Welcome to the Asetek Q4 2020 Capital Markets update. Throughout the call, all participants will be in a listen-only mode. Afterwards, there will be a question-and-answer session. Today, I'm pleased to present André Sloth Eriksen, CEO.
Good morning, everyone, and Welcome to our Capital Markets Update, March 4, 2021. I had hoped we could meet physically, but since that's not the case, then we have to get away with the second-best solution, and that's what we're trying to pull off now. If you go to the next slide. There's a disclaimer. I suggest you go and read it. I'm not going to do it for you. Let's jump right into the next slide, into the agenda. First of all, I'll be talking to you a little bit about growth and market expansion, about some new business areas, what I believe for the future in terms of growth, et cetera. John is taking over, talking more about the Gaming & Enthusiast cooling business. Dipak is going to talk a little bit about the data center world, how that looks.
Jim Carlton will talk a little bit more about our expansion into the SimSports markets. Peter will talk about the financials. At the end of the day, Peter and I will do a Q&A, and John. Let's go to the next slide. As we already know, 2020 was a great year for us, and we would like to see that continue, of course. How do we do that? What do we see? How do we do it, et cetera, is what I'm going to focus on. Let's go into the next slide. In 2020, it was our best year in many ways. It was record revenue, record gross margins, record EBITDA, despite losing our biggest customer, actually.
It's never great to lose your biggest customer, of course, but it's great to see that people keep asking for your products, although you shift the channel, so to speak. 34% revenue growth, I think we have done it before, but now once again, we have confirmed our ability to scale and the flexibility in our business and the scalability in our business. We have, like everyone else, had to deal with COVID-19. I think we have done that in a good way. We have been really busy. We launched a lot of new G&E products. On top of that, we've also been really busy on the data center side, especially with HPE coming in, of course. In parallel to that, we are entering new markets.
I'll talk more about it, obviously, but we are entering into the SimSports market, which is also a part of the Gaming & Enthusiast market for that sake. We think it's very synergistic. More importantly, I think, is that we are now adding a third leg to our business. Hopefully, it'll make us even healthier, even stronger. As a part of accelerating things, we have done a couple of M&A deals, and we have added many more team members. Next slide. If we look a little bit of who we are and what we're good at Asetek, we are founded on innovation and extensive mechatronics capabilities. These capabilities have pretty much made us into the market leader within liquid cooling and within Gaming & Enthusiast PC applications. What is mechatronics?
It's actually the, let's say, the common denominator of software, hardware, and mechanics. If you look at our products, there is a great deal of all three. I think that's what we are really good at, combining the three. Next slide. When I say I think we are good at it, I think I can actually prove that we're good at it, because if you look at this slide on our growth rates the past decade, we have grown 17% a year on average. That's something I'm proud of, and it's something that I would like to see continue. Next slide, please. The business segments we are in today, I think most of you know, but there may be some who doesn't know. On the Gaming & Enthusiast side, we are selling coolers, so coolers as a standalone product to a number of OEMs.
Here's a few of them. There's ASUS, Fractal, MSI, NZXT, and so forth. We are supplying these products OEM, meaning that our customers are branding them. We do have rebranding programs, et cetera, that we will hear more about later. The essence is that we don't sell direct to end users. We sell through OEMs and their channels. The target audience here is really PC tinkerers, hardware geeks, gamers, everybody who wants to build their own PC and tinker with their own PC. Along those lines, we also have gaming users, but who may not have the skills or the desire to build their own PC, so they would buy from a gaming OEM.
A few examples here is also MSI and Alienware, which is Dell, where we supply the cooler, for example, to Dell directly, then Dell would build it into their PCs and sell it as an Alienware PC. That's the main part of our market and segments as it looks today. Here on my right side, we're looking at the data center business. That's also purely OEM. We don't sell directly to data centers. We sell to OEMs. Here's three of our top ones, Fujitsu, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, and Supermicro. Next slide, please. We have been, not only from a revenue perspective, but also I think from a volume perspective, quite successful. If you look at the early start, it took some time, but in 2012, we passed the 1 million milestone, and now eight years later, we have sold more than 8 million liquid coolers. Next slide.
We are organized in a way where we support our business the best possible way, in my opinion. I think that's also why we have been reasonably successful through COVID-19. In a normal year, we travel a lot. We see each other a lot. That's not been possible. Because we are spread out, even as a small company, we are obviously also used to have a lot of online meetings and communication through time zones and emails. If you look at the chart here, we have sales and marketing in Silicon Valley. For obvious reasons, we have a lot of customers there, and Jim and Dipak will be calling in from there a little bit later today. In Texas, we have John, my COO, that you will also hear from right after me, actually. He's located in Texas.
That's also a good place to be because in Texas you have both Hewlett Packard Enterprise as well as Dell. We have sales offices in London. I'm calling in from Aalborg in Denmark, where we have R&D, prototyping, manufacturing, quality, marketing, branding, and so forth. In Xiamen, sorry, in China, we also have R&D. We have sourcing, manufacturing, quality, order fulfillment, and so forth. In Taipei, in Taiwan, we also have sales. That's important because a lot of our OEM customers have their R&D departments in Taipei. We believe that we are set up in a pretty decent way to supply or support the kind of business we're trying to do. Next slide. Talking a little bit about the new business we are entering. I'm quite excited about it for many reasons.
One of them is it's not been easy to figure out what we should do next. When I say next, it could be anything from liquid cooling other applications to entering gaming markets with different devices, et cetera. We have looked for a long time, and I think we have now finally identified the next step in our development. The reason why we've been looking, of course, is to look longer term, look 5 years, 10 years, decades out, and to continue our strong growth and our solid margins. Needless to say, a business that's selling into five different segments is obviously more robust than a business selling into one segment or only one technology. That being said, we didn't want to go into the rocket ship industry or something similar.
We wanted to leverage the capabilities and the know-how and the skills we already have. I think we have a huge potential here for further innovation and consolidation as a business. Next slide. What I'm talking about is the SimSports gaming market. I do believe that what we're looking at here has a lot of similarities than what we did and what I did some 20 years ago, because the market today is very fragmented. There is a lot of small players selling pedals or steering wheels or things like that, and there are a lot of, let's say, challenges, and there's a lot of problems with it. I think we can solve a lot of those. We got this idea for two reasons. One of them is that I have been in the racing business for two decades myself, and I still am.
I, as an individual, know a lot about racing, and I have built several simulators myself. On top of that, our esports academy, we have had, I think, five or six simulators for the last one to two years. Based on that, we got the idea that, hey, there's something we can do better here. There's a good business potential, and from a, let's say, a product perspective and mechanical perspective and software, for that sake, we do believe there is a big opportunity in the market. Obviously, we would like to go to market as soon as we could and as soon as we can. As such, we made some investments in IP and both hardware and software that was already in the market. I will get a little bit back to that as well.
