Good morning. I'd like to welcome all you very cordially at our mid-year results conference. On my own behalf, as well as on behalf of the management board members of PKP CARGO. So Zdeněk Klauza , Marek Olkiewicz , Jacek Rutkowski , and Maciej Jankiewicz. I would like to welcome you very cordially on their behalf, on behalf of the management board of the company, which is hosting you at this meeting here at the construction site at PKP CARGO Terminale, and Mrs. Jacek is joining us. We also have also Mr. Janowski, who are our hosts here, and they'll be present with us after the conference ends. I'd like to welcome you very cordially. We have also the Chairman of the supervisory board with us today, Mr. Szczepkowski, and so the supervisory board is also watching over the work of the management board, as well as the entire company.
I'm very pleased to have him and the supervisory board here because these are very competent people. As the CEO, I have the honor and pleasure to welcome you on behalf of a team of nearly 20,000 people in our community working for PKP CARGO. I'm very pleased to see that you decided to come here on Monday to Zduńska Wola, to the construction site of our terminals. My main message at the end of this first half of the year is that we have reported a positive result, PLN 110 million. This is the main idea that I want to convey to you today, to tell you where we are. This is the net result I want to emphasize and underline.
Also, with respect to the people who are watching us online, I'd like to welcome you very cordially as well to this meeting. We want to talk about some things that are also demanding, difficult. They're not easy. They're things that we need to overcome. So in the first half of the year, we had 42 million tons of cargo that we carried. We did some 12 billion tons of freight turnover, and so we can say that our work for our customers have grown by some 18%, and this is nearly PLN 3 billion as well as in revenue. And as I said, we generated PLN 110 million in net profit compared to 2022, where we had a loss of some PLN 32 million. And so the EBITDA result is PLN 611 million.
One of the things that's very important to our shareholders, one of the things that we always have on our agenda, we talk about this frequently at the management board meetings, and so we'll talk about this during today's session. So we have had some increases in our operating expenses by some 9%, and so we made some big investments, of course, with multi-system locomotives. We've been doing modernization as well as revamping our transshipment terminals. And so we spent nearly PLN 1 billion in investments, so PLN 992 million. So we're operating on a very changing and demanding market, and we're always, you know, retooling to meet and face the current market. We've got great experience, and so this enables us to plan with optimism upcoming undertakings. That's why we're meeting here.
We want to show you that we're very consistent and determined in our operations. If we look at our operating results, during the first half of the year, the freight turnover was nearly 12 billion ton-kilometers. We want to talk to you very honestly, it's down by some 13%, and I'll tell you a little bit about why a little bit later. So if we break that down into the various categories, we had solid fuels. We had a 5% yearly increase. Intermodal transport continues to have a decline, and it's down by nearly half. We know that we've got Małaszewicze that have been closed, and so this is basically our gateway. So we have oil products as well as lumber that are up by. So timber that's up by 12%.
If we look at construction materials and aggregates, as well as chemicals, metal and ore, we're down by 1.5% and 34% year-on-year. If we look at freight volume, so it's 8.5 million tons less than we had in the first half of last year. This is what related to what's happening with coal and the power sector, and so we were providing safety to the power sector for the Polish society. This is one of the reasons why, if we look at hard coal and aggregates, this represents near more than 60% of that total amount. We have to remember that the seasonality of our business means that freight turnover and freight volume dip in this period in which we are right now.
We're not assisted by the market situation or by the embargo on products from Belarus and from Russia. We understand that this is a tragic situation because of what's happening with geopolitics and the war in Ukraine, and so as a large company, this is something that we're also sustaining. An important cost item in our activities as a company is electricity as well as traction fuel. And so if we look at electricity and traction fuel, the biggest burden to us in the first half of the year were the costs of electricity. If we look at this corresponding period of 2022, we saw an increase of nearly 19%, and this is a result of electricity prices growing up on the wholesale market. And so we had signed electricity supply contracts in, earlier, and so we had these contracts in force from January and February.
