Ladies and gentlemen. My colleague, Willy Van Riet, and I myself would like to welcome you most cordially to our press conference for the presentation of the results for the business year 2016. I would like to walk you briefly through the highlights of 2016. We reached all our ambitious targets in 2016, an excellent operational performance. We focused consistently on the implementation of our strategy and in so doing, we generated significant growth.
Revenues remained almost stable. My colleague later on will talk about the foreign exchange effects on consolidated revenues in 2016. We achieved 9% organic growth of EBITDA. EBITDA now stands at EUR 404.3 million. What is even more important, particularly for the shareholders, we were able to more than double our net profit to EUR 82 million compared with EUR 36 million the previous year. That is really a strong signal as regards operational performance and net profit.
Our cash flow from operating activity now stands at more than EUR 333 million, up by 28% from the previous year. This excellent performance and also the outlook for 2017 have led to a situation in which we propose an increase of the dividend by 35% to EUR 0.27 per share. This is what we are going to propose to the next AGM. As regards the output of the group, our products were used to build more than 160,000 houses in North America and Europe. We set more than 288,000 roofs with our products. More than 360,000 kilometers of pipes were installed worldwide, both plastic pipes and ceramic pipes. Finally, more than 12 million square meters of pavers were laid, mostly concrete pavers, but also clay pavers. That shows the strong operational performance of Wienerberger.
When we look at the individual product groups, products for wall structures, that is mainly clay blocks, over 20% share. Roof products, particularly clay roof tiles, also around 20% share in revenues. Facing bricks are slightly higher, particularly because of activities in North America and Northwestern Europe. Pavers, that is concrete pavers, particularly in Central and Eastern Europe, is the smallest product group, 4%. Pipes, a very strong segment of Wienerberger, just above 30%. Wienerberger has a well-balanced portfolio covering infrastructure markets as well as residential construction and renovation. When you look at our EBITDA figures, you will notice that the situation is well-balanced. The pavers segment suffered because of investment restraint, particularly in Eastern Europe. Our industrial portfolio comprises 198 production sites operational currently in 30 countries, and we have approximately 16,000 employees. Now let's take a closer look at the group.
As you know, we have a strategy which we are implementing consistently. We focus on organic growth. We want to grow on the basis of our existing business. We are making every effort to optimize, improve, and further develop our business, and we also want to implement growth projects within the framework of our industrial portfolio. In 2016, we invested a great deal in research and development. A company like Wienerberger invests approximately 1% of its revenues in research and development and in digitization. We are really forward-looking and future-oriented, and that helps us grow in different markets. This is a very important aspect. As regards BIM, that is building information modeling, which has become state-of-the-art and has led to great improvements all over the world. Here are pilot projects from the United Kingdom.
We are doing a lot of the work for architects when it comes to planning and designing buildings or building estates. Wienerberger is well represented online. We have thousands of customers worldwide, be it plumbers, electricians, masons, designers, architects, developers. They visit our tools millions of times. We not only have online shops like Pipelife shown here, we also have vision apps. You can design your own image of your garden, of your patio. We are making great progress in the digital sphere. We are focusing on innovative technologies and new applications in our roof tile business, for example, digital printing, 3D printing in roof tile production is being used. We're facing a period of profound transformation. We are better positioned than ever before to make use of these changes. I mentioned growth projects. This is the second development step of Wienerberger.
Last year, we invested EUR 45 million. We took over two production sites in Poland and Romania for clay blocks. We took over a producer in Finland, producer of wastewater pipes. We built the most advanced paver plant in Austria at Bad Vöslau to the south of Vienna. Those are all forward-looking investments. As regards operational excellence, we want to continuously improve our production facilities at the 198 production sites. We want to save costs in production. We are focusing on energy as an important issue. By 2020, we want to save another 20% in terms of energy consumption. Last year already, we were able to achieve savings in the amount of EUR 7 million. We have highly ambitious targets for our company. When we look at the divisions, the situation is as follows.