That will enable us to go to market faster for sure. I think, and I hope that late this year we will be able to actually launch the first set of products or rather the first component of a simulator this year. That has gone tremendously fast. That's really nice. From a customer perspective, there is a lot of overlaps here. We are still in the gaming space. We're also in the enthusiast space because a lot of people are building their own simulators. On top of that, a lot of people who are building their own simulators are also building their own PCs, so we see a lot of synergies. Next slide. To support the development and at the end of the day, our product offerings, we have done two acquisitions, as we announced earlier.
What we really bought was, as I said before, time to market. We bought software, we bought technology, we bought consultancy, we bought designs, mechanical and hardware designs. Yes, we could have done this from scratch, but we believed, and we still believe, that what we have done is we have cut perhaps two years of our development time. We did that by buying IP from Granite Devices in Finland, a total of DKK 8.3 million, of which half was paid in shares. Then we bought a small company in the U.K. called Ultimate GameTech, which was also software and hardware design. I would say already now a few months after completion that these deals have been really good. We are working together really nicely. In terms of Granite Devices, we are working with them.
In terms of Ultimate GameTech, we took over a software engineer and took over the business. Next slide. We believe that this will fit right into our current business, both in terms of our capabilities, in terms of our customers, in terms of our supply chain and sourcing, and we are very well on the ways, actually. I would like to show you a little video that we made for the occasion that will give you a little bit better idea of what it actually is that I'm talking about.
[Presentation]
As you can see, this is something that we are passionate about. It's something we believe in. We have a decent number of people working on it already. I think we are 18, 20 people or something like that, and I'm spending quite some time on it myself. If we look at the slide here about our growth, what I hope and what I'm trying to achieve is that in a five years time, we have doubled our revenue, which would equal $150 million, and which would equal a growth rate of 15% a year. I definitely believe with this entrance to the new market that that's possible. With that being said, I'm sure you have a lot of questions and comments, concerns, and excitements. As mentioned earlier, we will do a Q&A when the rest of my team have done their presentations.
With that being said, I would like to hand over the floor to John.
Good morning. For those of you who don't know me, my name is John Hamill, and I'm the Chief Operating Officer at Asetek. I'm based in Austin, Texas, and I'm approaching my 12th year anniversary with the company. Next slide, please. I'd like to start with the overview of our revenue in recent years and quarters. Focusing on last year in particular, it's been quite a ride. We came into the year with modest expectations, in part due to losing our largest customer and in part due to the outlook provided by our remaining customers. Along came COVID, and we never looked back. Frankly, we couldn't. We didn't have the time. The entire company, and I'm including quality, research and development, operations, sales and product management, the entire company, our contract manufacturer, our supply chain, was focused on servicing customer demand.
Thanks to the sterling efforts of all those entities, we were able to conclude the year with successive record quarters. Next slide, please. Data from Jon Peddie Research confirms we were not alone. Indeed, Jon Peddie Research believes the entire PC hardware market grew substantially last year and effectively established a new level for the industry. Whilst COVID played its part, the market drivers we've discussed so often in the past are still underpinning this growth. Next slide. To reiterate how those market drivers come into play, no pun intended, we have to consider how new games or derivatives of existing games drive gamers to chase what we've described historically as that immersive experience.
Because it's that drive for the immersive experience that results in demand for the latest PC technology, the latest CPUs, the latest GPUs, which in turn leads to demand for liquid cooling technology, as liquid coolers are instrumental in enabling these CPUs and GPUs to deliver two things, performance and rock-solid stability. Those two elements are both important in achieving the immersive experience that the gamers seek so much. Next slide. As our revenues grew last year, so did our activity with customers. We were able to launch more than 20 new products in the last two quarters of the year. At the same time, we were able to add new customers, we were able to expand product offerings with existing customers, and we continued to pursue our branding initiatives.
It's a testimony to the resolve and the commitment of the entire Asetek team, again, our CM, again, our supply chain, that we were able to achieve all this and at the same time deliver successive record quarters. Next slide. This slide is fairly self-explanatory. However, I think it's important to highlight that despite losing our largest customer, we believe that our current customer base is the strongest customer base we've ever had. We're not resting on our laurels. We continue to look for new partners, new customers, high-quality partners, high-quality customers, and we're committed to reducing our dependence on any particular customer, whoever they may be. Next slide, please. We touched on our branding initiatives earlier. I just want to reiterate that at this stage, our branding efforts are designed to complement those of our G&E customers.
Our content, our outreach, is designed to remind the community that if you want the best liquid cooling products, you should buy Asetek products from our partners. There'll be even more emphasis on the Asetek brand and how the brand is employed when we move into SimSports, and Jim Carlton will talk about that later on in this presentation. Next slide. To summarize, our goal for the G&E segment is to further develop our leadership. To achieve that goal, we'll focus on innovation sponsored by our R&D team. We'll focus on growing our business with our existing customers. We'll focus on adding new high-quality customers. We will continue with our branding efforts. I'll conclude my comments at this point, and I'll remind everyone that I'll be available during the Q&A to answer any questions.
With that said, I'll hand over to Dipak, who'll now provide some insight into our data center business.
Hello, everybody. My name is Dipak Rao. I'm the Vice President and General Manager of what I would call Asetek's traditional business. I've been with Asetek now for a little more than nine years. I'm based in San Jose in California, in the United States. I'm going to be presenting an update today related to Asetek's data center business and strategy. Next slide, please. In 2021, we entered our ninth year in the data center business, and in this time, we've established ourselves as a significant player in this space. Seven of the top 100 most powerful and efficient supercomputers in the world are cooled using Asetek technology. While we have experienced success, and we continue to experience success, what we believe really limits our ambition is the lack of action so far on behalf of governments to implement legislation that requires data centers to reduce their carbon footprints.
This is something that we'll talk about a little bit more later in the presentation. Next slide. Here we're taking a look in the rearview mirror. 2020 really stands out on the chart that you can see on your screens. This growth that you can see in 2020 was fueled by bringing on two new customers in our data center business. More on those shortly. The numbers, as always, tell a story. The past three quarters have been the biggest three revenue quarters that we've had in data center in the past three years. Clearly, our margin trajectory, which is illustrated here by the white line, is also headed in the right direction, and we do hope to see this trend continue into sustained profitability. Next slide. I mentioned just now that our success in 2020 was driven by two new customers.
The first of those is HPE, also known as Hewlett Packard Enterprise. HPE is traditionally the world's largest high-performance computing OEM brand. Asetek had been selected for their mainstream server systems, which are the Apollo 2000 series and the Apollo 6500 series. It's good for Asetek to be involved and associated with the biggest name on the block. The second new customer is Supermicro. Supermicro is also a global IT provider, more on the up-and-coming level compared to somebody like an HPE, although Supermicro has great ambition and great reach. Measuring the meaningful impact of having these two new customers on board, it's actually quite obvious when you look at the screen here, and the chart, where on the left-hand side, you have the 2019 bar. Asetek announced two, what we call significant orders in 2019. That's a total number of two.
