Well, we're actually one minute ahead of time, that is Swiss time. I will do the presentation in English since we have some guests dialing in. A very good morning to all of you. We have a rather small contingency today. I know you have a very busy day. Many other companies are publishing today. That's why we said we do it a little bit earlier. The reason why we have a little bit less people today is we have a second time slot after this meeting so that we have more people able to attend. Therefore, we appreciate very much the early risers, and if that makes you a little bit happier, all of us had to come from the countryside, so it took us also quite a bit of time, so we had to get up very early as well.
Presentation today, similar format like in, the previous years. I will give you an update about, last year, business review. René, who will do the presentation with me, our CFO, will then go a little bit, more detailed into, the figures. Finally, probably the most difficult question, the outlook, 2023, we will do at the end before we then hopefully have plenty of time to answer all of your questions. 2022, quite a challenging year, and obviously some unforeseen developments. If we look at a few of our, key figures, I guess we can say it was a solid year. If you look at sales, which we published already a couple of weeks ago, we were able to increase by 17%.
Obviously therefore, we had quite a substantial impact of acquisitions, probably half of total increase, and the other half was organic. If you look at the two main product lines, ventilation grew much faster, 28%. If you look at radiator, it was roughly 5%. If you look at the result at EBIT level, it was a slight increase. In absolute terms, 3%. If you look at the relative percentage, it was a decrease to 8.8%. Like many other companies, we had the challenge of sharply increase in costs, material costs, transport costs, logistic costs, energy costs. We're not able to pass these costs on to the full extent to the market yet. Hence, we saw a decrease in our margin.
Higher costs in purchasing, but obviously also higher costs for or higher capital in inventory because we had work in process, but also tried to obviously get a more resilient supply chain, meant also a decrease in Return on Capital Employed, which you see went down from 22.4% in 2021 to 18.9%. If you look at net liquidity, we're still solid, positive. Don't forget we had three acquisitions all together, that was in the amount of roughly EUR 64 million. We also still are working on our share buyback program, that was roughly EUR 22 million. If you consider that, you can also explain the decrease in net liquidity. While we were circumnavigating the various challenges in 2022, it was always our ambition to stay on course.
I think I can really confirm that we continued to execute our strategy, and obviously growing in ventilation is key. That's internal growth, but also external growth. There we are very happy, and I will tell you a little bit more about the individual acquisitions that we were able to realize, three acquisitions altogether. We also continued to really drive our or enhance our sustainability profile. I will also tell you a little bit about that. Digital transformation, like for many other companies, is also a key topic where we invested quite some money and did quite some work. I think we had similar challenges like others with Russia. Here I can confirm that we completely exited the Russian market and all our Russian activities, which we completed last fall. It was something that burdened us also with some extra costs.
Obviously it was a small market. It was an interesting market, mostly for radiators, but hindsight, we're glad that it's done and that we have resolved that challenge. Clearly, supply chain logistics and costs, I mentioned that before. If you look at the ventilation segment a little bit more detailed, ventilation is our star activity, where we really want to play a relevant role at international level. While we are already doing that in Europe and did that in the past, we feel that North America is one of the key growth markets. We're very happy to report that we were able to acquire the company Airia Brands. They operate under the brand Lifebreath, which is in North America, one of the top three players in the residential energy recovery market.
Maybe here it's good to know that in Canada, energy recovery ventilation is mandatory by law. Here you see a typical project, an apartment project, a building where we were able to deliver more than 1,000 units. If you look at the three regions. Ventilation. You obviously see that in America, because of the acquisition, which really is the lion share of the growth, we were able to grow 200%, meanwhile have a substantial activity also in that market. We always had the activity of imported ventilation units already. This obviously will continue, and clearly there we have an excellent reputation. The market is a little bit different in terms of expectations towards the product.
Where we see the big opportunity is not so much the Canadian market, that's an established market, but definitely in the U.S. market, as the U.S. market is not a homogeneous market. It's very much a state-by-state market. What we see already today is that states like California, but also some Eastern states, but also states like Florida and Texas, where the major activity is for building industry, that there is an increase in demand for these kind of solutions. If you look at Europe, also a substantial growth, 21%. In Europe today, ventilation makes up about 53% of total sales. By the way, in America, it's now up to 60%.