Clay Building Materials Europe, CBME, covers all our brick activities in Eastern and Western Europe. As you can see, Wienerberger is oriented towards Western Europe. We have strong bases in the Western European countries, which are highly profitable. Through the acquisition of Tondach and further activities in Eastern Europe, we also have built a strong pillar for our activities in Eastern Europe, which is also profitable. Pipes and pavers in 2016 suffered because infrastructure investments were sluggish in Eastern Europe. Co-funding from the European Union in the region was scarce. This is due not least to the political transformation in Poland. Infrastructure activities were down by approximately 20%. We're not talking about minor percentages, but considerable amounts. We take it that there will be a catching up process in the coming years.
As regards Western Europe, in Norway and the Netherlands, we are engaged in international business, major projects for the oil and gas industry and for the energy sector. These activities were muted, subdued in 2016 compared with previous years. In North America, we recorded a growth in revenues and earnings following up the developments of previous years. If we look at the individual activities, in Europe, we are seeing and have been seeing diverging regional developments. Housing construction has recovered in Germany. France has also seen an improvement. The Benelux markets, particularly the Netherlands, very good growth. Belgium, after a slight downturn, stabilized. The U.K., after the Brexit vote, has recovered during the past few months as far as new residential construction is concerned.
In Eastern Europe, Romania, Hungary, and Poland reported positive results in the residential construction and renovation market. We expect that this is going to continue. In Western Europe, we also benefited from lower energy costs. We also felt the impact of the fact that fewer support schemes are available for renovation, for thermal insulation in particular. Our volumes sold were down slightly. Revenues increased only slightly, but earnings were significantly higher despite the fact that we suffered from foreign exchange effects, particularly from the GBP. The result is indeed a very good one for 2016. As regards plastic pipes, we saw diverging developments, a decline in infrastructure business in Eastern Europe, and a decline also in our international project business.
At the same time, an excellent performance in Northern Europe, particularly in Norway. Sweden and Finland, we were able to record high growth rates. Also in our basic business, that is water and wastewater, we were performing well in Western Europe. When we look at our ceramic pipes, wastewater pipes in particular, again, we felt the decline of activities in Eastern Europe simply because there were lower sales, particularly in Poland and Romania. We felt a decline in revenues and earnings. There is another thing. We have a considerable market share in Saudi Arabia. In 2016, major infrastructure measures were no longer implemented in Saudi Arabia. Our exports to Saudi Arabia were discontinued. As regards concrete pavers, a decline because of low infrastructure activities. We were able to compensate for that almost completely through our sales in Western Europe.
As regards North America and in Canada, we saw excellent demand in the Toronto region and in the U.S. New housing starts, that is single-family homes, particularly in the southeast of the U.S., was picking up again. We were able to benefit from that. We also have a small infrastructure pipe segment in the U.S. There we felt competitive pressure, which also put our prices under pressure. Overall, we're quite satisfied with our results, a 5% increase in earnings in this division. We are doing quite well also in North America. With this, I'd like to hand over to Willy, who is going to elaborate on the individual results. Good morning also from my part, ladies and gentlemen. I'd like to walk you briefly through the main headlines of our 2016 results.
As Heimo said, at first glance, flat development of revenues, hardly any increase. When you analyze that in detail, you will see that in an environment that was characterized by diverging developments, we did increase our sales volume by 1%. Although markets in Eastern Europe were sluggish, we performed rather well. Prices also increased by 1%. I'm proud of this 1%. We are operating in a low inflation environment. People do not expect price increases in such environment. Nevertheless, we were able to market new products and achieve a 1% increase in prices across the group, which is really more than the inflationary pressure we had on production costs. The consolidation effect is 1%. The new acquisitions from 2016 contributed 1% to revenues. Those are so-called bolt-on investments, things that can be directly integrated into the existing portfolio. Then the negative FX effect. Foreign exchange differences.