The value of those orders was just over a million. In 2020, which is after we had the new customers join us, that number of two increased more than sixfold to 13 new orders, and 13 new orders valued closer to $8 million, as you can see here on the screen. Significant impact of bringing on new customers, and we do hope for continued success with both our new customers and our existing customers, such as Fujitsu. Next slide. I'm going to hone in just a little bit on HPE for this slide. HPE has gotten off to what I can only describe as a flying start, by winning eight deals in the first six months of their partnership with Asetek. We certainly hope, and we look forward to working together with HPE in building on that initial success. Next slide.
I'm going to come back to a point that I'd stated at the very start of this session. Sustained success in the data center business is going to be about legislative change. Our business is going to struggle to meet the grand ambitions that we have without that change. There's a multitude of reasons, some illustrated here on the slide that you can see, why we would continue to pursue the educational efforts that we've started. It feels as though our hard work of doubling down on this approach is not falling on deaf ears. For example, European and Danish politicians have been receptive to our message and to the data. My job is to manage expectations, and we should keep in mind that we're talking about legislation. Legislation is something that will take years rather than quarters to be enacted, so patience will be key.
Next slide, please. There's nothing really new on the slide that you're seeing here as a summary. Our goal remains to create a sustainable and profitable business in the longer term. We're persevering with our approach because it does seem to be paying off. Things are going well from both a revenue and a margin point of view in data center right now due to, again, existing customers like Fujitsu and our two new customers that we spoke about just previously. We're working very hard to keep those efforts moving forward in the right vein. Our green and sustainability agenda is also gathering steam. We're going to remain committed with those efforts as well. With that, I'm going to conclude my comments and hand over to my colleague, Jim Carlton, who has something very exciting to speak to you about. Thank you, everybody.
Hi, I'm Jim Carlton, Vice President and General Manager of the new SimSports group here at Asetek. I've been with the company almost six months, but my history with Asetek goes back almost 12 years. I'm excited to share with you our plans for the SimSports business. Next slide. SimSports, and particularly racing, is among the fastest-growing categories of gaming today. Our target market is willing to invest thousands and thousands or more of dollars in their hardware, all in pursuit of realism. The racing industry, as you are all probably familiar, is huge, and the intersection of real racing and sim racing continues to grow. For the first time ever, the GT3 series is including sim racing. Teams will have to compete successfully in both in order to win a championship.
As you can see, NASCAR's iRacing event was the most viewed television esports event in history. That's a big deal. Next slide. As you can see from this drawing, a full-fledged racing setup requires a wide range of products, all designed to provide an immersive experience to the user. From pedal and wheels to shifters and seats, these components all provide the user with a true-to-life racing experience. For Asetek, there is no reason not to be eventually in every one of them. Next slide. There are a lot of companies with offerings in this market, but for the most part, they are fragmented, offering only a part of the solution. Nonetheless, we see opportunity in this space. Our long-term goal is to become the one-stop supplier for all your racing needs. Today, the nearest we have to that is Fanatec.
They have been at it for 15+ years, but they still aren't in every category, and they don't provide the user with an experience that they deserve. We hope to change that. Next slide. We see sim racing as a big opportunity. There's already one competitor, Fanatec, who is over $100 million. The racing sims are doing really well. iRacing and Assetto Corsa, whose numbers you see here, have seen their numbers surging with no end in sight. Next slide. To summarize our goal and strategy to become one of the key providers in next-level immersive gaming, we intend to leverage our years of experience in mechanical, electrical, and software engineering, as well as our global supply chain to develop products that speak directly to this market. We want to use in-house and acquired technology with an emphasis on the latter to start.
We're adding this important third area of growth in the hope that it will one day generate as much or more revenue as our G&E products do. Thank you very much. Now I'd like to hand the mic to Peter Dam Madsen, Asetek's CFO.
Thanks, Jim. A lot of interesting stuff going on in your part of the business. Good night, Jim. We are sending Jim and Dipak back to their own beds in California. It's wicked late over there. John, who's in Texas, will stay with us a little bit longer for the Q&A session later. Now we'll turn our focus to the financials. Just as late as last week, we delivered a quarterly report and an annual report with record numbers, and we are, of course, happy and satisfied with those numbers. What we're going to do now is that we're going to look at both the quarter, last quarter, and the last year, 2020, and then we're going to take a look at what the future in terms of 2021 will bring us. Next slide, please.
I think by now we have sort of used our allocation of bragging rights talking about the top line and the bottom line, et cetera. I'll jump over that relatively easily. Just saying that overall, we are happy with the numbers. They were in line with our indications and our communications, and that is, of course, how that should be. The quarter as such was super busy in terms of us releasing and shipping now 12 new Gaming & Enthusiast products. Also on data center side, I think we received six new r elatively large orders, so large that we had to disclose them, and we did that.
Of course, we were busy with the two acquisitions that André talked about in the Gaming & Enthusiast segment for our new business segment. Next slide, please. If we take a look at revenue over time, then you will see that revenues have grown about 15, a little bit over 15 on average for the last many years. That is in line with also our long-term ambition that André spoke about, of a 15% growth rate in the future also. There are good years and weaker years. 2019 was a weaker year. 2020 was a strong year. We'll come back to that in a little bit. What's also interesting here is the white line coming up, when we started being profitable in 2015, then onwards, it's the EBITDA margin, the earnings margin.
What's interesting here to me is that when revenue goes up, then also the earnings as a percentage go up, as a general rule. If the revenue goes down, then the earnings also go down. What that shows to me is that not only our gross margin, but also our overheads are pretty much under control. It shows me that we should have, which we do have also, an eager for revenue increase and growth. Next slide, please. This thing about weak quarters and strong quarters, volatility here, that is also quite obvious when you take a look at the quarters. We came out of it 2019. You can see that little bit to the right towards the middle of the graph here. In 2019, that was weak. It was a fighting year for us. We were fighting the tariffs in U.S.
You might have forgotten about those, but they were there, and they're still there. We were fighting the fact that we were changing our, at that point, largest customer with another or a couple of other larger customers to take their place. That meant that we actually came into 2020 with some level of anxiety. We didn't know exactly what it would bring. You would also see that Q1 of 2020 is the weakest of the four quarters in 2020. I said before that there's a general trend that when our revenue goes up, then goes our earnings. What does that mean then when you see that over on the right-hand side, the EBITDA margin is 24.9 versus 24.8 in the third quarter, it's flat. That doesn't really jive with what I just said.
That's because Q4 last year was impacted by not only foreign exchange rates going towards us, but also an inventory cleanup we did in the data center side of things, and then we had some write-off of an R&D project on the overheads lines. That's what happened there. Next slide, please. Looking at gross margins year by year, you can see that gross margins have increased from the 36 level in 2017 and then up north of 40 to 47 here in 2020. That has been in line with our expectations and our communications.
For 2020, the gross margin at some point actually was over 50%, and that has been driven by a change in our business model where we are focusing, so to speak, on selling products with a higher value proposition, high margins, Or suggesting to our customers, maybe I should call it, to buy lower value products in a different way so that we focus on the products where we really add value, and hence also can charge a premium that drives up the margins, and that's what we saw in 2020. We have seen the opposite effect coming in from a weaker U.S. dollars, meaning a more expensive Chinese currency that drives up our cost prices. In Q4 specifically, we had an inventory valuation that drove down our gross margins.
