To everyone here on this beautiful day in Amsterdam, my partners and I have been working intensely on our strategic alignment. Over the past 6 months, it has been very hard work, and we are excited to show you, to share with you today, JDE Peet's transformation plans. We really appreciate you making the effort to be here and listen to us. Roland just beautifully described the emotion that comes with coffee and the power coffee has to bring people together. I want to share with you a story that evokes the emotional connection I personally have with coffee. As you probably know, I grew up in Brazil. Almost half of the coffee production in the world comes from Brazil. When I was about 6 years old, my father took my family on a road trip.
We drove on the interstate highway that ran through the countryside, where most of the coffee farms are. At some point, we stopped at a coffee farm. It had little restaurants that were a rest stop for some travelers. I vividly remember the smell of coffee as we approached the farm. We sat down at the small restaurant, and we had something to eat. They were roasting beans and serving coffee directly from the farm. I did not drink coffee at that time; I was only 6, but my dad had me let have a little sip of his. Frankly, I did not like it. It was a bit bitter, and my young taste buds prefer sweets.
The image of the big field with the beautiful flowers and the smell that came out of it, and the happy memory of being there with my family, stayed with me my whole life. It is really an honor now to be running one of the most exciting coffee companies in the world and to bring this emotional connection to people everywhere, every day. Let's talk about the power of coffee and the potential this company has with its iconic brands. Some of you will remember my remarks on the full-year earnings result back in February, when I had been at JDE Peet's just over 100 days. I talked about the unharnessed potential I saw in this company. Now that I have been here eight months, I am even more convinced and excited by the tremendous opportunity we have to unlock and create more value. Here is why.
Coffee is a hugely attractive category. It is big, resilient, omnipresent, and loved across geographies, occasions, and age groups. It has the power to connect people and provide joy and comfort. JDE Peet's is uniquely positioned to lead and maximize potential. We have refocused on a brand-led strategy. As you hear over the course of the day, our strategy is led by our iconic brands that will drive the growth. We are working hard to simplify and generate productivities that we can reinvest for growth. We are going to do this by strengthening key capabilities that we have identified as critical to drive our next wave of growth. Delivering this strategy should generate steadily growing cash flow and top-tier shareholder returns. Let's explore now each of these pieces in a bit more detail, starting with why this category is so attractive. Coffee is big.
Sales in the category total more than EUR 300 billion worldwide on an annual basis. One third of that is from in-home consumption, while two thirds is from out of home. Coffee is the third most consumed beverage in the world after water, and a very close number two to tea. The coffee category has five powerful dynamics. It is resilient. It is omnipresent. Even though it is already big now, it has a lot of room to grow and to premiumize. Finally, coffee is structurally aligned with major global trends. Let's take a closer look at each of these five dynamics. First, coffee consumption grows through economic cycles. The upward trending red line that you see on the chart shows global coffee consumption since the early 1980s. The black line is the world GDP year over year, which vacillates quite a lot.
No matter what happens macroeconomically in the world, from global and regional financial crises to inflation and global pandemics, coffee consumption continues to increase. In economic downturns, people may change where they consume their coffee, but they keep drinking it multiple times a day. On an annual basis, people consume coffee more frequently than other indulgent beverages like snacks, for example. Three times more than confectionery items, 50% more than savory snacks, and significantly more than other beverages like beer and spirits. This means that the coffee category provides even more opportunities for consumer interaction than many other CPG categories. Coffee is big, resilient, more widely consumed than most other beverages. Yet, there is still a lot of room to grow in all the regions. Even across coffee legacy countries, there is variation in consumption.
For example, while per capita consumption in Finland is almost 1,000 cups per year, in France it's 430, and in the U.S., it's only 350 cups per year. At the other extreme, in large tea legacy countries in Asia and the Middle East, coffee consumption continues to increase, but it's quite small, around 12 cups per year. Again, there's still a lot of headroom to grow everywhere. Coffee has a unique opportunity to premiumize across three key dimensions. First, developing more premium ranges within the subcategories. Taking home consumption, for example, the average per cup cost of a roast and ground coffee is EUR 0.07. However, capsules cost about EUR 0.27 per cup, more than four times higher. single-serve continues to premiumize the coffee category.
As more regions adopt capsules and the ready-to-drink segment grows, this trend continues, expanding into mixes and other premium coffees, premium offerings, right? Second, shifting to more premium brands within the same category. Consumers are increasingly moving toward higher-end brands. For example, here in the Netherlands, Douwe Egberts has been a household staple for centuries. With the introduction of L'OR, many Dutch consumers recognize the added value in the brand's quality and status, supporting differentiated price. This shift is driving the overall premiumization of the category. Third, enhancing product offerings. Twenty years ago, black coffee was the standard. Today, as you heard from Roland, consumers enjoy a range of premium-flavored coffees, such as salted caramel, oranges, and peaches, from a variety of regions, all of which command higher price points. This evolution of product offerings further drives premiumization within the category.
On top of these three premiumization dynamics, out-of-home consumptions provide a pricing umbrella. While an in-home cup costs between EUR 0.07-EUR 0.27 per cup, consumers pay EUR 4-EUR 5 for a cup at a coffee shop. This leaves significant room for growth in the in-home segment as we bring more out-of-home consumption to bespoke experience in-home. Coffee is also aligned with a global shift in consumer preferences. More and more, consumers are seeking more natural sources of energy, healthier, low-calorie, low-sugar drinks, and refreshing, cold drinks like iced coffee. Research shows that in most countries now, up to 75% of people consider coffee natural and healthy. The perception of coffee as a healthy alternative to energy drinks, to soft drinks, and any other energy booster is growing.
On top, an increasing number of young people are consuming coffee, as you can see on the bar at the right of the chart. Take the U.S., for example. Nearly 60% of 18 to 24 -year-olds are drinking coffee daily. We like this trend. To summarize, coffee is a hugely attractive category. It is big, resilient, it provides an emotional connection, and has plenty of headroom to still grow. That is some of the potential of the coffee category, potential that JDE Peet's is uniquely positioned and committed to capitalizing on. What is it so unique about us and how we play in the category? What gives us the right to win?
We have five differentiating strengths: unrivaled coffee expertise, iconic brands which generate value for all stakeholders, a very strong best-in-class supply chain which we are very proud of, and finally, a strength that sometimes is overlooked or underappreciated, but is very important and valuable. We have a strong, stable cash flow generation and a very solid balance sheet. You will hear more from Yang this afternoon. Now, let me elaborate quickly on each of those five strengths. It's not an exaggeration to say our expertise in coffee is unrivaled. Sometimes it's easy to forget we've been around for a very long time. Douwe Egberts has been in existence for 270 years. Not many companies or brands can say that they've been around for more than two centuries, surviving crises, revolutions, wars. Jacobs has been in existence for over 140 years.
Peet's has been in the US for over 60 years. It is not only this exceptionally long history that gives us unrivaled expertise. It is also our full focus on coffee with scale. We are coffee. We play at the largest pure-player coffee company. No other pure-player coffee company in the world matches our scale. The number two, number three, number four players are all 30% or less of our size. We serve more than 100 markets around the world. Roland and his team of master blenders, informed by centuries of institutional knowledge and continuous learning, have the expertise to make more than 1,000 blends of coffee. That means we can quickly respond to emerging consumer taste preferences. Now, we do not actually make 1,000 brands. That would be too much complexity. The point is that we have the expertise to do so, gives us optionality and agility.
That is a great competitive advantage. Second, we have iconic brands that are leaders across geographies and categories. In more than 20 countries, we have the number one position in the coffee industry. In more than 30 countries, we have number two or number three. In 50 countries around the world, we are on the podium. We have a significant presence in other countries as well. We are also present across all the subcategories of coffee, from roast and ground to single-serve to ready-to-drink and out-of-home. These iconic brands generate value for all industry participants, consumers, retailers, coffee shops, and farmers. Third, we make coffee accessible to consumers and retailers across different price points, from mainstream to super- premium. In 2001, we launched Senseo appliances and pads, which caused a big market disruption.
It was the first single- serve appliance sold in grocery stores, a category that was primarily dominated by filter and instant coffee at that time. This launch reignited growth of the single-serve coffee market. In 2016, we brought aluminum capsules to grocery, and once again, revolutionized the coffee market and created even more value for many stakeholders. Our track record demonstrates our ability to disrupt the market, starting with Senseo's initial launch and continuing through our innovation of aluminum capsules. We've been at the forefront of premiumizing the single-serve coffee category, and we are not done yet. Our fourth differentiating strength, and one that we are really proud of, is our best-in-class supply chain. Our customer service level, in terms of on-time and completeness of delivery, consistently remains above 97%, even in times of crisis and massive external disruptions like COVID and the blockage of the Suez Canal.
We also ensure the sustainability of our sourcing partners, supporting nearly 1 million farmers in 23 countries to develop regenerative agriculture projects that really enhance the lives of so many communities. Let me give you an example, one that is quite close to me. Before I joined JDE Peet's, and before I even knew I was going to join a coffee company, I spent 3 months doing volunteer work with my family in Kenya. While there, I met a guy from a coffee farming family who had an idea for a new system that would improve the yield of their farms, especially for premium coffee beans. This will improve the economics for the farmers. I was intrigued, and I kept thinking about this idea. A few months later, I joined JDE Peet's and reconnected with my friend Charles Kimiti.
Our specialists are now working with him to bring his system to reality. That is just one small example, but it is scalable. Multiply that by 1 million farmers we work with around the world, and imagine the potential we have to improve the lives of so many people and communities, and why ensuring our source of highest quality beans for decades to come. Sustainability plays a very important role in our industry, and JDE Peet's is definitely on the forefront. We are very proud of that. Our fifth differentiating strength is one that is critical to value creation and critical to our strategy, but it is one that I do not think is fully appreciated. JDE Peet's has a very strong cash flow. Despite the high volatility of green coffee price, our cash flow is quite stable, as you can see on this chart.
A big reason for that is that we are a pass-through category. We pass on the appropriate portion of price changes in green coffee to our customers and consumers. While coffee prices go up and down significantly, our free cash flow remains relatively stable. You are going to see this chart again. Yang will say a lot more about this point on the financial discussion this afternoon. Here, I want to emphasize that our strong and stable cash flow is an important and valuable strength, which, combined with our other differentiating strengths of unrivaled heritage and coffee expertise, iconic value-generating brands, and best-in-class sustainable sourcing, positions us to lead and grow. Now, while we are very proud of all the fundamental strengths of this company, not everything is optimal.
I think there's a lot more opportunity for us to unlock value, and we have an ambitious plan to do it. This plan requires a shift in our mindset and our organization, starting with a transformation of our culture. Our unique position of being the largest pure player sometimes has worked against us, promoting complacency and defensiveness. That hasn't always been the case. We've disrupted the category more than once before, but the disruptor and innovation mindset that led to past successes lost some traction. More recently, we've operated many times with an incumbent mindset, which makes it very hard to innovate. Revigorating innovation, re-energizing the organization, and boosting agility are key to our success. We need to take advantage of our unparalleled expertise, scale, and pure-player position to operate and be the trailblazer in innovations again. We have been working very hard to make this shift.
We already aligned the leadership team and revamped our incentives. Our KPIs are now fully tied to long-term creation and shareholder goals. Everyone's committed to an ownership mentality. In the eight months since I joined, I've seen a surge in energy, excitement, and focus. We also need more disciplined focus on fewer but higher impact, higher return activities. As I mentioned on the full-year earnings call in February, when I came to the company, I visited many countries. I had literally hundreds of one-on-ones, small meetings, and group meetings. I struggled to find the focus of JDE Peet's. I kept asking, "What's the priority?" I kept getting many different answers. This multitude of priorities made it very difficult to focus. When you have many priorities, you don't have any priorities. What we are doing now is to be very clear and intentional on our priorities.
We are focusing our resources, our minds, and our money on fewer, bigger bets that have the potential to generate the best returns. In my conversations in my first months on the company, I also found it very hard to understand the strategic framework of JDE Peet's. I heard about so many priorities. I heard multiple and shifting strategies. Sometimes I heard the strategy was to grow and to focus on the different coffee subcategories. Other times it was about the technology and our machines. Still, other times I heard it was channel development and brands. So developing and implementing a crystal-clear strategic framework is the next area that will change. In fact, it already has. As you're going to hear from my partners, we have developed a clear brand-led strategy with consumers at the heart. What consumers want is what we are going to go after through our brands.
