was a positive development in all our business areas, and there is not one single entity where we have not reached our goals. That is insofar of importance as a balanced development of the whole company, I think, is a very essential goal. We saw revenues up at EUR 931.5 million +24%, EBITDA at EUR 393.6 million +33%, and EBIT at EUR 261.8 million +57%. This all ends up in the group net profit of EUR 188.6 million +47%. What I think is especially of importance, our productivity has also been steady on a very high level, so EBITDA margin at around 42.2%. If you put in mind that a major part of our business is the handling business, which per definition is a low EBITDA margin business, I think this is really a very, very good level of productivity.
We saw the largest cost increase clearly in personnel expenses with a plus of 28.3%, and I will come back to the details later. Based on these results, we will propose to the General Assembly a significant dividend increase up to EUR 1.23 per share. That is 60% as a basic payout ratio plus roughly 5.7% of a bonus. So altogether, around 66%, almost two-thirds of net profit will be transferred to our shareholders, which is an increase of 70% compared with last year. If we look at 2024, then we see that due to our positive expectation of further growth in the years to come, we decided to start into a new phase of investments on the airport, and our CapEx will go up to roughly EUR 200 million in 2024 and should stay somewhere at this level also in the coming years.
The good news is we don't need debt financing for these investments. They will be financed from our cash flow, especially also the big project of the terminal expansion. When we met last time, I think there were more question marks about how 2024 will perform. What we see so far, not only from passenger figures in January but also from the press releases of the travel agencies, of airlines, from today's perspective, we can expect a rather strong travel season, maybe the strongest ever for Austria. This should also positively impact our business expectations for 2024, which are more shiny from today's perspective than it has been in January or even in October and November when we made our budget. If you look at the financial indicators in detail, you might see that financial results finally ended up in negative territory.
That reflects the fact that we repaid our EUR 200 million remaining EIB loan in Q4, and from that repayment relates one-off expense of roughly EUR 10 million, which is included in the financial results of 2023, but which means that further years will be relieved from the burden of paying interest, which should have a positive effect on our profitability for 2024 and the following years. Clearly, we expect for 2024 a substantial positive financial result. If you look at our net position, you see that we had roughly EUR 361 million end of 2023 on available funds and zero financial debt. If you compare the figures and earnings, revenue, EBITDA, group net profit with 2019, you see that in all financial categories, we are better than 2019. What we have to put into account is that this is not deflated, so it's including inflation.
So it's not a comparison real to real, but it shows that overall, we have overcome the COVID problems and are now back on a very fine and positive economic road. Clearly, we also saw a sharp increase in our cost positions. The most important one, personnel expenses, went up by roughly EUR 75 million, 28%. Consumables and services used only up 21%, what reflects that we are very well positioned in regard of energy prices. So we have not been severely affected by the price hike due to the fact that we are producing electricity on our own with our PV for roughly 30% in 2023, and this will go up to roughly 50% once all of the projects are finalized throughout 2024. And it reflects also that we had purchased electricity already in 2017, 2018, at substantially lower costs than we saw in 2022 or 2023.
Other operating expenses went up 49%. This includes especially some maintenance measures that have been cancelled due to COVID in the years before and which are now overdue to be done. So it's not surprising that we saw a cost increase there. EBITDA margin at 42.2%, I think that's a very, very fine indicator, and I think we can be very glad that we reached that level. Going to the equity, you see that we improved our equity ratio up to roughly 70%. We had a very high cash flow from operating activities with EUR 384 million and an overall free cash flow of EUR 228 million. And as I already said, net liquidity of EUR 361 million and total equity of EUR 1.556 billion. You see the strong balance sheet structure. I think it's self-explaining. We even reduced our balance sheet smoothly from 2019 levels and increased our equity position substantially.
As I already mentioned, the payout will be proposed at EUR 1.32 per share, and this equals an increase of roughly 70% compared to the dividend for 2022. Also, our employees who own 10% of the shares of the company will profit from that situation. I mean, it was a very controversial discussion, if you remember, what so-called experts and really distinguished experts said about the long-term effects of COVID. But if we look at the real situation now, it's more or less a very big, but again, it's a V, and it shows that we will reach pre-crisis levels soon, maybe 2025 or even earlier. Let's see. But the aviation industry as such, and especially our airport, is back on track, and we foresee substantial growth in the years to come. That also shows the necessity of making our airport fit for these future developments.