We do sell products outside the euro area. We sell approximately 20% of our products in the U.K., and there we suffered from the devaluation of the British pound. In the course of 2016, the British pound lost up to 15% of its value. The pound recovered again later, but the Brexit vote had a severely negative effect. Another point concerns currency translation. That only means that the earnings we generate in a country like the U.K., we have to convert that into euro. We call it the translation differences. We're not suffering a loss. A loss would only be generated if we sold in a country at different prices. It's really a conversion difference, but nevertheless, it depresses our revenues. We have a flat or stable development of revenues. When we talk about organic growth, what does that mean?
It means that you have to adjust earnings, not just for one-off effects, but for things that are not related to our operational business. You can make a valid comparison. We have a program to sell non-core real estate. The program ends this year. We have already generated the EUR 100 million we had planned for, and we generated EUR 17.9 million proceeds through real estate sales. In the U.S., we optimized our portfolio. We closed down one production site at the beginning of the year, and we sold two production plants for concrete pavers, and we generated added value on that basis. We have a 1% contribution to revenues from our acquisitions, and 1% contribution to consolidated revenues. If you really want to have a like-for-like comparison, you have to compare EUR 395 million.
There is one point which I haven't mentioned yet, that is the currency translation factor. It cost us EUR 12.8 million in terms of EBITDA, almost GBP 9 million of which from the pound sterling. Nevertheless, we have achieved a good result. In a like-for-like comparison with the previous year, we can see that we generated EUR 395 million EBITDA on the basis of our organic business. Last year it was EUR 369 million. That is a strong performance of the group, which is also reflected in the 2016 income statement. EBITDA, plus 9%. Depreciation, slightly higher than last year, EUR 4 million. EBIT, EUR 197 million. Impairment charges to goodwill, EUR 7 million, and as Heimo said, our ceramic pipe activity was significantly depressed last year, but nevertheless, we closed the year with EUR 190 million EBIT, up by 17% from the year before.
The financial result, minus EUR 32 million compared with minus EUR 56 million the year before. Why is that? We have made much better use of our cash. We rely on short-term funding. We've redeemed expensive long-term debt. Our funding structure is much better than it was in the past, and the cash flow position of the group has improved significantly, and all that is reflected in the financial result. EUR 158 million profit before tax, plus 48%. Profit after tax, an increase by 65% to EUR 115 million. We do pay taxes because we are a company which pays taxes in the countries in which we operate. We're not like Google or Amazon. We pay taxes in the countries where we earn money. EUR 115 million profit after tax.
We have to deduct the hybrid coupon and a small part for a non-controlling interest. That results in a net profit of EUR 82 million, which is more than double the previous year's net profit. Let's take a look at free cash flow. This is my hobby horse, as you know, and it's important for a company because it tells you where the money comes from and what drives our business. Gross cash flow, EUR 317 million. A steep increase. Working capital. We managed working capital even better than the previous year. We generated a change of EUR 15.9 million. Quite a bit of that from the U.K. because we thought that the market would decline after the Brexit vote, which it didn't. We cut down our production in some plants and that helped us better manage our inventories. Normal CapEx, that is investments in our normal business.
That includes maintenance and improvements of the existing plant structure. EUR 137 million, the same figure as in the previous year. We're clearly below the EUR 200 million depreciation every year. We really were prudent, but we did what had to be done. Divestments and other. This is the non-core asset sale program, which generated EUR 50 million, and we also released provisions which we had set up in 2015 in order to provide for the restructuring. EUR 246 million free cash flow. What does that mean? That is the cash flow available for value-driving projects, that is for growth investments or for payments to the shareholders or the Holders of the hybrid bond. We spent EUR 61 million on that in 2016. The net cash flow is EUR 140 million.
That is what remained after 2016. That tells you clearly when we pay out a dividend, we pay out the dividend from our net cash flow, which we generated. We are retaining much of that cash in the company. A buyback of the hybrid bond, you may have been following that. In December already, we renounced that we would buy back one of our hybrid bonds. A hybrid bond is recognized as equity, but when we pay it back, equity is converted to debt. That's the only reason why our debt position was higher at the end of the year. If we hadn't done that, the debt would have been EUR 140 million lower. We would be below EUR 400 million. That again, is a very good performance. We can afford this reclassification from equity to debt through the buyback of the hybrid bond.