For 2021, we expect, and keep in mind here that our visibility into the future is relatively limited. That's just the nature of our business. We do expect the gross margins in 2021 to decrease a little bit compared to the very high level we saw in 2020. As a level indicator, I would put in 45% for 2021. When I say level, that means it can go up a couple of points, it could go down a couple of points. We had hoped, of course, that President Biden, he would remove the tariffs that we have been fighting in 2021. That seems not to be the case at this point. Although the tariffs don't impact us directly so much, then of course, having someone, Uncle Sam, stealing 25% of the value chain in terms of tariffs doesn't help our margins at all.
We had certainly hoped that they would decrease or even go away, but we need to see how that's going. Next slide, please. Currency rates impact us quite a lot. We report in U.S. dollars, and if we take a look at this slide here, then on the left-hand side, we have the Chinese currency, which impacts our cost of goods. Even though all our sales and purchases are transacted in U.S. dollars, then deep down in the belly of the beast, the Chinese currency, Renminbi, impacts, of course, our negotiations in China. As a general rule, for every 3 percentage points up or down, the Chinese, Renminbi, moves, then we are then adjusting our cost prices towards our vendors.
I believe that we are pretty well caught up. There's, of course, an element of delay, and there's an element of this three-point threshold step here that creates a delay function in itself. I believe we're pretty well caught up at the end of the year on currency exchange rates. Of course, it impacts, and your guess as to what's going to happen with the currency is at least just as good as mine. Of course, there are other things that impact the margin than the cost of the goods. Well, our ability to negotiate sales prices and the products not least, the product mix, not least, is impacting us quite a lot. As a proof to that, even though the price of the CNY went up by 5% during 2020, we still showed an improved gross margin in 2020. It's a complex matter for sure.
On the right-hand side of the graph here, we have the Danish krone. About one-third of our overheads are denominated in Danish krone. We, of course, paying our salaries here in Denmark in Danish krone, and of course, impacts our P&L quite significantly. When the Danish krone went up by 7% last year, it impacted us significantly. It seems to have flattened out by now, again, your guess on currency rates is probably better than mine. Next slide, please. If we try and tally up the income statement and how it looks. Solid revenue increases year-over-year and certainly also quarter-over-quarter. We had a 3x difference between the weakest quarter and the strongest quarter, the weakest being the first quarter and the strongest being the fourth quarter.
We could capture that in our organization, and that's actually pretty well done by our supply chain, both internally here, but also our vendors. It's a job well done, I believe. Gross margins, we spoke about those already. Operating expenses, if we look at the 2020 number, then it says $23.3 million versus $22 million the year before. If we then allow ourselves to correct for the one-off income of $750,000, which was a legal settlement that we got paid in 2019, then that actually shows an increase in overhead operating expenses of only 2%. How does that then link up with the 7% currency rate increase that I just spoke about, and how does that link up with the numbers on the left, where operating expenses in Q4 were $6.7 million versus $5.5 million the same quarter of the year before, meaning a significant increase?
The way that links up is that we came out of 2019, prepared for a challenging year. We had the issues with the tariffs, we had the issues with the customer that we exchanged. We were pretty lean in our setup. We pride ourselves in our ability to scale both up and down in our organization quite rapidly, and that appeared to be the case also here in 2020. When we saw the revenue pick up in Q2 and Q3, we started adding resources to our operation to cater for new products coming up and new products being started. That meant that here in Q4, the $6.7 is impacted by both an increase in activity, yes, but it is also impacted by currency. Around $400,000 out of the increase of $1.2 comes from foreign exchange rate.
We had a one-off write-off of $350,000, which also impacts Q4. Q4 was relatively expensive in the big picture scheme here. That brings us down to the income pre-tax, which was $9.4 million in 2020 versus $1.5 million in 2019. After tax, you will see that the tax amount is only $230,000 thereabout in 2020. You might think that that's a low amount. That has been helped by an addition to our deferred taxes asset of $1.6 million. If you add those two together, then you will see a more normal tax rate. Next slide, please. Cash generation. We have typically, over the years, been relatively low on fixed assets, et cetera. We've been quite flexible there.
The way that turns out is that what we make on the bottom line pretty much turns into cash the same quarter or the quarter after. We're capital light. That also shows here over the years where we are showing the cash generation. If I might direct your attention to the right-hand side, 2020, where we started out with $24.5 million in the bank. We then generated $21.5 million from the Gaming & Enthusiast segment at EBITDA level, and then we spent $1.2 million on data center. What's interesting here, if you compare the three years of data center spend, then you would see that in 2018 we spent $7.3 million, and in 2019, $4.3 million, and then in 2020, $1.2 million. We are not home safe yet, I would say, on the data center. It's not profitable at this point still. We are working on it.
We have not been guiding specifically on data center for the last year or so. We will have to start talking about that segment and reporting on that segment specifically again, because it's growing to become, again, a significant portion of the revenue. Last time we guided, we said that we needed revenue around $10 million before we became profitable in that segment. That number has probably changed up towards $14 million-$15 million, I would say, maybe a little bit less. That's driven by the fact that our gross margins are reduced a little bit. They're still significantly higher than the G&E, but they have reduced due to the customer composition. Then we have added more resources in that segment also to develop new products. What else? Investments, $4.8 million in 2020.
That's a little bit higher than they have been in earlier years due to a couple of things. We have invested in a company in the United Kingdom, as André spoke about, and what is a part of the basis for what Jim does in the SimSports department. Because we've added more activity, taken on more activity in the data center business, we have invested in more machinery recently in the data center manufacturing plant here in Denmark. There's a new column share repurchase. We have spent $6.4 million during 2020 to repurchase our own shares. Of course, that then contributes to the cash generation and usage here in 2020. Next slide, please. Cash conversion, just a few words on that.
When we grow as significantly as we do, then it's interesting to see and to look at whether we have our working capital under control, and I'm happy to report that I believe we do. The numbers are increasing. You can see up top, the receivables are increasing significantly year-over-year, and so does the payables. If you look at the table down below, then you will see the net of it all is that we are actually improving a little bit on what's called the cash conversion cycle. From the day when we receive the invoice from the supplier until the day where we receive payment from the customer, there is now eight days, which is a slight improvement compared to the same quarter last year in 2019.
Some years ago, we communicated a grand plan and ambition to be around zero. I think this is pretty much about where we should be. The numbers are bigger, you can see. That's simply a matter of math and where the revenue is placed. Next slide, please. Balance sheet. Those of you who've been following us through this history will know this sheet, this graph here, it's not changed at all. We have a strong cash position. We have almost no interest-bearing debt. It's a solid picture. We are very attractive towards our OEM customers, particularly in data center business, where our customers over there are very interested in our balance sheet. They want to make sure that we are solid enough to go through a period of R&D and a period of business development, et cetera, and being able to fund that. We are.