Here you find some highlights of ongoing and planned investments at and around the airport. The southern terminal extension, where the intensive construction phase already started with an investment volume of EUR 420 million, our PV plants, which are completed in 2024 and should sum up to roughly 50 million kWh production. We are developing a roughly 50 ha big facility on the western side neighboring the airport, where we have commercial space, and we see a very, very high demand for that. It will bring a lot of new companies nearby the airport for their businesses. We have to build the logistics center for supplying the terminals. The construction of the new Vienna House Hotel will start very soon. The logistics park nearby the airport will be completed in fall of 2024, and our ultra-fast, super-fast electric charging station will start operation most likely in June this year.
And we also see substantial investments in the apron and the terminal expansion at Malta Airport, but more details in regard of that, we will get from Julian Jäger. We know that the transport infrastructure needs to be extended, and a very important part of it is the railway connection from the airport to Bratislava. In regard of that, this year, the permission process should start so that some light at the end of the tunnel that these very important connections will be finalized. Overall, we see roughly 1,000 jobs in our airport and through companies who are coming to the airport added in 2024. In 2023, our total employment increased by roughly 8%. In 2024, this will be slowing down, so we will see roughly 300 additional employees in our subsidiaries and in the company itself, which equals 4.5% roughly.
Putting all together, we expect roughly a personnel cost increase in 2024 of around 10%, so a substantial slowdown from the development in 2023. We can confirm our financial guidance for 2024, and given the brighter prospects, I would think it's on the very c onservative side. So if everything goes well as it looks now, we could maybe end up higher than expected in November when we made our budget. Last but not least, we see that our share price has substantially improved.
We are at a current market capitalization of around EUR 4.2 billion, which is, believe it or not, only EUR 500 million lower than Fraport, with a balance sheet that is 8 X bigger than ours. It's not too far away from Zurich with EUR 5.6 billion. The graph shows that we had a very constant impro vement throughout the last decade, and I think we have all reasons to be optimistic for the years to come. That's from my side, and I hand over to Julian Jäger.
Thanks a lot, Günther. I will continue with the segments and a bit of an outlook on 2024. I think overall, and you've seen the strong results 2023, the main driver, in my perspective, was passenger growth. It's really satisfying to see that essentially throughout the segments and all the businesses, we managed to translate the passenger growth into revenue growth. I think the basis for the quick recovery of Vienna Airport is the high process quality. Austrian Airlines is the only airline in the Lufthansa Group which has more passengers in 2023 than in 2019.
So I think the basis is a very solid and punctual operation here. Therefore, I think overall, we can be quite happy with the cooperation with Austrian Airlines and the development here. I would continue with the airport with the yeah, thank you. A few words regarding the airport segment. We had above passenger growth in the external revenue growth by 37% up to EUR 440 million. EBITDA increased by 39% to EUR 176 million, and EBIT was pretty exactly doubled to EUR 100 million. The main driver was increasing the passenger-related fees +47%. Overall, our airport revenues from the segment increased by roughly 11% per passenger. We managed to increase revenues significantly above inflation. I think this is quite an achievement, and revenues were already above 2019. Let's come to the next slide.
Yeah, I think this is one development where it makes a lot of sense to take a bit of a more long-term perspective. If you look at this, you can see that both the seats per flight movement and the seat load factor increased very significantly over the last 13 years. Seat load factor was in 2010 around 70%, and now we are above 80%. So I think this is quite an achievement and quite a change which very substantially supports the revenue development at the airport. And thank God, this is a trend which continues. And the same applies for the seats per movement. If you look, we were roughly at 115 seats in 2010, and now we are at 165 seats. So overall, the combination really drives the passenger numbers per movement, and this is obviously an excellent development.