You will remember the hybrid coupon costs us EUR 6.5 million per year. We funded that from our own cash and partly from a long-term, eight-year loan that costs us 1.2% annually. For the future, we're going to have an even better cash position. Here you can see the effect of the reclassification of the hybrid from equity to debt. It was redeemed already in February. That's a thing of the past. Here are our maturities. 2017, we are going to cover more than we need by undrawn credit lines. All liabilities in all maturities, including the hybrid bond and maturities are very low in the years to come. Again, a very positive picture for the future. Net debt, way below the two times net debt to EBITDA, which is our internal target. What we need for our covenants, our bank covenants is to be below 3.5.
Even including the hybrid bond, we're way below that. Moody's already upgraded us to a positive outlook at the time of the payback. The dividend is going to be increased by 35%. We always look at the free cash flow. Can we afford to pay out a dividend? Yes, we can. We certainly can afford to do that. The liquidity plan for the coming years allows that. We have no major maturities coming up. We have growth projects in mind, but they will not lead to a deterioration of our liquidity position, and this is why we intend to increase the dividend from EUR 0.20 to EUR 0.27. We're going to pay out EUR 31.6 million. That's a good signal that goes out to the market. We are confident as regards the future, and we wanted to express that by increasing the dividend.
Thank you very much, Willy. Ladies and gentlemen, let me now come to the outlook. As Willy has shown, Wienerberger has a strong financial position. We can pay back our debts within two years, and we could double our profit last year. 2017, ladies and gentlemen. We live in turbulent times, this is going to continue. We have gotten used to handle this situation. Of course, interest rate fluctuations, foreign exchange rate fluctuations are something that we are confronted with. We still are confronted with the consequences of Brexit. There is the Greek sovereign debt crisis that has come up once again. Other issues will also come up. How much are we going to invest in new construction and infrastructure in North America? There will be elections in Germany, in France, in March, of course, in the Netherlands, very important.
In autumn, there will be elections in Austria. No, in the Czech Republic. This was just a joke. There will be elections in Europe, there will be a number of other topics that we will be confronted with. Altogether, however, we are optimistic as far as this year is concerned. There will be a growth when it comes to new housing construction, particularly in Germany and France. We see a positive trend in the first half of the year. At least this is our perspective. As of today, we cannot make forecasts for the entire year, but at least for the first half of the year. There will be strong incentives in the housing market. We'll see how things turn out. In the Netherlands, there will be additional further growth, but at a lower level than previously. This again is the result of elections.
We see a positive market environment in Eastern Europe, as I've already mentioned. Measures taken in Eastern Europe are positive when it comes to new construction, you can see this in the graph here, where all these countries are shown in green. The outlook for pipes and pavers. Here again, we are optimistic for 2017. You can see the countries that are stable or show slight growth. We can say that there has been a change in trend. Altogether, the outlook for North America in the regions where we are active, and you can see the markets where Wienerberger is represented. We are confronted with a challenging environment as regards prices and local competition, but there is a positive trend when it comes to one- and two-family homes. Let's take a look at the financial development, the development of our performance.
We expect that there will be improvements and growth of revenues and earnings. Given the savings from operational excellence in the amount of EUR 10 million, which I've mentioned before, we will see a sharp increase from operational activities, and we will reach EUR 45 million. Foreign exchange effects, of course, is something that we cannot predict. Acquisitions or sales from our portfolio, something else. This does not include the sale of non-core assets and portfolio optimization. We are talking about organic EBITDA. For 2017, we expect negative foreign exchange effects and a positive earnings contribution from the sale of non-core assets. These are our expectations for 2017. We expect a clear increase of earnings, an organic EBITDA of EUR 415 million. We have a clear strategy. We are consistently working to achieve our targets.
We focus on innovation as regards the overall group, and we also focus on operational excellence. We want a continuous cost and process optimization, and of course, we will also have selective bolt-on projects in the core markets. Ladies and gentlemen, so much for a brief summary of the results of 2016, and we are optimistic as far as 2017 is concerned. Thank you very much for your attention, and we are available for questions. Thank you very much.
