Stepwise from 2011 up to this year from roughly EUR 900 million, you can now take the respective slide to visualize it also. It's the next slide, please. Where you see how we step-by-step reduced our net debt position up to EUR 149 million + end of 2022. This now gives us the possibility to start with all the projects that have been delayed, unfortunately, by COVID and the problems accompanied by that. We also reported a very robust equity ratio of 65.1%, as you see in the slide, the previous slide. Our cash flow from operating activities increased to EUR 337 million compared to EUR 105 million last year.
Given that positive development, our dividend proposal to the annual general assembly will be 60% of the group net profit, so exactly what it was in 2019. That equals EUR 0.77 per share. If things go as well as we expect them right now for 2023, we will be in the position to even increase the payout ratio for 2023, so to let our shareholders participate on the favorable development of our company. I think one essential pillar of the positive development of our company is the fact that we are listed on the stock market. This is what we think would also be the best for the company in the years to come.
We will support to the utmost possible extent to maintain the free float as an important corporate objective. If you look in detail, you see that our EBITDA doubled almost compared to 2021. Overall, we could increase and improve the productivity. Our EBITDA margin should be again above 40%, so more or less at the level we saw in pre-crisis years. The earnings before interest and taxes were at EUR 167 million. Financial results improved to - EUR 9.3 million. You know that we are still repaying EIB loan. In this respect, the rising interest rates are favorable for our company because perhaps we reach the level of the interest rate that we have to pay for this loan.
This would enable us then to repay the loan in total or even major parts of it. By doing that, we would also have benefits for the coming years in respect of a better or even positive financial result. EBIT at EUR 157 compared to EUR 9.5, and the net profit, after non-controlling interest EUR 107.9. You might ask why there is such a difference this year between net profit for the period and after non-controlling interest. That has to be attributed to an extraordinary, positive result of our subsidiary in Malta. If we look ahead for 2023, I think from today's perspective, we will see further growth, both on the passenger side, but also on our Airport City and business location projects.
A considerable number of companies already opted to come to the airport. Especially, I would point out one company, it's Enpulsion. You may have not heard of them before, but it's a highly innovative, very fast growing company from Wiener Neustadt in Austria. They are producing satellite propulsion systems, especially for the Elon Musk's Starlink project, and they are growing on a very, very high speed, and they rent roughly 4,600 sq m and have an option for another 2,300. The facilities that have been left by Austrian Airlines in the crisis are now more or less again rented to this company, and they will produce on the airport. Our investment the next year should go up to EUR 135 million.
It includes the start of the Southern Enlargement terminal project and the further expansion of our photovoltaic facilities, which will be increased to roughly 45 hectares and the production of roughly 45 million kilowatt hours, which equals 40%-45% of the electricity consumption of the total system on the airport. Not only the airport itself, but also the companies that are working here. All these investments, as you will see, are financed from our cash flow, and we expect the revenues of about EUR 830 million and EBITDA of at least EUR 325 million and net profit exceeding EUR 150 million.
We are operating CO2 neutral since start of January 2023, and our sustainability goal for 2033 will be to get a Net Zero status, and we will really concentrate on further improving all our activities in regard of technology, of energy consumption, optimization, and even of production on our own. Let's move on to the operating expenses. Clearly you see that hand in hand with the increased traffic, our consumables and services used went up. I have to stress that energy prices did not very much hurt us because we had a very conservative purchasing strategy in place since years.
We have bought electricity for 22 already in 2019 and 2018, and we have provided already, roughly 25% by our own PV production. Personnel costs clearly went up substantially, and what you have to understand there is that we added roughly EUR 12 million to personnel provisions because you may be aware that we reduced our staff in the period of corona by roughly 1,000 heads. We put the 280 people in our new placement agency, and for most of them, so more than 200, we found new jobs inside the company or outside the company. There is a rest of roughly 50 people, mostly ill people who are handicapped and cannot do the work they did before.
