Good. I think we are ready to start. A warm welcome from me to you all to our GN Store Nord Meet the Management event 2022. It's great to finally be here. We have been looking forward to welcome you all today to this special day for us. We have a lot of people in the room in sunny Copenhagen. We have great weather, and we hope we'll have a great day. We also, I know, have a lot of people online, so welcome to everybody online as well. We have two different streaming options today online. We have one where you can be passively just listening in, and one active participation via Teams.
There you can actually ask questions, raise your hands in Teams, and we will ensure that you will be able to to also ask questions during the day. This is truly a hybrid event. It's a modern way of collaborating, and I'm sure that René and team down here will come back to this later in the day, and all the benefits that actually entails. Let me just briefly walk you through the agenda of today. We have uploaded this to gn.com together with the presentations for today, and in the room you will also find the presentations on the tables. We will start out with a introduction and a status of the business presentation by our CFO of GN Store Nord, Peter Gormsen.
He will hand over to CEO of GN Hearing, Gitte Aabo and team that will provide a strategy update under the theme Simplify to Grow Above the Market and Restore Profitability. We will go over to GN Audio and René Svendsen-Tune, CEO, and his team that will provide an update under the theme Transforming from Audio Mainly to Audio, Video and Gaming Business. We will have ample time for Q&A during today. We have a plan for four Q&A sessions where you hope you will participate and collaborate, and we'll have a interactive day. With that very brief introduction, I think we are ready to get started, and very great to see all of you today. I will hand over the word to our CFO of GN Store Nord, Peter Gormsen.
Thank you, Henriette, and also a very warm welcome from my end. Great to see you all. See a lot of familiar faces, so really great to be together, not only virtual. Also warm welcome to those of you who are attending online. As Henriette said, we've been looking very much forward to today and to share some of all the great stuff we have going at GN at the moment. Hopefully it will give you a lot of confidence in the future also. Before we dive into the details, we felt it was prudent just to briefly touch on this terrible situation in Russia-Ukraine. You may have seen that we have announced that we have ceased all business with Russia and Belarus.
Of course that has an impact, but it is a minor impact. It is roughly 1% of our total revenue in GN Store Nord. We do not have warehouses. We do not have any inventories. We do not have any operations in Russia. We do not source any components in Russia. That is the impact. Where we are impacted is unfortunately on a unit we have in Ukraine. In Kyiv, we have 25 software IT developers. We are in very close dialogue with them. Five of them have left Ukraine. Twenty of them have moved to the western part of Ukraine, where it's more quiet. We try to help them as much as we can. With that, let's move on. We thought it was prudent to start with the overall purpose of GN.
We don't talk so much about it today, but of course this is what drives us. This is what inspires us in everything we do. Make life sound better. I'll read out what it actually means, so if you're double clicking out. We feel it means we bring people closer through the power of sound and vision, letting you hear more, do more, and be more in life and at work than you ever thought possible. That means a lot to us.
It means a lot to our customers, whether you are getting your hearing aid for the first time and can rejoin conversations over the dinner table, or you're chatting with your friends while you're gaming using your SteelSeries product, or you are basically just a boring office guy like the ones in this room today, where you need proper devices to allow you to connect with your peers, your colleagues, your customers. Hopefully you can see this also being reflected in what we will talk about throughout the day. GN investment case is fully intact, and in my mind, stronger than ever. It starts with the innovation. That is the core of our DNA. There is a relentless focus on innovation in GN. That is what has made us successful in the past, and that is what will make us successful in the future.
That is very important for us. We are in leading, focused markets. We invest in R&D. We invest in technology, and thereby we do create entry barriers, making it more difficult for competition to come in. We have a clear strategy. We manufacture, we distribute, we develop our own products. We outsource manufacture and audio. Peter Håkansson will come back and talk about the operations in hearing a little later today. We do not do forward integration, so we do not compete with our own channel partners. Profitability is of course hugely important. We'll talk a lot about that later today also. Profitable growth is what we aim for and at least on par and preferably better than competition. Last but not least, of course, being the CFO, cash is very, very important.
That is also ingrained in everything we do across the company. That is what allowed us to acquire a company such as SteelSeries and Lively late last year. It is what will allow us to also do acquisitions in the future also. If we move on and just take a step back and look at our historical performance, it's very nice curves, and I, of course, like this slide. Much of this is before I joined the company, so I can't take any credit for it, but it's a nice growth curve we show. We've basically added DKK 10 billion worth of revenue to the top line. We have grown the bottom line even faster and added another DKK 2 billion. Last but not least, we have grown the earnings per share even faster. We are quite pleased with that.
Of course, it's a great platform for the future also, and we have every belief that we will continue this curve and would love to come back and show you that we are continuing the curve. That is clearly the strategy and the focus of GN. Moving on. We are in the three segments we've talked about many times. We are in medical grade, we are in professional grade, and we are in consumer grade. As you can see here, we have added new brands to the brand portfolio. We have added SteelSeries. Very, very exciting. Ehtisham Rabbani will come back and talk a lot about this in the afternoon. We have added Lively. Gitte will also talk into this in the medical grade. We believe this is a powerful brand portfolio for us to be successful in the future. Moving on.
Often I get the question, "So GN, you have these two businesses, how much collaboration do you really have, and what is sitting in the other GN Store Nord? And how many synergies are you leveraging that you are one big GN, or are you operating in isolation in two silos?" The clear answer, we are certainly leveraging a lot of synergies and have done that historically. I will also be very clear and say, I think there's a lot more we can do. With this picture, we try to illustrate in the color coding how far we are. It's clear if you take the traditional back office functions, IT, finance, HR, I think we've done a lot. We are more mature, if you can put it that way, while there are other areas where we can do more.
I think we can do more on the operational side. Again, Peter Håkansson will talk about this when we get to hearing. I think we can do more in other functions also. We will be moving to a new world in the hearing side where the go-to-market will look slightly different. You could argue it will look somewhat similar to what we're doing in audio, and I think that gives us an excellent opportunity to leverage all the experience we have in dealing with retail, be it offline or online. Of course, there's more to go from the IT side. Why is that not completely orange?
We are in the process of implementing one ERP system across GN that will put us in a much better position that will allow us to drive higher level of productivity, get savings that we can reinject back into the business, be it in R&D, be it in marketing to drive growth. Moving on. Normally, we talk about the markets we operate in either audio or in hearing. This time we try to consolidate it all, and if you sum across all the market, we're actually positioning GN into more than $40 billion worth of market. So massive opportunity for us. Secondly, the penetration rates are fairly low across the different industries. You've often heard Gitte talk about only 20% of the hearing market being addressed properly. I think we have now...