Peter.
Thank you very much. Thank you very much. You have doubled your earnings. An increase of the dividend by 35% is not really appropriate. You've been very modest in this regard. Obviously, in view of repaying the hybrid loan or bond. Is that true? Yes. Willy has shown you that one of our priorities, of course, is securing the financing of our operation and the performance of the overall group. You've seen that thanks to our strong organic growth and the cash flow, we could repay the hybrid bond. This is a very important aspect that we have to keep in mind. On the other hand, it is obvious that our target is to pay out 10%-30% of our cash flow as a dividend, and this is what we are doing this year. A second question.
Talking about 2016 and in your outlook, you mentioned growth in new housing construction and reticence when it comes to renovation. In the coming years, the trend, of course, has to go towards renovation. Yesterday, we heard about decarbonization in relation with the Paris result. It was pointed out that nothing has happened when it comes to transportation mobility in Austria. Activities in this regard in the construction sector have been insufficient. Growth of less than 1%. Is Wienerberger going to follow this trend? What about your plans regarding acquisitions for the purpose of revitalization? Isn't this a topic for you?
It is an important topic for us. These are two important pillars for our company. We are working hard, not only in Austria, but also in Belgium, in the Netherlands, in Germany, in France, and Northern Europe.
Everywhere we are cooperating with the local and regional decision-makers in order to find solutions. Let me point out that the Belgian government, two or three weeks ago, passed a new law which is very future-oriented. This will provide incentives not just for renovation, but for replacement of old buildings. It's wrong to talk about renovation only. Very often, the wrong buildings are being renovated. Buildings where the energy efficiency is far too low. Measures will last only for 15 years, and these are wrong investments. People's behavior patterns have changed. We no longer live in family structures as they existed 15 years ago. Our everyday behavior has changed. Family life has changed. We need apartments that are different from what they were 15 years ago. This is a message to Austrian decision-makers in particular.
We should not talk about traditional renovation only, but about replacing buildings as well. This is a topic that has been taken up in the U.K., in France, and also in the Benelux countries. This of course, is a political issue. I'm not a politician. I'm not a policy maker. All I can say is that we talk to policy makers. For us it's an important topic. We try to make it clear that we want to reduce CO2 emissions. We have to think in long terms. We cannot just renovate an old building which does not improve energy efficiency. This is obvious. Just look at the discussion about passive buildings which started in 2000. The result was that more energy is being consumed in these new buildings than would have been the case if one had done it right.
Well, actually, I was referring to what you just said. You said we are not politicians, but what are you doing with regard to policymakers?
Well, as an enterprise, as a company, we provide products to the market and solutions which actually helps to reduce energy consumption. Low energy buildings, active energy buildings that can be built at low cost. One of the best examples is Seestadt Aspern, where we are constructing a multi-story building. This is a sustainable project which will last not for a few years, but for decades. This is a positive contribution. I plead for a more objective, unbiased discussion rather than an emotional discussion that will solve the problem only for one or two years.
Your presentation clearly showed your focus on core markets, Europe and North America.
I remember that not long ago, Wienerberger also considered the Far East learning by doing on the spot. What are the results of this learning process?
Well, in Russia and in India we have brick manufacturing plants. All three of them are profitable. In recent years we have definitely learned a great deal. Of course, as you can well imagine, this is not one of our top priorities. We need to make progress also in our core business. I can tell you that in India last year, we increased our capacity because sales had improved. We will also increase our productivity there, our production activities. Activities in Russia are low, but we are trying to introduce new products on the market. These plans are part of our portfolio, which are satisfactory and positive.
You mentioned growth projects in the amount of EUR 44 million last year. Will this year's figures be similar, or do you plan an additional increase?
Well, we do not have a precise guidance. We can't do that. We will invest more or less what we did last year. Normal CapEx will be more or less similar. When it comes to growth projects, we expect something like EUR 25 million. It may be more. It depends on what opportunities arise. As Mr. Van Riet pointed out, it is possible that there will be additional growth. Well, if there are no further questions, thank you very much for your attention. Have a good day. Thank you