Over time, our organization has also become very complex and fragmented. In the last few years, we've made more than 20 acquisitions, sometimes of very different businesses. We never really integrated them. Every company continued to operate on its own and consequently fighting for priorities, fighting for money to grow, and diluting and fragmenting the organization. Running this organization should be simple. We operate in only one category. It's coffee. We are going to work very hard on simplifying the company and getting productivities to fuel growth. This is a very important part of our strategy, and you're also going to hear more about it today. Finally, we are lagging in some of the commercial and execution capabilities that are absolutely necessary to be a winning consumer goods company.
Going forward, we'll have an intensely disciplined focus on execution, including best-in-class revenue management, consumer insights, and key account management. We are going to invest in the specific capabilities that will bring the highest impact for our strategy. As we execute our strategy, we will generate strong cash flow and be more disciplined and intentional on our capital allocation, which ultimately will deliver shareholder returns that are top tier among CPG companies. Executing our strategy begins with being clear on our identity and our purpose. We have thought deeply about our category and our place in it and where we want to go. I'm proud to share our revigorated purpose and newly refreshed identity, which builds on the best of our heritage and focus on our exciting future. We are JDE Peet's. We craft coffee for every cup, and we build brands for every heart.
Whoever you are, wherever you come from, however you feel, we have the coffee you love. Because we believe amazing things happen over a cup of coffee, and that is why we champion everything that coffee makes possible. Every blend, every day, every moment for every culture all over the world. We are fiercely proud to be JDE Peet's. Coffee. A coffee for every cup, a brand for every heart. This is our clear path forward, energizing and guiding us to execute our strategy. JDE Peet's strategy now is brand-led with three very clear big bets: Jacobs and the local icons, Peet's and L'OR. We have intentionally chosen to focus on these three platforms because we know that with more attention and investment, they have the highest potential to grow profitably and efficiently, generating meaningful returns to shareholders and investors. Let us talk about the potential of each brand.
Peet's is a champion of craft coffee with a cult-like following. It's also a billion-dollar brand. That combination gives it a uniquely advantaged position. It's very rare to have a billion-dollar brand that is still considered craft and disruptive. Typically, smaller brands usually aim to become bigger. Once brands become too big, most of the time they become mainstream and lose both their reputation for disruption and their cult following. In contrast, Peet's has the size and scale of a big mainstream brand. It has so far preserved its reputation as a craft beverage, a disruptor coming out of the vibrant, idiosyncratic, unconventional culture of Berkeley, California. We know that's unique, and we are going to take advantage of it. My partner, Eric, will show you how we are going to take Peet's to its full potential, initially in the U.S. and eventually beyond.
L'OR is our second big bet. L'OR is positioned as attainable luxury. What a beautiful brand. As Ricard will explain shortly, we've already taken L'OR from a smaller local brand in France to a EUR 1 billion one. We are confident we can make L'OR at least a EUR 3 billion global mega brand. Ricard will explain in detail the plan behind this ambition. The third big bet we are investing in is a set of 10 iconic brands led by Jacobs, which together today represent EUR 4 billion in sales. All of them are household favorites that elevate everyday coffee. We know from our experience with Jacobs that with more attention and investment, these brands can be revigorated and grow substantially. Our third strategy in this third big bet brand cluster is to create a platform using Jacobs as the chassis to synergize innovation and drive growth.
This is a big opportunity. Ricard will also explain in detail how we'll do this. We've intentionally chosen these three big bets not just because they are our largest brands. We chose them because of their ability to meet current and emerging consumer needs. Now, if you map our brands against human and category needs, these three clusters clearly emerge. Jacobs and the local icons fall together around affiliation, certainty, and comfort needs, with L'OR and Peet's having more distinct positions. Ultimately, as you can see, we are using consumer needs to guide direction. Our strategy calls for three phases, which we are calling Wake Up, Step Up, and Look Up. The work has already started across all three, and everything will be ongoing. What we will see is the financial returns coming in three phases.
During the Wake Up phase, which is going on now and will accelerate through the next 2 years, we will simplify the company to gain productivities, and we invest the savings in specific growth and profitability initiatives. We are targeting EUR 500 million of savings with more than 50% delivered by 2027. Yang will give more details on the timing and sources of the saving. I want to be super clear here. This is not simply a hopeful ambition. We have done intensely, extremely detailed analysis to identify exactly the specific areas we are going after. Since the beginning of this year, we have begun executing on them. Similarly, we also started phase II, Step Up. We have looked critically at all the capabilities we need, and we have identified four key ones that we must excel to achieve our ambition. We are strengthening these mission-critical capabilities starting now.
You'll see the financial results or the full results within a couple of years. In the Look Up phase, we will continue to pursue productivities, hone our four mission-critical capabilities, and look for long-term opportunities to fuel future growth. This will likely include other innovations and geographical expansion. Though the returns of this phase are further out, the work starts now. While my partners will be giving a lot more details on the specific plans, initiatives, and the financial impact, I want to give an overview of the three phases of the strategy and a preview of the initiatives we are taking in each phase. In the Wake Up stage, we have identified four areas of opportunities for our productivity program: portfolio simplification, synergies in the way we work, focus on continuous improvement, and a more asset-like route to market and partnership.
As I said, we have a specific target for each of those areas, a zip code where we are going to get the productivities from. For example, on portfolio simplification, you might be surprised to hear that 33 of our brands generate less than 5% of our gross profit. This offers a huge opportunity for simplification, which Yang will give more detail later. We've also begun identifying and achieving synergies in our organization and ways of working. Here are some examples. Two months ago, we announced the sale of our tea business in Turkey and the end of our lobbyist expansion in the U.S. with the transfer of the capsules to Peet's in San Francisco. This is part of a broader strategy, and we are working on other similar opportunities. There are several other initiatives in the pipeline that align with this approach of synergies from simplification.
In procurement, we expect to have significant savings throughout the years. For example, we've implemented a design-for-value program that's already bringing productivity. Using our coffee expertise, we are able to mix our blends to optimize cost while maintaining quality. There's going to be a lot more coming on simplifying and synergizing on our organization. The fourth area of identified productivity is implementing a more asset-light operating model. For example, we used to have a direct store delivery, a DSD program in the U.S. for Peet's, which we had more than 700 routes served by hundreds of vans delivering products to individual stores. DSD was important to establish the Peet's brand, but it's become costly and is constraining our ability to grow. Eric will give you more details about this later today.
Similarly, as we mentioned on the February earnings call, coffee stores were a fantastic source of brand build, but we are not running them in the most optimal and profitable way. We generate approximately EUR 400 million globally in sales from the stores, but with a profitability that is well below the company's average. We are therefore reevaluating how to grow this channel optimally to build our support for our brands while improving profitability. The important thing here is that the first phase of our strategy has been underway since the beginning of the year, and we are accelerating as we move forward. We will share the progress with all of you over time. Moving to phase II, the Step Up. Step Up focuses on strengthening the four capabilities we've identified as critical to achieving our bold ambition.
While there are many areas we could focus on, these four are essential to our strategy, and we will execute them extremely well. These capabilities will help us become a consumer-led company with expertise in consumer and customer insights, brand building, and key commercial functions like revenue management and key account management. By concentrating on these areas, we will enable ROI-driven capital and resource allocation. We have identified our four Cs: Consumer Insights, Consumer-led Brand Building, Commercial Excellence, and Capital Allocation. An important aspect of all this is the Step Up phase is the innovation. When I joined JDE Peet's, I was actually well impressed by innovation products that we had across the company. They were not getting the attention they deserve. The organization fragmentation led to duplication and slow scaling, causing us to miss high-potential opportunities. We need to scale successful ideas faster, like cold coffee.
A good example is Douwe Egberts' iced coffee range, which has become a staple in my own household. My kids and I cannot get enough of it, and we are enjoying a cup every time. Seriously, we cannot get enough, and the company does not give it away for free. I am gladly spending a lot of money on it to keep my kids happy. This is just one product. It is just an example of major growth potential that we can reach, iced coffee lovers, beyond the Netherlands. Innovation is not just about products. It is also about new occasions. We are looking at campaigns and partnerships to create more long-lasting connections and more consistent points of consumer interaction around key moments of celebration like summer vacation and Christmas. This kind of commercial innovation will be a strong focus for us going forward.
As we work on the Wake Up and the Step Up, we cannot forget about the long term. We are building this company for the next 270 years. Now, this is where phase II, Look Up, comes into play. The Look Up phase involves working on initiatives that have the potential to become important for the company in the future. This might include expanding coffee into new functional benefits, new geographies, new experiences with machines and business models. These initiatives will take more time to add visible impact in our financials. We know there's a lot of opportunity here, and we will carefully evaluate long-term opportunities against both our strategic criteria and our financial return hurdles. Now, bringing it all together, we are simplifying the organization into one unified JDE Peet's with three big bets: Peet's, L'OR, and our local icons led by Jacobs.
Our transformation will be driven by five key catalysts: a winning culture of agility, ownership, and transparency, a consumer-led organization built on iconic brands, commercial excellence across our four mission-critical capabilities, a simplified structure through an ambitious productivity program, with financial discipline at the core. Together, this will create sustainable value for all stakeholders. Okay, now it's time for a break. Please enjoy a cup of coffee, and when you come back, you're going to hear more from Ricard and Eric on the power and the potential of our iconic brands.
Thank you. Good morning, everyone. My name is Ricard, and since February, I am the CMO at JDE Peet's. While new to the role, I'm certainly not new to the company, which I have had the honor to serve now for, wow, over 9 years.
I am what Johan, our Chief Human Resources Officer, calls a boomerang: someone who went, learned, grew, and came back completely galvanized with an appetite for more. Between 2014 and 2018, I led the development of L'OR as our global premium platform, as well as the launches of our aluminum capsule and the L'OR Barista System. After what was the adventure of a lifetime, my curiosity pushed me to explore new horizons that took me to Africa. While these were amazing times, I could never move past my passion for coffee. Whenever I had the opportunity to come back to what I call home, I did not hesitate. Like the millions of consumers that we delight on the daily, I do too believe that coffee is more than just a drink. Coffee is the greatest connector.
It connects us with ourselves, connects us with others, and it connects us with the environment around. Let's not make a mistake. Coffee is much more than that. Coffee inspires creativity, and it powers decision-making. With a cup of coffee in our hands, we feel invincible and ready for whatever life will throw at us. Think about yourselves. How many times have you used coffee as an excuse to have what's going to become a life-changing conversation? It really is amazing what happens over a cup of coffee. That is why at JDE Peet's, we are powered by our purpose to champion everything that coffee makes possible. Whoever you are, wherever you come from, however you feel, we have the coffee you love. We do really craft a coffee for every cup, and we build brands for every heart.
As Rafa mentioned earlier on, one of the biggest changes that we're going to make as an organization is to become a brand-led business. It couldn't be any other way because our brands are our biggest asset. It is through our broad portfolio of brands that we uniquely cover the full spectrum of the coffee category in a very different manner versus what our competitors can do. We operate across all price points, across all formats, and we're present across all channels. As in all things in life, an overplayed strength can become a weakness. The reality is that over the years, our portfolio has grown unnecessarily complex. Today, around 50% of our brands represent less than 5% of our gross profit. Yet these brands entail a significant amount of hidden costs.
If we want to unleash the full potential of the brands that are going to make a difference, we have an opportunity ahead of us to significantly streamline and optimize our portfolio such that we create the focus, the efficiencies, but as well the funds that we need to reinvest behind our growth agenda. We are going to do that by moving from a place where we are catering to the individual needs of more than 60 brands to a space in which we are going to focus in three big bets. That sounds scary. Actually, we have the confidence that we can do that quite easily. Because again, as Rafa just shared with you, when we map our brands against core human and category needs, three clusters emerge naturally. The first one is what we call our heritage brands.
Brands, a set of local, big icon brands led by Jacobs. Brands that are anchored in the everyday and that satisfy the need for belonging and connection. The second cluster is L'OR, our global premium brand. A brand that lives to awaken the senses by delighting our consumers with daily moments of treat and indulgence. The third one is Peet's, a brand that's all about quality, mastery, and craft. A brand that needs pursuit for better, provides our consumers with the reassurance and the rewards of a choice well made. Belonging, sensoriality, craft. These are the three core spaces in the coffee category. With the focus that our strategy will provide us, we feel the confidence that we can dial up our ambition. Starting with Jacobs and our local icons, we are committing to reignite growth for these brands.
On L'OR, we have the confidence that we have an opportunity to build at least a EUR 3 billion global mega brand. With Peet's, by focusing all our efforts in the United States, we know that we can unlock, again, an opportunity of EUR 2.5 billion. In the next couple of minutes, I want to spend some time with you going through the detail of the plans that will help us turn what is an ambition into a business reality. I want to start with Jacobs and our local icons. Now, you've heard me a couple of times referring to these brands as heritage brands. What do we really mean when we're talking about heritage? These are iconic cultural cornerstones in all the societies that they serve. Brands that have built legacy throughout the years, decades, and in some instances, yes, even centuries.