We'll try to do our best to actually increase that number with the new offerings we have lined up. You have heard us talk about the office worker, where we have penetration around 15%-20%. With COVID and the massive digitization happening and the high growth in Teams and Zoom, those growth numbers were significantly higher than the growth in our headset sales. Of course, the potential to look into has increased considerably. Collaboration business. AK will talk about this in the afternoon also. We started with one product, now we have three products. They are being very well received. We need a few more components. We are getting those now, so we will be able to take a lot of share in that space also. Last but not least, gaming. Big growth opportunity for GN.
Happy to have Ehtisham here today also to explain that to you. Of course, a massive opportunity. You've all seen the amount of investments going into that space and of course, that's good news for SteelSeries. With that, how do we spend the money? We have a very strict and intelligent way of allocating the funds. Of course, in order of priority, first and foremost, we invest in the business. That is the key. Organic investments in R&D and technology that will not only help us this year but also in five years out is hugely important. It's going back to the relentless focus on innovation. That is what drives us, and that is what will make us successful in the future. We also look at M&A.
It can be getting access to technology that we do not master ourselves. It can be accelerated penetration into new markets. It'll be tapping into a new growth rate, as we've seen in either video or in gaming for that matter. If there's money left, of course, we hand it back to our shareholders, either via dividends or share buyback. Here you can see on the pie chart the split of how we have allocated funds over the past three years. Moving on. With the acquisitions we did, Lively in December and closed the acquisition of SteelSeries in January, of course, that does impact our leverage. As we've communicated before, it will go up in 2022 by design. This will not be a surprise.
With the strong cash flow generation that we have delivered historically and that we plan to deliver going forward, we do plan to be able to deleverage within a couple of years. We have put the share buyback program on pause until we are closer to between 1x and 2x EBITDA leverage. That is our financial policy. We will continue to pay out dividends as stated here, between 15% and 25% of net profit. Guidance for 2022, nothing has changed, and we confirm the guidance as we stand here today. It is a volatile ever-changing world we live in. We talked about Russia, Ukraine. There is component shortage. There is COVID impacting. We will come back to that later, but the very, very short message is we do confirm guidance across all parameters, hearing, audio, Store Nord, EPS.
Midterm guidance. Again, we also confirm the midterm guidance. We do plan to grow faster than the market in both hearing and in audio. For hearing, that means between 4%-6% in volume growth and then take one-two percentage points in ASP decline. In audio, that means more than 10%, and adding that together, that means GN Store Nord will grow faster than 10%. Growth and earnings per share, we also plan to be double digits, more than 10%. Being talking about our purpose, making life sound better, there is another very important component to that is also being a responsible company. So ESG work, climate, environment, becomes increasingly important and has over the past years been a very important topic for GN, not just for management, but across the company.
Of course, we feel it talking with you, we sense it. You no longer just answer polite question you have to ask because it's on your list. You actually ask qualified, intelligent questions on our ESG journey. We discuss this with our customers, we discuss this with our suppliers and all the stakeholders that are relevant to GN. The way we have done it, categorized in these three areas: protecting the planet, sustainable products and packaging, and then health and wellbeing through our products. We take the first one. It's really about neutralizing our CO2 footprint in scope one and two between now and 2025. And then reducing our scope 3, that's the outside world, also significantly. What are we doing? We are changing all our energy to sustainable energy at all our own sites.
We're changing the car fleet to electric. We are installing very new, tough travel policies where, by the way, we are making products that allow you to be efficient without traveling overseas. Of course, we are saying let's take our own medicine to a much larger extent. A lot of initiatives on that. Products and packaging, every new product that we send out will be 100% sustainable packaging. New products coming out will contain at least 50% sustainable materials by 2025. It's not that easy. There are components that today you simply cannot find in a sustainable fashion, so we need to work hard on that. We are not the only one working on this.
We have a very close dialogue with our partners, component suppliers on this topic because we're also not the only customer who has this focus. In that sense, we're all in this together and believe it will be looking much better in the future. Last but not least, the health part. We plan to help more than 10 million hearing aids users by 2025. We will increase the awareness, the donations, the charity work around hearing, plus help those parts of the world where it's difficult to get hearing aids to get easier access to hearing aids. Very important. What did we do in 2021 on this important topic? I think some of the areas, a lot of work had been done, but of course, we were quite pleased to have confirmed the AA rating by MSCI.
We signed on to the CDP, and sorry for the acronyms. These are some of the agency that give you a score and rank you in terms of how well you do and on this sustainability agenda, and we received the B minus that we're also very pleased with. We will do our very best to improve it going forward also. It makes it easier for you guys and for investors to see, okay, are GN, is it just nice talk or are they truly actually making a difference? Last but not least, we signed up for the science-based targets that allow, of course, everything we do point towards lowering the temperature increase to maximum 1.5 degrees Celsius. Goals are in 2025, but of course we will track this every year between now and 2025.
What you see in the bottom is the performance until now at a high level. Important areas, Gitte, René and I all missed on this, so we need to take it serious. The board has missed it, so it is important and it's ingrained throughout the organization. Of course, we can see when we hire people, if we want the talent, we need to take this very serious. They don't wanna work for a company that only talk about sustainability. They want to work for a company that takes it serious. Last point, people, of course, at the end of the day, what most important part. Looking at these numbers, we do twice a year an employee survey, and the score lands at eight for total GN. I think that is a very strong score.
It's better than the benchmark. Of course, it gives us a strong indication that we do have a dedicated and engaged and motivated workforce. Of course, don't need to tell you, hugely important for GN to have that and which will allow us to be successful in the future. We also look at diversity. We look at the society. We make sure that we have a profile of a company that matches what society is at. Here we have included some of the gender statistics. Roughly half of our employee population are women. Unfortunately, only one-third ends up in manager positions. We could say, yeah, but that's because we are engineering company, so it's a little more tricky. That is probably part of it, but we don't just settle there and lean back and say that's the reason.
We actually do a lot to make sure that we can attract the right talents across the company. With that, thank you so much for your attention. This was a quick fly into it, and now I'll hand over the word to Gitte.
Thank you, Peter. Good afternoon and a warm welcome. I've been looking very much forward to today because it gives the opportunity to speak about our strategy and plans in GN Hearing. We want to outgrow the markets and restore profitability. I think in addition to talking about our plans, it is also an opportunity for you to meet a broader part of our management team. Obviously, you are familiar with myself and Morten, whom you often meet, but today you also have the opportunity to meet our head of operations, our CTO from R&D, and also our head of North America. The agenda we've put together is that I start out talking about giving a perspective on the markets and why we're confident that we can outgrow the market going forward.