They have a fixed contract, so they cannot be laid off. Therefore, we made a provision for all future potential costs out of that that are now part of the personnel costs in 2022 and will be a relief also for 2023 and the following year. As I already pointed out in the following slide, you see our balance sheet structure is very healthy. Our equity is at EUR 1.448 billion, equity ratio at 65.1%. Also we have net liquidity and strong cash flow. From the financial side, I think we are ready for all the investments that are planned the coming years to enhance growth and to enhance also the profitability of our company.
One very important decision of the Austrian government and the Austrian parliament was the indexation of passenger and landing fees as protection against inflation. The classic tariff formula has been suspended until the end of 2026 due to the COVID-related distortions, and the increases are now based on the average inflation rate on a yearly basis, calculated from 1st of August to 31st of July. An earlier return to the price model is only possible if the three-year average of traffic volumes exceeds the comparable figures of 2016 to 2019. The security fees include also the extra costs for the implementation of the Entry-Exit System.
A very important decision that shows the confidence in the further development of our company was the decision of the Mamma Group to build a third hotel at our site, a Vienna House Easy with 510 rooms. It's a very big hotel, and it shows that also third-party investors are convinced that our company will develop in a very good way in the coming years. Construction will start later this year, and the opening is planned already for spring 2025. This will increase the room capacity on the airport up to 1,400 rooms and will especially support our Airport City strategy with conferencing center, seminars, and all that stuff.
As I already pointed out, we have the plan to increase PV capacity to about 45 hectares at the site and in the Bad Vöslau, our airfield south of Vienna. The project will be finalized in the course of 2023. You have for sure monitored the development regarding the takeover bid by one of our co-shareholders, IFM, from the outstanding stake, 3.37% accepted the offer, 6.63 did not accept the offer. 2/3 of our investors rejected the purchase offer, which we see as a clear vote of confidence in regard of growth, profitability, and attractive dividend policy, the strong destination of Vienna and our sustainability policy.
We hope that we can convince these investors also in the years to come. Last but not least, summing up the financial guidance for 2023, revenue around EUR 830 million, EBITDA higher than EUR 325 million, net profit higher than EUR 150 million, and CapEx approximately EUR 135 million. That's from my side, and if you have questions in regard of that, we can follow that after Julian with his presentation.
Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. I would like to continue with traffic, our segment results, and a bit of an outlook for 2023. I think overall, we were very happy with the strong growth we saw in mainly in the second half of 2022. Passenger numbers are the main drivers of our results, so therefore, we are happy that we had 30 million passengers again in the group. The result, as Gunther, just presented to you. We expect passenger volumes to increase further in 2023. We gave our guidance in January with 26 million-27 million passengers in Vienna and 32 million-34 million in the group. We are very happy that January already went pretty well.
We had roughly 10% below the passenger numbers in 2019. Malta was already above the 2019 numbers and Košice as well. Overall, 2023 started pretty good. The outlook is positive, we are very sure, or at least as sure as you can be in nowadays, without any additional external major crisis, to reach the 26 million-27 million passengers. I'm very curious to see the numbers in the second quarter. I think Q2 with the summer schedule already in place, it will give us a first indication if the weekend leisure passengers are back, how much passengers are coming back and summer should be in any case good.
So far, what I get to know from our airline customers, bookings are really, really good for the remainder of the year. We are very well equipped for this passenger growth. 2022 I think compared to many other airports, worked very well operationally for us. We started in January again with a very good result and we intend to hire round about 350 new employees for the summer season, terminal operation, security operation, ground handling. I have to say things look better now than probably three or four months ago. We are very confident that we will have a good and solid summer operation again. A major focus is obviously retail.
Round about 80%-90% of our EBIT is coming from center management and retail. We want to open some new shops and restaurants before summer. There will be new openings by Figlmüller, DO & CO, Billa, Burger King, Costa Coffee. For the strong summer season, the offering for our passengers should be significantly better than it is today. The major change will be our Southern Enlargement, where I will show you some details later on. Yeah, I think we covered that already. Let's move on. The airport segment.