They have become synonymous with the coffee category. Brands that are immediately recognizable, not only for what they look like, but most importantly, for what they signify and they stand for. It is not a surprise that to date, these brands remain household favorites in all the markets where they operate. We have plenty of these brands. As part of our portfolio strategic review, we have identified the 10 brands that are going to make the difference. Ten brands that are the backbone of our business and that represent close to 50% of our sales. Brands that are very complementary because either they do not coexist in one market or they are never activated simultaneously. These brands, beyond a shared positioning in our consumers' minds and hearts, have more things in common. They share strengths.
Again, in the markets where they operate, they have amongst the strongest meaning, awareness, consideration, and penetration. That is across all age groups. Yes, that includes younger demographics where we tend to overskew versus our key competitors. Importantly as well, these are brands that perform extremely well on shelf. Brands that are very reactive to activation, which according to us is the best measure of a healthy pulse. I think it's fair to say that these brands are very much alive. The same way that they share strengths, they are facing similar opportunities. These are brands that are over-reliant in what we call traditional coffee categories. In a world where consumers continue to explore new formats to get new experiences, we have a big opportunity to build a position of strength in these new emerging partitions.
Secondly, these are brands that have built quite a complex portfolio. As part of our analysis, we have identified a number of SKUs that are not bringing much on shelf other than noise and complexity. Even better, we have uncovered quite a few of what we call hidden gems, SKUs that for whatever reason are underexploited despite the high rotation. Moving forward, we have an opportunity to bank on commercial excellence and maximize the return of our brands on shelf. Next one is our resource allocation. I think it's fair that until recently, we have been investing in what we call legacy models. Moving forward, we have an opportunity to be bolder in prioritizing for growth. That means making bolder choices on how we allocate resources across countries, across categories, but as well across channels.
Last, despite the many synergies that these brands have and that I'm sharing with you today, until recently, we have been managing them very independently. Not only does this create duplication and fragmentation of efforts, but over time, this has become a blocker for us to be able to scale up with pace and scale innovations and activations. As a consequence, to be open, the reality is that these brands have struggled to deliver the growth that they deserve. We know that once we address the opportunities that I just shared with you, we're going to be able to revert or reignite the growth of these brands. We say that with confidence because in 2024, Jacobs proved that there is a pathway for growth for these brands.
In 2024, we implemented what we call a Reignite program, an end-to-end marketing initiative that helped us reset the brand and prepare it for future growth. Although it's early days, what we are seeing is that something's happening. From a share standing position, we seem to be moving from a sea of redness to what is an emerging wave of greens. Before I give you some of the details of what a Reignite program entails, I just want to take a little moment to share a bit more about Jacobs. Our biggest brand, the J in JDE Peet's, the crown jewel, a brand that generates on a yearly basis close to EUR 2 billion on sales. A brand that is present in more than 40 markets and a brand that was born in Bremen, Germany, in 1895.
What I find truly exciting about this brand is the leadership position that it has consolidated over the years in what sometimes we refer to as the Jacobs continent, which is everything that encompasses between Germany to Central Asia. A region that is of critical importance not only for us, but for the coffee category as a whole. This is a region that is responsible for 22% of the in-home coffee consumption worldwide. EUR 23 billion are generated on a yearly basis in this region. This is the home of almost 750 million people. This is a region that will continue to grow. Either we see in some areas booming population or in some others, we continue to see an acceleration of what we call conversion from tea consumption into coffee.
I guess that the question is, how come a German brand has managed to establish leadership in this region? Like in many things in life, sometimes to understand the present, we need to travel back in time. It is actually in the years of the Cold War that Germany emerged as a beacon of prosperity, a portal to freedom, if you like. These are values and signifiers that Jacobs has beautifully encapsulated over the years. Let me make this a bit more tangible for you. What we see on the screen is a picture taken on November 9th, 1989. That is the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin. Yes, that is the day that the wall fell. What we see at the front of the picture is Jacobs.
Jacobs welcoming back home the Eastern population into a reunified Germany with a warm and delicious cup of coffee. There is a reason why Jacobs and only Jacobs could be here credibly. Because for many years, Western families who had been separated from their loved ones had the opportunity to sell what were called Western or appreciation packages to the Eastern populations. Packages that contained items and goods that one would never be able to buy in a communist society. Packages that would never be complete without a Jacobs Kronung roast and ground brick. To date, our share position in East Germany is significantly higher than that of the rest of the country. That aspirationality is deeply embedded and rooted in the collective psyche of these societies. We have so many more of these stories for this brand.
In Poland, at some point, Jacobs was called the third currency. Because smuggling a pack of Jacobs back in the day and being able to trade it for favors could get one out of trouble. Inspired by this incredible legacy, but also with the responsibility that it entails to manage a brand of this significance, we decided to engage into this Reignite marketing program. A marketing program that turned into an internal rallying cry to reignite the icon that we know Jacobs can be. What we did was basically elevate the way in which we present this brand to our consumers. By bringing back the gold that once made us famous, by recovering Wunderbar, the tagline that we used for this brand for more than 50 years and that so nicely represents everything that this brand stands for.
We as well step changed our approach on creativity, banking on emotional-based brand building, and doubling down our presence on social media. We embraced the responsibility that comes with leadership. We started driving a much more intentional agenda as it relates to sustainability. We did much more than that. With Reignite, we reclaimed our relevancy. I am of the opinion that the biggest driver of relevancy for any brand is to offer their consumers what they want, when they want it, and how they want it. In that sense, we've been innovating across each and every single category where we participate. Just to give you an example, it is to reignite that we brought to the market our all-new to the world instant paper refill, one of the most successful innovations that we have launched in the recent years in market.
I'm going to stop telling you, and I'm going to give you a sneak peek of what Reignite has entailed in all our markets. We've done the work, and we are confident on the preliminary results that we are delivering with Reignite. Therefore, we believe that this can become the repeatable model that we implement across the rest of our local icons in order to reignite growth. If we want to do that at pace and at scale, we must fundamentally change the way in which we are operating with these brands. We need to move away from a place where we constantly reinvent the wheel for each of these 10 brands. Now, let me give you a very tangible example. What you see here on the screen is seven of these brands building credibility in the growing beans category.
That is seven different teams working with seven different agencies, spending money seven different times. We want to move to a place where we platform once and we deploy multiple times. What this means is that we are going to build a chassis with Jacobs that we are going to roll out to the rest of the brands, and only on the last mile, we are going to transcreate for what we call meaning and distinctivity. What you see on the screen is not theory. We have been experimenting with this model over the last months, and we know it works. We know it generates the fuel that we need to drive growth. It is more than just driving efficiencies. We want to drive impact and therefore growth. I want to share another example with you.
What you see on screen is the latest launch that we have done on mixed specialties to buy chocolate. The beauty of this model is that when you start removing internal blockers, we can move at the speed of culture. Thanks to our platform approach, we have been able to tap into what has been the biggest social media trend over the last years. Actually, it has taken us 18 weeks before someone came with the idea to now being present in more than 22 markets. Can we do more? What could this model look like in its full potential? Now, if we think what is the biggest opportunity that these brands face, probably recruiting the next generation of consumers is where we need to focus. What do these consumers want? Cold coffee.
Rafa already mentioned that 60% of consumers ranging 18- 24 years old are drinking cold coffee on an ongoing basis. Yet, it continues to be so difficult to prepare cold drinks at home. As the biggest pure coffee player, can we alleviate some of that pain? The answer, of course, is absolutely yes. I want to introduce you to Jacobs Coffee Concentrate, a new product that we are going to start rolling out in the markets as of half to 2025, and which will help all our consumers to prepare a perfect cold drink simply by adding a little dash of this beautiful product in whatever base drink they want. The next question is, can this idea travel across the rest of the local icons? You can imagine that the answer is, of course, yes.
Because in a world where borders are virtually disappearing, universal insights can travel faster than ever. Let's give ourselves a bigger challenge. Can a heritage brand speak in a credible manner to a younger audience? Most importantly, can the assets and activations of one brand travel across the rest? I would say, let's have a look.
If you like taking days to make iced coffee, scroll on. [Foreign language] . Still here? Cool. [Foreign language] . Absolutely no stress. [Foreign language] . Totally frothing. This is everything I needed. I thought this was going to taste basic, but it's like, clean. [Foreign language] .
With the power of our platform approach and our incredible innovations, we know we can drive both efficiencies, but as well growth. Most importantly, when we couple this magic combo with the unconstrained power of artificial intelligence and digitalization, the results are going to be tenfolded. Because mind you, what you have seen on the screen featured no real human, and it was developed in a fraction of the time for a fraction of the cost than a traditional way of producing would entail. Summarizing this first section of my presentation, we are committing to reignite growth for Jacobs and our local icons on the back of our platforming approach. I have the conviction that the future for these brands has never looked brighter. Now, we're changing gears. From consolidated icons to an icon in the making. Welcome to the world of L'OR.
We all experience the world through our senses. They are the natural path to pleasure. In a world where nothing ever stops, we close ourselves off to how beautiful life can be. It is only when we choose to be in the moment and surrender to our senses that we open ourselves to the pleasures that life has to offer. Every cup of L'OR coffee transports you beautifully through the senses to experience the indulgence that makes us feel more alive. A world of intense sensations, symphonies of arousing aromas, smooth and sharp flavors, so rich and refined. Let yourself be fascinated by the L'OR sensual indulgence, an experience that is as precious as gold. L'OR, pleasure is gold.
Multisensorial experiences that beautifully transport us through our senses, which take us to places from where we come back feeling more alive.
What a beautiful brand, and what a beautiful story of value creation for all our stakeholders. Back in 2014, when we decided to build out of L'OR our global premium platform, this was at best a mediocre challenger in the French market that generated less than EUR 200 million in sales on a yearly basis. Now, let's fast forward 10 years in time. This brand has joined the exclusive club of the billionaire brands. It is already the third biggest brand in our portfolio and certainly the biggest growth contributor over the last 10 years for our business. We are now present in more than 50 markets, and already we are generating more than 30% of our sales outside of our stronghold of capsules. You know what we are really proud of? We have reached and consolidated a leading position in our homeland, in France.
Not only have we done that, but we are the brand that has generated the most value creation for all our retail partners over the last decade. Yes, that means that this has been the most successful brand across each and every single product that you can buy in a supermarket. We are not the ones saying that. Kantar published an independent study with all the evidence that supports this statement. The question is, what is behind this success story? Clearly, the launch of our disruptive aluminum capsule, which dismantled the barriers of physical availability to a gold standard espresso forever, has really served as a catalyst of growth for this brand. We have done more than just launching a capsule.
We seize the momentum that breakthrough and disruptive innovation gave us to build a brand, a brand that is anchored in the universal need for daily moments of connection with oneself that we deliver through indulgence. A brand that makes luxury attainable for those consumers who are willing to pay a little extra and get in exchange a whole lot back in return. Now, if we deep dive in the case of France and here what you see is the progression of our market share in the total coffee category, we see a number of drivers for this growth. Capsules, for sure, have been there. Consistent and intentional investments, of course, have been there. I think that the biggest learning that we can get out of France is that we have built a coffee brand.
What I mean by that is that today, L'OR is already operating across all the coffee categories, which by definition maximizes our potential in terms of penetration because we are targeting the whole of the category users. Sometimes we get the challenge that, oh yeah, this works in France, but it only works in France. To that I say, evidence shows otherwise. Already today, we're generating more than 40% of our sales outside of our stronghold of France. Very importantly as well, when we're intentional about the brand, very quickly it becomes the number one or number two rotating item in the premium partition across the different markets and categories where we operate. What is clear is that L'OR is a young and underdeveloped brand. This is great news because the case for more and acceleration is evident.
We know we have cemented strong foundations, and we have the proof points that give us the confidence that, yes, we can build out of this brand a EUR 3 billion proposition at least. We are going to do that through a simple and repeatable model. If we want to accelerate awareness and rotation in point of sale, we need to accelerate our investments in line with our ambitions. It is not only about how much we spend. It is how we invest. For a brand that we want to build in the fashion of luxury brands, we require a completely different marketing mix. Moving forward, we are going to be doubling down in partnership with other luxury brands, as well as accelerating our brand experiential and influencer marketing initiatives.