Following that, Morten and Peter Håkansson, who is our Head of Operations, will talk about why and what we're doing to restore profitability. Our CTO, Brian Dam Pedersen, will talk about technology trends and how that impacts our development going forward. Last but not least, Scott Davis, our Head of North America, will talk about the market opportunities we see in the U.S. All in all, we believe we have an exciting agenda and, yeah, have really been looking forward to today. Let me start out by focusing in on our core business. We want to outgrow the market, and we've plans in place to do that already from 2022 and onwards.
We have that based on a solid roadmap for this year and obviously we'll continue to outgrow the market also in the coming years. In addition to that, we have a task to restore profitability. We're not happy with our current EBITDA margin, and we want to get back to where we were before above 20%. We wanted to today provide you a tangible timeline on that, so we aim to be back at 24% or 20% in 2024. We have solid plans in place to do that, and it's partly by growing the top line, and it's partly by optimizing the business. We have a strong focus on optimizing our supply chain, but also other parts of the business we can drive further efficiencies.
In the emerging business, which for all practical purposes is Lively, we also aim to outgrow the market. When we look at online sales in the U.S., that is forecast to grow above 30%, so also here we want to grow more than that. In the midterm, we also aim to get to break even in this part of our business. This is the financial framework that we are working within. Let me give you some perspective on the market development in 2022.
We believe that the market is back to a normal situation. We see market growth of 4%-6% in volumes, and as we've seen in the past many years, probably in the high end of that, closer to the 6% as we still see markets recover from COVID. We also expect to see headwinds on the ASP of 1%-2%, and again, probably in the higher end of that. The reason we believe that is because we see markets like India coming back. We see the NHS in the U.K. growing strongly, and they are at the lower price point. That's why we are expecting this impact on the ASP. Overall, in 2022, we expect the market to grow 4% in value.
We also continue to believe that this is an industry or a market that has very high entry barriers, both in terms of regulations, technology, and also in terms of distribution. Having that close relationship to the audiologist is absolutely pivotal. In terms of regulations, we've added one new bullet point to what we've presented previously, and that's the OTC regulation coming into force in the US. We don't expect that to materially change the core market. We do, however, think that what will happen is that over time, we'll see a greater transparency in terms of what you pay for the hearing aid and what you pay for the services provided by the audiologist.
In addition to that, we actually see the OTC regulation as a way to expand the market and reach people earlier on in the hearing journey, and I'll come back to talk more about that in a short while. We also see important trends driving our market, and some of them are I've also spoken to at many occasions before. Obviously, we live in a world where the demographics are in our favor. People are getting older and older, and we continue to see low adoption rates for hearing aids. We've seen some trends accelerate actually during the pandemic in terms of digitalization and the use of data, and certainly also in terms of consumerization. Those are important trends for us as we move ahead.
We've also seen regulatory shifts in the market or about to, with the OTC regulation coming into force in the U.S. Consequently, we also expect new competitors to enter into that part of the business. Again here, I just wanna underline that I believe that we are in a very strong position here with Jabra Enhance Plus and the collaboration between audio and hearing. What I wanted to leave you with in terms of the market is that it's a resilient market we operate in, and it's also a market with continued nice growth rates. I think that's the key takeaway in terms of the market we operate in. However, I do think we have one consistent challenge as an industry, not only as GN, but as an industry.
That is despite the innovations made over the last decade both by us, but actually also by our competitors. We are only helping one in five. That is not good enough. We've actually done quite significant research among consumers to understand why are we in this situation. What is it that prevents people from getting a hearing aid. The interesting thing is that when we do this kind of research, we see. I'm sure you're all well aware that stigma is a key reason why people don't go and buy a hearing aid. However, when we do the research, it's actually only 15% that answer that is due to stigma that they are not getting a hearing aid.
However, when we deep dive into the categories, it actually turns out that this is also driven by stigma, both associated with the hearing aid, or the form factor, but also associated with the channel. If you like, 70% of these people that we are not helping today are actually held back because of perceptions around the device or around the channel they can buy in. Obviously a huge opportunity for us to think differently, both in terms of device and channels, and that's why we are quite excited about the OTC regulation and also Jabra Enhance Plus bringing that into the market.
All in all, the way we see the market, we kind of see the total market in sort of four buckets or four categories, if you like. If we start here at the left side, we have what we call the medical touch experience. That's for the very severe hearing loss, where you typically get an implant. That's as an example, the business of Cochlear. We have what we call the high touch experience. That is our traditional market. That is by far the majority of our market, where people are getting a traditional hearing aid helped by an audiologist. That's the main part of our business and will continue to be so many years ahead. We have new categories emerging, which we call light touch experience.
That is, for instance, what we provide with Lively, where both, the acquisition, the buying experience of, getting the hearing aid, but also the fitting of the hearing aid is all done virtually. That is what we call light touch. We have what we call no touch experience, where with the OTC regulation coming into force, you can buy a hearing aid and self-fit it. Obviously here we see a huge benefit from having a strong consumer brand like Jabra in our hands. This is obviously a rough cut on the market, but it's just to inform and drive our strategic thinking. I want to share with you a little bit more flavor on the consumers and their profiles in these different categories.
If we start out looking at the bottom, and these are data from the U.S. market, you will see that the high touch experience, so the traditional experience going to the audiologist, is today 95% of the market. What we call light touch or the online is 3%, and then we have 2% in this no touch experience today. What is interesting is that when you look at the market growth, as I've just alluded to in the traditional market, we see the market growing 3%-4%. In the new market, the emerging market, and don't mistake that with China, Brazil, and so on, but the emerging business here for us is we see market growth at a much higher level.
I think what is also really interesting here is when you look at first time users, what we see in these channels, both no touch and light touch, we see a very high share of first time users. So this is a market that is really attractive to be in. I'm sure that once you started out using Jabra Enhance Plus, the likelihood that once you need a real hearing aid, that that will be from ReSound is pretty high. So we want to catch these users early on in their hearing journey. I think also what is interesting, when you look at the age, you see that the no touch, light touch people are on average 10 years younger than they are in the traditional market.
Obviously it's important in order to catch people early in their hearing journey and ensure that they start with GN and continue with GN. This informs how we think about our strategy as a company. Here we also talk about our core business, again, the majority of our business by far, which is obviously driven by innovation. Our organic hearing philosophy, which I'll talk more to in just a second. It's driven by an ambition to be the trusted partner for the audiologist. That is absolutely critical for us that we are the preferred partner for the audiologist. In the emerging business, we see an opportunity to go into new channels.
