Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Bruce Hodge, and I am the Chairman of the Board of Directors of Premium Brands Holdings Corporation. I will be chairing this meeting. From coast to coast to coast and country to country, I would like to begin by acknowledging the indigenous peoples of all the lands that we are on today. Here in Richmond, I would like to acknowledge that we are gathered on the traditional territory of the Coast Salish peoples. Welcome to the Annual General Meeting of Shareholders of Premium Brands Holdings Corporation. In order to ensure that this meeting covers all required business in an efficient manner, we have pre-arranged with Will Kalutycz, our Chief Financial Officer, and Gwun Yee, our Director, Legal, to move and second, respectively, the motions of the business of this meeting.
This procedure is in no way intended to discourage any comments and or questions from shareholders who are present today. Please note that questions can only be submitted through the Lumi AGM platform. Please note that only eligible shareholders are entitled to vote at this meeting. Eligible shareholders are defined as registered shareholders who held their shares in the name as at the close of business on Friday, 18 March 2022, the record date of this meeting, or their validly appointed proxy voters. Please also note that voting is open for any shareholders to vote their shares if they have not already submitted a proxy. We encourage you to vote your shares prior to the meeting using the instructions found on pages nine through 11 of the information circular.
Shareholders who have already voted their shares by proxy do not need to vote their shares at this meeting unless they wish to change their vote previously made by proxy. The meeting will now come to order. Douglas Goss will be acting as secretary and counsel for this meeting. Sandy Hunter of TSX Trust Company will be acting as scrutineer. The notice and access notification to shareholders representing this meeting was mailed to the shareholders of the corporation in accordance with National Instrument 54-101 on 4 April 2022, as evidenced by the Affidavit of Mailing of Lenchi Pearson of TSX Trust Company, the registrar and transfer agent of the corporation. The Affidavit of Mailing of Lenchi Pearson will be annexed to the minutes of this meeting as appendix one.
As you have already received a copy of the notice of this meeting, I would suggest a motion dispensing with the reading of the notice.
I move that the reading of the notice of this meeting be dispensed with. I second the motion.
Are there any objections to this motion? As no objections have been raised, I declare the motion carried, and with proof of service and the notice calling this meeting duly tabled, I direct a copy of the notice together with proof of service be kept by the secretary with the records of this meeting. The bylaws of the corporation provide that a quorum for the transaction of business at any meeting of shareholders shall be two persons present in person or by means of telephonic, electronic or other communication facility that permits all participants to communicate adequately with each other during the meeting. Each vote entitled to vote at the meeting and holding or representing by proxy not less than 10% of the votes entitled to be cast at the meeting.
I have received the scrutineer's report on attendance and confirm that this criterion has been satisfied. I therefore declare that there is a quorum present at this meeting. The scrutineer's report will be attached to the minutes of this meeting as appendix two. I now declare that this meeting is regularly called and properly constituted for transaction of business. There will be an opportunity to ask questions regarding each resolution in turn, noting that questions may only be submitted through the Lumi AGM platform. As chair, I will pause for the appropriate amount of time to allow shareholders to submit their questions. Once discussion on all items of business have been concluded, I will give you a minute to enter your votes and then declare voting closed on all resolutions. The results of this meeting will be released today and will be available on our website.
We will run through each of the items on the agenda in turn, responding to questions on that item of business while it is before the meeting. I now declare the polls open on all resolutions. The next item of business is presentation of the corporation's audited financial statements for the financial year ended 25 December 2021, together with accompanying report of the auditors. The corporation's financial statements for the financial year ended 25 December 2021, together with the auditor's report thereon and management's discussion and analysis regarding same, were filed on SEDAR on 10 March 2022, and are available for viewing and printing at no charge on the SEDAR website at www.sedar.com.
Copies of the corporation's financial statements together with the auditor's report were also made available on the corporation's transfer agent, TSX Trust Company's website. As you no doubt have had an opportunity to review this material, I would request a motion dispensing with the reading of the financial statements and the auditor's report.
