all the projects without price increases has been closed, and now we have a very qualitative high backlog regarding the price level. When we look at the EBITDA, the margin, we were able to generate a margin of CHF 40.2 million, which is an increase about 30.9%.
The main driver for this margin or is the, as I mentioned at the beginning, that we had the non-linearity of the project business which we had in the second half of the year where the projects came in the production intensive phase, which triggered 2x more EBITDA. If we compare it with the previous year, as you can see, we had a margin about 8.8%. If we look only at the second half of the year, we had a margin about 18.9%. Also, from operational point of view, we had positive effects here.
If we look on the left side, material and external services, even with the constraints that we had in the cost inflation, we were able to keep our material costs under control. They increased only just a little, about 0.2 % points from 27.4% - 27.6% in relation to the net sales. The personal cost, we have ramped up our employees as we have planned. We have employed about 165 employees, but we're able to maintain the cost, if you look on the left side, the personal intensity at 45.1% in relation to the net sales. There we were able also to compensate the inflation-based salary increases due to our increasing production productivity.
The other element is also the operating cost. Also here we have an increase from CHF 31.7 million - CHF 35.5 million. If we compare it with, in relation with the net sales, we are about 0.7 % points lower. The main driver for this increase is the increased travel expenses due to the removed travel restrictions due to COVID. The other effect is also that we have one full year now in the new building, and we have rental cost, which is on a higher level. In overall, we see also here a clear leverage effect in the operating cost, which results in 2.8%. The segment equipment and solution.
The order intake here, if we look, only this segment, it's about 58.5% increase to CHF 336 million. The main drivers, as I mentioned, is the high volume equipment that we are selling with the e-beam technology, but also the catch-up effect of the small batches. Both grew, as you can see on the right side, at the level of 57.6% year-on-year basis. The net sales increased by 20.7% to CHF 207.7 million. As I mentioned at the beginning, the nonlinearity of our project business has driven the growth in the second half of 2022.
From an EBITDA point of view is the same effect that the value intensive production face kicked in the second half year, therefore, we generated an EBITDA of about 42.7%. The completion of 80 projects contributed to this segment and gives us also, again, due to the increased installed base, also the security for the recurring revenues in the upcoming years. When we look at the segment service and consumables, we have here a growth rate at 10.4%. This is a little bit or slightly a lower rate. This is mainly driven that commission of our machines at customer side were a little bit delayed. When the machines are kind of not running or not running later, they will also consequently consume less spare parts and less consumables.
That's why is the growth rate here a little bit lower. From a revenue point of view or net sales, we have been growing at 19.4% from CHF 58 million-CHF 69 million. The main driver here for the growth is our retrofit business. As we have mentioned in the first half year, the retrofit business until we complete these orders, the volume will be considered in the balance sheet as work in progress. Now these orders are completed. Also, the maintenance contracts are completed. This kicks in where we realize the revenue and realize also the EBITDA or generate the EBITDA also in this segment.
The profitability also is driven by retrofit business, but also due to the product mis-mix with spare parts and other consumables which are on a higher margin. We have improved our margin from 23.5% - 24.8%, which is the, yes, it's the right direction. When we look at the cash generation or operating cash flow, we have increased it from CHF 10.3 million - CHF 61.5 million. The main driver is, as you have seen at the beginning, the high order intake that we had about CHF 411 million. Normally, our customers pays 30% upfront with order confirmation, and this is one of the main drivers for the operating cash flow generation.
We have been also investing in increasing our increasing our inventory to counterfeit the whole supply chain issues as much as possible. On the right side, the significant investments that we have made over the past years as mentioned from Thomas, we have invested in Görlitz, in Stein, and so on, and we were able also to maintain the high capital efficiency at 15.3%. Balance sheet structure still a strong balance sheet. We have a net cash position at CHF 94.1 million, and this is really the cash that we need to finance our strategic investments with Pre-Approved service, with integrated solutions. We want to have also the flexibility also for M&A opportunities.
We have a solid, a solid equity ratio at CHF 42.6 million. The reduction of the minority interest to CHF 8.3 million is mainly driven by the by the increasing our share in Aseptic Technologies in the second half of the year, about 20%. That's the main effect for this decrease. From a dividend point of view, we are proposing to the to the general meeting a payout of CHF 0.25 per share, and this will be paid out from capital contribution 50%, which is at the end tax-free, and 50% from retained earnings. This results in a 30% payout ratio, which is in line with our dividend policy as we communicated during the IPO.
The last slide, just as a summary, which is really interesting, is if we look on, on the right, on the top, we have been growing 4 times faster than our underlying markets. We have been growing profitable on a high profitability with 14.5%. All segments contributed to it. We have a very strong finance structure to finance also the future growth. I will hand it to Thomas.
Thank you, Burim, for these details about the figures. Let me give you some information about sustainability in SKAN. As we have announced already during the IPO, we are reporting sustainability according to GRI standards. Basically, they are focusing on the environmental, on social, and social focus points. On one hand, I think with our technology, we are already saving energy since the isolator is using much less energy, and we produce much less waste compared to a Class C cleanroom. On the other hand, we are also developing our isolators in such a way that they even become more energy-friendly, as an example, by using catalytic converter technology that allows us to use air from the room and give it back into the room, not to waste any energy.