We see an opportunity to provide new form factors, like Jabra Enhance Plus, in order to catch people early in their hearing journey, and through that expand the market. We also have as an important part of our strategy to digitize and simplify the way we work, drive further efficiencies. We want to modernize hearing care. We want to modernize our supply chain, and drive efficiencies here, and we want to drive efficiencies across the company. Those are also important part of the strategy and the plan we have in place for GN Hearing in order to restore profitability. Let's deep dive into our core business. As I've already alluded to, our whole philosophy when we develop hearing aids is what we call organic hearing, and I think that sets us apart from the rest of the industry.
That's unique to us. That organic philosophy is really deeply rooted into R&D and our whole thinking. It impacts how we think about the form factor. Bear in mind that on average, our users wear their hearing aid 14 hours a day, so obviously it's critical that the hearing aids are comfortable to wear and put on your ear for that long. It's equally important for us that we provide the brain with clues on the hearing similar to what you get when you have a natural hearing. That's the core of the philosophy in ReSound ONE and M&RIE. We really want to give people the full information as if they had natural hearing. I'll just shortly show you a film with one of our users using ReSound ONE with M&RIE.
He is a very special person. He is a world champion in kayaking and is really in love with ReSound ONE and M&RIE. I spoke to him two weeks ago, and his name is Eric Jackson, and he shared with me that in addition to doing kayaking, he is also competing in fishing competitions. With ReSound ONE and M&RIE, he was actually able to hear where the fish jumped, what kind of fish it was. Apparently, you can hear that. I didn't know, but you can. He could also hear the direction or the localization, and that he had not been able to before. That's obviously really critical, and he actually won the competition.
Now he's afraid that the hearing aids will be abandoned in the future 'cause it gave him a competitive advantage. That is what we talk about when we talk about organic hearing philosophy. We really want to restore people's hearing, so they hear as we all do when we have normal hearing. Rather than me talking, maybe you should meet him.
My hearing loss has definitely affected my life, but it's not preventing me from living it. I don't hear any birds doing anything, just loud noises, a low airplane, a boat going by. Never thought of it as a handicap, and that was largely in part because my parents never treated it that way. When I first started taking my strokes, when the paddle hits the water. That's a sound that without the hearing aids you don't hear at all. The ReSound ONE is fitted with a thing called M&RIE. It stands for microphone and receiver in ear. All hearing aids have microphones on the outside. The problem was every time the wind blows, and the wind blows a lot, it makes a lot of nasty sound. With M&RIE, the wind isn't hitting it, and you don't hear that wind noise. That is just, like, unbelievable.
Both of my kids, particularly my son Dane, my oldest son, his hearing loss is almost the same as mine. My biggest achievement to date would be the happiness of my children.
Now mind you, Eric Jackson is obviously in many ways a very special person. Nevertheless, the benefits he get from ReSound ONE and M&RIE is also what we see in if I can put it like that, more ordinary people using the product. Brian will come back and show you data to confirm that. We have a very strong roadmap in place for 2022. We've already launched two new products, Jabra Enhance Plus, which is this combination between a true wireless earbud and a hearing aid in a really nice form factor. For those of you that are here in the room, you have the opportunity to see it in real life outside, and I really encourage you to do so.
We've also just launched ReSound ONE BTE Rechargeable, which is obviously an important add-on to our ReSound ONE family. In Q2, we will launch another important family member, which is, ReSound ONE in the custom form factor, also in a rechargeable version. That is obviously also a very important add to our product offering. In Q3, we come out with a new platform. We have a very strong roadmap in place for 2022, which is why I'm confident that this year we will outgrow the market. This strength in our R&D is not only in 2022, it continues into 2023 and obviously puts us in a very strong position. When we leave 2022, we are strong in co-connectivity, as you already know.
We will also by the end of 2022 actually offer rechargeability in all our form factors, and we'll continue to provide better and better sound experiences. Obviously, it doesn't stop here. We are constantly on the lookout of our next competitive edge. Brian will talk more about that. I do wanna mention one area that we are exploring, and that's in terms of the connection between hearing loss and cognitive impairments. I'm sure most of you will be aware that there is a correlation between hearing loss and cognitive impairments. If you have a severe hearing loss, you have a five-fold increased risk of developing dementia. Now we want to take that to the next level and actually use our hearing aids to provide early detection of cognitive impairments.
In order to do that, we are working with startups in this industry, Sonde Health and Ellipsis Health, developing algorithms to early on detect in your voice potentially or early signs of cognitive impairments. There are already algorithms developed to do that, and I know they've been tested on some of the presidential speeches, Ronald Reagan, for instance. I'm not talking about current presidents, but Ronald Reagan, that when you run through speeches he did as a president, you can actually detect early signs that he is about to develop Alzheimer's. We want to explore this further as a way to provide our next competitive edge. With a hearing aid, we have a device sitting on your ear listening into your voice all day.
Obviously, it's an ideal device to detect early changes in your voice. Now, in addition to providing innovation and leading the innovation game, obviously we also want to be a preferred partner. We've done research again with a number of audiologists to truly understand what does it require to be a preferred partner with them. Well, first off, you need to provide high-quality hearing aids. There's no doubt about that, and we do that. It takes more than that. We also need to provide fitting software that make their workflow and every day easy. That is critical. We also need to ensure that we have a supply chain that is efficient and things arrive on time, it's easy to work with us.
When Peter later on today talks about our supply chain and what we're doing there to improve profitability, it's certainly also to improve the service we provide to the HCPs. Last but not least, we also need to be a partner that helps them improve their business. You'll hear from Scott talk about our Accelerate program, which is a loyalty program for the audiologists in the U.S., where we help them expand their business. In order to be the preferred partner, again, you need to provide first-class hearing aids, but it takes more than that, and we are well aware, and we're working on that as well. With that, I will move on and talk about the emerging business.
Again, here we are exploring new channels, and we are exploring new form factors in order to reach people earlier on in their hearing journey. That's the background for why we acquired Lively in December last year. We see that as an opportunity to reach people online or virtually, and further build on that. We actually also see this as a way to step into the world of omni-channel because two-thirds of the people approaching Lively, they are looking for a combination of an offline and online experience, and we see the opportunity to guide those people into our Beltone network or into our ReSound customers. Scott will come back and talk more about that later on. Then last, we are also looking forward to the OTC regulation coming into force. We really believe that we have a strong competitive edge here.
Actually, what I like to call an unfair advantage. I think we have the right technology. We have a very strong brand with Jabra. The channels that will open up to us might be new to us on the hearing side, but they're very familiar to us on the audio side. Such as Best Buy and Amazon are channels we already know in the company. Here I think we are extremely well-positioned to win. Overall, I think we operate in a market that is resilient and continue to grow. I think we continue to have a strong focus on innovation and bring industry firsts, and I think we have a very strong roadmap in place for 2022. We continue to be a preferred partner for the HCPs, and we continue to work to improve our experience towards the HCP as well.