We finally were out of the crisis with a result of an EBIT of close to EUR 50 million, external revenue EUR 321 million, EBITDA EUR 127 million. Major driver obviously passenger and aircraft related fees. One can see here as well, passenger related fees more than doubled, aircraft related fees + 73%. This shows as well that there is a change in the traffic pattern.
The passengers are already closer to the 2019 figures than the aircraft movement, which is a good development, and it shows that on average the aircraft are bigger and the take up from passengers is higher than it used to be, which is overall a very good development for us. In 2022, we had roughly revenue, a net revenue from airport charges by roughly EUR 13 per passenger. We expect 2023 to be somewhere between EUR 14.50 and EUR 15 per departing pax. This shows you as well what Gunther already mentioned, the increase in our airport charges with an increase of 5.8% with the 1st of January, which covers inflation until mid of 2022.
There will be another significant increase then in January 2023. Let's move on to the ground handling and security services segment. This is the biggest challenge undoubtedly. We reduced the minus here. The EBIT was still in the negative territory of -EUR 3.5 million. We are very determined to move this segment into the positive territory in the course of 2023. I'm very optimistic that we will manage to do so. On the one hand, we expect further traffic growth. On the other hand, we managed to increase the average price quite significantly already. There were some extraordinary price increases due to the inflation.
As I said, I think we have a very stable operation. Our ground handling services are doing an excellent job compared to most airports in Europe. You can see here, in January, we were the second most punctual airport or most punctual hub above 20 million passengers in Europe. We are very significantly more punctual than the other airports in Lufthansa Group: Munich, Zurich, Frankfurt. I think this is a good basis to negotiate prices with customers and that's what we are doing right now. As I said, we are determined to move this segment into the positive territory in the course of this year. We were already amongst the top performers in terms of punctuality and quality in 2022.
Our aim is to keep this position. As I said, on the one hand, this helps us to negotiate higher ground handling prices. On the other hand, I think this is one of the reasons as well, the good performance together with our home carrier Austrian Airlines, that the positioning of Austrian Airlines within Lufthansa Group changed in the course of the last six months. Austrian Airlines is the top performer in terms of punctuality in the group in the last 12 months. Even from a financial point of view, Austrian Airlines is doing much better now. I think overall, Lufthansa managed very well to secure the so-called DACH market, so the German-speaking countries. To increase ticket prices in this area very significantly.
This is a strong market for Austrian Airlines as well. Long-haul does very well, overall, I think Austrian managed very well to increase the yield, as did the other airlines here in Vienna as well. Overall, I think there's a lot of room for optimism now for the coming months. Retail and properties, I already mentioned that there will be quite some openings in the course of the coming weeks. The most important area here in this segment is center management and hospitality, with close to 50% of the revenues in this segment. Parking, more than doubled, excellent performance and a market share of 31% in this segment and rentals are up 7%.
They didn't suffer that much during the pandemic, now they're up 7% and they make up 21% of the revenues in this segment. Let's move on. Here you can see some of the openings which we intend to do in the coming months. The good thing is that duty-free is already trading on the 2019 levels, so obviously there's an inflationary effect here. But despite the lack of Chinese and Russian passengers, duty-free is doing very well. F&B sector is trading above the 2019 levels. The only area which is suffering is specialty retail. There we see the lack of Chinese and Russian passengers significantly.
There will be a major game changer now with the Southern Extension, which we intend to build until 2027. You can see here some pictures from the Southern Extension, 70,000 additional square meters. Overall, 10,000 additional square meters F&B and retail. I'm sure we will manage to get some luxury retail to the airport, and we will increase our offering in terms of F&B as well. I think right now we don't have enough space for F&Bs, and we will have a centralized duty-free shop and not two duty-free shops on top of each other. I think this is one of the important areas which will change. The second one is that dwell time should increase very significantly as well.
We will have 18 bus gates directly on the ground floor of this building, so people don't have to walk 400 m to the gates. They will remain there and then they go much later to the gates. We will have a centralized passport control, so we will manage to channel all the, you know, the high-value non-Schengen passengers through the luxury shops. Overall, this should increase both the quality for our passengers, but on the other hand, the sales for us and our operators very significantly. We expect that at least we will have an increase by EUR 0.50 per passenger in terms of revenue from the fee by 2030.