Secondly, we know we can deliver a lot of mechanical or organic growth simply by accelerating presence and prominence within and outside of grocery. On the latter, we know we have an opportunity to enter with skill in out of home. In e-commerce, we can strengthen our position, particularly in marketplace. Probably the most important one, building on the learnings that we just got from France, expanding our portfolio by entering in beans, in instant, in mixes, in ready-to-drink, in liquid, you name it, it's going to be critical, particularly for those markets where portioned espresso systems remain nationally penetrated. While we're building a global brand, we know that there is not such a thing as a global consumer. What we have done is build a cluster-based model which groups countries based on similar characteristics that therefore required very specific actions.
Within each of those clusters, what we have done is appoint what we call acceleration cells, markets that as of now, we are focusing all our efforts on to future-proof those playbooks before we expand them within the cluster so that we know we are predictable on the growth that we're going to generate. Moving from a billion plus to 3 billion will entail a lot of activity. Today, I want to share three of what we call our accelerators for growth. The first one I already alluded to, partnerships with luxury brands, because we believe there's merit in borrowing some of this incredible equity that luxury brands have been building for years. When it comes to partnerships, we're making no compromises because already today, we're partnering with the likes of Lindt, Ferrari Hypercar, and Alessi.
Partnerships that we are leveraging not only to drive mental availability, but as well to drive business. Let me give you some examples. Based on the insight that 40% of the consumers of Lindt love to eat their chocolate with a cup of coffee, together we developed bespoke bundles and recipes that allowed us to place an incremental 2,500 displays in the markets where we operated together. Inspired by our partnership with Ferrari Hypercar, we brought to the market our Passione Rossa range, comprehensive of coffee and brewer solutions, which led us to an incremental 5,000 displays in what we call established L'OR markets, but also served as a very credible point of market entry to new regions such as the Middle East and Southeast Asia.
Together with Alessi, we have brought the L'OR Barista System into the Please Say range by creating together what I believe is one of the most beautiful domestic appliances that will ever grace any household. The second accelerator is about capitalizing on the leadership that we have established in portioned espresso and identifying emerging and new trends and consolidating them in grocery. When it comes to coffee trends in coffee, it is all about cold. I want to give you another data point. One out of three cups served out of home are already cold. Yet, it remains so difficult to prepare cold coffee at home. That is why very recently we have launched our all-new L'OR Barista Absolu, the first portioned espresso system that delivers the perfect poured-over iced coffee with the capsule that you want.
We're not dictating the one that you should be drinking. Importantly as well, we have coupled this launch with the introduction of our summer limited edition coconut ice, which not only will bring a tropical flair, if you like, to the coffee category, but will serve as the perfect ingredient for the cocktail or mocktail of your choice. The last accelerator for growth is growing across categories. As I mentioned, this is going to be a very important area of focus for L'OR. If we're going to expand across categories, we need to do it the L'OR way, always disrupting with superior technology and seducing the senses of our consumers in a way that no other brand will be able to do.
Today, I want to focus your attention into what is going to be the biggest innovation that we have brought to market since the launch of our aluminum capsule, next generation instant. Because thanks to new proprietary extraction technology, we are going to be able to deliver an in-cup experience commensurate with that of fresh brew coffee, but without all the hassles of preparation. We simply call it fresh coffee hashtag machine free. So simple, so bold, and yet so difficult to achieve. This is one of these innovations that in order to understand the transformational impact that they will have on the category, you need to experience for yourselves. That is why Carolyn will host you afterwards in the innovation booths and will give you an opportunity to delight in what I hope is going to be a life-changing coffee experience.
Now, I think it's fair to say that the L'OR case is one of the biggest recent success cases in FMCG. With the strong foundations that we have cemented, with our intentionality to invest behind an agenda of growth, and with our disruptive innovative solutions, yes, we are confident that this is going to become at least a EUR 3 billion global mega brand. We are making it to the top of the pyramid, Peet's, the pinnacle of our portfolio, a brand that not only is exceptional for its unmatched craft, but because this is the brand that ignited the second wave of coffee. It all started here in the Netherlands because actually Alfred Peet, our founder, grew up in Alkmaar, which is a small town in the north of Amsterdam. He was the son of a coffee trader.
Alfred Peet developed a passion and love for coffee being a child, spending his days playing around in the warehouse of his father, getting infatuated by all these incredible aromas of coffee. Early on in his life, he decided to move to Amsterdam to learn the art of coffee cupping. Later on, he moved to London to master the science of coffee trading. His journey would take him to Indonesia, where he would develop his obsession for dark roast coffee. It is almost out of serendipity that Alfred Peet ended up establishing his roots in San Francisco. While Alfred Peet absolutely loved the U.S., there was something that he really could not understand. How come he made it to the richest country on the planet and consistently he would be served the worst coffee he would ever experience in his life?
He decided to change that. He quit his job, and in 1966, he opened his first store in Berkeley, California, to bring to his community rich, dark, freshly high-quality roasted coffee. What started as a small business venture later on would turn into a cult, a cult that transcended Berkeley, California, and, for a matter of fact, the country as a whole. History has it that at some point in time, three young men came all the way down from Seattle to ask Mr. Peet if he would train them in the fine art of roasting and blending. Alfred Peet agreed to do so. These three young men eventually left to open a coffee chain that you might or might not have heard of, Starbucks. The rest is history.
What is clear is that the vision and the passion of Alfred Peet continues to live on through Doug, our master roaster, and his team who remain passionate about sourcing the best beans from the finest growing regions, only buying from farms that are verified by Enveritas, a team that whenever possible continues to use their hands to roast and blend, and only utilizing technology at the service of craft, never ever to replace it. Yes, ours is a legacy of craft, but most excitingly, it is a future of possibilities. With our full focus on the US, we are convinced that we can unlock the full potential in this market by creating a EUR 2.5 billion brand. Sometimes the only thing that it takes is to remove self-imposed growth blockers. We are going to expand distribution beyond our strongholds of California and Massachusetts.
We're going to start investing intentionally and at scale on marketing for the first time ever. Most importantly, we're going to give the American consumers the coffee they love. Yes, Americans love light roast, medium roast, ready-to-drink, instant coffee. Moving forward, we're going to keep some of that coffee snobbery to continue to raise the bar in our pursuit of better, but never to dictate to the American consumers the coffee they should drink.
I don't quite know how to follow Ricard, but I can tell you the story of Peet's. As I listen to this and reflect, and Rafa spoke earlier about an incumbent mindset and being disruptive, I'm reminded here how disruptive Alfred Peet was when he started in 1966.
It is our opportunity here, as I tell the story of not only what got us here, but where we're going, to remind us how disruption is part of our DNA at Peet's.
Alfred Peet wasn't trying to start a revolution. He just believed in better coffee. For him, it was about the ingredients, the passion, and creating the process the other roasters have been trying to model ever since. Coffee with character, the real stuff, full body, authentic, sharpening the taste buds to embrace every morning, every day, everybody. Slow it down, drink it in. We're Peet's, and we've been clearing the fog since 1966.
It is easy for me to tell the story of Peet's as I'm a native Northern Californian. In fact, I grew up about 10 miles from where we started in Berkeley.
When I joined Peet's about 15 years ago, we were a $300 million company, and our CPG business, which I'll speak a lot about today, was present in one channel. It had one form, bagged coffee, and our assortment looked like about 12 different blends, all of which were dark roast. We've gone from $300 million to the billion-dollar brand we are today, and I'm going to tell you a little bit about how we're going to get to $2.5 billion. I will in a second here. We can get the Peet's slides up. Here we go. Okay. Peet's is the second largest JDE Peet's brand with close to a billion dollars in sales. We have a strong foundation, which is driven from our heritage in dark roast and our commitment to craft. Rafa spoke of an almost cult-like following, and that's true.
Back in 1966, when Alfred Peet opened the store, the first store, and Peet's was born, we became known then as Peetniks. And Peetniks has stuck with us to this day. Our most loyal consumers are Peetniks. You may have seen at the last break a few of our Peetniks that came over from San Francisco to share some of our coffee with you. Yes, we started in dark roast. We're far more than dark roast today. We're going to be far more than dark roast as we go forward. How we go to market today is a point of differentiation and also our competitive advantage. We think of this as an omnichannel approach, and we are present wherever consumers interact with coffee.
On our left-hand side here, we see our owned retail stores, two of our direct-to-consumer channels, our owned retail stores, where we operate about 200 stores today, owned and operated primarily in the western part of the United States, and our direct-to-consumer channel. On our direct-to-consumer channel, we ship coffee to our most loyal Peetniks within three to five days of roasting. If we move over to the right-hand side, we see our CPG business, which is our biggest business and the focal point of our growth. The bottom part here is an example of our out-of-home business, one of our over 30-plus airports around the country. We are in airports from San Francisco to Miami to Boston, demonstrating the resonance and the pull of our brand away from our home market.
All of these distinctive strengths have been key to our historical growth, which has been strong over the last 10 years. In fact, at a growth rate of 7% per annum, we've outperformed the CPG category in the U.S. by about four times. However, last couple of years, you see us plateauing a bit. What that tells us is that it's time for a change in strategy. We are now primed, ready for a boost. We've been very successful in California, and we know what got us here will not get us there. We see the coffee stores, which were an important part of our growth, formative to building the brand. Not that they're not important going forward. They'll play a complementary role, and we will expand that in an asset-light model. In the center, Rafa spoke earlier around our DSD, our direct store delivery.
Twenty-three years ago, that was disruptive. It got us into grocery. It put us on the map. However, times, customers, and consumers have changed, making DSD less of a competitive advantage than it was today. As a result, we're changing our route to market to more of an asset-light approach, which will enable us to unlock distribution at far greater economics. We see on the far right-hand side an example of how we've activated the brand locally. We're the Bay Area's coffee brand, and as a result, we've partnered with local sports teams, which is a great emotional, powerful connection with consumers. As we look forward into new geographies, we will look for partnerships that are much more scalable that allow us to make those connections with consumers in new geographies. Let's take a little look at where we are today.
You've got a map here of the United States, two maps. The left-hand side shows our market share. The right-hand side shows our brand awareness. We've got a special position in California since our starting in 1966 on the Berkeley campus, where we still serve coffee today. You can see that represented in our market share. Dark brown in California showing over 15% share, then shades of brown, and then no brown. We've got a big part of the country with no brown telling us that we have low market share and a lot of room to grow. We see pockets, which Ricard mentioned earlier in reference, such as Boston over on the East Coast, that tells us we know how to grow the brand and it resonates in markets outside of California.
Left-hand side, strong market share in the West, no market share in the middle, and pockets in the East Coast. Now let's go to the right-hand side of the graph, which shows our brand awareness. A lot more brown and a lot more consistency. The right-hand side shows us that we have 74% brand awareness, driven by our CPG distribution, our company-owned stores, and also the out-of-home business that I referenced earlier with airports. In addition to airports, we are also in colleges and universities across the country, ranging from Harvard in Massachusetts, Villanova in Pennsylvania, and the University of Wisconsin, just to name a few. We've achieved this strong awareness, national awareness of 74%, with very limited investment in marketing. That's an important point that you've heard referenced earlier with both Rafa and Ricard that we are going to change.
Historically, in fact, we've been significantly underinvested in marketing, both relative to other CPG companies and our competitive set in coffee. We have strong awareness, and we've also driven strong velocities, which is what this chart shows. At the top, as we look across the top line, we see our awareness of 98% in California, San Francisco. We see 83% in Boston and 74% in the rest of the U.S. The second line shows our distribution. Looks pretty similar, California to Boston, 83%, 82%. Drops off quite a bit as we look at the rest of the U.S., where we're down at 66%, which is still a very strong starting point. In the third line, we see our average number of SKUs per store.
It drops by half, 24% to 10%, as we get to the rest of the U.S., meaning that only a fraction of our portfolio is available outside of our home market. However, our velocity is strong in a planned purchase category, where Peet's typically sells at a 30%+ premium to the category average and a 15% premium to the number one brand. Velocity is a metric of how quickly we turn and how many dollars we generate off the shelf. It represents a very strong proposition for our trade partner. We know, as we look at this chart, that we are outperforming our competition, who are spending a lot more in marketing, outperforming our competition whenever we're on the shelf against them. This gives us great confidence that when we expand our distribution and invest in our brand, we will be able to grow from a position of strength.
Now let's talk about innovation, and I think you may have tasted some of this in the break before. I want to walk through here four categories, one of which we're not in today, three of which we are underrepresented in. The first one is instant. Instant is a billion-dollar category in the U.S. It's growing in popularity with young consumers. Peet's does not have a presence in that today. More importantly, there is not a premium offering in that segment today. The power of the brand, the scale of JDE Peet's, and the expertise in instant will allow us to enter this category in the U.S. with a premium position. Ready- to- drink. A lot has been mentioned about ready-to-drink. It's a huge category in the U.S. It's a tricky category, but it also represents over $5 billion. We have a small footprint today.