We are well-positioned to win in the emerging business, and we have solid plans in place to restore profitability. With that, I want to hand over to Morten and later on Peter Håkansson. Morten, I think you know really well. He's been with GN for nine years. Since late 2020, he's been the CFO of GN Hearing. Peter Håkansson, who will join Morten soon, joined GN Hearing a little more than around a year ago, I think. Peter brings a strong experience from Philips and also from GE HealthCare, where he's worked in the supply chain and also in quality. I think really you are adding a lot and bringing new perspectives into GN Hearing. Morten, over to you.
Thank you, Gitte.
Hello, everyone. Today, I would like to talk a little bit about our profitability model in GN Hearing and also talk about how we're gonna restore profitability to where we want to be. You all know that we have a midterm target, which is to grow above the market, and that we have a midterm target to have an EBITA margin above 20%. Today, Gitte gave us a little bit more color already, as we see on the slide here, also more tangible timeline on when do we plan and expect to be back at above 20% EBITA margin. That's 2024. It's clear our profitability model works so that it's a prerequisite for profitability at this level that we have the revenue growth that we need to sustain it.
I'll talk a little bit about it with talking about this slide here, taking a step back, comparing 2019- 2021. We all know that 2020 was, in many ways, a lost year in our industry due to COVID-19. What we show here on the top chart here is the development on EBITA. You remember we lost around DKK 1 billion on revenue, and the impact we see here, gross profit being down almost DKK 1 billion, a reflection of, in addition to the revenue loss, then also fixed part of production cost and the fact that it takes longer in our industry to adjust the gross margin than when the pandemic hit, like we saw here.
In addition, what you see on the top chart is that even as our revenue declined, we continued to invest in R&D. Really goes to what Peter Gormsen also talked to here, that innovation is in everything we do. It's at the core of our business, and we continue to invest in that. On the SD&A side, we have been very stringent on the cost we have approved, and that has obviously led to significant savings over the years. On the bottom chart, you then see the development on the margin side. Obviously, big swings we saw, but important to understand that this business here is really important driver for the profitability is really the growth side.
With that, as an offset, as a starting point, you can say then, as we look at our guidance for the year 2022 that we're in right now. Remember, we guided around 14% EBITA margin. The DKK 400 million savings on the SD&A side, you can say not all of that is fully sustainable going forward because we came out of a pandemic where we had lower launch costs, we had lower customer events, and so on. Thereby, factoring that in travel and all of this coming back, well, then that saving is not gonna be sustainable.
In addition, you know that we guide for this year in our core business, a revenue growth corridor of 5%-10%, so DKK 270 million in revenue, approximately. Of course, where we come in with that, in that corridor is also impacting the margin level. Then the OpEx impact, so we are taking a number of different initiatives there as well to really drive up profitability, take out cost. Initiatives on the revenue side is of course launching new technology. Gitte also showed you the launches we have in store, what we already have done. In addition to that, we are taking price increases also now, and that's partly on our hearing aids, but also on the ancillary products.
I know you all follow the space very closely. I know that's something we see in the market overall right now. With that, I think I just wanted to help some of you with your models. I know some of you are struggling a little bit with how to think about our Q1 numbers. As a reminder, you know that we have given this commentary that you should expect Q1 to deliver low single-digit organic growth and low single-digit EBITA margin as well. This is really due to the launches that we have talked about coming late in the year, and we have launch costs, but not a lot of revenue from these launches in the quarter.
In addition, of course, you know the seasonality in our business, which means that Q1 is always a low quarter. That's sort of key parameters in addition to that these cost-saving initiatives, I'll get back to in a moment, they start really taking effect from Q1 onwards. That's how to think about it. With that, I would like to look a little bit further into the future than the next week and look onwards until 2024. Here we show that partly some of the profitability lift we need to see to get from the 14% where we are guiding to be this year to the more than 20%, that there's gonna be different pockets to that.
Because it's clear we are not in any way satisfied with having a profitability of 14%. We want to really drive that profitability up, and we have taken a number of measures. On the growth side, new product launches and of course commercial execution being at the center of everything we do. Scott will talk more to that later on.
Here, this is really where we're also gonna see impact from the pricing initiatives that we have already initiated and that is being implemented in different countries at different stages, but implemented as we speak. Then on the gross margin side, Peter will talk more to that in a moment, but it's different initiatives all the way from, you can say, reducing returns, freight, optimizing packaging, and of course then the whole supply chain overall, transforming the supply chain. I'll let Peter talk to it, and then we can get back to it. It's also reducing the number of SKUs we have in the market by being more, you can say, aggressive on the phase out of old technology.
On the OpEx side, that's really well-tested initiatives from indirect procurement initiatives to simplifying the organization at large, and then this whole digitization of the customer journey that we have talked about. Just to give a little bit of comments, flavor around that, it's we are in the healthcare space overall. I know a lot of you know that space very well. It's a manual space, very conservative traditionally. I suppose you can say the hearing aid side is the most conservative part even of that space as well. We get a lot of our orders in from manual handwritten notes on faxes and emails and via phone and so on.
Digitizing that journey is something that partly we believe is gonna generate more happy customers, and partly also be able to reduce manual errors and take out costs as well. That's just to give a little bit of flavor around these initiatives that we have undertaken, and it's clear we have a very detailed financial plan setting this out, and we are comfortable with where we are at the moment. It's clear when you do these changes, you get wiser along the way. Different initiatives have given a little bit different return than you thought. We of course allow ourselves to get wiser, but we are content with where we are right now in that development. With that, Peter, I'm actually gonna hand over to you.
Thanks, Morten. Yeah, what I'll try to do is give a little bit of a color to some of the initiatives Morten mentioned. Gitte mentioned I've been here a year. It's been a pretty interesting year to be in supply chain. You know, it's probably one that goes into the history books, at least in my own CV. I started in March, and this, you know, first effect was the immediate end of the transition period on Brexit, then COVID acceleration, component acceleration, new VAT in Europe, if I stay in Europe, to a continuous challenge on volatility in every way you can think. That was actually a good thing coming new into role because I had such opportunity to deep dive together with my team and our supply chain, understand what's working, what's not working.