I move that reading of the corporation's financial statement for the financial year ended 25 December 2021, together with the auditor's report thereon be dispensed with. I second the motion.
Are there any objections to the motion? As there are no objections to the motion, I declare the motion carried. The next item of business is the appointment of PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP as auditors of the corporation, and I ask for a motion in this regard.
I move that PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP Chartered Professional Accountants of Vancouver, British Columbia, be appointed as auditors of the corporation until the close of the next annual meeting or until a successor is appointed at a remuneration to be determined by the Board of Directors of the Corporation. I second the motion.
This motion is now open for discussion. You have heard the motion, and if there's no further discussion, I would ask that anyone who has not previously voted their shares in this regard, please do so. The results of this vote will be announced later in the meeting once all of the votes have been tabulated. The next item of business is fixing the number of positions on the corporation's board of directors. I would request a motion in this regard.
I move that the number of directors of the corporation to be elected at this meeting be fixed at not more than eight. I second the motion.
You have heard the motion, and if there's no further discussion, I would ask that anyone who has not previously voted their shares in this regard, please do so. The results of this vote will be announced later in the meeting once all of the votes have been tabulated. It is now in order to proceed with the election of directors. Management's nominees for election of directors of the corporation are listed on pages 18 through 25 of the corporation's information circular. They are Sean Cheah, Johnny Ciampi, Dr. Marie Delorme, myself, Kathleen Keller-Hobson, Hugh McKinnon, George Paleologou, and Mary Wagner. The shareholders of the corporation have been asked to either vote for or withhold their vote for the election of each of the management's individual nominees.
Each director elected today will hold office effective as of the completion date of this meeting until the close of the next annual meeting of shareholders or until their successor is duly elected or appointed, unless their office is earlier vacated in accordance with the articles of the corporation, or unless they become disqualified to act as a director. Proxies have been received sufficient to elect all of the management nominees. If any shareholders present have other nominees that they would wish to propose for consideration, the board would be pleased to receive their names for consideration for future elections. In light of this, are there any further nominations? I now declare the nominations closed.
I move that Sean Cheah, Johnny Ciampi, Dr. Marie Delorme, Bruce Hodge, Kathleen Keller-Hobson, Hugh McKinnon, George Paleologou, and Mary Wagner be appointed as directors of the corporation to hold office until the close of the next annual meeting of shareholders or until each of their successors is elected or appointed. I second the motion.
You have heard the motion, and I would ask that anyone who has not previously voted their shares in this regard, please do so now. The results of this vote will be announced later in the meeting once all of the votes have been tabulated. The next item of business is approval of the advisory resolution respecting the corporation's approach to executive compensation. As outlined on pages seven and eight of the information circular, the board, through the Compensation and Human Resources Committee, is responsible for formulating and monitoring the effectiveness of the corporation's executive compensation program. The board believes that the corporation's shareholders should have an opportunity to express their opinion on the corporation's executive compensation program by voting for or against the resolution set out on page seven of the information circular.
As this is an advisory vote, the results of this vote will not be binding upon the board. However, the board and the Compensation and Human Resources Committee will consider the outcome of the vote as part of their ongoing review of the corporation's executive compensation program. In order to meet the requirements of Canada Business Corporations Act, this resolution must be passed by a majority of votes cast by the shareholders of the corporation. As all of you have had a chance to review the resolution prior to the meeting, I would request a motion dispensing with the formal reading of this resolution.
I move that formal reading of the resolution approving the corporation's approach to executive compensation found on page seven of the information circular be dispensed with. I second that motion.
Are there any objections to this motion? As there are no objections to this motion, I declare the motion carried. I would ask that anyone who has not previously voted their shares regarding this resolution, please do so. The results of this vote will be announced later in the meeting once all votes have been tabulated. I would now advise that we're closing the polls. It is now 1:41 P.M. Pacific Time. I will close the polls with respect to all resolutions within 30 seconds to allow all online votes to catch up.
Okay. The polls are now closed. While the ballots are being tallied, we will receive a brief update on the corporation's operations from George Paleologou, our President and Chief Executive Officer, and Will Kalutycz, our Chief Financial Officer.