This is one that we will accelerate as we move forward. We will do so with the scale and expertise of JDE Peet's, and also, as I think you may have tasted during the break, our coffee shop expertise in crafting beverages. We will bring both coffee-flavored drinks and non-coffee drinks to market in this category. We will look at the concentrate. The concentrate is about a $100 million segment in its own, growing in popularity as well. We launched this product through our direct-to-consumer channels last year to test the waters and seed the market. The consumer response has been very, very strong, and we are expanding in the second half of this year with new distribution. The last one, medium roast. We did talk a lot about dark roast. It is our heritage.
However, when we look at medium roast, medium roast is the most popular taste profile, excuse me, the most popular taste profile in the U.S. today. Over 50% of the U.S. consumers are in medium roast. However, today, it only represents 30% of the Peet's business. That is a huge opportunity directly in our core competency. As we have expanded medium roast over the years, it has been about 45% incremental to our business, bringing in 15% new consumers into our brand. The blend that you're seeing here, which is also outside, is Off the Grid. Off the Grid is our newest blend that we launched last year. What made this different is we crafted this blend specifically for consumers that are not drinking medium roast today, that are not drinking Peet's today.
We know when we have expanded our footprint over the years, our distribution, our blends into new categories and new forms, we have grown the business. We have grown from $300 million to $1 billion with minimal marketing support, but we also know what works in bringing new coffee forms and flavors to the market. Medium roast alone is another $5 billion consumer category that we are underdeveloped in today. We know what works. We will repeat what works while we are listening to what consumers want with discipline as we go forward. How do we get to $2.5 billion? We will increase mental availability with higher brand investment. As I mentioned, the healthy growth of Peet's was achieved with very limited marketing support over the years.
When we stepped up our investments, such as our campaign last year of Coffee for Coffee People, and we brought the brand into new markets such as Boston, we have seen that drive profitable growth, and we have seen it drive new consumers into the brand. We have the model that works that we will increase. We will increase our physical availability by leveraging our omnichannel approach and driving new points of CPG distribution. As we move away from DSD, critical part of our success, but not the way we need to go to market in the future, we will unlock more points of distribution to bring our brand to new consumers, new taste profiles, new forms. Our portfolio will expand, as I just shared, well beyond dark roast, well beyond bagged coffee, new forms, new flavors.
Our growth does not depend on our company-owned stores as it did in the past. That will be complementary to us going forward. We will move from a company-owned position to looking to operating partners to help expand our brand as we have done successfully in colleges and universities. I want you to take away that while we are very proud, very proud of our success to date, we are far from satisfied from it. Looking ahead, we will unlock our potential by simplifying our business. Another point that Rafa made and that Yang will speak to going forward. We will simplify that with a route to market and how we reach consumers in CPG. We will simplify it with looking for operating partners to expand our coffee shop presence.
We will innovate into new forms and segments, such as instant, such as medium roast, ready-to-drink, and concentrate, and more, leveraging the combined scale of JDE Peet's to do so. We will increase our marketing support to a competitive level as we continue to step up that investment, leveraging our strong awareness but low share. We start with a strong position of strength, strong awareness of 74%, single- digit or lower share in the rest of the U.S. We know what works. We have a repeatable model to do so. More importantly, we have both the brand and the scale to accelerate our growth in the U.S. I'm excited about where we're going to go next. With that, I'll turn it back to Ricard to wrap up the segment.
Exciting times ahead for Peet's, where again, we're going to unlock the full potential of the U.S. to build a EUR 2.5 billion brand. Incredible brands, credible plans, and attainable ambitions. Ambitions that in order to realize will require us to step change our approach to marketing. We have a vision. We are going to transform JDE Peet's into a brand-building powerhouse that has the courage to leapfrog into the future. We are going to transform the marketing function by focusing in four key areas. The first one is consumer centricity. What is it that we're going to do different there is basically implement demand space models and social listening such that we not only can tap into emerging trends faster, but most importantly, identify new occasions beyond what we are already covering.
Think of hydration, refreshment, occasions that will multiply by definition our ability to create value for all our stakeholders. The second one is portfolio choices, bold portfolio choices. Hopefully by now you see that we are walking the talk and moving forward. We will continue to make the tough decisions to make sure that we do less, but bigger and better. Next one is innovating at pace and at scale. Today I have shared with some examples that at JDE Peet's, we have the muscle to move at the speed of culture. However, what is happening by exception today may become the norm tomorrow, which requires a bit of a different approach on how we set up our innovation delivery systems. Last, but certainly not least, creativity as a multiplier. We live in a world where fighting for attention has never been fiercer.
I do believe that creativity is a powerful device to be noticed, to be remembered, and to be understood. Very importantly as well, it is about being where our consumers are. We know we have work ahead in terms of deepening our footprint, if you like, in digital, but particularly in social media, where we're going to drive quite some significant change as of now. Our transformation is going to be underpinned by the digitalization of marketing, but as well embracing AI, as I mentioned before, unapologetically. I am passionate on this space to stop catching up and start leading, leading with the courage that it takes to experiment, to learn, and to take risks when necessary. We are coming to the end of the section of brewing the future through the power of our brands.
If there is something that I want you to remember after the last 40 minutes, it is that, one, our brands, yes, are our biggest asset. Two, we are fundamentally changing the way in which we are going to manage our brands by focusing in three big bets. The first one, we are going to reignite growth for the backbone of our business, Jacobs and local icons. We are going to do that through the power of platforms. Two, we are going to build out of L'OR a EUR 3 billion brand, leveraging the momentum that we have built and investing and innovating. Last, we are going to build a EUR 2.5 billion business in the U.S. by focusing all our efforts in accelerating the flywheel for Peet's. All of that will be underpinned and enabled by our marketing transformation. Now we are coming to the fun part.
Now is when you're going to get an opportunity to try the many innovations that we've shared today and much, much more. For that, I'm going to welcome Carolyn, our Chief R&D Officer, to the stage. I'm going to thank you for your attention today. Thank you so much.
Hello everyone. Good afternoon. My name is Yang. I will take the next half an hour actually to walk you through and wrapping up everything you heard earlier this morning into our financial context. Then how our financials is actually a translation of our business strategy so that we'll guide into our financial algorithm and capital allocation priorities. Before that, most of you know I just recently joined the company.
I also want to take this as an opportunity to introduce myself, tell you a little bit more about myself, my experiences, and therefore my thought process when I step into this role. With that, I was actually born and raised in China. I spent a little bit more than one decade in the United States and another decade across different countries in Europe. Almost all my career has been in finance, always in publicly listed companies. More than two decades of my experience are actually in the consumer goods industry. That is why, based on my experiences, I step in this role, I said, how am I going to look at JDE Peet's? I actually always considered there are four facets of a CFO role.
The first is business strategy first, financial steering to follow, communicator to the external world, and be a good leader to our teams. It is with such perspectives that I start evaluating JDE Peet's financial profile by asking myself five key questions. First, do we have the right financial metrics? Second, how strong is our financial discipline? Third, is our capital structure strong? Fourth, how do we allocate our capital and resources? Last, how do we communicate to our external stakeholders? While I find very good foundations in this company, I also find there are rooms to improvement in each of the five areas. In terms of financial metrics, I believe we should focus much more on what is the most representative metrics for our category. When it comes to financial discipline, I'm quite pleased actually with our rigor and financial control in the system.
Historically, we have not expanded our profit. We have room to grow and room to generate more profit. Capital structure, it's strong and stronger, but I do believe we can be even more. We can strengthen even further. Capital allocation, now we have a clear strategy framework. We'll need to be much more disciplined and intentional to deploy our money behind. Last one, communication. Simply put, we have work to do to foster a more frequent and transparent communication with our external stakeholders. Now let me explain a little bit more in details in each of those areas. When I first stepped into this role, I put my simple CPG hat. I was thinking about how do I evaluate that. I look at the top line growth rate, then I look at my EBIT in terms of percentage.
I quickly realized actually those are not the most representative numbers for the category. Here is why. Coffee, by and large, is a pass-through. That is why you can see our top line typically grow or decline according to our grain coffee commodity cycle, it is correlated. Hence, the EBIT percentage often gets skewed because of top line fluctuation and translated into denominator fluctuation. That is why you see on this chart, we have sporadic growth rate and our EBIT percentage up and down. The good news is when you look at the EBIT in absolute amount, it is quite stable. Despite the different cycles, it is ranging from EUR 1.1 billion-EUR 1.3 billion. Now, why is that? It is because we could by and large pass through an appropriate amount of pricing of the grain coffee. And because earlier you heard from Rafa and Ricard, and this is a very resilient category.
The consumption has been very strong and resilient. People love our coffee and our brands. Those coupled with our very strong pricing discipline, we could always pass along a certain amount, appropriate amount of price to the consumers. That's why we're saying the percentages may not be the most representative. Now, this chart on the bars actually has gross profit in absolute amount and free cash flow. The trend line is actually the coffee commodity cycle. You can see despite the ups and downs, our gross profit in absolute amount and our free cash flow has been very strong. Gross profit ranging about EUR 3 billion every year and cash flow averaging about EUR 1 billion every year. That's why in absolute amount in terms of profitability and free cash flow should be the most representative financial metrics for our category.
The second area I want to spend a moment upon is our financial discipline. Earlier on I said we have very good financial discipline in terms of our pricing and very pleased to find also in terms of our hedging. There is a lot of rigor in our system. We also have very strong control systems, and that is a fundamental of the success of the business. Of course, we are going to continue to focus on that. Historically, we have not yet expanded our profit. That is why earlier this morning you heard that we have already started with a productivity program. Our objective is quite simple. We want to fuel the growth, find the means from within, but we also want to expand our profitability. Now let me give you a little bit more specifics.
Having worked in different industries and companies, I know as a fact that frugality top of mind actually varies from company to company. My assessment about JDE Peet's is we do not have obvious lavish spending. At the same time, we have not yet organized ourselves to be as most effective and efficient as we can be. Over the years, we actually built up a complexity in our portfolio, many different SKUs, many different brands. Later, I will give you much more specifics. We are also very decentralized. The decentralization by itself also meant that we were not able to optimize the whole company in terms of spending as a whole. Let me give you some simple examples. In fact, each of our subsidiaries, they can decide on their own to spend money on similar but slightly different stuff. Sometimes they can buy different IT applications.
Sometimes they can decide on their own just to buy different market research. Whereas in reality, we could have put all our resources together to procure more cost-effectively and also to scale up faster. You have also heard from Rafa that in certain countries, we do not yet have the critical scale. Because of the history of acquisition, we never integrated them. That is why sometimes you find layers and layers of overhead and diluted scale. The good news is also now we have found those low-hanging fruit type of opportunities. We can just organize ourselves to go after them. The structural waste that we can eliminate, but how? Earlier on, Rafa also previewed four big buckets of how do we find efficiencies from within. First one, portfolio simplification.
As you may imagine, if you have a very complex portfolio in terms of brands, in terms of SKUs, then by the nature of it, you have many different footprint and logistic networks. By streamlining some of them, you can generate a lot of efficiencies. Later I will get into much more detail. Second, ways of working. Earlier I gave some simple, straightforward examples about how we can organize ourselves to reduce the structural duplication and structural waste. Those are the things we're going to find synergies from within. Third, continuous improvement. Simply put, we expect to do more with less, and we can do more with less. In this area such as procurement, in the areas such as design for value, in the areas such as continuous improvement productivity in our manufacturing sites, those are the things that we can achieve much more.
The last one is asset light route to market and our partnerships. Earlier on, you heard from my colleague Eric talking about the direction of asset light. Financially speaking, we do have a bias for asset light because it structurally takes out capital intensity from our system. We can generate similar returns, and we can scale up faster. By achieving in those four areas, we are targeting EUR 500 million of productivity. We will deliver more than half of it by the end of 2027. In fact, we are quite confident with this number. Why that is? Number one, we have mapped out very specific initiatives already. Number two, we have commitment through our organization. Number three, we have experience to manage them. As a matter of fact, we already started. As you read in our quarter one press release, we actually have sold one tea business in Turkey.
We stopped our rollout of lower barista machines in the U.S. As recent as only 2 weeks ago, we just announced we're closing our Bambury facility. That is a processing and packaging facility in the U.K. as a concrete example of a footprint optimization. Our asset light from DSD to direct to serve for our USPs business is well underway. Now, I talked to you about the specifics. Let me quantify a little bit each of the area, how much we expect from each of those buckets. In fact, let me get out of the way. 60% of it will be coming from simplification and simple ways of working. The rest of them will come from continuous improvement and also asset light route to market. As I mentioned, in each of the area, we have already mapped out all our schedules and initiatives.
