2004 was another very good year for UTC. Both earnings per share and net income grew 18 percent. Revenues increased 21 percent, exceeding $37 billion. Last year's revenue growth was exceptional for us and came from a combination of acquisitions and strong underlying performance in our businesses around the world.
Our operating income margin increased slightly from 2003 to a little over 13 percent, but included a drag of 80 basis points from two larger acquisitions, Chubb and Linde. Both businesses came into UTC with lower income performance and both will improve in the years ahead.
Cash flow met our usual high standard of exceeding net income after capital expenditures. We used this in part to support another solid dividend increase of 26 percent, effective with the last payment. This was on top of a pair of increases in 2003 which raised the dividend then 43 percent.
In 2004, UTC's total shareholder return again met or exceeded the market averages. Over a longer term, we have decisively outperformed these averages. Since 1992, UTC's return is 975 percent versus the S&P 500 at 248 percent and the Dow Industrials at 321 percent.
We also use our cash flow for acquisitions to strengthen our core and our already market-leading companies. Since the beginning of 2003, our acquisition spending exceeds $7.5 billion. This includes Rocketdyne and Lenel, which we expect to close in the second quarter, and earlier acquisitions of Chubb, Kidde and Amtech Elevator.
Our current revenue growth is strong in part from these acquisitions and from generally good economies worldwide. More importantly, I believe, is that UTC is outpacing competitors in many of our businesses, a reflection of UTC's very good product lineup today, combined with low and competitive costs which we've been working on for over a decade now. We see this in 2004 in Otis' exceptionally strong 14 percent growth in new elevator orders worldwide. We see it in Carrier's 15 percent growth in units shipped last year. And we see it in Pratt & Whitney Canada's unit shipments growth of 42 percent.
We like our current products a lot. Pratt & Whitney's F119 engine powers the Air Force's F-22 Raptor and is the world's most technologically advanced. We shipped the 100th engine last year.
We believe a new class of light jets is coming, to serve general aviation markets and potentially a new generation of air taxis as aviation develops service on demand. We're delighted to have won with the PW600 the two engine placements in this segment to date, the Eclipse 500 and the Cessna Mustang, and we're hopeful about a third airplane placement.
Carrier led its industry in adopting the new federal energy efficiency standard (SEER 13) a year ago. Effective next January, every residential air conditioning system Carrier ships in the U.S. will be 30 percent more energy efficient than the former federal standard. And this is on top of more than 40 percent in energy efficiency gains over the last 20 years.
Otis' Gen2 elevator system is transforming the industry across the world and leading to buildings without separate spaces for elevator machinery. Instead, equipment goes directly into elevator shafts and eliminates the former need in many buildings for rooftop machine rooms. Additionally, these elevators are 100 percent lubricant free and 70 percent more energy efficient in some configurations than comparable equipment only a few years ago.
A landmark award for Otis last year was most of the elevators in the Shanghai World Financial Center which will be the world's tallest building at 101 stories. More recently, Otis was awarded the elevators in Burj Dubai which will be the world's tallest structure.
Hamilton Sundstrand has had an amazing streak of wins on Boeing's new 787 Dreamliner airplane, winning 92 percent of the value of all systems bid. Notably, on systems involving our traditional rival, we won seven and they won none.
We didn't win the Marine One fleet replacement award and are disappointed about this. We pulled out all the stops and fielded a great helicopter based on the very successful S-92. The Navy's evaluation office judged Sikorsky's helicopter to be the "better performing," but the competitor's helicopter was slightly larger, required less modification, and therefore represented less schedule risk. We think the S-92 is still going to be a great helicopter for us in competition and has already done very well, winning every other competition against its European competitor since certification in 2003.
Another development we're proud of is the release a few days ago of our first Corporate Responsibility Report. Here's a copy and you'll find ones for you as you leave today's meeting. About 20 of the Fortune 100 companies have published such reports, and we're glad to be in this leading population. Simply, we take our responsibilities to all constituents seriously. This report lays out progress and commitments across areas like the environment, employee health and safety, employee education, compliance and ethics, and contributions to and participation in communities. We've been at this for a long time and already have a solid record of accomplishments as you will see in this report.
One of our most important efforts is UTC's Employee Scholar Program. The program's essence is that we make it attractive for employees to go to college, and they do. A total of 16,000 degrees have been earned already, and a further 13,500 employees are currently enrolled. Our spending to date totals nearly half a billion dollars. Bottom line, there isn't a program like this anywhere else in the world, and we, along with our employees, think it's one of the best things we do.
We get recognition as UTC from time to time. One we like is Fortune's annual Most Admired survey where we were again just ranked first for the fifth year in a row in the aerospace category. We also watch environmental and corporate responsibility ratings like Innovest (where we're AAA rated) and the 100 Most Sustainable Corporations in the World (where UTC is the only aerospace and defense company included).
Shareholder value looms large for us too, and no measure is more important to us than total shareholder return and how we rank against peers and indices on this. I noted these at the outset and close with emphasizing them. So, this has been a great year past and the future looks just as good. As always, I thank all of our employees on your behalf for their great work and contributions.