In Europe, we also had some acquisitions, smaller acquisitions, so roughly 1/3 of the growth are acquisitions, but we also had the possibility to grow organically. However, here I have to say that was a little bit disappointing, we still had quite some challenges in getting enough components, in getting enough motors, particularly in the first half. The situation eased in the second half. That meant that we were not able to deliver all the backlog, but we were able in the last couple of months of last year to at least fulfill some of our obligations. I think going forward, that obviously is something that should also help us now in the first half this year. Asia-Pacific, Asia-Pacific for us is China, is completely different situation. In China, we have a ventilation activity for quite some time.
Ventilation is 80% of our total sales in China, but China market is down. It's not the first year, 2022, it was already the year before. We're talking about, in our traditional business for ventilation units, a 30% decrease. Now, maybe the good news is that at one point in time, it can't go lower. I'll get to that in the outlook. Definitely, not a very pleasant year on the ventilation side. Thanks to the acquisition of Fortuneway, and they produce heat exchangers, we're able to compensate that to some extent. You see the total amount of decline was 5%. Just a couple of highlights I mentioned already. Airia Brands in Canada, maybe also a figure that is interesting.
Airia Brands last year delivered roughly 80% of total sales in Canada on only 20% in the U.S. market. If you look at population, the U.S. market is about 10 times as big as the Canadian market. Clearly, it will take some time, but you see a little bit what the potential actually is also in that market if energy recovery ventilation becomes a standard. Another topic that we're working on are total solutions, so that we are not just recycle or exchange the air, bring fresh air in, but where we also have the possibility to actually do additional functionality, like for example, humidification control, but also tempering the air. Here we launched, what you see in the picture in the middle, a solution which we call ComfoClime.
We launched it carefully, not because we don't believe in it, but obviously because we didn't want to oversell. Again, there, one of things that hampered us a little bit was, the component, the supply situation. Finally, just one thing I also would like to point out because we don't talk very often about this activity. We have a small activity. We call it a n ew potential star. Totally different business. They are in filtration in the commercial area. It's about fine dust control. There we launched a new series, and this new series is interesting because all these units are now connected. That means we have online always an understanding on how the situation, the dust situation looks in the facilities where these units hang, and obviously can control the climate and the fine dust situation online.
These are also linked together. That means we can, depending on the situation in the facility, ramp up 1 unit, take another unit down. If they're not working, we can reduce the consumption. It's also a topic about energy savings. This is an interesting business because it's a service business. We do not sell the units. We own the units, but we actually sell clean air. That is an activity that is steadily growing. It's still relatively small, but steadily growing, double-digit, and is obviously very profitable and therefore quite interesting and something that we try to really expand at the global level. We have a couple of international key accounts that set this as a standard in all of their facilities. Among them are some quite known names also in the Swiss industry.
That all together means if you look at how ventilation grows, in total sales, that last year we were able to hit the EUR 450 million. You saw that, roughly 55% of our total sales are now in ventilation. It's probably also a little bit an indication that we're moving from a building supply company more and more into the area of an HVAC company. I think that's also important for you to know. Nevertheless, radiator is still a very important activity. It's also a strategic activity in that we do have some major projects you see on this picture. Charleston is our product that we produce for more than 90 years, still very active.
I guess something not just renovation, but most of the activity is renovation, but obviously that also goes into new projects. We had quite a good 2021 in radiators. Last year, if you look at volume, the first half was probable plus minus zero, but in the second half, we had a double-digit decline in volume. The 5% increase in total sales, therefore, are pretty much price increases. There, I guess the supply situation was better. We had some minor issues on electric radiators. That's a relevant topic for France only at this stage. But realistically, we were not burdened by that. It's really a market decline, and I guess some of our competitors have already published their figures, not totally new also to you.
If you look at North America, situation is slightly different because if you look at our total sales in radiator, 85% is nowadays in Europe, and only 15% is in the rest of the world. The U.S. is a niche business. It's a very steady business. It's also a very profitable business. It's really, also, not something where we see a lot of growth potential. Most of these increases are actually, increases, in price. We differentiate in radiators by doing whatever the customer wants. We make to order any dimension, any color, obviously with quick delivery. I guess that's really how we can differentiate in the market. Important is for us to come up with new designs. What we have here in the middle is a new towel radiator. We're happy we won a price.