That is why it boosts our confidence. We know how to get them and where to get them. Let me double-click a little bit in portfolio simplification. That is one area we see the biggest opportunity. Earlier on, you saw from Ricard the same chart. We made a strategic bet of top 12 brands. That is our L'OR, our Peet's, and our iconic brands led by Jacobs. Those brands, why we choose them, not only because they share the same brand in terms of responding to consumer demand, but also they're 80% of our gross profit. They have tremendous growth momentum. On the flip side, you can also see half of our brands, they only add up to less than 5% of our gross profit.
Those brands, you can imagine, they take out a lot of complexity, manufacturing, packaging, quality control, point of sales activation, innovation, lots of those. By streamlining them, trimming them off, or sometimes over time replacing them, actually can create a lot of oxygen, take out the complexity, take out the hidden cost out of the system. Therefore, we can also focus on our big bets. The same is also true when it comes to SKUs. Recently, we mapped out all our SKUs in three buckets. The first one, we call them heroes. Those are the SKUs that turn very well, distribute very well. Of course, we are going to focus on them. We also have what we call hidden gems. Those are SKUs that have high velocity. However, they are still not yet well distributed. The third bucket, I simply call it complexity.
Complexity means that they do not turn very well, but they do occupy shelf space. On the right-hand side chart, you can see we have a big portion of the SKUs that are sitting in the complexity buckets. They do not add up to a lot of revenue. The good side is we also have an equal amount of hidden gems. You can imagine, in all fairness, not all complexity SKUs are bad. Not all of them will be eliminated. A big chunk can be shrunk, trimmed, and then be replaced by much more focus on the heroes and the hidden gems. In short, by simplifying our portfolio, we can reduce complexity, allow focus, and ultimately reduce the cost and really boost our profitability. Now, by generating EUR 500 million, our plan is to reinvest half of it into our organic business so we can drive growth.
The rest of half of it drops directly to the bottom line so we can expand profits. As you heard this morning, we have a lot of growth opportunities within our organic business. By putting our money, attention, people behind those big bets and the strategically important high-impact capabilities, we can boost the growth. Growth should not come necessarily at the cost of profit expansion. That is why we already expect in the near term some of productivities will already drive our bottom line expansion. Where do we invest, you may wonder? Those are the four biggest areas. First, A&P. We will be putting a conscious amount of reinvestment behind our big bets. That is, again, the L'ORs, the Peet's.
With iconic brands of our heritage platform, we can synergize, we can find innovations, we can find many things amongst themselves so we can create synergy already from within. In the areas of L'OR, we're already building a global mega brand in the premium space. With Peet's, we target to achieve its full potential in the U.S. Capabilities. Earlier on, Rafa also previewed four areas of high-impact capabilities. Those are our consumer and customer insights, our consumer-led brand building, our commercial excellence, and ultimately better capital and resource allocation. Sustainability. We're very proud of our sustainability, and we will keep investing behind them, such as we continue to help out our smallholder farmers so we can enhance their yield, such as we'll continue to advance our journey in sustainable packaging. Last, capacity.
Naturally so, as we continue to grow our business, we'll continue to put money and capacity behind our manufacturing sites. As our outcome, we also anticipate to have an average of EUR 30 million-EUR 50 million of CapEx fully reflecting to our financials annually so we can continue to boost our capacity, innovation, sustainability. Now, allow me to take you through step by step the construct of financial algorithm. Our financial actually will follow our strategy in all three phases: the Wake Up, the Step Up, and the Look Up. That is why in 2026- 2027, it is already one chapter of our strategy, and the rest of the chapter, concurrency and the follow suit, fully ramp up. We will be focusing our financial algorithm in the three key financial metrics, as I just elaborated.
That is gross profit amount, that is absolute EBIT in terms of amount, and that is free cash flow. We expect accelerating our financial profile with all our strategic choices fully embedded into our financial algorithm. Now, let's talk about numbers. In 2026 to 2027, we actually expect to have gross profit expansion 1%-3%, EBIT expansion 3%-4%, and free cash flow generation of EUR 2 billion cumulative for these 2 years. In 2028- 2029, we will be anticipating 3-4% CAGR in terms of gross profit, 4%-5% in adjusted EBIT, and cash flow of more than EUR 2 billion across those two years. From 2030- 2032, actually beyond, we expect to deliver gross profit CAGR of 4%-7% and EBIT expansion of 5%-8%. Our free cash flow will continue to be very strong, EUR 3.5 billion across the 3 years.
Okay. As you see, we continue to expect consistent growth and profitability and cash flow generation. That leads me into then how about our capital structure and capital allocation. In fact, I said we have very strong liquidity. Our balance sheet is getting stronger, but I see room to further strengthen. Historically, we have been putting a lot of capital behind acquisitions. Now, with our clear strategy, we will be allocating our capital really behind so we can really strategically jump-start and we can further strengthen our financial profile. That is why we have refined our capital allocation priorities. First and foremost, reinvest in our business, reinvest in our big bets. We can already find productivities from within to fuel such growth. Number two, we are targeting our net leverage now at 2x , which is a significant step forward versus our previously targeting 2.5x .
As we continue to really expand our cash flow, expand our profitability, it's just natural. We want to put this stick on the ground, and we want to have a stronger balance sheet. More consistent return to shareholders. We want to be able, and we will continuously and gradually increase our dividend. That coupled with our existing share buyback program, you may remember we have EUR 1 billion authorization already in place. EUR 250 million of this will be consummated within this year. Lastly, M&A. As I said, historically, we put a lot of capital on the M&A, and now we will be deprioritizing leveraged acquisitions. Our M&A, as I also mentioned earlier, we will have a bias for asset light. We will be exploring more partnerships and, to the extent relevant, non-core diversities.
Having said that, just to be crystal clear, we are still a very strong consolidator in this industry in the long run. Right now, at this particular moment, our priority is very straightforward. We're getting our house in order. Finally, we also want to be more frequent and transparent with you. In the past, our communication has been quite limited to the two times required. We have many adjustments in financials that at times can cloud the clarity of underlying momentum. That is why, from now on, we expect to have quarterly communication about our strategy and financial delivery, similar to what we have been doing in quarter one. We will be increasing our participation into the conferences and much more on the road to have dialogues with many of you. Lastly, we will be much more consistent and much more transparent in our communication.
We're not here to cherry pick. At the end, I really look forward to dialoguing with many of you. This is what I'm thinking at the end of everything put together. We will have a robust financial profile. We will have a much more disciplined and intentional capital allocation, and we will have transparent communication. By doing that, in fact, we're building a household blue chip company, and we will be creating value for all our stakeholders. With that, I will invite Robin back to the stage to open now for our Q&A.
I see that you're ready for the Q&A session. With that, we would like to ask a question. Jeff.
It's Jeff Stent from BNP Paribas. You probably don't know my wife, but if you did, she would testify it's very rare that I give any compliments.
I'd just like to compliment you on this morning. I think it was really great and quite refreshing for some of us like myself who've watched JDE Peet's and even its predecessors over quite a long time. Which leads me to my question. We're not going to be looking up until 2030. Yeah. I'm kind of wondering, given how good this morning was, why is it going to take five years for us to be looking up? Have I misjudged how good this morning was, or are you simply lowballing and we should think about these being objectives that you'll hopefully surpass? Thank you.
Maybe I'll start. Is it on? Yeah. Maybe I'll start here, Jeff. Thanks a lot for the kind words. Very glad that the information we share and the clarity that we want to provide is coming across.
The reality is you've heard me saying many times, and you heard us saying about prioritization, right? There is a temptation, obviously, when you're running a business that wide in terms of one category, but wide in terms of geographies and brands to try to do everything. The reality is we want to focus. The reality is in the first couple of years, we want to focus on the efficiencies that we have, the productivity gains, and start organizing the house. The look-up part, by definition, in order to be meaningful on impact on the financials, we need to start now. If there is an opportunity of innovation, if there is a geography that we might see a good opportunity of partnership, we're going to start seeding this. You're not going to see the results of it straight away.
You're not going to see the benefits on the P&L straight away. That is what we mean. Financial returns should come as a model on the look-up. Obviously, if we can materialize them earlier, we will. The reality right now, it's about focus and organizing the house, as Yang put it, and making sure we deliver what we are saying we're going to deliver on a consistent basis. I don't know if anyone wants to compliment.
Who would like to go next? Jon. Sorry.
Yeah, Jon Cox, Kepler Cheuvreux. Maybe two questions. One on the financials. You haven't outlined the costs of the savings program. Just wondering how much we should expect in those so-called adjustments, which we've got used to over the last few years, and what your thoughts are on that adjustment line for the next couple of years. Then a broader strategic question.
I think those have covered you going back a fair way. I think the last time you've been talking about Senseo and Tassimo, are those systems no longer important for the business? And just as an add, on your smaller brands, these 33 brands, which represent less than 5% of gross profit, will you be exiting those brands? Thank you.
Thank you. Thank you, Jon. Maybe you start with the financials, and then we'll try to take each one of the questions you can complement on the brands.
Okay. So I'll get started. Thank you for the question. First of all, I think the EUR 500 million of productivity is a program that we're really passionate about. Not only passionate about because we see the opportunity. It's not cost-recurring simply by the fact of the cost-recurring, but it's structural.
That's why we spend a lot of time talking about each of the buckets. Now, yes, it's true that some of them would have the cost to get, like one-time non-recurring nature, but many of them do not. When you think about simplification, really get the complexity out of the system. When you think about better procurement, when you think about continuous improvement, many of the programs actually do not have to incur a lot of one-time restructuring cost, per se, but some do. It's fair enough. Some of, if it's footprint-related questions and if it's sometimes organizational simplification, that could have. Having said that, currently, our estimate is anywhere between EUR 90 million-EUR 120 million, but across different years. That's why the cash impact of those things are not really meaningful in the grand scheme of EUR 1 billion a year of cash generation.
I hope that answers the question.
Yeah. The second question about, John, about our machines, right, the machine parts of Senseo and Tassimo. The reality, the way we are looking at this, as you heard, is your own here. Yeah. The way we used to, I mentioned on the presentation, many times this company used to look at different models, sometimes trying to win the category, sometimes the brand, sometimes the channel. What was the priority or the technology? What was the priority? We have made a very clear choice of choosing the brands, the brand-led strategy that they will lead the growth. Now, that said, we do have some models and some machines. They are very beautiful and actually very profitable as well. We do see this as more of a channel of delivery than a brand on itself.
For instance, Senseo, for example, anyone that is Dutch here will know how this disrupted the market really 25 years ago, but it is a filter, a simple filter, a simpler filter coffee pads. It has not been given the right attention that we believe it has. We are looking on a project of reigniting the Senseo machines, for example, but not necessarily as Senseo as a brand, but Senseo as a system to deliver our brands. That is one. Tassimo, in a way, same thing. It is going to be a brand, a system to deliver the multiple brands. If that is the way consumers want to buy our products and in a certain aspect through the Tassimo machine, we will continue to deliver that. We are not going to see the machines being the hero of our strategy.
The third question on the tail brands, the 33 brands, do you want to start this?
Yeah, absolutely. Because it's an area of our strategy that I'm very passionate about. Because I'm the first one who's cognizant about the cost of that complexity and the inability then that put all those resources to invest behind our big bets. Now, the reality of the matter is that we're not going to follow a cookie-cutter approach. Each and every single one of these brands will have a specific program. Specific program that it's also going to be based on the learnings that we have built on the past because we have experience doing that. Just to give you a couple of examples, I think five, six years ago, we transitioned the whole of Carte Noire into L'OR in the U.K. quite successfully and enabling growth for the brand.
As well, recently in Switzerland, we have taken one of these tail brands called Médaille d'Or and reconverted it under a range of Jacobs, which has now given us the opportunity to start driving the brand across multiple categories. We are going to put a plan in place and we are going to be providing an update. That is how we intend to take care of the tail sooner rather than later.
Any other questions?
Hello there, Alexander Poess, Bank of America. First of all, thank you for all the great presentations today. I have a quick question.
I was wondering, in all the profitability guidance you give, is that excluding any assumptions about green bean coffee price inflation, or is it fair to expect that it would be better if we see continued price deflation, or is there any expectation about that baked into these numbers, or are they just excluding that factor?
It's excluding.
Thank you.
It's excluding.