The contracts we had with PKP Energetyka enabled us to defray some of those costs, from the end of 2022 and beginning of 2023. We had some of the contracts on a timely basis as we saw on the futures markets, as the prices fell in 2023, and this means that we are able to curtail the impact exerted on the customers. This is a very important item in our overall system. We're not to trade exposing all of our cost, costs just to the customers. If we look at the traction fuel, the variation is not very big. We're trying to find our way on this market. We enter into contracts, and we're trying to purchase this fuel for our company nearly every day, in fact, in terms of depending what's happening on the fuel markets.
In the first half of 2023, our group had CapEx of nearly PLN 1 billion, so PLN 962 million, specifically. This is 154% more than we saw in 2022. The largest CapEx was for rolling stock. So basically, to do some renovations. So the renovation components, so we had PLN 370 million. And so here it's worth mentioning, and people listening to us online, our shareholders, what's worthy of being emphasized that when we improve and upgrade rolling stock, basically, we had COVID, we had the COVID law. So basically, all of this built up over time, and some of the things were pushed back in time.
Now, basically, we have to do all of those renovations and repairs now, and that's why those amounts and those percentages, as you can see on these slides, this is something that we need. We need to have that rolling stock in good condition. It needs to be safe, it needs to be certified for utilization in freight carriage, and that's why we are spending so much money on this. If we're looking at the investments, we had PLN 160 million spent for locomotives. We had five multi-system locomotives for intermodal, so it's PLN 118 million. This is partially funded by the European Union. We've purchased a couple Dragon 2 locomotives for multi-system purposes, and that's PLN 36 million.
We also have PLN 270 million under leasing contracts, and we have the right to use assets. And then we have more Dragon two locomotives. Generally speaking, if we're looking at leasing in the first half of the year for rolling stock, we spent nearly PLN 800 million. This is 82% almost of the total CapEx of the group. So in a company like ours, this is a huge line item. And basically, this shows you the trend we're following. In order to be competitive and to be such a large group and compete in Europe and across—in Poland and across Europe, we have purchases, we have renovations, but we have to be well-poised for the future. We want to run this company in such a way for it to be competitive, above all, across Europe.
So here we don't have competition as so. It would not be possible to be so competitive without the people who are working for PKP Cargo. And I emphasize, it's the people, the team, the community, the trade unions at PKP Cargo. These are things that create the group, and this is very important to us as the management team. As I said, we have nearly 20,000 employees with high level of skills. We're a logistics company, and so we're working across many areas within the company. So the skills of our employees have to be very prolific, very high, and so the industry is changing, so we're investing in our employees through training sessions. We're actually hiring, and so we know what's happening in terms of the generational changes.
We're preparing to accommodate them in order to be able to bring on board new people to ensure the future is also secured. We're doing a lot in order to work together with the trade union organizations to protect our employees. We made recent decisions about financial gratification. PLN 450 paid out to, on gross basis, paid out to employees in August. This was because 20,000 employees gave us the security in terms of security in our power plants and our homes, and we wanted to honor and pay tribute to the employees who did a lot of work. And they did more than the call of duty. They went above and beyond, and we wanted to basically show our appreciation for that.
If we look at the financial results, here, we can talk about the most important line items. So we had PLN 2.9 billion in revenue in terms of our contracts with our customers, up some 18%. And so, so we've generated PLN 110 million net profit. Of that, our EBITDA result is PLN 611 million, and it's a 21% profit ratio. So I'd like to thank the sales department, which has made it possible for us to generate this positive result. I already talked about some of our expenses, so it's PLN 2.6 billion, which is an increase of 8.8% compared to H1 of last year. So the two major components representing, well, we have electricity and traction fuel, as well as payroll, which represent more than half.
We've made some adjustments in our key ratios. The EBITDA per employee, as a result of declining headcount, has grown to PLN 30.6 thousand. If we have a 34% increase in payroll per thousand kilometers. The same is true in terms of electricity, at 36%. If we have the access cost to infrastructure, they're more or less the same. It's PLN 21.2 per thousand ton kilometers. So PKP CARGO Group has a stable source of financing. So it has more than PLN 174 million in cash, and we have lease lines of some PLN 240 million, and so we want to improve our profitability. This is something you can see in our ratios. Our margin, EBITDA margin, is 21%.