Overall, we found it to be fairly resilient, but quite complex. This is one of the more simplified charts that we could put together. If I draw the lines, it becomes complicated. We are now looking into simplifying this. We will be sharing more throughout the year, but we have very clear, concrete plans in place, and they've started to be executed upon. The other one is it allowed me to also rebuild the team. We have in my team 50% are new in the role. Many internal young talent we were able to promote. It's been a lot of effort clarifying accountabilities, driving a new, you know, slightly different behavior, customer first, understanding how do we compare to others, not only in our industry, but other industries. You know, that has continued.
That's obviously a continuous journey we're in. We started to simplify, standardize, automate, and digitize throughout our sites. We have a mixed model. We will continue to have a mixed model. Ratios may change over time, but we like the mixed model. Finally, very close collaboration with key accounts. We're looking at co-planning, cost to serve, ordering, returns, and launches. We're really getting more and more in tune with our customers, and that drives a very different dynamics within my team. The other one is, obviously for me, has been looking into the scale of GN. You saw my CV. I come from fairly larger companies, but I've been very fortunate to see, together with GN, we have the scale we need to do the things that we used in the past.
The other one was the cost efficiency of our designs and our products. We know our features are great, but how cost-effective are they from an operations standpoint? What I've done is, you know, together with my team, we tear down our own products. Obviously, we know them by heart, but we looked at our competitors. There were a couple of things we liked, some things we liked a lot in ours. We were working through very detailed things. Just to highlight, we looked how many soldering points, how many PCBs, how many layers in the PCB and the copper, layers of copper in the PCB. Then you get into the dilemma, obviously, less layers, cheaper, but bigger form factor. Those are the dimensions, you know, the paradoxes we've been looking at. We've been very fortunate.
I think, I feel very good. We had a review last week of our new platform for next year. We feel very good. I think we've taken the best of the breed from outside the company and inside the company and have a very robust design coming through. The question, of course, is how do we make this repetitive and scalable? It's not a one-time effect. For this, I needed a framework. Peter showed earlier there's a very good collaboration between the two R&D teams in GN. We were very happy to see that there was a fantastic framework in GN Audio. We just had to take it. We stole it with pride almost. René was very happy about sharing. What we're looking at is, we call it, you know, it's a basic design for manufacturing process, but it's quite intuitive.
We're looking at what the choice of material. Is it easy to break? Is it easy to deform? Is it flat, robust? You know, not easy, you know, difficult to damage. How many assembly directions? Is it one? We like vertical, easy to automate. Two, we can automate to some extent. Many different directions, it will require manual assembly. Guiding. Is it self-guided? Do we have lines and guides or is it in, you know, blind assembly? Again, blind assembly, very, very hard to automate. Finally, on fixation. I don't like glue necessarily. Screws, heat stakes a little bit better, but snaps, great.
This is the methodology that we now use as we go through the different gates, and we challenge obviously between R&D and operations and our sourcing side to just make sure we get what is a good compromise. Sometimes it's a compromise, although I usually hate compromise, but sometimes it's a give and take. How do we make sure we get the best features relative to the cost effectiveness of our design? Then we color code it. I'm obviously not gonna do this on the left-hand side, but this is where we stand with this design. Again, the process is simple to explain, simple to train, and this is something we use throughout. You see some still red for our next platform we have to blue.
There's a component we have to glue, so be it. You know, it's for now the best choice. With this, we will have a very cost-effective product once we start building this. The other one, you know, I shared that I got this from Audio, but there's a few other things that we're now able to also get from our colleagues but also share back. One has been on, and I shared a little bit the complexity in our supply chain, lots of Excel. Very difficult to do what if scenarios. So if I get a request, can I take this order or we're planning to bid on this, can I do that? Today, it takes me two days on Excel spreadsheets.
It's given the volatility and the complexity, we're looking to digitize, and for some of you who follow the classification that Gartner does on software and applications, I always like the Magic Quadrant. Audio happens to have one, a supply chain app for this, and it's a hard to implement thing, but Audio has done it for 2.5 years already. We're now starting to implement this into Hearing. It's a great tool. It changes not only planning processes and so on, but how I can organize my teams around this. I would not have been able to go to Gitte and ask for this had I been alone. Again, great effort and support from the team in Audio.
We also, as part of the simplification, consolidated our freight team to one for the company. We did that back in September, and we see that with a bigger voice into the freight forwarders, rates that are becoming more competitive. We're also giving back. We have the indirect sourcing team. I hope, by the way, René, two years from now, that there will be a little bit more balance in the sharing here. We are having one indirect sourcing team, hosted under Hearing, covering our indirect expenses through the company. This is a bit of a flavor of, you know, how we are becoming much stronger working together. The opportunities I think are obvious, and this is a good start on a journey on the operations side.
With this, I'll give it back to you, Morten.
Yeah. Thank you, Peter.
Thank you.
All right. I trust you found that insightful understandings of the very sort of practicals how we work with it. That leads me to talk to these DKK 150 million in non-recurring items that we have also included in our guidance for this year. It's clear we do not like non-recurring items. We also do not like to have a profitability of 14% and therefore we simply decided we want to move very fast from that profitability level we are today to the 20% where and above 20% where we want to be.
Thereby we said we speed that up and we also wanted to give you guys the transparency that we also have internally to measure the underlying profitability, how are we really faring. Of course, DKK 150 million, a little bit more color on that. It's a big chunk. You can say expect more than half in the first half of the year. You know, these costs are gonna be related to redundancies. It's gonna be related to also simplifying our supply setup. Peter talked to it or hinted it at least. It's around automating, digitizing our business model and the consequences of that.
I know that a few of you are also experiencing right now it's a hot job market, and some of you are also getting new jobs and we just see it across the markets where we operate. It's a really hot job market, so please bear with us. We will give you more details as we incur the cost. When we report the quarters, we will also give some granularity onto where these costs sit, more detail in the P&L. We want to be able to make the decisions, we want to be able to drive the change and operate the business on an ongoing basis. Therefore, there is a limit to how much we can share early on, even though of course we understand that you would like the transparency.
Trust us, we will share it once the cost is incurred and we feel that we can operate under the circumstance. With that, midterm targets, they are fully intact. We expect in the core business to grow above the market. Gorm mentioned it already, but in the core business, we see a unit increase of 4%-6% per year and an ASP decline of 1%-2% per year in the midterm, and an EBITA margin above 20% in the core business. On the emerging business, which is Lively, we also expect to outgrow the market. As Gitte mentioned already, that market we expect to continue to grow above the 30% mark.
It's clear we bought with Lively a super cool business, fantastic business model, with high NPS scores and that business really needs scale to be able to break even, you can say. Therefore, you can say we're not gonna buy a business like that and then starve it by being too cost-focused in the short term. We want to allow that business to really grow to its fullest potential. Therefore, the commentary we gave here in the midterm is that it will be profitable in the midterm. That's our midterm targets. They're intact. With this, I'll invite Peter and of course, Gitte to the stage, and then let's take the Q&A.