Thank you, Bruce, and welcome everyone to our 2022 AGM. Our CFO, Will Kalutycz, and I are going to take you through a formal presentation followed by Q&A. This is now our third AGM by video. Hopefully, next year we will see you all in person. The slides here are available on our website as well. On slide two, our standard disclaimers as usual on slides two and three. We're now on slide four. As you can see, our sales for 2021 came in at CAD 4.9 billion, up from CAD 200 million back in 2004. We began with eight operations located mainly in Western Canada, and we have expanded across Canada and the U.S. with 111 operations overall. For our investment in Clearwater Seafoods, we now have operations in Argentina and the U.K.
We also have an investment in a dry cured meat company located in Parma, Italy. Over the years, we have grown every metric consistently and steadily despite the many headwinds that came our way. We have also grown our free cash flow per share to CAD 6.05 per share, up from CAD 0.78 per share back in 2004. We're now on slide five. Our vision remains simple and straightforward. We invest in innovative and entrepreneurial food companies that are making great-tasting, nutrient-dense products with a passion for their communities and what is best for our planet. All of our capital allocation decisions and innovation are driven by this simple vision. We're now on slide six.
Even with the most recent volatility in the capital markets, we have delivered a 21.1% compounded annual return to our long-term shareholders since 2004 through growing dividends per share and capital appreciation. We're now on slide seven. We invest our capital carefully, deliberately, and responsibly in targeted segments of the food industry. We back incredibly passionate and talented people, and we support them over the long term. We don't buy businesses to flip them. We encourage innovation in new products and processes, and we work diligently to build large moats around our various businesses. We're now on slide eight. Our second comprehensive ESG report is due to come out in June of this year. We're on track to achieve carbon neutrality by 2030. We're also committed to producing authentic food that is healthy, nutrient-dense, and minimally processed.
We take climate change very seriously, and we believe that our passion for regenerative agriculture and the sustainable stewardship of our fisheries, combined with our stated objectives to help reduce food waste, will improve both the environment and human health and also help reduce food insecurity. We continue to believe strongly that healthy humans and a healthy planet are two sides of the same coin. We're now on slide nine. While focusing on the social part of ESG, we would like to show you a short video about the significance of our partnership with Membertou First Nation and the Mi'kmaq Coalition in acquiring Clearwater Seafoods. We believe that this transaction represents reconciliation at its very best. Our Mi'kmaq partners can also teach us a great deal about environmental stewardship. Their decisions are focused on the next seven generations and not just on today's.
The video is narrated by Chief Terry Paul of the Membertou First Nation, who played a leading role in this historical, transformative, and groundbreaking transaction.
For 13,000 years, our ancestors took to the waters of Mi'kma'ki to provide for their families. Fishing became more than nourishment. It is a way of life for the Mi'kmaq. Over time, rules changed and our access became limited. As industries grew, we were often left behind. Today is a new day. Today, our Mi'kmaq communities have come together in a monumental way to celebrate our ancestors and to provide for our great grandchildren that we haven't met yet. With pride, a collective of Mi'kmaq communities from across Nova Scotia and Newfoundland, in partnership with Premium Brands, have acquired North America's largest seafood company, Clearwater Seafoods. Where we once were left behind, now we have ownership. Where others once went ahead of us, now we have made a transformational move for the future of our people.
In this truly remarkable moment, we have invested in our traditions. We have invested in 100% ownership of Clearwater's Canadian licenses, which will sow economic benefits for us and for seven generations to come. Together, we always rise. Let's keep fishing, number two.
We're now on slide 10. This slide provides you with a list of the many resources and attributes available to partners that join the PB ecosystem. As stated many times, we're not a roll-up, an integrator or a consolidator. We identify emerging trends and white space opportunities, and we invest in innovative specialty food businesses that share our views, and we help them build scale to become much larger. Let's now on slide 11. The chart shows you how diverse we are by product and by species. This diversity enables us to better manage commodity risks and makes us more agile and more resilient. You can clearly see the emergence of seafood as our top commodity input. We're certain that seafood is the emerging protein in North America and at the intersection of a number of key consumer mega trends. We're now on slide 12.