This is an increase of nearly six percentage points year-over-year. So if we look at these financial results, we want to compare ourselves and benchmark ourselves against the competition. We can show you as we compare ourselves to the international entities, we're one of the very few carriers that's generating basically a positive result without the state support. And so our carriage operations are profitable, and we're very disciplined in terms of our costs. I frequently emphasize, I said that cargo is the future, and it's worthwhile being with cargo, and this is something I'd like to emphasize. I sustain that. We're trying to strike a balance between the price and basically the freight turnover. We believe that our competences, our skills, make it possible for us to put together an attractive offer and generate profitable results.
We're convinced that the work we're doing, that the profits we're generating, can only go pair in pair, hand in hand, with our customers, who are also generating, profits on their operations. And that's why we work closely with our customers, and we continue to work with them very closely, hand in hand. So in the near future, we're gonna start our preparations for the winter period, and that's why we believe that the freight volume will grow. We also anticipate that the prices in the main categories of cost will be more or less at the same level. We believe that inflation or pressure will subside. So the Polish economy has shown great resilience to supply side and demand side, shocks, and that's why we anticipate that results will improve in upcoming periods.
As we invite you here, and since we're here and you decided to accept our invitation, that we've invited all of you online to be here with us, we'd like to show you the terminal here in Zduńska Wola. We're not opening it yet. This is something that's under construction. We want to show you how determined we are and consistent we are in running our investments. We have the terminal in Paskov, and we want to have another terminal close to Prague, in Kladno. We're also talking with other states in Serbia, in Romania. Basically, as a group, we want to be well prepared, and we're also talking in Ukraine. We're talking with the government, with Minister Milevich, who is responsible for contacts with the Ukrainian government, and we want to have a presence in Ukraine.
Well, this multimodal terminal in the center of Poland gives us that ability to basically connect all of the seas around us, so north and North-South basis on an east-west, east-west basis. It's gonna be the biggest port, the biggest terminal in Europe. And so I think Mrs. Jażdżyk and Mr. Janowski are gonna be able to field any questions you may have, and they'll be able to say more. So I'd like to ask the two of them to stand up next to me at this point in time as the hosts of today's meeting, and then people will know that you're at their disposal.
So this terminal will have a network of multimodal terminals around the center of Poland, and so we'll have a large number of container terminals or container routes along the Silk Road from China into Poland, and then in other directions around Europe. So we're around this area is around 13 hectares. So the transshipment capacity is 500,000 multimodal units per annum. What we should emphasize here in terms of the operations in this terminal and what we're gonna be doing for our customers, this terminal will be equipped with smart systems to optimize logistics operations. So have automatic identification of container system to identify also any type of things requiring repairs. So our host of today's meeting and the people who are running this investment and are watching over this investment, this is not the only terminal that they're running.
They're talking with their customers, our customers. They're encouraging customers to work with us together here in this terminal, and they're talking realistically about the future of our group. We're all well aware, whether or not we like it or not, that green energy is coming into Poland in big steps. We're preparing an ESG strategy. I think this is something that it's worthwhile to emphasize. So we don't want people to say that we're just hauling coal and that this is dirty energy. We are a green carrier. We use green electricity. We don't have too many diesel locomotives. In some cases, we're utilizing those locomotives. We're using electricity. So we're a green carrier, a green freight operator. This is one of the things that we're preparing to do, and this terminal is gonna be part of our operations in terms of ESG.
Just as is the case in the European Union and across the world, we're going to – we're gonna utilize PV, so solar power, also wind power generation, and this is something that will pertain to us as well in how we use electricity. So these are things that we're doing as a company, as a group, to ensure that the burden. Well, what's – a lot of investments are taking place in Poland, so we'll continue to move away from coal for our power plants, and we hope that aggregates will continue to be. Then there's the large atom and the small atom. I understand that this is the long-term future, but a group as strong as ours, as PKP Cargo, has to look at the future, has to look into the future. By 10, 15 years, we have to be ahead of the curve.