Yes. Thank you, Morten. Yes, I can see we have a lot of questions. Let's start with you, Maja.
Thank you very much for giving me the opportunity. How many questions can I ask?
Let's start with two.
Two. Okay. Great. Well, thank you very much for the presentation. Now, looking at your target of 20% EBITA margin for 2024, a lot hangs obviously on top line growth. We haven't really seen a great performance the last two years. If we, you know, maybe it's a bit difficult to dissect because all markets had a different kind of performance. If we look at the markets where we can compare it wasn't really above market, and that's largely due to VA and to Costco. Now, these channels are still present. Can you tell us how you think you're going to turn that around? Or is it by now so meaningless that it really doesn't matter what is happening from that perspective? That's number one.
The second question is, we've seen over the last two years, Lively has cut the pricing. I think it was last year where there was quite a predominant cut in the pricing of Lively. Is that the reference within the U.S. market Costco? If you wanna compete in the non-high touch market, you have to look at what Costco is doing as a reference point? Or can you explain to us why the price cut came through? Thank you.
Let me start out talking about the growth in the market at all. You're right. I mean, when we look at our past performance, especially last year, we didn't grow according to the market, and we were facing headwind, especially in Costco and VA, as you alluded to. On the rest, we actually kept or increased our market share. You'll hear more from Scott talking later on about the U.S. market today. Clearly, VA and Costco remain important for us. They account for 30% of the U.S. market in volumes, as we'll share later on. They continue to be important channels. I think they are channels where it's really important to have, you know, constantly new offerings of products. As you know, we had a hiccup in our roadmap last year.
Obviously coming back with a strong roadmap in 2022 and onwards will help us also grow in those channels. In addition to that, it's obviously important to grow in the rest of the market as well, and we have plans in place to do that. On your second question regarding pricing in Lively, we or they, as they were running the business last year, we did not. They, I guess, were looking at the competitive offerings also from Eargo and adjusted their pricing to that. Good. Let's go to Christian Sørup Ryom.
Yes. Thank you. A couple of questions from me as well. First to you, Morten, now you've given us sort of your margin target for 2024. As I hear you're saying that the cost initiatives and the supply chain initiatives that you're doing this year is very much front-loaded. The question is really how should we think about the bridge from 2022- 2024? Is all the cost streamlining done as we go out of 2022, and it's only a matter of sort of getting the incremental top line from '23 into '24? Or so basically, how will the phasing be of the step-up from the this year's guidance to the 20%? That's the first question. Second question is to the emerging business.
One of your competitors also has a somewhat similar business in hear.com. They, of course, have revenues in excess of DKK 1 billion and are still loss-making. Is that the kind of revenue base that we should be thinking about when sort of considering when will this kind of business be profitable? Just as a tack on to that, I saw on your slide that you had Jabra Enhance also under the emerging business. Would that product report as part of the emerging business? Thank you.
I can kick off answering your questions, Christian, good questions, I think. First on, it's clear we are not guiding on 2023 today. But what I can say is some of these initiatives, Peter talked to it also. It takes some time before they kick in, and before you really see that impact on the gross margin, that impact we need to see there. Therefore it is not as simple as saying that it will just bounce right up. You will see that development over time, and it's also gonna be a function of how it works with sort of rolling out, phasing out old products and so on.
I cannot give you the guidance for 2023 here, but of course our storyline would not make a lot of sense if 2023 was gonna be either below 14 or above 20, but I cannot give you more commentary on it. It's clear we front load as much as we can because we wanna see that impact in the business. As you also mentioned in your question, I mean, it's also a revenue game. Revenue needs to come back as well to allow that profitability level. Do you wanna answer for Lively?
Yeah, I'm happy to do that. In terms of Lively, I mean, our starting point was the turnover of DKK 114 million last year. I think we've disclosed that. We aim to outgrow the market, and we're assuming the market grows around 30%, and we wanna do better than that. We've also said that we aim to reach a break even midterm. I guess you can do the math and assume that it will be with a turnover that is less than the number you mentioned for hear.com. I think what is really important here is to drive scale, and we already know that there are two-thirds of the approaches to Lively that is not catered for today.
That we will be able to cater for by driving these into the combination of an online and offline experience, and Scott will explain more about that later on. I also think what is important is that when we look at Lively, it's still early days of the business, so we haven't seen that many repeat customers yet. That's obviously really critical, and what's really critical about Lively is that they have NPS scores above 70. They are really known for the care they give. The likelihood that if you start with Lively, you continue with Lively is very, very high, and over time, that will also drive customer acquisition costs down, which is a critical parameter to look at.
Both additional scale and return of customers will allow us to reach break-even in the midterm.
Enhance Plus.
Yeah. Enhance Plus in terms of how we. When we talk about our emerging business in terms of our guidance, it is only Lively. Jabra Enhance Plus revenue will be reported as part of our core business. Let's go down to Veronika.
Thank you, guys. I have two questions, please. The first one is just trying to understand a little bit of the gross margin development in the hearing business. Obviously, it's a pretty significant compression, Morten, that you talked about. I get the volume deleverage, but it seems to me like there are other things happening here, whether it's ASP, whether it's mix, whether it's return rates. Maybe you can give us a little bit more color for how we've gotten from that 69% gross margin that the business had consistently for a long time before COVID to where we are today. I guess, you know, to get back to that 20% margin, is your expectation that you get back to 69%, or can you get there with a little bit less?
I think it's the piece that I'm still not sure I understand, and I get the color and some of the things you're doing around efficiency, but obviously you were able to have a 69% margin before COVID started. Maybe just help us understand what's changed there. Then maybe a bigger picture Gitte for you, and this might be better after this next section, but I'm gonna ask it anyhow, which is the product life cycle philosophy. Obviously, if I look at the big thing that changed when you launched M&RIE is there were no follow-on form factors for 18 months, which is very, very unusual in the industry. Is this simply the by-product of some of the own goals that you had in the organization?
Is your product life cycle philosophy changing at all, on the sort of more frequent cadence? You alluded to, we have lots of exciting things for 2023. Maybe help us think through that product cadence for not just this year, where you've given us great color, but also for 2023. Thanks.
I can maybe start out on the gross margin point. It's clear our gross margin has declined from these high 60s to sort of 60-63, that kind of level. There's a couple of items there. Partly it's the fixed part of production cost that you also called, and then there is the mix effect. The developments that we have seen in the U.S. business, of course, hurts the gross margin. We see the VA market share loss there, and then, of course, the Costco development with the ASP decline there really, you know, just impacting us.
