With that, I move to Slide number 15, where we see the profit bridge for the fourth quarter. And besides what was already mentioned on the LTI programs and the provision we have taken for this commercial dispute, we also have a slight negative impact from acquisitions, slightly dilutive, even though they are generating positive profitability and at the same time, also a slight negative impact from currency. While I think the very positive news is a very strong drop-through of 48.6% from volume price mix and others, which is, of course, very good, partly — mostly because of increased organic revenues. But — of course, we also need to take into consideration that we are comparing to a weaker quarter 4 last year, where we suffered from some higher costs in particularly Industrial Technique and Vacuum Technique, excuse me.
When it comes to the currency, currently slightly negative, for the next quarter, we are assuming based on the current exchange rates that it would be probably, again, slightly negative in a similar dimension. If I then move on to Slide number 16. I will just briefly walk you through the operating profit bridges for the respective business areas. We can say that basically, the drop-through, I think, is very solid for all four business areas, and that is for all four of them based on the increased organic revenues. I would say that only for Vacuum Technique and Industrial Technique, as I already mentioned in the general comment, we also need to take into consideration that the drop-through is not only so good because of the good organic revenue development, but also because of the fact that we are comparing to a softer Q4 2022, as you will remember, where we took a number of higher costs than usual in that particular quarter.
But otherwise, I think even without those considerations, I think from our side, I think we are very pleased to see this very solid drop-through across all the business areas. If I then move on to the next Slide number 17. Just a few brief comments on the balance sheet. I don’t think there is a lot of drama in this balance sheet to be detected from my perspective. I think there is, of course, also a slight impact from the currency development from Q3 to Q4 resulting in lower values. But I think otherwise, we see the rental equipment and the property, plant and equipment on a fairly high level, resulting from the investments we have done in 2023. In our rental fleet, we have held back a little bit during the COVID period and the difficult times.
But of course, now we have a bit of a catch-up effect going on the rental fleet. And also, we have communicated already many times about all the investments we are doing in expanding capacity mostly in Vacuum Technique, but also in Compressor Technique, for example. And then the last comment I would like to make on the balance sheet here is the positive development on our inventories. Due to the supply chain constraints, of course, we have commented earlier that we have been suffering a little bit from inflated inventory numbers, partly due to the fact that for components in stock in order to be able to produce the units — when those missing components would finally arrive and partly also because in more remote territories, the customer centers tend to build up more stock of sales products in order to be able to satisfy their customers with reasonable delivery times.
Now that supply chains have normalized much more and the problems are much more limited than they used to be a year ago, we have been working quite hard with the different business areas on trying to reduce those inventory levels. And at least this quarter, we see some first signs of development into a positive direction. And if we look at it from a relative perspective compared to sales, we also see that our short-term values are crossing the long-term terms. So that I think is very positive news to highlight. If I then go to Slide number 18 to comment briefly on the cash flow. First of all, a very strong operating cash surplus of SEK 12 billion for the year, SEK 46 billion in total. Net financial items that are not so material in the bigger scheme of things.
Then I already comment on taxes being higher due to, of course, higher profitability levels on the one hand in absolute terms. But at the same time, also due to the higher relative nominal tax — weighted nominal tax rate. The change in working capital, again here, a positive topic to mention, the plus SEK 558 million. I think the first time since a very long time that we see a positive value contributing to the cash flow rather than eating into the cash flow. So I think that is, again, a very positive sign. Let’s hope that we are able to continue these measures further in Q1 and that we continue to see a positive development. I already mentioned the increase of the rental equipment which is also clearly visible here and also the investments of property and plant, which are on a similar level as last year.
But overall, historically, on a relatively higher level due to all the investments we have been making and we are continuing implement. And then as a result of all of the above, we end up with an operating cash flow of SEK 8.8 billion for the quarter, a record for the year of SEK 23.2 billion, of which we spent about SEK 4.3 billion on the 17 acquisitions that Mats referred to earlier in the presentation. Then on Slide number 19, just to comment briefly on the dividend. As already mentioned, based on the development of our profitability, we ended up with earnings per share of SEK 5.76 for the year. And considering the fact that we tend to aim to have a 50% payout ratio to our shareholders, the Board of Directors has agreed to propose to the Annual General Meeting of Shareholders a dividend for the year of 2023 of SEK 2.80 per share, as already indicated payable in two equal installments, the first time in April — end of April 26 and the second time on October, record date October 30.
And with that, we are almost at the end, I just need to hand back to Mats to comment on our forward-looking statements.