We have the flexibility to both develop and defend, and not least, our IP platform. What to say here? I'll come back a little bit on dividends. We do have an ambition to pay out dividends. We don't have any desire to sit on excess cash. I'll come back to that. We have a challenging tax situation that I need to address. If you change the slide. Yep. We're going to something totally different, although it does have something to do with cash allocation, capital allocation. We are here in Aalborg, sitting on each other's shoulders. Our staff is sitting pretty much like sardines in a can. That means that we need to expand. We have purchased a building plot in a prime location here in Aalborg, where we are developing a new innovation center and manufacturing facility. It's very much in its early stages right now.
We are meeting with architects and contractors. It's a multiple year project, obviously. We are sitting on each other's shoulders, literally. The last time we added to our test facility out here, it was built on top of another test facility, so it's quite cramped. For now, the idea is to fund it by our own means, our own cash and long-term debt. We don't have any strong desire in either direction, but we certainly don't have a strong desire to become a major property owner, and it may very well be that we do an optimization of the balance sheet at some point down the road. For now, in order to maintain the flexibility and keep that, we are taking it on our own books.
If you squeeze André a little bit during the Q&A session later, I'm sure he'll be happy to tell you the story about how we actually deliberately bought a plot that was a little bit too big, and then we sold off a portion of the lot to a fast food chain for, I think, three times the price we paid per square foot. That just underlines the fact that it is a prime location. It is a new hotspot here in Aalborg, close to the highway, et cetera. If you change the slide again, please. Yes, innovation. We need to be innovative, and we are, and we are committed to that, and we support that by the proper amount of funding. Our R&D spend is actually increasing higher than the revenue.
On the graph over to the right, you can see that how I've overlaid the revenue and the R&D spend in 2016, and then you can see the development from there. We are outspending in terms of R&D, the revenue increase. On average, we're spending around 8% of our revenue on R&D. Here in 2021, we'll see a generic increase on the liquid cooling, the existing business, up to $6 million or $7 million thereabout, compared to $5.7 million in 2020. We're adding the SimSports investment, where on the R&D side alone is between $1 million and $2 million. Right now we have some 16, 18 people out of 120 allocated full-time to SimSports, and that's going to increase a little bit during 2021. It is a significant amount of our investment. Next slide, please. The fun stops and we have actual real life, so to speak.
Tax structure, I need to talk about that a little bit. Those of you who have been following us, you will know that we have a little bit of a tax challenge in the sense that both the Danish Government and the U.S. Government considers Asetek a tax subject. That has actually not been a problem for the company per se up until now because the company that is a tax subject does not have significant taxable income. That income is in subsidiaries which are local to either Denmark or U.S. The top company does have a tax liability in both jurisdictions.
That means that for our investors, if we should pay out dividends, then we would have to withhold dividend tax to both the U.S. and Denmark, which would make it a rather unappealing, if there's such a word, unappealing situation for especially the smaller investors who don't have a tax presence in the U.S. and get their tax money back. We would simply lose too much on taxation. At this point, we don't have any actual plans for paying out dividends. That's been the case both in 2018 and 2019, now here in 2020 and 2021 again. We have, however, filed a complaint or a request for resolution, I think it's called, something to that effect, with the Danish and the U.S. tax authorities. They don't have an obligation to find a solution.
There is what's called a double taxation treaty, where they are obligated to talk about and obligated to seek to find a resolution, but they are not obligated to find the resolution. This whole thing, let me start another place. Add to that the Americans have now figured out a new way of taxation, something they call GILTI, where the Americans charge an extra tax on foreign activities by U.S. companies. Keep in mind that for the Americans, we are a U.S. company, and they see that we have activities in Denmark, so they want to tax that. They call that a GILTI tax. That GILTI tax cost us $400,000 here in 2020 and like $1 million the year before. That actually may be a little bit of a help to us, even though it sounds contradictory.
It means that now it is the company who has an extra liability and an extra double taxation situation. That is easier. That's a better argument to be made to the tax authorities in both countries, that there is actually a real double taxation situation that they should figure out how to fix. It's a long-term process. It started a year ago or so. We know they're communicating, they've been asking questions. It's still early stage. Share buyback. We have transacted two share buyback programs during 2020. We are running the second one right now. It's ending on Friday. Purpose of which is to buy back shares to hedge our risk with the employee stock options that have been issued over the years.
The shares that we are buying back are simply sitting in our bank depository accounts and are then resold out to the market when employees are exercising their options. That program is running out here on March 5th. We expect there might be other or additional smaller share buyback programs in the future if and when the board of directors, they decide to grant new employee options. Options have been a natural component of our pay structure since 2010 or even earlier than that, I believe, so it should be expected that there will be smaller additional share buyback programs in the future. Next slide, please. Looking at 2021, if you look at the graph here, there's this bubble over here on the right-hand side, which is an ambition, not a guidance.
It's an ambition for us to maintain our 15% annual average growth in the years to come. We also have to release a specific guidance for the year 2021 as such, that guidance that we offer is an increase on the top line between 10% and 20% compared to 2020. That would result in a top line of $80 million-$87 million of revenue. There is volatility, there's uncertainty about many things. COVID-19 is still playing a factor here, and if you know the company here that our transparency into the future is fairly limited. Margins, as we said before, expect them to lower just a tad bit compared to the 47% here in 2020. There's some risk in that also, as I said, and that means that our operating income guidance is between $9 million and $15 million. Quite a wide range. We do realize that.
We'll narrow it down, I'm sure, as we go through the year. There are a number of uncertainties, not least related to our relatively short transparency into the future. Next slide, please. Changing gear totally. CSR, ESG, sustainability, call it whatever you want, is something that has taken up quite a lot of resources and work during 2020. We have, as you know, a product on the data center side that provides significant positive climate effect. Of course, that's not enough when it comes to ESG, and CSR. We need to show how we operate the business as such. We've been running through a project last year where we set up the framework both for measuring and for goal setting, and then for reporting of all these good goals here and good measures. We are measuring it now.
We are sharing our measurements internally, and what is measured tends to be met when it comes to goals. That is definitely something we are going to be working on more in the future. We've always been running our company in a sustainable way, I believe. Now we're building it into a more formal framework. There's a link here to the report that you can follow if you should choose to do so. Next slide, please. All right. I think I've taken up quite a lot of my time here, so I'll just focus on the left-hand side. My focus is on the continued profitable growth, solid financial platform, and that remains to be my focus, and that's how it is. In that sense, I certainly welcome the SimSports investments that both Jim and André, they were talking about. Good. Last slide from my end.
Please change to that. Yep. Investment highlights. What is Asetek as an investment case? Long-term growth driven by mega trends and innovation, both on the OEM side and for the end users. It's market leadership and it's then again, solid growth margins. As we say, we focus on difficult problems, and if we solve difficult problems, then we can also charge a premium for that. That's the whole business here, whole idea here. We are primed for continued growth, both in data center business and the Gaming & Enthusiast markets. We are starting out this new entry into the SimSports gaming. With that, if you change the slide again, please, we'll hand over the microphone to the moderator who will take care of first the phones, whoever is choosing to call in, and then we'll address the written questions afterwards.