Our global supply chain is shown here on slide 12. During 2021, some global supply chains slowed down and in some cases ceased completely, so global diversification was the key for us. Our supply chain teams travel the world looking for partners that share our values and our vision, and these relationships are leveraged for the benefit of the entire PB ecosystem. Now slide 13. Sales channel and customer diversification are key strategic objectives for all of our platforms. Our progress over the years in this area was a key factor in helping manage through the various COVID-related shutdowns of channels like food service, airlines and cruise lines. Slide 14. The map shows the location of our various operations around the world.
Our U.S.-based sales continue to grow, and we continue to see tremendous opportunities to grow our business in the U.S. for many years to come. Slide 15. We are very active with acquisitions during 2021, and we remain very active in 2022. We have already completed four transactions so far, and all of our platforms are currently working on several accretive acquisitions to help grow and diversify their businesses. Slide 17. This slide shows you the various businesses under each platform. Back one. While Slide 18 gives you an idea as to the size of each platform. As promised many years ago, four of our six platforms are at or are closing in on being billion-dollar platforms. Slides 19 to 23.
Our protein group faced a lot of headwinds during 2021, including labor shortages, inflation, and supply chain disruptions. They persevered and are well-positioned for when things go back to normal. The next few slides show you some of the exciting new products we launched during 2021 or will launch in 2022. We're now on slide 24. Our sandwich platform had a good year in 2021. It grew its business by 17% while diversifying across different sales channels and finding new customers. We're continuing to invest in automation and robotics as a way of building on our many competitive advantages in this space. The following video shows you our newly installed generation three line in Phoenix, Arizona.
Another generation three line will be installed in Reno later this year, increasing capacity while reducing our reliance on labor. A third generation three line is in order. We're now on slides 26 and 27. We call it our sandwich platform, but they assemble much more than sandwiches. We're a leading assembler of single-serve meals, charcuterie trays, breakfast sandwiches, Philly steak sandwiches, and with the recent acquisition of Leonetti's, we have now added wrapped products like calzones and strombolis to our portfolio. We're now on slide 28. Our bakery platform is small relative to the size of Premium Brands, but has a long runway ahead of it. Our Canadian business has just completed a major expansion of its capacity at its Stuyver's facility in Langley, BC. While our U.S.-based business, which is called Shaw Bakers, is currently investing in a new facility in the Bay Area.
Slide 29. Shaw Bakers is getting tremendous traction as U.S. consumers discover its artisan, innovative, and great-tasting, best-in-class products, as shown here on Slide 29. Slide 30. Our culinary group made excellent progress during 2021 after its transformative deal with Global Gourmet during 2020. Global Gourmet is a leading soup, protein, mix, and sauce business, and is currently launching several new products in both Canada, U.S., and Asia. Slides 31 and 32. Global Gourmet seafood soups utilizing clams and lobster meat from the PB seafood ecosystem will be launched in Asia later this year. On Slide 32, we're pleased to show you our new artisan pizza line under the Rocky Mountain Flatbread brand name, and a pasta meal kit SKU currently being launched by Duso's. Slide 33.
Our distribution business came back nicely during 2021 as food service and out-of-home dining returned. This platform is very well positioned to benefit from the reopening of the economy as consumers resume their normal activities. Slides 34 and 35. As the pictures show, our various distribution businesses added capacity during 2020 and 2021, and are very well positioned for growth as the pandemic subsides. Slide 36. Our seafood platform took shape during 2021, leveraging recent acquisitions and capital investments. Including our equity investments, sales of this platform reached CAD 1.5 billion in 2021. Our seafood platform is vertically integrated from ocean to plate and is very well positioned to continue to grow through its direct access to best-in-class sustainable seafood resources and by leveraging favorable consumer trends.