This terminal is our response to those things. As we move from, in terms of the services, we'll be hauling less coal, but other things. This is one of the reasons why we have this terminal and have other terminals. So this is going to prepare us for what's going to happen in the future. If you look at the location of this terminal, we have the airport in Łask, which is very safe 'cause there's the F-16s. So we know what's happening in recent days. It's very important. I want to emphasize what we see in the media in terms of the systems out there. We, as a group, I'm not saying we're 100% secure, but what I am trying to convey to you... What's very important, some of these activities don't pertain to us in term.
So our team is responsible for security and cybersecurity. We're doing everything to ensure that our train drivers, people who are working in operations, and basically all day long, they're working to ensure that we're well secured. I'd like to thank also our team that's responsible for ensuring that operations are safe. We're here today with the people who are heading up today's meeting, and we share these tasks amongst ourselves, and we work together. We need to be in various places, and this is not because we have a lack of respect for anybody in terms of reporting these results. I mean, we have PLN 110 million in profit. You know, we've got the war going on in Ukraine. This is a very good set of results that we've generated. It's worthwhile to communicate that.
We want to share that information with everybody. My colleagues are meeting with Ukraine today, and so we're taking actions by our financial team is working on some other issues, and so we share the burden to ensure that we're able to work together on a competent basis. And so my colleagues asked me to convey our thanks to everybody, to all the people who are listening to us, who show their trust in us by purchasing our shares, people who are writing about us. Everything that's helping, everything that's happening is very helpful to us. We're a Polish company. We want to compete. We're the largest player, a national player, a Polish player.
So we want—It's very important for us to have a positive image, and that's why I appreciate the fact that you've decided to join us today and that you accepted our invitation, 'cause this is a fair piece from Warsaw. We have a very good location for a terminal, but we would like to thank you for basically deciding to come out here and join us, even though it's a pretty good route to get here. And we'll be here after the meeting to interact with you. And so we wanna talk about things that aren't so easy for us as well, but we wanna pass on one very important message, the Supervisory Board, the Management Board of PKP Cargo, and all of the employees of PKP Cargo.
In this very demanding period, not so easy period, in the first half of the year, we've generated this profit of PLN 110 million. I'd like to thank everybody very strongly for that, and this is a very important result. I can tell you, somewhat immodestly, since I've been the CEO, I've had the pleasure of reporting the positive results. This is something that's quite good and important for me. So when you're in management, it's good to have some good fortune as well. And since I've been heading up the management team, I can say that we've had that good luck, and we've been able to generate positive results. We're in the black, so I'd like to thank you very much, and we can then move on to some discussions in the background. So cargo is the future.
Sometimes we have a little more difficult period. However, I really want to emphasize this, this is not the result that would enable us to sit on our laurels. This is not a result that, satisfies. It's a positive result. We're in the black. It's a result we've generated as a result of doing a lot of hard work. This is not something that tells us that we've done everything we could, and this is not at all the case. We're thinking about the future. We're undertaking activities, we're preparing strategies for a variety of situations, and that's why we're pleased that we have this result. And the directions we've chosen, the avenues we've chosen, are the right avenues to take, but the future is not easy, but it's worthwhile to be here with us at Cargo.
It's worthwhile to trust us to buy our shares, 'cause we're a large company that's competitive in Poland and across Europe. I can tell you somewhat immodestly, that I would like for things to happen, that we're gonna be able to say during my term of office, that we're gonna pay out a dividend. That's how I'd like to end today's meeting. Thank you very much, and I'll invite you to join us for discussion. I do ask you to stay with us and stick with the PKP CARGO, and in three months, we'll have the next meeting. Isn't that right, Madam Director? I hope that we'll be able to report even better results. Thank you very much on behalf of the entire management team here at the PKP CARGO.
Very cordially from the bottom of my heart, thank you very much.