Yeah, it's net of it. I mean, as Yang said, we don't believe we are a company that should be based on what the green coffee price that generates volatility on our top line. That's not how we manage the company. We manage the company on the gross profit, on the EBIT, on the cash flow that generates. Yes, it's excluding everything. I don't know if you need to complement.
Yeah. Just to want to just also to want to re-elaborate because it's important for us.
Green coffee cycles at the end in the lower period of time, it does not really matter why that is. It's because our discipline of hedging and pricing, it always correlates with the coffee inflation. That's why we actually earlier this morning, I got questions about why you do not guide top line. Because top- line at the end, it does not really matter at the end because it will up and down. That's why, yeah. Regardless of a commodity cycle, what really matters is the bottom line expansion.
Thank you for taking my question. It's Bing from Rothschild & Co Redburn . I have two questions here. The first one, the strategy you're talking about is brand-led, but I believe your organization structure is still region or cluster or region.
Can you talk about how do you align the organization structure and incentive to the new brand-led strategy? That's my first one. The second one on the performance matrix, Yang, you talk about because of the pass-through nature of coffee, it's not meaningful to talk about the margin organic sales growth. Over the long term, with premiumization, with innovation, improvement in channel mix, do you think you can reduce the impact from these green coffee commodity cycles fluctuations? Two questions. Thank you.
You want to start? Start with that.
I can start with the second one. Yes. Of course, like for like, you can imagine the strategic big bets also enable us to premiumize the whole portfolio, right? When you think about Peet's, when you think about L'OR, yes, of course, apples to apples, you would expect it to have an expansion in terms of mix.
On top of that, tactically and surgically, earlier on, Rafa said, we also have a lot of intentionality behind commercial excellence. Revenue growth management, the mix management, all those kind of things will come along to help with that financial profile. What we're not guiding is because in year or over the time, it's not truly representative. That does not mean that we're putting our eyes away from intrinsically mixed.
Yeah. Yeah. Thanks for the question on the ways of working in the organization. You're right. Today, we are organized on a regional basis. Frankly, we'll continue on that for now because, I mean, the problem before was we were organized completely independent on each country base. Now we want to drive more synergy how we organize ourselves together. With that, there is a central team for the brands.
There's keeping some clear guidelines where we want to take each brand. For example, Peet's is a different situation because mainly U.S., so it'll be run by the U.S. team. We are not going to centralize this. The platforms is definitely the execution, the last mile is done on a country basis. You have a central team that is playing kind of the midfield and seeing where are the synergies? How do you allocate better the capital? How do you do the innovations? Then deploy this for each country to execute. There is an adjustment for us to still make on how we're organizing ourselves. Part of it's already done, but we are going to continue to adjust, especially on the platform ones. I don't know if you want to complement.
Yeah, no, I think that you covered it quite well, Rafa, but as we speak, I'm already reorganizing or I have the intention to reorganize the marketing function in line with our strategy because I strongly believe structure follows strategy. Now we need to set up in order to deliver against our strategy. In that sense, we're going to see a higher role for the brands in the central marketing function to make sure that we orchestrate the world in line with the impact and the synergies that we want to deliver. Thank you.
Thank you. Reg?
I appreciate your explanation about green coffee prices and the focus on gross profit and cash flow.
Those of us, and I think there are many of us in the room still who were here 5 years ago, will remember that that point was made at the time of IPO and a particular metric was introduced, EBIT per cup, as a way of measuring that gross profitability and also the premiumization of the portfolio. Could you tell us why that metric was abandoned and whether or not you have any plans to reintroduce it?
Look, it's very hard to comment on what was done 5 years ago. As you know, I've been here 8 months trying to take the best of what existed and then try to adjust the company for going forward. I mean, we still look on consumption on a per cup basis internally to understand how movements are happening.
As a guideline, I think it is clearer that we focus on how the gross profit of the company is doing, how the generation of the cash flow generation is. Hard to tell. I do not know if you have any comment on why it would have been abandoned. It is just, I think it is a regular evolution.
Okay. You use it as an internal measure now. Why would you not share it with us?
I do not see it as more as well. We have to make choices which ones are the most relevant metrics to share. I mean, we have a lot of other metrics. We did not talk about market share. We obviously look at market share. We look at price on a country-by-country base. We will look at the difference.
We would be delighted if you shared market share data with us too.
We will look at the price difference versus our competition. We will look at the velocity per region, per country. We will look at the share of shelf.
Yes, please.
There are a lot of metrics. No, but I'm just saying we have to choose which ones are the outcomes that make relevant. Again, we as managers of the company, we have to analyze in a lot of detail each one of the segments. I mean, in the end, the outcome that is easier for tracking the performance is the gross profit. We do not have a problem of lacking data and definitely not of lacking looking at these details.
But again, as we mentioned today, the theme of simplifying, we want to simplify our lives and your lives in terms of what really matters and you're able to see the direction that the company is going.
Okay. Thank you. One of the other things was transparency. Thank you for providing an update at the first quarter. May I also make a request without simplifying it too much that you provide actual financial information rather than just simply things are going okay or they're not going okay? Anything you can do to improve the disclosure at the quarterly would also be much appreciated. Thank you.
No, thanks for the comment. I mean, just I hope you understand. I mean, first of all, regulatory-wise, we need to do it on a semi-annual basis.
The reality is there's a lot of work that goes on in preparation of every detail in order to share externally. I think you as a shareholder or an analyst, I mean, you would appreciate that you want us to run the company the best way possible and not necessarily waste too much time preparing information in order to share. I mean, we have a commitment of transparency. We will share everything that we can for you to have a good assessment of how the company is going. We will take every, as we've been doing since I joined, personally, I did a roadshow meeting a lot of people to try to understand what are the demands, what's working, what's not working. We're going to take every suggestion in consideration. I hope, and I think you already recognize this is a step forward.
We're trying to be more transparent and trying to share the evolution of the company. The more information we can share, the better. Recognizing there's a lot of work that goes behind this. We'll try to manage both. Thank you.
Robert Chung?
Robert Chung for Eben Emre Odo. Two questions. You talked about the EUR 250 million reinvestment and you gave the CapEx number that you expect will be increased by EUR 30- EUR 50 million. Can you maybe also elaborate on other components of that reinvestment amount? For example, the step- up in A&P and maybe other investments, for example, in pricing. Can you quantify these a bit more? My second one is a follow-up on the previous question. Did you say that you will update the quarterlies similar to what you've done at Q1?
Purely qualitatively, or will it include some financial metrics like sales or maybe organic sales growth? Maybe you can elaborate on that as well. Thank you.
As I just said, we said we can talk about organic sales, but that's not relevant for our company. I hope it's clear that I wish we do not continue looking at this company at organic sales because it's the wrong metric for it. That said, to look at the past and the short term, we are always happy to share. Right now, we are looking to update as we did in Q1, which, as I said, the company never even did that. We are going to start updating. The amount of detail that we're going to do going forward, I mean, is to be discussed and we will analyze.
At least we are trying already to show you the direction that the company is going so you do not have these hiatus of six months without information.
Sorry that I mentioned organic sales growth. Of course, that is, for example, sales. Will you report sales per quarter? Because just saying that you are on track to reach your annual targets is a bit helpful, but not extremely helpful, of course.
Yeah. My experience with providing data is that is never enough. We just heard like whatever we provide, you want more. We can continue to provide, and there is always going to be a request for more. I mean, as I said, we have a commitment from us to try to always provide you the guidance and the direction where we are going. Any relevant thing that happens within the timeframe, we will share. I mean, that is the commitment we have.
What exactly information that will be will depend a lot on how we can organize ourselves to do it in the most efficient way. We will always consider, we hope that we're always going to be evolving and doing something better in the future.
Clear. My second question on the EUR 250 million. Thank you.
You want to take that?
Yeah. I can take that. Actually, the way that I specifically put on the chart is because everywhere that could be investment, but those four areas are most important and relevant, meaningful money behind them. It is A&Ps , it is our capabilities building, it is our sustainability, it is our capacity expansion. If you were to model out, those are the four most meaningful areas. There is also sequencing, as we talked. First is A&P, and the rest will follow.
I hope we're not going to be too precise exactly how much EUR that we're going to put behind them. For modeling purposes, you can say those are the four major areas and with the sequencing, if that helps. Thank you.
Olivier in the front.
Thank you. Olivier Nicolaï, Goldman Sachs. Two questions, slightly more short term, but could you give us an update on the private label penetration in Europe, which has been gaining share so far this year and how you see this evolving? And then secondly, concerning the current coffee price inflation, do you think you've taken enough pricing so far this year to offset it?
I'll start with the second, Olivier, if okay. Because we are not going to comment a lot on the results.
As Robin said in the beginning, we will talk about results in three weeks when we release our results, and we'll be able to give a more update where is coffee price. The reality, we are going through a second wave in Europe specifically. In the rest of the world, it actually happens on an ongoing basis. In Europe, we are going through a second wave of pricing right now as we speak. I mean, it's going to be a dynamic negotiation, as always happens, especially in some countries. We are confident that with our partners, we're going to get through. It's necessary to put the price on. There was a lot of disruption as we put on the press release on the first one. In the end, it came through as we expected, as we needed.
Because again, the dynamic of European negotiations is a lot of sometimes is a lot of conflict, which frankly, I do not believe. I believe much more on the partnerships and growing the category together. That is what we are trying to drive. Again, we are in the middle of it, confident that we are going to get through. We might have some disruptions in the short term, as we did. The strength of our brands proved in the first wave, and quite confident it is going to prove again that we can continue to put the price through and get the volumes back and continue to grow this category, which builds on the second part of the first question that you had on the private label. What happens? Actually, if you look at a long-term basis, private label has been quite stable. A few years basically has been quite stable.
When you look at very short term, as you described, there is this disruption of negotiations because it happens. What our models or what history has shown in this category is that you might see private label gaining or losing share in short term, mainly because of negotiation disruptions. Then the habits of coffee are quite inelastic. It is inelastic on the amount of coffee you consume and on the brands that you trust and keep. There are waves of premiumization, and they happen, and people keep upgrading the brands, but they happen slowly. Vis-à-vis private label, I mean, we do not see a big risk on the short term or even on the long run. Again, if you have, as we had in January, February, disruption on the trade, yeah, ultimately you want your coffee.
If it's not there, you consume the private label that is available. And to be brutally honest, we might lose a little bit because it's not zero elasticity. You might lose a little bit. Overall, this number is small. It's not, let's say, a major concern. Is there anything to comment right now?
Yeah. Thank you.
Martin, you?
Maarten Verbeek , the idea. When I look at your financial targets going forward, I do notice that your free cash flow disproportionately grows when compared to your EBIT and gross profit. Could you explain it? Because the growth in your free cash flow, I cannot explain by your EBIT growth.
Maybe I can clarify a little bit about that. First of all, the cash flow numbers I put is cumulative. Actually, allow me just to elaborate why sometimes I even think about the cumulative.
Because you see sometimes green coffee cycles, you have some impact of working capital. That is why on average, you can think about it as $1 billion every year in the first stage, more than $1 billion every year in the second stage, and expanding from there, $3.5 billion across 3 years. That answers the question. Maybe I did not articulate enough, it is cumulative for the stage. Yeah?
That clarifies an awful lot.
Would not be bad if we double the cash flow per year. That will be a target. Thanks for the question.
Talking about other indicators, could you more or less give some information? How do you think your working capital will progress going forward? Kind of ratio to your sales and also your CapEx to sales?
Working capital, actually, I am pleased that the company has a cash focus.
This is one area I really do think there's a lot of discipline around that. Net working capital has been a net contributor to our cash, and I anticipate it will continue to be so. Having said that, I think there's AR, inventory, and accounts payables, and they all play a different role and different dynamics. Net all in all is going to be a net contributor in the long run.
Could you provide a certain ratio or?
If you want to know each of the components?
The grand total of your working capital to sales?
Right now is about, we have a percentage, right? At the end, you have to think about days because we say the top line sometimes goes up and down.
In days, our accounts receivable is less than 30 days, which is just reflecting to the trade nature of our business, which is pretty good. Sometimes you will have some country mix and noise there, but by and large, quite strong. Inventory is a little bit over and around 100 days, and that's reflecting the cycle from green coffee to processing to packaging to distribution. I think there's a small opportunities for us to fine-tune. Early on, we talk about SKU pruning and this and that. That should be able to help a little bit. In terms of accounts payable, the accounts payable cycle is quite long and right now is over 200 days. That is reflecting the relationship and negotiations that we have with big trading companies and co-ops.