This slide, on slide 37, demonstrates Clearwater's progress over the past year. Due mainly to strong demand for its products and higher pricing, sales grew by 13.7%, while EBITDA grew by 53.7%. Clearwater is a well-managed company with an excellent management team with access to some of the best shellfish and seafood resources in the world. Its products are in high demand and are highly coveted around the world. Slide 38. Clearwater combines its access to some of the world's leading seafood resources with best-in-class automated and efficient operations. The following video demonstrates some of the Clearwater's unique processing at sea technologies while providing you with an update on its progress working within the PB ecosystem.
It is still early days, but we're very excited with the organic and acquisition opportunities we're seeing to help grow and improve Clearwater's business model for the benefit of all stakeholders.
Let's review how some key solutions are driving Clearwater's return on investment while helping to evolve its leadership and sustainability. Clearwater's automatic shucking technology equipment on board our scallop vessels delivers consistently high quality product and offers remarkable increases in productivity and profitability. Solely designed in-house, Clearwater has driven a dramatic increase in productivity on board our vessels. Clearwater faces many challenges in processing wild seafood. One of the greatest ones is how to effectively and consistently identify and sort defects, ensuring all finished goods are in spec. For much of the industry, and up until very recently for Clearwater, sorting defects is highly laborious and slow. Note how challenging it was to find Argentine scallop defects, let alone determine which ones they were. The term needle in a haystack comes to mind.
Adapting technology used in other industries, Clearwater implemented hyperspectral imaging to revolutionize our process to an incredible throughput, driving cost savings of CAD 0.70 per pound. We are taking Clearwater's priority ingredients and complementing them through collaboration across the Premium Brands ecosystem. Take a look at the breadth and wealth of this pantry. Our chefs are thrilled to be working in this space and have started to innovate together. By leveraging great brands, complementary ingredients, and third-party processing partners, we are innovating in some exciting culinary platforms. It's still early days, but here is some of the culinary magic being worked on across the Premium Brands ecosystem. Duso's fresh pasta and sauces, produced on Granville Island in Vancouver, are partnered here in one of our seafood pasta creations.
Stuyver's Bread, also out of British Columbia, is a truly artisanal bakery who provided the ideal slider bun to complement some lobster and langoustine sliders we're developing. Sorry, folks, none left to share. Last but not least, Harvest Meats, based in Saskatchewan, is a leading producer of some of Canada's finest sausages, seen here in a traditional seafood boil. As we stated earlier, innovation at Clearwater is about solving problems that matter. We are proud that our innovation strategy drives profitable growth while enabling us to steward the resource and the environment. This is not just our commitment to investors, it's our commitment to ourselves and the communities in which we work and live.
We're now on slide 39 and 40. Our investment thesis is that the majority of the seafood space is very commoditized and that Clearwater has a unique opportunity to lead in the areas of value-added and branded. The next two slides show you some examples of its value-added products. These slides also show you some of the progress we're making in value-adding and branding certain seafood products. We believe that we have a unique opportunity to connect the end consumer with the entire supply chain, demonstrating environmental stewardship, sustainability and traceability in an area of the food space that often lacks these important attributes. I will now pass it back to Will for the financial part of the presentation.
Thanks, George, and welcome everyone. I'm on slide number 42, just talking a bit about our sales for 2021. As George mentioned, we had sales of CAD 4.931 billion. That was an increase of CAD 862.8 million or 21% from 2021. That 21% was in line with our 11-year CAGR of about 22.4% for our sales growth. Looking ahead to 2022, we've provided guidance of CAD 5.6 billion-CAD 5.85 billion. We've shown on the chart the midpoint of that of CAD 5.725 billion. Assuming that number, that would represent growth for 2022 of CAD 793 million or roughly 16%, and that's before any additional acquisitions this year.