While we're setting that up, I'll run over to André's office and we'll do it from there. Thank you.
Thank you. If you do wish to ask a question, please press zero one on your telephone keypad. If you wish to withdraw your question, you may do so by pressing zero two to cancel. We have a question from Yiwei Zhou from SEB. Please go ahead.
Hi. Thank you for taking my question. I have a couple question here. Regarding the 2025 revenue target, is it possible to elaborate a bit on this target and how much do you expect data center business and also the new business area, SimSports, to contribute to this $150 million sales? Secondly, is it possible to elaborate a bit on the profitability for the new product area? Yeah. I will start with two question and I'll follow up later. Thank you.
Yeah. Thanks. Well, in terms of the spread on our revenue target, it's impossible to say. Obviously, we need to start selling something in the SimSports market before we can actually talk about how much we can sell. It's way premature. What we can say is that, looking backwards, as I showed earlier, we've had a 17% growth rate over the last decade, and let's say with another business leg to stand on, we feel even more comfortable talking about it. That's the way we look at it. What was the second question again? That was how big the opportunity is. It's also too early to say.
The profitability.
Oh, the probability.
The profitability.
Profitability. Sorry.
Profitability. The margin.
Yeah. Okay.
Gross margin.
What I can say is that, we have no intention in entering low-margin business segments. I absolutely expect that we will keep seeing the same margins or better than we already doing.
Could you indicate maybe a value per user for the gaming simulator?
It's really difficult to say because that's obviously not the segment we'll be playing in, but you can go to an electronic store and buy a $300 simulator set up with very low-end, in our terminology, low-end stuff. These markets, I think are typically dominated by Logitech and Thrustmaster, and that's not where we are going to focus. I don't have a spend per user, but if I should give you an indication, I would say at least from $1,000 and upwards.
Okay. Very helpful. How much additional OpEx investments, especially on the sales marketing, have you planned for launching the SimSports products?
D o you have anything you can say about that?
We are applying 16, 18 up to 20 people or so this year. If you do the math simply by counting the headcounts and marking it up, then it's between $2 million and $3 million in total for this year.
Oh, then, for the launch, I guess, next year, 2022 is probably the year where you can start to generate sales. Is it possible to also give us an indication on the 2022 budget for the product launch?
I appreciate the question, Yiwei. I think it's too early for us to talk with any level of quality about what's going to happen two years out on the sales and marketing side.
Okay. Fair enough. Could you just clarify, this 15-20 people, are they mainly the R&D function or also includes the sales marketing?
Actually, that's an interesting question. If you look back over the history of Asetek, then our projects have always started with a heavy R&D effort, then that has sort of scaled down, and then the marketing and sales effort have scaled up. What we're doing a little bit different here is that we are applying significant marketing, product planning, or whatever you want to call it, or different disciplines relatively early in the projects. It's a mix.
Okay. Thanks. I jump back to the queue.
We have another question from the line of Johannes Ries from Apus Capital. Please go ahead.
Yes, good morning, guys. A couple of questions also following on with SimSports. Only to get it right, is your intention to deliver a full system or is your intention also to sell only components for the system? Only the pedals or the wheels also?
The plan is to let the customer choose, but to have the possibility to buy everything from us. This is obviously something we will go much more in detail about over the next and the coming quarters. Some of the obvious, let's say, opportunities we see in the market is that if you have tried to build a simulator yourself, you'll see how difficult it is. You will see how halfway you need to be a computer scientist and you need to be an engineer to actually get it to work, and that's independent of brand right now. It's very complicated. Unless you have a console and you just have a simple set of steering wheels and pedals, it's very complicated. What we want to do is pretty much the same as we did more than 20 years ago with the liquid cooling market.
Remember back then, liquid coolers were a lot of components. You had to cut the tubes and put in or pour in liquid yourself, and hopefully everything would work. We came out with the all-in-one cooler that kind of revolutionized it. What we are intending to do here is pretty much the same. It has to be easy. It has to be user-friendly. As such, we focus a lot of effort on software right now because software is what ties all the hardware together. I think it's an understatement to say that the software that's out there is flaky at best. I have our first prototype of our pedals right here. You would be able to start out buying those, and then you would be able to operate as you go along.
That was a long answer, but nevertheless, how we see it.
Okay. How is the sales channel because I think it's a little bit different. On your cooling, you go a lot with OEMs. Maybe here you really sell a full product under your brand, therefore have you to build up a new sales organization. You have some synergies with the Esport Academy and things like this, your brand. How you bring this, especially this full simulator in the market?
I think we still have time to fully figure that out. What we can say and what we are willing to say, there's also some elements of what we want to tell the competition at this point, of course. What we can say is that pretty much, the competition is selling direct. We will absolutely be pushing our own brand, but we were also very careful when selecting this new business that we did not step on our customers' toes, and we did not compete with our customers. I actually do believe that there is potential both to push our own brand and also to do a partnership model. At the end of the day, it comes down to what bill of materials we can achieve.
We have a very strong supply chain, and I think when I look at the entire simulator landscape, I think by far we are the company who's best positioned with our China operations. As such, at least in theory, we should be able to get the lowest possible cost prices. By getting the lowest cost prices, applying our margin, then we will see what's possible. At this point in time, we are not ruling anything out. Yeah. Do you have anything to add, John?
No, I think that pretty much covered it, André. We're keeping our options open here until we know more about our BOMs. We obviously have some pretty good idea of what we want to do, but nothing ruled out.
Thanks.
Maybe as a follow on, after these two acquisitions, do you think you have everything together you need to build these products? Or maybe you could say, the one or other small add-on acquisitions to need to fulfill, to make the product really complete?
Yeah. Just a little word about the process. We actually identified and looked at more than 120 companies within SimSports. It's not like we woke up one morning and said, "We are buying these two." It's been a quite rigorous process, and I would say that especially on the software side, we knew that that was going to take a long time if we had to start from scratch. That's why we bought a software company, and I believe we bought the best. In terms of the hardware, we are pretty good at that stuff. The pedals you see here, for many reasons, I don't want to go into detail with what they're capable of, but we've actually been turning around this set of pedal within four months internally. That stuff I'm quite confident about. We know what we're doing.
In terms of the actual wheel base, so that's what's giving you the force feedback, there's a lot of software into that as well. That's why we acquired those capabilities again to accelerate. Other than that, I do feel we are quite well suited. That being said, we acquired a company, I think 17, 18 years ago, but other than that, we never really did any M&A activity. Not because we've not been looking, but because we haven't found anything interesting. M&A can be dangerous for many reasons, as you know. I have to say, what we have done here has been really successful, and I can say that even before entering the market, because in one of the acquisitions, we kept the employees, the software engineer that's working really well. On the other side, we are working together with Granite in Finland.