We hope we win a lot of customers. On the left side, obviously, we need to stay trendy. We also have some collections which we change once in a while, almost like fashion, obviously not that quick. We launched the Studio Collection. Maybe you have a look at our webpage, so you can see that actually there are really some nice radiators that you can purchase. That's really how we want to be a little bit different from the competition. Also in radiator report, another small activity, and that's closed ceilings. closed ceilings is project business for radiant heating and cooling in commercial business. It's not really something that fits perfectly to us. It's different core competencies, and that's an activity where we have been struggling for quite some time. There we made some progress.
We're still not in a profitable situation, so we're still working on a turnaround, but we're in the midst of carving that activity out, which should be done by December. We're also trying to increase value. What you see there is that we actually insource some of the manufacturing processes. We also separated the entity, made some legal entities, separate legal entities, focused on two key markets to really try to carve out a company that has a totally different DNA, like the rest of the company, to hopefully be successful in that business. Now, one topic that I wanted to flag today, that's also a challenge that anybody else has as well, finding the right talents. We do every other year an employee satisfaction survey, and the last survey showed that 82% of our employees are satisfied with Zehnder.
If you compare that with the industry, we're clearly above benchmark. Another thing that we see, once people come to see us when we are looking for candidates, they're always very excited, and normally we are able to win them over. The problem is that people don't know about us. Therefore, we have started a employer branding initiative. The idea is that our own people actually broadcast about us, their stories, their employee stories. We will this summer, have that on social media, also on our career webpage. Obviously, we also will have an employer branding webpage.
What we are trying to do is really to have a much broader presence in the employer market, employee market about Zehnder, so that not only people talk towards inside that we're a good company, but obviously also broadcast that to the rest. Another big topic, digital business transformation, not something new. We're working on it for many, many years. If you look at the middle, operational processes, I mean, we are on SAP on most in most of our activities for quite some time. We're still obviously in a rollout when we acquire new companies. We did the change to the new cloud solution, which obviously is always a big ordeal for an organization. We are already on SAP for HANA. We're among the first ones, which is good.
Obviously, what we are trying already for the last couple, three years is to focus much more on the outside world and see on how we can use digital transformation to enhance customer value and really have a better customer experience. Some of you are familiar with our setup. We're quite a fragmented setup, almost a little bit a confederate setup. How we started was with many initiatives. Some were local, some were at group level. We realized it's a challenge not to get lost, and it's a challenge to have a governance. Therefore, we decided to invest in a new team. We have, since last October, we have a Chief Digital Officer. We're currently building a team.
The idea is to really have the competences to build a much stronger organization in terms of being able to have a transparent situation, to have also governance in all these projects, to find the common denominator without really losing the speed. To have something in between business and IT that is enabling, and that's something we're obviously we're willing to invest money, that hopefully we can yield the success and the reward later on. A similar topic is topic of sustainability. Also there, we have decided to build centrally a responsibility of a sustainability officer. We have also now additional resources that will help him to come up with a structure program.
I mean, this is something that obviously takes quite some work, so we did a lot of groundwork, understand where we are at, status quo, assess the impact that we have based on some references. We use the Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations and really come up with a systematic approach. We have defined our ambition. We're in the midst of defining also the targets for this year, but then also for the years thereafter. What we wanna do, and obviously CO2 is one of the targets, but there are many others. What we wanna do, after we already published a status report last fall, we wanna publish a sustainability report by the end of June, so that everybody is aware of where we're at and what we're committing to.
What you see on the right side is just one example. It was also in some of the media here in Switzerland. It's the roof of our facility in Gränichen. A solar plant that was commissioned. You see we're able there to provide 20% of all the energy that we use. It's just one. In fact, in the last three years, we did five of these kind of projects. Some we invested ourselves, some others we didn't invest. We're just having some contract with the local electricity provider. That was the quick review. René, maybe you can give us a little bit more insights about the figures.
Thank you, Matt. Welcome also from my side. I would like to give you some additional information to our financial figures in 2022. As mentioned, our growth was 17%, and to go a little bit more in detail, it means 8% acquisition, 7% organic growth. Organic, so 7% are mainly price, and on ventilation side, it was a volume increase, and on the radiator side, it was a volume decrease in 2022. We also had some positive foreign exchange effects of 2%. As mentioned by Matt, the growth in ventilation was hampered due to the availability of electronic components, and on the other side, it improved at the end of 2022. For the radiator market, there was a decrease in demand during 2022. Here we see our top 10 countries.