Turning to the next slide, number 43, gives you a bridge of how we got from 2020's number to 2021's number. You can see acquisitions accounted for roughly CAD 358 million of the growth. Price and freight inflation, CAD 307 million of the growth. It was an incredibly inflationary market in 2021, and with average price increases across our portfolio of about 7.5%. Most of that CAD 307.5 million came in the second half of the year. Organic volume growth accounted for CAD 327 million of our growth. This was an organic volume growth rate of 8%. Included in that 8% is some recovery from lost sales in 2020 due to COVID and the impacts of that. Normally
Normalizing for that, our organic volume growth was 6.3%, which was above our long-term targeted range of 4%-6%, but well below our potential. Four primary reasons for being below our potential. One was because of all of the inflation in 2021, many of our businesses did less featuring as a way to manage their margins while they were putting through price increases. Also, we had a variety of supply chain and labor shortage issues that hampered our ability and resulted in higher customer shortages. Finally, the impacts of the pandemic on our food service sales. The last factor impacting our sales in 2021 was the exchange translation of our U.S. operations because of the higher Canadian dollar that resulted in a reduction in our sales of about CAD 131 million.
After that brings us to our sales for the year of CAD 4.931 billion. Turning to the next slide, 44. This slide is an inventory of our major growth initiatives across our six platforms. The items highlighted in yellow represent initiatives that contributed to our growth in 2021, and the unhighlighted items, along with the highlighted items, are all future growth drivers. You can see there's a lot of fascinating and exciting stuff in the pipeline. Turning to slide 45 and talking a little bit about our EBITDA. EBITDA for 2021 came at CAD 430.7 million. That was an increase of CAD 118 million or roughly 38% from 2020. You can see that's a much accelerated rate of growth from our eleven-year CAGR of 22.2%.
As we look forward to 2022, we've provided guidance of CAD 510 million to CAD 530 million for our EBITDA. Assuming the midpoint of that range of CAD 520 million, that would be growth of about CAD 89 million this year or roughly 21%. Right in line with our eleven-year CAGR. That's before any additional acquisitions in 2022. Turning to slide 46. Just a little bit of an analysis of our margins for the year. I mean, the total column on the far right, our EBITDA margin for 2021 was 8.7%. That was a 100 basis points increase from 2020, but far below our long-term target or our targeted 10% EBITDA margin range.
There's really three factors that contributed to the shortfall from our 10% target. One was lost sales contribution from the challenges I mentioned earlier, namely the featuring, the supply chain disruptions, the labor shortages, and the COVID impacts. Then the two other factors that we wanted to highlight on the slide, one was just the impacts of inflation, and that's the middle section of the slide. You can see we put through CAD 307 million in price increases. However, our direct material costs, wages, and freight costs increased by about CAD 346 million, resulting in about CAD 39 million of reduction in our EBITDA. When you look at our two platforms, our two reporting segments, specialty foods and Premium Food distributions, you can see the different stories there.
If we look at specialty foods, you can see that there was about a CAD 50 million negative impact on our EBITDA. That's due primarily to one reason, and that is much of their business is to large retailers, and there's a natural delay in getting price increases through. That delay results in some short-term margin impacts, and that's what you're seeing there. Ultimately, as those prices come through, we'll see our margins normalize in that segment. In our premium food distribution group, you can see they more than offset the increase in their cost with selling price increases with a positive EBITDA impact. The premium food distribution group are much more dynamic pricing model, and they're able to pass on those price increases immediately.
Overall, the short-term impacts of inflation was about 137 basis points impact on our margin. Again, we expect to fully recover this as our pricing strategies unfold in 2022. Next factor highlighted on the sheet is our outside storage costs. You know, George mentioned the supply disruptions, significant factor in 2021. As a method to mitigate those impacts, our businesses took on larger inventory positions. This helped also manage inflation to some degree, but that came with a cost of additional sorts outside storage costs, and that was about a 15 basis point impact on our EBITDA margin.
If you look at our EBITDA margin for the year, comparing it to that 10% target, if you normalize for just those two factors on the sheet, the inflation and the outside storage, we would have actually hit our targeted 10%. As you'll see later on, we are very bullish on meeting that target. Turning to the next slide 47. The next five slides just show you how extreme of an inflationary environment it was in 2021. The five slides outline the five basic commodity segments that we source raw materials in. The first chart is the pork segment. The green line represents 2021, the blue line 2020, and the gold line 2019. You can just see the record levels of pricing in 2021. Next slide 48. Again, the green line represents 2021.