From a strategic point of view, our decentralization strategy to be, on one hand, closer to the customer, but also, on the other hand, to reduce travel. We are a very good customer of airlines. We are planning to reduce this as much as possible. In our buildings, we have no plastic initiatives. We are electrifying our service fleet here in Switzerland. We do have solar panels on all the buildings that we have, that we own, specifically on all the new ones that we are building. That's not a new initiative. That's something that we have started already years back. On the social side, I think, yes, our equipment is helping to produce safe medication and then basically to save human lives.
Our high-quality solutions are basically required to produce cancer drugs, cell and gene therapies, and so on and so forth. Very important for me is also our strategy, let's say employee development and training. We are trying to have a very attractive culture for our employees. Basically, we do have a low employee turnover. We have an inclusive hiring. We have an equal pay policy already several years in place. When I speak about inclusive hiring, for me, it's important that we don't like quotas. We want to hire the best. Inclusive does not only include male and female, it also includes different nationalities. It also includes people with disabilities and so on. Basically, this all helps to have a very inclusive climate here. It's.
I think it's working very well. When we talk about CO2 footprint, here, our goal is to basically reduce or get our Scope 1 CO2 or greenhouse gas emissions under control. I think here we can say, since we're mainly using ecological energy and we produce our own ecological energy on the roofs, we are already pretty far. Scope 2 is something that we are targeting for next year to get this under control, and Scope 3, obviously, will then be the next thing to tackle. Important to say is that we don't do this just for fun. The biggest pressure here is coming from our customers themselves, who are asking their suppliers to be CO2 neutral by 2035. We have a certain pressure from the market anyhow.
Now to give you a quick outlook into the future, what is expecting us in the future. Here I would like to show you these slides in the beginning. On the left side on this slide, you can see the top 10 blockbuster medications in 2025. Sorry, in 2005. Almost 20 years ago. As you can see, the top 10 products were all tablets. There was not a single injectable product among them. In 2020, five of the top 10 are injectable products, all large molecules. When you would look at the top 20, you would see 12 out of 20 are already large molecule injectables.
When we compare that with the development pipeline of our customers and when we look what they are developing, so what we can expect in the coming 10 years to come to the market, we see that 75% of the products in these pipelines are injectables. Why are they all injectables? I think there are different factors that go into this direction and also make it understandable for ourselves. On one hand, large molecules, the new biological products are more sensitive to pressure, to temperature, and it's much more difficult to, let's say, press them into a tablet without destroying the molecule or handle them in a, let's say, in a non-temperature-controlled environment. On the other hand, when we look at new products, I think I can say it's all about the dose, right?
When I eat tablets, I need to overdose because I don't know how much my stomach really absorbs and how much it does not absorb. Same is with inhalable products. If I have a cold, maybe my lung absorption capability is different than if I am healthy. On the other hand, if I, if I inject product into my body, I know exactly how much is in there. Now when we think about cancer therapy, where it's all about poisoning the cancer and hoping the person survives this, you can imagine that an overdose might not be what you expect. From that point of view, we are pretty positive that injectable dosage forms will continue to increase and will increase within the pharmaceutical industry, and therefore we expect to be able to grow faster than the pharmaceutical industry also in the coming years.
When I look at this, we basically can summarize and say, yes, we expect the growth to continue. We don't see a cool down on the horizon yet. Basically, yeah, our growth continues. You can see that in the order intake. Order intake, also important to understand is what is in our books, what has been contract approved. Orders are here, but we obviously have a much larger sales pipeline. Also there, I think we can say we don't see a cool down at the horizon. One of the drivers definitely is reshoring. We see a lot of Western companies, and when I say Western, it's maybe also mainly American companies, that are basically trying to pull production back from Asia to North America.
As you can read in the news, the North American government is subsidizing these activities with billions of dollar . I think one of the effects that we are really profiting is also this reshoring effect. This is also something that we don't expect to slow down in the coming years. Basically the demand remains high. SKAN sees our strategy. We see it confirmed, we'll continue our strategy. When we look into 2023, I can say the start has been encouraging. We obviously looking at the order backlog, yes, we have a lot of work. Now the challenge is to manage the growth and to basically continue to bring these orders on the ground and make them happen.
The bottleneck in the supply chain will most likely persist, we don't expect a big cool down there, but as I initially mentioned, we have put measures in place where we can manage it. We are confident that we've continued to achieve our growth targets also in this year. With this, I would like to switch to our guidance. The guidance remains as it was last year. We remain to grow in the mid to upper targets, also in the midterm. Sorry, mid to upper teens, also on the midterm side and on the EBITDA margin, we also keep our margin between 13% and 15% with a gradual increase over the midterm. Now why do we keep the margin on the same level like this year?
I think it's important to understand that we have implemented a reorganization in 2023 that will now cost more overhead basically to make us able to grow again. We have to now grow into this new organization. We also have, just to give an example, we have now a dedicated team for standardization that will allow us to better and fast standardize and optimize production. On the other hand, in this year, this will mainly be overhead as well. As you can see, we are investing a lot into our future. We are still investing about 7% of our revenue into R&D, which we directly charge to the P&L.
From that point of view, we are continuing to invest in our growth, and growth costs money, and this is why we think keeping the margin on this level for this year is realistic.
Thank you very much. From that point of view, thanks for listening in and, yeah, if you have any questions, you know where to find us, later on, and, thanks a lot and have a nice day. Bye-bye.
Thank you very much. Bye-bye.