These 10 countries contribute to 85% of the total sales, Germany and France have a double-digit share of the total, then the rest, a single-digit contribution to the total sales. It's the first time in the history that North America contribute with 100 million+ sales. That is due to the acquisition. The growth was 86%. In Canada, the sales were tripled, also in the US, it was a clear increase in sales. China is getting less important. We heard the reasons just before, so it's now in position 8, 3 less than in the last year. Profitability. As mentioned, the EBIT increased by 3%. The EBIT margin slightly decreased from 9.9% to 8.8%.
That is mainly due to the cost increases in different areas due to the bottlenecks in the supply chain, in 2022. We had an increase in material cost, energy cost, transportation, but also in general operating costs. We increased the prices proactively, but in certain areas, we had a time lag between the cost increases from our suppliers to the price increases, to our customers, especially in the area of ventilation, where the lead time was long due to the backlog and also due to the availability of components. On the radiator business, it was a negative impact from the factory utilizations due to the lower volumes, especially in the second half of the year. We kept our financial discipline, and we also invested in sustainability, in digitization, and also in research and development.
For example, we spent about EUR 3 million more in research and development to strengthen our innovation pipeline. Net income is slightly lower, 6% lower to the 56.7%, that is only due to the higher tax rate. In 2021, we were able to use tax loss carryforward, therefore the tax rate in 2021 was only 12%, in 2022 now 20%. We have a more normalized tax rate. That's why the net income is lower than the year before, despite of a higher EBIT. Last year, we also changed our segment reporting. In the past, it was by region. It was Europe and then North America and China together. Now we have a segment reporting by product group, groups.
That means ventilation, including cleaner solution and the heat exchanger business, and radiator, including climate ceilings, together with the normal radiator business. Ventilation contribute 55% of the total sales. We were able to have a double-digit growth in sales, 28%, and slightly higher on the EBIT level of 33% growth on EBIT, meaning 12.2% EBIT margin for the ventilation business. To have a closer look to the two half years in 2020, it is unusual seasonality. Normally, we do more sales in ventilation the first six months because normally you have more working days. Then you can achieve higher sales. For the radiator business, we have higher volumes in the second half of the year due to the heating period starting October, November. In 2022, it was exactly the opposite.
We had stronger sales in ventilation, 35% increase in the second half of the year for ventilation. That is also due to delivery issues in 2021 in the second half of the year. We were able, in 2022, to deliver more due to the better availability of components in the second half of the year. In the radiator business, we saw a declining demand. That also means then lower volumes and lower factory utilization. We anticipated a lower demand for the radiator business, but at the end it was a little bit faster than expected. Lower volumes in radiators means also then lower margins due to the lower factory utilizations. We still have a solid net liquidity, EUR 45 million at the end of 2022, despite of high investments. Come back to that.
Also our equity ratio is still 64%, despite of the share buyback and also the acquisitions where we had a goodwill of EUR 37.5 million in 2022. The operating cash flow decreased to EUR 60 million, mainly due to higher inventories because the prices are higher than the year before, so price increases. We also tried to build up some safety stock to better manage the supply chain. Also the accounts receivables increased due to the higher sales volumes in 2022. We further invested also in fixed and intangible assets. We have a new Center of Climate in Lahr in Germany. That is a meeting place for our customers, partners, and also employees. The opening is planned in spring 2023. That means in March, this month, a lot of people will move to the new building.
The investment last year was EUR 8.6 million for this building. In total it's about EUR 20 million. We also extended our factory of office environment in Poland, in Włocławek, with a new building that is for research and design team for radiators to increase the know-how for electronics and also to have more workspace for a shared service center in Poland, where we have IT, but also finance functions for Europe. We also invested in production capacity extension for heat exchangers due to the high demand in Wolvega, that is in the Netherlands, but also in Germany, in Reinsdorf, about EUR 2 million in total. What does it mean for our cash flow? Our liquid assets decreased EUR 81 million. The biggest investment was in subsidiaries. The acquisitions, that was EUR 64 million.
The investments in fixed and intangible assets of EUR 27 million. We paid dividend of about EUR 22 million, and we had a share buyback, and we also purchased back some shares for management programs of also EUR 22 million. That's why the liquid asset, liquid assets decreased, but mainly driven by the acquisitions. We have a growth ambition for ventilation, a double-digit growth ambition. We were not able to achieve that in 2022, in 2020 and 2021, but we overachieved it now in 2022 with a growth in ventilation of 28%. 16% acquisition-driven and 10% organically. We have a positive trend there, and we also have a positive trend for the whole group.