This is for beef commodities we purchased. Again, same trend. You can see the record high levels in 2021. Slide 49 is for chicken, probably the most extreme of the commodity increases we saw in 2021. You can see that with that green line again. Then the next two slides, lobster on slide 50 and salmon on slide 51, both show the same trends. A little less impact on us versus the first three commodities. Beef, pork, and chicken are primarily purchased in our specialty food segment and used in our branded products. Where you have those pricing delays versus the lobster and salmon are in our seafood segment, which is in our premium food distribution group, much more dynamic pricing models and as a result, not as concerning, but still a challenge.
Turning to slide 52, looking at our earnings for the year. We came in at CAD 194.8 million of earnings. That was a CAD 76.3 million or 64% increase from 2020. Again, driven by the improvement in our EBITDA. You can see that rate of increase was far in excess of our 11-year CAGR of 25.2%. In terms of EPS, we came in at CAD 4.48 per share. That was an increase from 2020 of CAD 1.43 per share or 47%. We don't provide guidance, forward guidance on earnings, but given what we're expecting in the EBITDA, we do expect a significant improvement in our earnings as well in 2022. Turning to slide 53 and looking at our five-year targets.
Over the last twelve years, we set five-year targets three times. The first time in 2010, we set a target for 2015 of CAD 1 billion in sales. We exceeded that by 2014, a year ahead of schedule. At that time, we set our target to CAD 2 billion in sales by 2019. Again, by 2018 we exceeded that target with CAD 3 billion in sales, and at that time set our current target of CAD 6 billion in sales and CAD 600 million or 10% EBITDA margin. Turning to slide 54 and just looking how we're performing to our five-year target.
You can see if we look at our midpoint of our 2022 guidance of CAD 5.725 billion and add 6% organic growth for 2023, a very conservative number relative to our historic organic growth. This includes inflation, unlike our organic volume growth rate, that's adding that 6% you can see will easily exceed our CAD 6 billion target, and that's without any further acquisitions this year or next year. Slide 55 shows you a similar calculation for our targeted EBITDA. You know, our 2022 guidance of CAD 520 million, adding the contribution margin for the incremental growth at 6% takes us to over CAD 600 million in EBITDA and meeting our 10% EBITDA target. Turning to our balance sheet on slide 56. We ended 2021 with a very solid balance sheet and good liquidity.
Our total debt to EBITDA ratio, which includes our convertible debentures, was 3.6 to 1. That was at the bottom end of our long-term target range of 3.5 to 4.0 to 1. Our senior debt EBITDA ratio was 2.7 to 1, which was right in the middle of our long-term targeted range of 2.5 to 3.0 to 1. Again, the difference between those two ratios just being the exclusion of our convertible debentures and our senior debt ratio. In terms of liquidity, we ended the year with CAD 485 million in available credit capacity. Slide 57 outlines a history of our convertible debentures. We really view it as an equity strategy. That's one of the reasons we separated out in our covenant calculations.
You know, with our objective always being to get the convertible debenture converted into equity before it matures. We've done nine issuances. You can see seven of those nine have almost fully converted, with the most recent being in 2021. Our Series F was converted, a hundred and five million of the hundred and thirteen million outstanding, leaving us with only two convertible debentures outstanding, both of them having long-term maturity dates. Overall, it's been a very successful strategy for us, and we estimate that the anti-dilutive impact on our share price from this strategy to be roughly CAD 15 per share. Turning to slide 58 and our free cash flow. For the year, we generated CAD 263 million in free cash flow, an increase of CAD 74.5 million or 39.5% from 2020.