The short answer is, we don't have anything on our list right now, but if an opportunity represents itself, I will obviously be looking at it.
Super. Maybe coming to Gaming & Enthusiast, do you expect maybe that if what we all hope, COVID-19 go a little bit away or a little bit, it's not so severe anymore, maybe in the second half or maybe next year, that the gaming PC market could see a setback like some people expected it for DIY, things like investing in your garden or in your house? Do you, like John said, do you expect it stays at this high level or even grow further because that was a push for a market which stays around?
If I was a prophet, I would work in the church and not for Asetek. I have no idea. My guess is no better than your guess. What we are doing is focusing on fulfilling our customers' forecasts. The start this year have been good. We have guided, as you know, between 10% and 20% and that's what we are aiming and fulfilling. What's going to happen with tariffs, with COVID or anything else in the world, I really don't have anything intelligent to say.
Okay. So far you said the year have been good, therefore, an ongoing development like you have seen in the second half last year. A strong market, yeah?
Yeah.
On another topic, graphics card cooling, GPU. How the things are going on there? Have you the first product out, and how big could be this market maybe in the next four or five years? Have you anything included in this vision, this 2025 vision? Although I get the feeling that you have not really broke it down to the different businesses and even sub-activities.
John, do you have a comment on that?
Yes. We continue to engage with various graphics card vendors. We have a multiple graphics card solution shipping today. Interestingly enough, to not just NVIDIA now, but also AMD solutions. However, the volumes continue to be extremely modest. I think the reason for that lies in the cost of these solutions. The solutions that typically have liquid coolers added to them retail in the region of $1,000-$2,000. That contrasts with CPU liquid coolers that typically retail down at the $100-$200 mark. What I've come to realize over the years is that, yeah, every PC has a graphics card, but trying to sell liquid coolers into those is quite a challenge given the price points that we typically see when we liquid cool a graphics card. We've got a healthy business. We're very committed to servicing it.
We've got some great customers doing some great stuff, but the volumes continue to be fairly modest when stacked up against the CPU cooler business.
Do you see these prices coming down going forward?
John, sorry to interrupt. I think it's important to clarify, it's not the cost of the cooler, it's the cost of the graphics card that drives the price. That's really a question for NVIDIA. If you ask my guess, I would say chances of pricing going down for their high-end solutions is fairly slim. I think, as we've elaborated a couple of times, what would change it would be the competition between AMD and NVIDIA. If GPUs came to a level where they were just unbearable noisy. In some people's mind they are, but that's one thing. The other thing is also, if you as an end user buy a graphics card and you take off the cooler, you lost your warranty.
I think the appetite for end users buying a, let's say, $1,500 graphics card, and then the first thing you do is to void the warranty. I think there's a limited amount of users that's willing to do that, whereas on a CPU, you have to mount a cooler. That's the big difference. I think what we can hope for is that the graphics cards vendors will kind of accept the solution wider and broader for the end users to mount the cooler themselves. It's just that the, what should we call it? The architecture of a graphics card is delicate. If you're sitting there fooling around with your screwdriver, you can easily ruin something, whereas if the cooler is mounted from the factory, it's different.
That is also why, for example, Dell, Alienware have success with their graphics card coolers, is because it's mounted from their factory.
Super. Last point at data center business could be, I think it was already on the slide. After the success, yes, with HPE and this new guy on the block, Hover Solution Minder was the name. Are there further OEMs looking at the solution, seeing the success with HPE, and there could be further OEMs added to this business?
Well, we can at least say that's our plan and our hope, of course, that other OEMs will carry on. I also think it's important to calibrate the business we are in here with how you look at it in the sense that the gaming business is fast-paced and moving forward really fast. We launched our data center, I think 2012, we were in Utah talking about our solutions and OEM adoption, and we have to realize that now it finally happened, which is good. It's also eight years ago. Yes, I do believe over time we will see more OEMs, but it's also a business that just works at a different pace than the gaming business, for sure.
You showed how long you needed even with the gaming business, therefore it could be an inflection point going forward now. It not depend on you, it depends on the politicians now. We discussed it.
Yes
often enough now.
I agree 100%. I can only say that in terms of the politicians, that we are seeing, I would say, more or less constant improvements in the EU and talks about this very topic. I'm still firm in my belief that we will see it. Just to get it out of the way, it's not built into our 2025 plans because frankly, it's out of my control and it's out of Asetek's control. We can try to influence it as much as we can, and we are, but I think our growth plan will be way too fragile if we kind of baked in that something would happen in terms of legislation.
If something happens and there is a real push in the market, definitely it would be upside now. Like I said, it's not in. I expected this. Okay, thanks a lot.
You're welcome.
Just as a final reminder, if you do wish to ask a question, please press zero one on your telephone keypad now. As a note for the audio questions, I'll hand it back to the speakers.
Perfect. Thank you. We will address the questions that are coming in via the website.
Feel free to keep asking. We'll refresh the site once in a while. I'll pick them out here. We did speak about COVID. John, there's one for you here. The gaming industry is scaling fast. Are you available to keep up the demands, on demands?
Yeah. It's one of the topics I was trying to stress when I made my comments earlier, that we've handled that very well. I continue to have confidence that we'll be able to continue to handle upsides and demands. Yeah, don't see any issues there at all.
Very good. There's another one, totally different street here. I know Asetek is an interesting acquisition to several big companies out there. Have there been any dialogue that we shareholders should be informed about? I can answer the last part of that question quite clearly. No, of course not, because then we would have informed you. André, do you Because we have to. Not to be rude, sorry. There are very strict rules about what we have to inform about. Anything else on that topic?
No. We look at the inquiries we get. What's been there so far have, let's say, not been interesting to us or interesting to the inquirer for various reasons. As Peter points out, of course, if there is anything significant, then we will let you know.
Very good. How's your business network within Europe set up? John, can you talk to that a little bit?
Is that a question with respect to our supply chain or our customers, or both? I'm not sure. Is there any more clarity there?
I would class that a customer-related question, the sales network in Europe.
Okay. Actually, Europe, there are not a lot of customers in Europe. Most recently, Fujitsu, who did consume a lot of our resources, they actually pretty much closed down all the functions in Europe and moved everything to Japan. We don't see a whole lot of activity from what I would call indigenous European customers. We do have customers there. Fractal springs to mind. We are courting other brands in Europe, so we're not sitting on our hands. There's actually not a massive business there. The vast majority of our sales and marketing activity is undertaken in North America and in Asia.
Very good. A question here along the same lines, I would say. The question is very specific. Maybe you, John, you can talk in broader terms. How many big customers is the goal for 2021? We know we changed out one big customer in 2019 and ramped up in 2020. Can you talk in general about that?
Yeah. I wouldn't put a number on it. There's never a number. The thing we were more interested in, and again, I tried to touch on this in my comments, it's the quality of the customer. We had a big customer in the past that really didn't appreciate what Asetek brought to the table. That's why we're no longer with them. I stressed during my comments that the customers we have today, we believe are the strongest customer base we've ever had. When we go looking for new customers, it's very important to us that they value what we bring to the table, and that they can make a contribution that will help us reduce our dependence on any one single customer.