So, this should increase our revenues very significantly. Malta, exceptionally well. I think, what is really important there is that we have a very close cooperation with government. I think, there is a good mix now with low cost, which dominates already a market like Malta. On the other hand, yeah, Malta, where the government is very important as well. Traffic in January was already above the 2019 levels, so the outlook for this year is strong as well. And we are very grateful for the support of government to the whole aviation sector and to the airport sector in Malta, in particular.
We got in 2022 a subsidy of EUR 20 million as a tax credit. I think this is, this shows the good relation to government and the importance government gives to the airport and the aviation sector. We are heavily investing in Malta as well, so we are going to build a hotel. We extend the business center there. We're going to increase the terminal and we're going to add some stands for the aircraft. We prepare ourselves for further growth in Malta. Finally, yeah, just a bit of an outlook for the summer season.
I don't want to go into too much detail there, but we see a lot of growth now already in towards Asia. Although I think China will take a couple of months or until next year until there will be a significant growth. I think the whole Chinese travel industry will need a bit of time to prepare. I think China won't be the game changer in 2023. Overall, long-haul is doing very well. We saw some increases from Air Canada, Ethiopian. Maybe we move on to the next slide.
As we're resuming flights from India. I think India is a strong growth market in the years to come with all the additional aircraft they are buying. Azerbaijan Airlines is coming to Vienna for the first time. I think our three main carriers, Austrian Airlines, Ryanair, Wizz Air, are all looking at some growth in 2023. I think overall we are very optimistic, and I would like to finish off again with our forecast, EUR 26 million-EUR 27 million in Vienna, EUR 32 million-EUR 34 million in the group. I think this forecast and this projection is standing on very solid ground. That's it from my end, and I'm looking forward to your questions and our discussion.
Thank you very much, gentlemen, and I open the room for questions.
Hello, good afternoon. Can you hear me? Here is Vladimíra Urbánková speaking.
Yes, we do. Good afternoon.
Yes. Hi.
Yes. Hello, good afternoon. I would like to have just a couple of questions for the beginning and to leave some more room for other participants. My question would be related to inflationary pressures, which we see across the board. What do you expect from 2023 regarding inflation, in particular for your personnel cost? This will be partly offset with the airport charges increase based on inflation. Maybe here I didn't understand fully, what will be the full year increase? Because you indicated increase from January, you said that there will be some more increase, but I don't know how much from when and how it will translate for the full year 2023 increase in airport charges.
Then one more question would be related to your tax rate. You mentioned EUR 12 million tax credit subsidy. I think this was maybe the reason for the fourth quarter tax with the opposite sign, so to say. What is the outlook for the tax rate for 2023? Maybe, if you could be a little bit more concrete, you said that you are considering to increase payout ratio. What kind of payout ratio we are talking about for the year 2023? Thank you very much for taking my questions.
Yeah. Thank you. Fine. Starting with your last question, I think it's a little bit too early to give a more detailed guidance on that. If it's 60 now and we will increase it, so it will be definitely above 60, where we then finally will end up is in any case linked to the business results of the year, and finally also to our proposal which will then be made for our supervisory board and the general assembly. If you look at the balance sheet of the company and the outlook, I think it shows that we have room to maneuver.
In regard of tax rate, you can firstly expect that the Austrian corporate tax in the first step will be reduced from 25 to 24% in 2023. This is in any case supportive for the result after tax. Besides that, we will see a somehow normalized tax rate. In total it might be a little bit higher than the Austrian one, given the Maltese tax rates. I don't think that we can expect that in Malta there will be another tax credit in 2023 because this one was related clearly to the COVID problems. In regard of inflationary pressure, I think we have everything included in our outlook. What can we expect?