Over the last years, the EBIT increased in euro over the last five, six years, and only the EBIT margin now in 2022 slightly decreased due to the mentioned reasons, just raised before. Dividend, the proposal is to pay a dividend of 1.8 CHF. That is equal to the amount of the last year and means a payout ratio of 37% in 2022. In addition, we'll continue with our share buyback program. About 75% is now completed.
We still have about 100,000 shares to complete the maximum of 5% of the uncertain that should be completed this year. As mentioned here, it's a maximum, so it also depends on the liquidity situation of the whole group. With that, I would like to give back the word to Matt for the outlook.
Thank you, René. 2023. I guess we expect yet another challenging year. We have, we mentioned it before, some pro-positives, we obviously have also some factors that will play into the business in a negative way. Positive is definitely the ease in supply situation. I think it's on one side the availability, but I guess it's also probably some easing on the costs. What we obviously see already in steel, we feel that also in other materials it should play into our hand. On the other hand, what we see as a negative, is clearly the increase in labor costs and the expectations for salary increases. I guess what is the big question mark is the market demand.
Clearly, if you look at new build permits, for example, in Germany, but also in most other European markets, you see a decline in new building permits. At the same time, we have not enough living space, and we also have backlogs, for example, in Germany, on projects. It's really a little bit difficult to understand on how that will pan out. We are still starting the year with a substantial backlog, so we feel that that will help us some in particular in the first half. The big question mark is obviously how will the market in Europe develop in the second half of the market. North America see the situation a little bit different. I also had the chance to be at the largest fair they have every year this year in Atlanta.
There, I guess the optimism, particularly for 2023, is quite good and high. That is also something that we see in our figures, obviously also where we have some backlog still from last year. We also where we see that the order intake is rather stable or even increasing. China, you saw, is not so relevant anymore. China is probably a little bit a mixed picture. We feel that there is a certain level that has been reached and that we should not see a further decline. On the other hand, to what extent it will support us, it probably still a bit questionable. Looking at the total percentage, it probably is not all that relevant anyway. I mean, this is probably the short-term situation.
The long-term situation, we don't see any change from the past. I mean, we will benefit from the new building standards. We see that housing needs will increase. There's not enough housing in most of the markets. With our products, we actually are there right in the middle of what will happen also in terms of building standards. Probably 2023 will be yet a little bit more challenging than anticipated. That's also the reason why we said we confirm the midterm target of EBIT between 9% and 11%. We feel that this year we wanna go with a EBIT ambition similar to comparable to 2022. We anticipate a slight growth.
At the same time, we saw that a lot of the growth was driven by price increases last year, was driven by acquisitions. We will not have that same effect, at least, from today's perspective. What we want to do is we want to stay on course. It's important that we continue with our activities, our strategic initiatives. Here I just would like to remind you once more on what our key strategic directions are. Clearly, further grow the ventilation business. It is our growth activity. It is our star activity. You also saw the profitability is substantially higher. We want to increase that. We want to focus on that. Radiator business, you saw that the profitability decreased, so we need to find ways to increase the profitability there.
At the same time, we have a couple of smaller activities. I mentioned the filtration business. That's what René referred to as Clean Air Solutions, when it will grow again. The ambition obviously in the midterm is to have a second star activity and possibly with the heat exchanger, a third star activity. Then you still have the closed ceiling business. Obviously, that remains a question mark, where we have the challenge to really turn it around and then obviously, see what the options are for that activity. The systems offering is a steady process. We do not want to compete with the big players and been everything to everybody like Vaillant or Atlantic, they are the systems provider. They have the key topic of the heat pumps.
We feel the heat pump is a commodity product. There are many good players out there. What we want to do in terms of system solutions, we want to go into specific topics around our core competencies, around ventilation, where we see opportunities to play a relevant role, possibly in a smaller market. We do not want to go full speed against these huge players because we feel we have to choose our battles, and we want to go in a rifle shot approach, and we don't want to go with a shotgun approach. Overall, you saw that, yes, we are solid. Yes, we feel that the strategy is right. We are working on the execution. We confirm the midterm targets, and we feel that we're in a good position to achieve that.
Hence, we also feel that we're an interesting case, for investors. That was what we wanted to present to you. Obviously, I'm sure you have.