Marco Wiren: Thank you, Pekka, and good morning, good afternoon from my side as well. And let’s start by looking at the regional performance of the businesses. And in quarter four, all regions declined and we saw growth in Middle East and Africa. Most notably, North America declined once again and reflected the inventory digestion and macro uncertainty, which has been dominating most of the year. India declined by 30% and this was related to the 5G deployments that continue to normalize. And in Europe, we saw a meaningful decline in the quarter and some of which was driven by Nokia Technologies, which is entirely reported in the Europe numbers. Otherwise, the decline was mainly driven by Mobile Networks and Network Infrastructure.
And then looking at the operating profit in the quarter. Pekka explained a number of these drivers already, but a few things that I want to point out. And first one is common contribution, which was better than a year ago quarter, and this was driven by venture fund where the performance improved. In Mobile Networks and Cloud and Network Services, they improved somewhat year-on-year. And then, however, the majority of the decline was driven by Nokia Technologies with a year ago quarter benefited from the €305 million one-off that Pekka mentioned. And then moving to our cash position in quarter four. We had a strong quarter and ended the year with €4.3 billion of net cash, an increase of €1.3 billion compared to quarter three. And this is mainly reflected strong quarter four profits and a significant inflow of cash related to net working capital.
And this was due to both lower inventories as well as receivables, which benefited from partial prepayment of licensing agreement that was made in 2023. And during quarter four, we returned over €200 million to shareholders through dividends and the completion of the second tranche of our two-year €600 million share buyback program. In the full year 2023, we returned over €900 million to shareholders through dividends and share buybacks. Free cash flow for the full year was just over €800 million and this is 34% conversion compared to operating profit, and this was in line with our guidance of 20% to 50% for the year. Then turning to our 2024 cash flow outlook. We try to provide a view here on the moving parts in the 30% to 60% free cash flow conversion from comparable operating profit that we have guided for.
We do expect to see a positive impact from our operational and net working capital in 2024 as we continue to see some reduction from the build up we saw during the past two years. And then we expect cash taxes to be about €500 million in 2024. And then we assume also cash flow related to restructuring of about €550 million. Although, I would like to note that we also target to achieve the €500 million in-year cost savings in 2024, and this related both the program we just launched, but also the final savings of our prior 2021 program. And then finally, Nokia Technologies, we expect cash generation to be approximately €700 million below operating profit, and this is due to prepayments that we received in 2023. From 2025 and onwards, we expect greater alignment between Nokia Technologies, cash generation and operating profit.
So taking these on the consideration, we should land into the 30% to 60% conversion rate. Then as you look out to 2026, you can see that we are well on track to reach our target of 55% to 85% conversion, especially as mega technologies, cash generation starts to align more with its operating profit. And then at the end of 2023, our net cash represented about 19% of our net sales, which is above the target of 10% to 15% that we laid out in the beginning of the year. And given this strong cash position, the Board of Directors will propose an increase in our dividend to €0.13 per share. And the Board is also proposing to initiate a new buyback program of €600 million over two years. And given the ongoing macroeconomic uncertainty and industry challenges, we feel it is prudent to take a measured approach to getting to the 10% to 15% net cash target.
And if we now look at the 2024, you can see in the presentation on the release, the planning assumptions we have for our business groups in 2024. And as you can see, these are well aligned with the commentary we provided back in December. I will not go into detail on each number, but you will note that we provide a net sales assumption by business group instead of the targeted addressable market assumptions we have provided in the past, which we hope gives greater transparency as well. And piecing all of these assumptions together, you can understand our full year outlook for 2024, we are now guiding for comparable operating profit between €2.3 billion and €2.9 billion, which takes into consideration all of the BG assumptions. We also expect the free cash flow conversion between 30% and 60% for the reasons I talked through earlier.
And one further planning assumption we have provided that I would like to highlight is around the seasonality that we expect in 2024. We expect Q1 net sales in our network businesses to show a largely normal seasonal decline sequencing. And since 2016, the average Q1 sequential decline in sales has been 23%. And we expect significant seasonality in profit generation in 2024 with lower sales coverage to weigh on operating profit in quarter one, especially in MN and CNS. And then the company then expect progressive improvement in these businesses throughout the year. I also want to draw your attention to some changes that we will be making to disclosures and accounting for 2024. These changes are being made to enhance transparency and further support understanding of financials of our business goals.