Our free cash flow per share increased to CAD 6.05, up CAD 1.18 or 24.2% from 2020. Our payout ratio fell to 42.3%, giving us lots of flexibility there in terms of future dividend increases. On that front, in 2022, after the fiscal 2021 year, we announced our eighth consecutive double-digit increase in our dividend, bringing it to an annual rate of CAD 2.80 per share or CAD 0.70 per quarter. Turning to slide 59 in capital allocation. This slide outlines our project capital expenditures for the year. We define a project capital expenditure as generally earning 15% IRR, internal rate of return or greater, and that's on an after-tax, unlevered basis, generally using a 10-year plus model.
You can see in 2021, we invested roughly CAD 114 million in capital projects capital expenditures. 14 of them being major projects, as we've listed on the slide here, and 12 of those 14 all being projects that come online in 2022, i.e., future growth drivers. They're all growth related. Turning to slide 60, capital allocation and acquisitions. As George mentioned, it was our second biggest year on record for acquisitions at roughly CAD 714 million. Again, for these acquisitions, we run with the same metric of a 15% internal rate of return after tax, unlevered, with generally 10-year plus business models. Subsequent to the year, also, as George mentioned, we did complete four additional acquisitions for about CAD 42 million of invested capital.
Turning to the last slide, our return on net assets from our investments. For 2021, our RONA was 10.6% below our long-term target of 15%. Now, we did expect a lower than targeted RONA for 2021. Not this low, and I'll come back to that in a sec. If you look at the nature of our RONA historically, we generally go through significant investment events. Because of our 10-year plus modeling, it takes some time for those investments to start generating the return, and then we see those returns until we go into our next investment cycle.
If you look at the period from 2010 to 2013, relative to the size of our company at that time, that was a very significant investment period for us. You see the jump in our RONA from 2013 to 2016 as we started realizing those investments. We went into another significant investment cycle from 2016 to 2019. Starting in 2020, we would have expected to start seeing those returns from those investments. They caused that short-term pressure, much like 2010 to 2013. However, there's just been an incredible amount of noise over the last couple of years with COVID and all of the issues related to that, with supply chain disruptions, labor shortages, and inflation.
If you strip that out, you can see within the underlying business there has been solid progress, and easily this year would have been without those impacts, you know, at 13%-14% RONA, which is kind of the trend or the track we would have expected outside of those events. That concludes the financial update for 2021. With that, I will pass it over to the commentator.
Thanks, George and Will. My name is Douglas Goss, and I'm the corporate secretary for the corporation and the secretary for this meeting. I'm pleased to advise the shareholders that with respect to the matters to be voted on today, the shareholders have voted by a margin of at least 99.3% to fix the number of directors elected at this meeting and no more than eight. The shareholders have also voted by a margin of 98.3% to approve the appointment of PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP as auditors of the corporation for the ensuing year and have authorized the directors of the corporation to fix the remuneration of the auditors.
I'm also pleased to advise that each of our director nominees has been elected by a margin of at least 90% and accordingly effective upon completion of this meeting. Each will hold office until the next annual meeting, or until their successor is duly elected and appointed, unless their office is earlier vacated in accordance to the articles of the corporation, or unless they become disqualified to act as a director. I'm very pleased to congratulate Sean Cheah, Johnny Ciampi, Dr. Marie Delorme, Bruce Hodge, Kathleen Keller-Hobson, and Hugh McKinnon, George Paleologou, and Mary Wagner on their reappointment to the Corporation's board of directors. I'm also pleased to advise that the shareholders have approved the corporation's approach to executive compensation by a margin of at least 96.43%, which meets the majority standard required for the passage of this resolution.
Accordingly, I declare this resolution to be carried, and I would ask that a copy of the resolution be attached to the minutes of this meeting as Appendix three. I've also advised the shareholders that a full and complete report of voting results with respect to this meeting will be prepared and filed on SEDAR later this afternoon.
Thank you, Doug. I would ask the secretary of this meeting to attach the direction of votes received by proxy from TSX Trust Company to the minutes of this meeting as Appendix four. Now, if there's no further business to be brought before the meeting, I would ask for a motion to terminate the meeting.
I move that the meeting terminate.
I second the motion.
Are there any objections? As there are no objections, I declare the motion carried. I declare the meeting terminated. Thank you all for participating in this meeting today.