You saw it in the slide before that more than 70% of revenues are coming from the passengers, and only 20% are coming from the aircraft. Let's continue with the next slide. Yeah, again, I think this is a very positive development if you look at the long-term passenger growth in Vienna. If you just look here at the average growth between 2000 and 2019, the European a verage was 4.7%, a nd our growth was 5.3%. This doesn't look much, but if you appreciate that the average or the European airports include Turkey, Istanbul, include all the Eastern European airports where growth in the last 20 years was significantly above average, I think the 5.3% are excellent. If you would compare ourselves to Germany, if you would compare ourselves to Western European airports, I think the difference would be quite impressive.
The good thing is that especially compared with the German-speaking airports, our recovery post-pandemic was very strong as well. Yeah, the most difficult segment is still the handling and security services segment, but we are very pleased to see that we managed to take the turnaround to profitability. We had an EBIT of EUR 6.1 million, a positive EBIT of EUR 6.1 million in 2023 compared to -EUR 3.5 million in 2022. Revenues grew by more than 30%. Overall, still a difficult environment, competitive environment, but we managed to change quite a number of contracts, to extend quite a number of contracts. So revenues should still increase in 2024. Costs increased as well. As Günther already showed, our staff costs increased quite significantly. And we did not save money on quality.
We did not save money on staff, but we improved very substantially in the last five years our efficiency in the handling segment. Overall, it will remain a difficult and very competitive environment. Overall, we are happy that we managed a turnaround in 2023, and we are confident that we will see a positive development in 2024 here as well. Retail and properties throughout the positive picture: parking increased revenue by 33%, center management and hospitality by 39%. More than 50% of the segment's revenues come from center management and hospitality, and rentals increased by 13%. Overall, I think a very positive development. Revenues increased to EUR 182 million. EBITDA was at EUR 100 million and EBIT EUR 81 million. One should not forget that there was a positive one-off of EUR 8 million in 2022. Overall, yeah, excellent results, I would say.
Malta is, yeah, still a very, very important and becoming more and more important part of our business. We had a record year in terms of passenger numbers in 2023, so 7.8 million passengers, a growth of 33%. This was translated into revenues of EUR 118 million, EBITDA of EUR 74 million, and a net profit of EUR 40 million. This was actually a bit below the 2022 figures because of a one-off tax credit of EUR 12 million in 2022. Overall, excellent results. The outlook for this year is very strong and positive as well. We expect more than 8 million passengers in 2024. We've started in Malta a very extensive investment program. Terminal expansion is going on. This is a project which is staggered over a number of years. We are increasing very substantially the aircraft stands, and we started to extend our airport city in Malta.
So SkyParks 2 will contain additional office space and a new hotel. Let's come to the current developments. January started excellent for the whole group. Vienna Airport had a growth of +9.5%, Malta +22.7%, then Košice +15.6%. Overall in the group, 2.3 million passengers and 12% growth. I think what is very positive, looking just at the Vienna figures, is cargo +16.2%. So this is an excellent development in January. We saw this trend already in the last quarter, but now it continued, and cargo is a very important part of our ground handling business. So we are trying actively to improve our competitive position in the region vis-à-vis Budapest, vis-à-vis other airports in the region. And we just signed a cooperation agreement with Incheon Airport and Korean Air. Korean Air is our most important cargo airline. Yeah, summer looks good.
I think Austrian is in a very good position right now. We'll grow by 2,787 in the course of this year. We'll offer a new long-haul destination with Boston. Ryanair will station 19 aircraft here in summer, five new destinations with their five aircraft. Wizz Air is th e airline which is affected most by the Pratt & Whitney engine problems, but still 29 destinations and five aircraft here in Vienna. So we are quite happy with the situation. And what is important to see is that Asia slowly but surely c omes back. ANA will start again in August, the Tokyo-Vienna route.
And overall, I think from today's perspective, and I think we will look at growth in 2024, and we will look at a positive development given that there's no additional global crisis or any other substantial problem somewhere in the world.
As we said, we expect about 30 million passengers in 2024. From today's perspective, it looks like we are going a bit more towards 31 million passengers. But I think that's too early to really say. It would be nice if we have in the group maybe 40 million passengers. Let's see. You saw that the year started very well, but I think it's too early to change here our predictions. And we feel quite confident to achieve here our full.