We had the 1st round of increase with 5.6% starting from 1st of January. The negotiations for the collective agreement for the period 1st of January 2022 to 31st of March 2023 will start in April and should be finalized end of April, beginning of May. If you take the inflation figures of these 15 months, it is clearly a figure that is to a certain extent exceeding 10%. Personal costs overall in 2023 compared to 2022 will increase by roughly 20% because we will also have, given the additional traffic and business, we will also have more people to a certain extent.
Putting all together, the wage increases, the inflation, and also Additional headcount, we should come up with roughly 20% personal cost increase, but that is already built in our guidance for 2023. Nobody can exactly tell you now what the tariffs will be increased for the next period, but the next period then will include the inflation rate for August to July of 2022 to 2023. As we all know, this is a period with a rather high inflation rate. This will be built into the airport charges scheme.
Does this answer your questions, Vladimíra?
I would have a question. This increase we are talking for the period August 2022, July 2023, from when it will be effective, this higher inflation rate in charges?
First of January 2024.
Okay, that's what I wanted to confirm.
Yeah.
Okay, thank you.
It's always several months after.
Okay.
... measured period.
Mm-hmm. Thank you.
Any further questions?
If I may step in. Good afternoon, gents. I mean, it's to some extent linked to the upcoming increase of the payout ratio, but if you could just remind me of your general capital allocation policy and, I mean, under certain circumstances, with very high, say, yeah, tailwinds from the market, I mean, might the payout ratio go up to say the entire profit, so a full distribution of net profit?
It's too early really to give you a firm assurance in that direction because we have to have the figures then for 2023, and then we can decide. As I said, I think if things go as well as we expect and given our capital structure, it would allow us substantial room to maneuver.
Yeah. I guess you're, you will continue to pile up cash. You're already in net cash territory. I mean, what will be kind of the, where will you deploy the funds?
I mean, what in very short time could be an option is that we start, as I said before, to repay the EIB loan, because there is the interest rate at 4.6%, and we have to put collaterals to that. It's penalized, so as long as interest rates are substantially below that, we would have to pay penalties to the EIB. Given the fact that EIB announced that two or even three rounds of interest rate reductions lay ahead, it could be the case that we can act maybe later this year. Secondly, we are now starting substantial investments, as Julian showed the South Extension and a lot of other activities.
Most of it, we are ready or we are in the position to finance out of cash flows. For the rest, I think we can also distribute some value to our shareholders.
All right. Thank you.
Thank you, Marcus. Any more questions independently from the analyst or investor side? Final call.
If there are no more questions, may I have one additional question? Here is Vladimíra speaking.
Of course, please go ahead.
Just question, did you make this accounting exercise to calculate so-called clean EBIT or EBITDA, whatever, 22, in comparison to 21, just simply deducting all positive, negative-?
Yeah.
... one-offs, everything what you would characterize as one-offs to give me-
Yeah
... two comparable figures for those years?
I mean, that's not totally worked out to the final euro was sent, roughly the one-offs add up to a positive, roughly EUR 16 million.
EUR 16 million +.
Plus.
.In 2022?
Yes, in 2022. Yeah. One-offs from different time.
Okay. Maybe can you elaborate? We have learned that there was -12 EUR in the last quarter, then -4.5 EUR also on this receivables impairment. How did we get to the positive 16 EUR? What was on the positive side so big?
The biggest chunk of it is the sale of a piece of land.
Yes.
With roughly 13 million or so.
Uh-huh.
...plus.
Yeah.
Some of the COVID support short-term work and these are the main positions.
Okay. May I ask you how much was the COVID support and short-term work?
No, sorry.
Okay, good.
We can.
Okay. Net is EUR 16 million + in 2022.
I can give you later the details.
Okay
...I have many figures in my head, but...
Okay, good.
not all of them. I agree.
Okay, I understand. For me, it is good to know the starting base, in fact, for calculating year 2023 without any one-offs.
Absolutely.
Okay. Thank you.
Bye.
Something else of interest? If not, I think it's time to conclude this call. We thank you for your interest you show in our company. We will be presenting traffic figures for February, the week following the next one and Q1 numbers in mid-May.