We're trying to be smart about adding new customers, and we're always looking for strong brands that can grow to make a contribution, a significant contribution, but brands that appreciate what Asetek bring to the table.
Very good. Thank you. There's a question which is in a totally different direction. It's about our share buyback program, which is coming to an end here on Friday, I believe it is. If we plan a new round, about that, yes, we do, if and when our board of directors grant a new series of options. They have been doing that more or less constantly since 2008 or 2009. That should be expected. That's a common part of our compensation plans. Yes, there will be probably a smaller plan. It will be a smaller plan because what we've done in the last couple of years is to play catch up to hedge our option plans. The gentleman is asking if there are news about the legal issues regarding the payment of dividends.
That's somewhat related to the option program, or the share buyback program here, and then yet separated. The news, I think I touched upon it in the presentation, is that there is no negotiations going on between the American IRS and the Danish taxation authorities. We are being double taxed. Politically for many years, there has been agreement that double taxation should be avoided. That said, when the Americans all of a sudden unilaterally decide that when companies leave U.S. soil to make money outside of the U.S., they should still remain taxed in U.S., then we are up against quite some resistance. It's coming back to Apple pretty much living out of a mailbox in Ireland.
When they made all their money over there in a low tax company, of course, that was annoying to the U.S. taxation system and politicians, and they put in place all kinds of preventive measures, and we are being caught in that. That's what we are debating with the tax authorities. Long answer, complex issue. Back to COVID-19 and how the physical meetings have been difficult, André, can we talk about how the meetings and education of politicians on environmental benefits from our products, how is that going? Do you have more to say on that? You did touch on it a little bit.
I think I already touched upon it. I think there will be. The reason I say think is because I know we have been conducting a study with the German government. I also know that it will be coming. I think we are at a point where I can say soon now. I hope that study will be used in the Green Deal and with the German lead in the EU. That's my hope and that's my belief. It's not really been held back by COVID because it's based on data from both our own data center and other data centers, air-cooled and liquid-cooled. In more general terms, of course, I've not been able to travel to Brussels, neither have our advisors.
For that reason, it's not been as easy as I had hoped, of course, but on the flip side, I don't think we lost out on anything significant.
Very good. Ooh, a fun question here. Will the SimSports mainly focus on car simulators or can flight simulators be relevant too?
There is actually a reason we call it Asetek SimSports. That is that it could be applied to anything from cross-country simulators to flight simulators, to racing simulators, to golf simulators. We have to start in one place, in one corner. We are starting with racing because that's what we know a great deal about. The name has been specifically made so that we, over time, can look at many other types of simulators than just car racing.
Very good. Staying within the SimSports here, talking about the, what should I call it, the level of enthusiasm or professionalism that the customers need here. Is it for arcades or is it for very enthusiastic customers, gamers? I guess the equipment itself could take up to three to five sq m, quite large. The total e-sport market is estimated at $165 billion in 2020, and the relevant segment for SimSports seems to be around $40 billion. Is that a fair guess for revenue pool to look at? I know it's a very broad question.
That was a lot of questions in one question. Let's see if I'm smart enough to even remember all of them. In terms of positioning, we are not going to compete with, excuse my French, cheap Chinese manufacturers of arcade equipment because we have no value add. What we are trying to do is to make equipment that would actually mimic a real car or a real race car. That's to begin with why it's called simulation. That being said, I have personally built a $30,000 simulator for my son, in combination with his racing three, four years ago. Obviously the volume of those is pretty low. The ambition is to do it at reasonable price points. We will, of course, have entry level and more advanced level, but per definition, it will be higher end.
That does not necessarily mean that we will not go after the console market, because we will. We will definitely go after both the Xbox and the PlayStation market also. You don't have to be a, let's say, a PC enthusiast to buy our product. Funnily enough, what we found out was that a big portion of the SimSports drivers, let's focus on racing right now, they actually do have a gaming PC with a, more often than not, Asetek liquid cooling inside. There is actually a big overlap of customers. In terms of the total market size, we have not really gone that detailed yet, because what's important for us is that we believe there is a significant market and that we believe the market is growing.
Being a part of real racing and having been a part of it for many years, looking at the green side with noise, gasoline, et cetera, for sure sim racing is taking over and merging and becoming more The fine lines between, let's say, simulation and reality is being wiped out. We believe in the market. How big it exactly is at this point in time, we actually don't know. What we can see is that, let's call it the main competitor or the current market leader, they are projecting plus hundred million Euros in revenue this year. I think there are several flaws in their business model, in the product program, and in their execution. I firmly believe there's space for more than one. I also believe that there is a whole forest, as I said earlier, we looked at 120 just racing simulator companies.
There's a whole forest of smaller companies that are doing components, and they seem, all of them, to be doing reasonably well. That's kind of the indicators we have used.
Yeah. Staying in the same segment, can you talk more about the market strategy in SimSports? Will it be B2B only or B2C also?
It will definitely be also B2C. I don't believe in a business model where we are only selling directly to consumers
Very good. Changing gear once again totally to our new innovation facility here in Aalborg. Can you add comments on what operational possibilities and competencies it will add that we don't have today?
That's difficult because we have most of it in-house today, but what I can say is that we are completely filled up today. There's not really room for any expansion. If there was empty facilities available, we would have to move much sooner than this new place will require. It's mainly a question about us growing out of what we have. We have searched a lot, and we've not really been able to find anything that. For the region we are in, we are actually becoming a pretty large company. It's been impossible to find anything that's larger than what we have right now.
Very good. That actually brought us to the end of the list here. Let me just reload to see if there's anything else. No, we have arrived at the list. André, you want to make a closing remark of any kind other than saying thank you for-
Yeah. What I want to say is, of course, thank you for listening in. It would have been more ideal for all of us, I believe, if we could have met. That's not the case. On the flip side, you saved your traveling time today. We definitely believe it's exciting times, and I would say proactively, since nobody asked the question, that to me, I have been facing these questions from investors for many years, how is the next quarter going to look like? It's actually pretty frustrating. It's a pretty frustrating question. Not because I'm not willing to answer, but because I cannot answer. In the short term, we have low visibility as always. Although it may sound contradictory that we are then guiding five years ahead, it's like the weather forecast.
They can't say the weather tomorrow, but they can predict global warming in 100 years. It's a little bit the same. I feel much, much better talking about a five-year growth plan than I am talking about Q3, for example. The reason for that is I believe we can see and we can spot the large trends. What I cannot say is, will I get a bad quarter three quarters from now? From my perspective, I think it's nice to be able to have this goal, and for sure, we will probably have to adjust it one way or the other during the next five years. At least now we have a stake in the ground to aim for, and I think that's important to all of us. I think that's it.
Perfect. Thank you for listening in. This will be available on our websites in a few hours, I'm sure. Well, you know where we are. Send us an email at investor.relations@asetek.com if you have questions. Thank you for your time.