Because as you may imagine, we do not deal with these millions of farmers, our coffee farmers, but we go through in a more asset-light way through the trading companies and international big co-ops. We have good relationships with them, and we negotiate good trade deals. Now, on balance, I think it's in the economics. If there are opportunities to say, if I can get better economics, in return, give us some trade terms. As long as it meets my hurdle rate, we will not hesitate. Gradually over time.
Thanks.
Yeah.
Here in the middle.
Hi, I'm Michiel Declercq , KBC Securities. Thanks for taking my question. The first question would be a bit on the outlook. Just previously, you always mentioned or you targeted a mid-single-digit organic EBIT growth.
Now, if I look a bit at the end of your current ambitions, you're guiding for 5%-8%, despite the fact that the savings will be more front-end loaded. I'm just trying to understand a bit why the pickup then. Is it just a moment in time, a certain period that you expect to see the benefits of your plans, or is this the new long-term growth rate that you are expecting? The second question would be, you emphasized again a bit the importance of the stores in the U.S., particularly. In the past or in the recent conference call, you also mentioned that you haven't been great store operators. I'm just wondering, now you're focusing more on this asset-light franchise model. Are you also planning to convert the stores that you currently operate into a franchise business, or how should we see this going forward?
I can answer that, but do you want to take this question, the second part, and then Yang?
For the second part, I think we would, consistent with what Rafa shared before, we are not going to operate the stores at scale. I would expect us to convert the majority of our stores over time to operating partners. That is the cleanest way I can answer.
We are evaluating the best way to operate those stores. Our model, our financial model is not dependent on the growth of stores, although having stores in certain locations is a cherry on the cake. It helps build the brand. We are right now evaluating that, and as soon as we have more clarity on what will be the right model or what will be the right partners, etc., we will communicate to the market.
In terms of the ramping up financial profile, you said right at the very beginning, it's much more about harvest half our productivity, a little bit front-loaded. That's why you're already 3%-4% of EBIT. Because we're very conscious when you put the money behind the big bets, actually, but it should not be at the cost of your margin not expanding. Historically, we have not been. That's why you already see a bottom line expansion already. Of course, as you build the capabilities, as you ramp up the big bets, they have a ramping up curve. That's why in a little bit further, the second phase and third phase, you can see a clear ramping up of all those areas, and your productivity is coming back more or less to a steady state stage.
That is why you continue to see some of the expansion in terms of operating leverage, but your gross profit expanding faster, and then the drop onto the bottom line because as you continue to grow, you obviously have a higher profile in terms of profitability expansion. Now, if you compare this to our previous guideline, I am nerdy, right? I always do my financial numbers. If you add all those years together, it does also correlate more or less into a mid-single- digit across the different phases. Yeah.
Okay. Thank you.
Thank you. Great to see all the questions from the room, but I also want to be a bit respectful of time. I would like to take one last question from Tom in the back.
If you can get a couple more.
Yeah.
Sorry. Thank you very much. Tom Sykes from Deutsche Bank.
Just had a question. We've had a lot of focus on younger consumers. In terms of how your marketing spend is going to evolve, what's happening to the cost of customer acquisition within the category, particularly for younger consumers? Do they have the same degree of brand loyalty that you may have seen in the category from older consumers? Perhaps what's your infrastructure for content creation now and how you'd expect that to be in two, three years' time, please?
I tried to be as transparent as I could during my presentation, and I identified creativity as a multiplier as one of the key areas of transformation and said that, quite frankly, we have some work to be done here. Actually, a lot of the work that you are asking for is defined at the moment.
I have a point of view, though, on how things are going to evolve, although I want to leave room to my team to have an opportunity to build on it. I believe in hybrid models. I think in three years from now, probably from a content creation perspective, we're going to be looking at a mix of internal creative services with big holding companies with more independent boutique agencies. From all the people that I have talked to in the industry, a hybrid model is what seems to work better. From a cost of acquisition perspective and a loyalty from a younger consumer perspective, quite frankly, when it comes to the laws of growth and we still follow the Ehrenberg-Bass institutes, we do not see major deviating patterns of behavior as it relates to your loyalty on younger versus older consumers.
Actually, loyalty tends to be quite often a result of your penetration. In a way, it can be modeled. Again, according to the evidence that we are managing today, we do not see major differences. From a cost of acquisition perspective, quite a lot of discussion in the industry. Actually, we are going to be moving forward. Sorry. Today, we are already investing 56% of our investments in digital media, and we continue to optimize those models to make sure that we maximize the return of investments. There is a benefit on continuing to buy TV because from a marginal perspective, it remains cheaper. We continue to work with our media partners to optimize that mix as we move forward.
Okay. Thank you.
Thank you.
Tom, to be brutally transparent with you, I mean, I think we already started to make this transition.
I mean, so there is a lot happening already, but we are not where we need to be. That's the reality. I mean, 3 years from now, I hope to have a very different conversation with you that where we are, but it's not where we need to be. It's a process. It already started, but it's a process.
Thank you.
Robin, I think.
You want to take a couple more?
Yes. Maybe take a couple more questions because of the interest.
Okay. I know there's one more all the way in the back.
Just let's finish those three.
Okay. Three? Then that's finished.
That's what we have this week.
Thank you very much, David Roux from Morgan Stanley. Perhaps three questions for Yang. Have you actually disclosed what your A&P spend is as a percentage of revenue?
No.
That's the first one.
The second one is just going back to your focus on earnings. Will equity derivatives still be part of your adjusted earnings? Just given that it is non-cash and it skews the kind of operational transparency. The last one is just on the 33 sort of tail brands that you mention contribute 5% of gross profits. Can you give us a sense of how much revenue they contribute? Because I am just trying to get an understanding of what sort of drag it has been on the margin. Thank you.
Rafa, you wanted to answer this one.
I can think they contribute less than 5%, but anyway, you can complement. On the equity derivatives, maybe you better. You can do it. You can do it, but yeah. We actually share both. We have with and without. That is what we did.
Yeah. Because Tom is absolutely right.
I mean, when I evaluate outside the EPS, I cannot make much sense of the EPS. That is why when I dig further, I realize there is an equity derivative. Once you do mark-to-market, for example, last year, our prices came down. We have a negative mark-to-market. This year, up to now, there is a bull run. You have the reverse side. What we commit with Robin, we also say when we talk about EPS, we will, if we have not been, we tried recently already. That is my understanding. We will be able to talk about underlying EPS without such noise. I think it is much more representative. Yeah.
We will give you both.
Yeah.
You can see exactly what the impact is.
Yeah. It should be so that you can see how much it is. On the A&P, no.
Because earlier, Ricard was saying, the first and foremost is really to make our money work harder. I think that is really important. A&P per se, of course, in the long run, when you model, you have to model about A&P increasing, right? Because we are boosting all the big bets. In reality, we want to make our money work harder. That is why, Ricard, if you want to complement.
Yeah. You mentioned about A&P as a metric of your net sales value. I mean, the same way that we are going to be focused on GP as the key metric, we are not going to be tracking A&P as a variable of net sales value because it gives you the complete wrong indication.
When I'm looking at the resources that today we have available from a marketing standpoint, I think that it's more than enough, provided that we realize all the efficiencies in ways of working. In that sense, my commitment for the team is that I'm going to make work harder what we have before I come and I ask for more because there's ample room for opportunity.
Okay. Thank you.
We had just last two.
Yeah. Feng.
Hi. Thanks for taking my question. I have a question for both of you, actually. Given Yang just started 60 days ago, how aligned you are in terms of this cost-saving plan? Are you 100% agree with each other? Second question is about the new rollout in terms of innovations in cold brew concentrates.
I suppose that the cost savings there is apparent because you're rolling out in every similar product in different markets. But what's the opportunity for existing products in terms of savings? What's the risk in terms of losing local market tastes? Thank you.
Maybe I can clarify that latter question because I didn't have a lot of time to go into the details of the program. It is by no means our intention to now take our local icons and Jacobs and make the same thing everywhere. I think that it's very important to understand these brands, differentiate their portfolio architecture. Because today, most of the sales are done on what we call our flagships. I'm going to give an example that's close to home. Douwe Egberts Aroma Rood. This is the base of coffee culture in the Netherlands.
The last thing that we are going to do is touch that blend. We have what we call our elevated ranges, which are much more focused in driving innovation. Here is where platforms play a very important role. Even then, on the last mile, remember I said we are going to transcreate for meaning and distinctivity. If in a certain region we see very different preferences, of course, we are going to adapt because at the end of the day, it is not only about driving an agenda of efficiencies, but it is making impact. We only make impact when we delight our consumers with the products that they want. The big shift here is that instead of now starting the task with 10 different briefs, we are starting all together. Only when we need to have the right differences, then is where we apply them.
Hopefully, this provides a bit more clarity in the model.
Yeah. On the question about the efficiency, I mean, you can complement. You mentioned 60 days more, Yang, but I can't say what. Yeah, please know. I mean, we are fully committed to it 100%. We are coming here not only in front of you, broadcasted, press releases, everything. Tomorrow, we have here again, they're already part of this discussion, but 100 top leaders of the company are coming here in this same room for us to start analyzing how we're going to execute all this. Yeah, it's not only the four of us, but the whole company. We are fully behind. Yes, we really believe in it. I don't know if you want to complement anything, but.
Yeah. I think the four, actually, the 22,000 of us is like in a marriage.
You figure out the differences and divide and conquer. At the end, the direction is super clear. It is just to roll up the sleeves and get it done. The good news is we know some of us have been there, done that, and we are fully confident. Yeah, we will do it.
Last one here from Olivier.
Thank you. Olivier Nicolaï , Goldman Sachs. Just one quick question. Maybe it is not that quick, but could you give us an update on the EUDR since the deadline has been postponed by a year? I think it is going to come up in December.
Yeah.
Frankly, as you know, it was postponed right in the end of last year, right? Frankly, we are ready.
I mean, it's not a, I mean, it was a year postponed, but again, because everybody had to be ready, if I'm not mistaken, it was the last week of the year that was postponed. It did not really give a lot of chance for us to not be ready. We are ready for it. There are still discussions happening now of how will be the certification of it. The certification of the directive of what you can consider defluorization or not, if it goes to the last mile, if it does not go, if you can do by region. There is a lot of discussion still happening in the industry with regulators. For us, overall, it is okay now. It is model. It is happening. Not a big deal.
Once again, thank you very much for your questions and your engagement. Very much appreciated.
Thank you to the presenters. I would now give the floor to Rafa for the wrap-up and the closing remarks.
First of all, I would like to thank everyone for being here, for listening to us, for the interest in our company, the interest that you do in the analysis as an investor. I mean, we really appreciate you taking the time, either traveling. We had people from the U.S., people from even Canada, all over Europe, and definitely here in the Netherlands. I really appreciate you coming, discussing, listening to us. Appreciate your time. I mean, I hope our strategy is quite clear. We've made a couple of things did not really change. I mean, we're confident on the coffee industry. It's a great coffee, a great industry to be in. We really believe in it. We gave you the reasons for it. It's not different.
The second is we believe we are positioned to take advantage of that. That is JDE Peet's. We have the fundamentals in the company to take the maximum of it. Now what we are changing in the strategy is going to a very strict brand-led strategy where we are going to be very intentional on our big bets, where we are simplifying the organization with productivities in order to fund this growth. With that, we will fund our capabilities or the key four capabilities that we believe are essential. By delivering that, confident that we will deliver very consistent, transparent, growing cash flow to investors and then return to all stakeholders. It is not only me saying this or the four of us here. There has been a lot of people that were involved in preparing and already living on those plans. They are feeling the energy.
As I said in my presentation, I mean, this is important. The cultural change that is happening in the company, the transparency, the energy, the ownership affects all 20,000 people. I wanted to read just two quotes that we got recently, one I received, one my team received from our employees, just for you to have a sense of how people are behaving. Because again, it's more and more people getting involved into it. The first one comes from Paula. She runs our partnerships model. She said, "Rafa," she sent a message, "we are now encouraged and empowered to think beyond, outside the box and beyond our daily scope, constantly pushing the limits of what's possible with bold and disruptive ideas while leveraging the power of a diverse team." Very good to see that. Also from Viral from the sourcing team, "This is a metamorphosis.
With this new mindset that is bold in vision, transparent in purpose, and fearless in pursuit of creating value for everyone, we're going to win. This is just two examples. We have many more of that. The whole company is feeling that, that this transparency, this energy, is contagious and contaminating in a good way the whole JDE Peet's. We are confident that with that, we're going to deliver. Thanks again for taking the time. We're going to enjoy some drinks in the beautiful sun again, either drinks or more coffee if you're ready for it. Once again, we'll be open, transparent to talk more to you. Thank you for taking the time.