We have also talked about divesting these 200 stores in Beltone, also something that hurts our gross margin. I think these are some of the key moving parts. Overall, the mix effects just really impact the gross margin. As we look further ahead, we don't give guidance on the gross margin, as you know, right? We focus on that guidance on the EBITDA margin, but it's clear with the initiatives we take, both from price increase to... Although, of course, that's a tailwind, and there's the headwind from the input cost that we also see.
Of course, we see different sort of puts and takes there, and then all these initiatives on the supply chain side, that is something that we of course expect to have an impact also on the gross margin. That's clear.
In terms of product cadence, I'm sure Brian will talk to that as well. I mean, it is not unintentional that it took 18 months between the launch of ReSound ONE and that we come with a follow-up. If anything, we want to shorten the product cadence. It's not our intention going forward. On the contrary. Yes. Should we go to Mattias?
Thank you so much. Mattias Häggblom, Handelsbanken. So given the bridge Morten showed us for margins and the importance of growth, assuming you end up in the low end of your revenue guidance for the year at 5% or alternatively you end up in the high end at 10%, why is there not a range for the EBITA margin, EBITDA margin target as well for the year instead of the 14%? Sounds like there should be a big swing between the two scenarios. Secondly, to the work that Peter and his team now is doing on design for manufacturing, supply chain digitalization, that GN Audio already had in place since 2019. I guess the question to some extent goes back to questions we get often from investors around what synergies and logic there is between the group and the two.
Why have this not happened before in hearing? I'm sure Peter is not the one to answer, but, you know, in parallel when Audio implemented it, and how should we think about that going forward?
Yeah. First off on the range and how we give the guidance, you can say it's probably a bit more art than science in how to set the guidance. It's clear everything else being equal at the higher end should lead to a higher margin. Clearly what we are implicitly stating is that at the 5%, we can also get to the margin guidance. It's of course a question of the mix of the top line and how we see that market developing.
You know the industry. You know that we can easily get some empty calories on the top line, and we need to drive that mix, and that's why new product launches are so important.
Well, I think in terms of the collaboration between Audio and Hearing since I joined a little more than two years ago, I mean, René and I and the two teams have been working really closely together, and closer and closer every day. I think that is really important. I think in addition to that, I mean, we've always been on the forefront of innovation in GN Hearing. Now we also wanna be on the forefront of manufacturing. Let's go to Niels.
Yes, thank you. It's Niels from Carnegie. I have a question about your omni-channel. Seems like you are well underway to create an omni-channel in the U.S. How about Europe? I'm aware that online sales isn't really a big topic in Europe yet, but what are your thinking in terms of creating an omni-channel in Europe and to avoid you becoming too depending on selling to Amplifon in Europe?
Well, I think that is a really good question. I mean, we made the acquisition of Lively in December, as you know, and Lively is focusing in on the U.S. I guess our philosophy is first we take Manhattan, then we take Berlin, in a sense that we focus in on U.S. first and making that successful. That's our thinking for now. Obviously, we are also well aware of the opportunities in Europe or other parts of the world as well, so it is on our radar. But for now, we really wanna concentrate on making it successful in the U.S. Go ahead, Oliver.
Okay. Thank you. It's Oliver Metzger, ODDO BHF. Two questions on your price increases, your targeted price increases. First, how to think about normally you have the cycle with some positive price increases at launch and then basically stronger price pressure. Do you just want to manage the cycle better or really do you really want to increase prices? That brings me also to my second question about your customers. I can imagine if I talk to Amplifon and say, "Oh, GN wants to increase prices," they will start to smile. If you think more about your broader customer base, is it more price increases at independents or how do you think the perception of the big box retailers might be?
That's a very good and insightful question. I think, Oliver, it's clear pricing is very detailed work. It's dissecting every market for market and see where we can get the price increase. We see very different inflation levels in different markets also. You all know very high inflation in the U.S. right now. It's clear the trend in our industry has always been when you launch new products, that's when you take the price increase, and then it sort of trickles down over time.
With north of 7.5, 8% inflation we see in the market now, we think that the market is also ready for it, and we also see that from competition, and that's why we go for it. We of course cannot comment on individual customers. But it's clear it's really a detailed work. And you have also different negotiation power in different parts of your customer landscape than others, right? So I think that's as much as we can say about it. But it's also, I think it's important, it's both on the core hearing aid products, but then also on the ancillary products where we can also do something.
Good. Maybe we have time for one or two more questions before the break. I can see a lot of hands. Let's go down to Carsten Lønborg Madsen.
Thank you. Just, Peter, a question to you. On slide 48, you have this very nice color-coded heat map, where 2023, it looks like the new hearing aid will fix more or less everything. Is that a sign of the new platform you're going to launch late 2022, that platform will be able to deliver this kind of color-coded heat map in terms of productivity gains? And also, even if you didn't really want to talk too much about your current portfolio and how it looks with the color coding there, could you maybe tell us a little bit about where do you see the biggest improvement potential? Which of the categories will you improve most?
Starting with the launches in the first part of next year, we will see this and scale it up. The answer is yes to that. Look, let's call it a huge improvement to or let's call it an improvement from where we are today, and we will continue on this path and continuously improve. The areas where we, I think we'll improve the most is on the assembly processes. In certain areas, being able to do, you know, design and dual components and play a little bit more competition and supplier base and also drive, you know, improved supply reliability. But you know, in short, it's going to be primarily on the assembly process.
A final question? Doesn't seem to be the case. Oh, sorry, Veronika, I couldn't see you. Sorry.
I will make this really quick one actually for the first session, for Peter, for you. You obviously confirmed the guidance for 2022, but I'm just curious if you can confirm the first quarter expectations as well and the phasing that you have had for the development of revenues for the year and profits, whether that still is on track.
Yeah. Thanks for the question. What I confirmed was the full year guidance, and we'll come back and give you a bit more color. I'm sure you refer to the COVID situation in southern China, and René will talk more into this in the afternoon. What I confirmed was full year, so I've not confirmed the Q1 per se. We'll come back and give you more details on that, Veronika.
Maja, did you have a final question as well? Okay.
I'm not so sure it's gonna be that easy to answer. Just quickly, we're talking about the inflationary headwinds that you're seeing on the cost side, but it is for everyone out there becoming more expensive to live, if you wanna say so. Have you started to see an impact on market growth? Has there been any indication that customers are maybe a bit more choosy on the pricing levels? Do you believe that this kind of inflationary environment could actually be a nice feeding ground for your emerging business?
I think it's a really good question. I think sort of, traditionally, if you like, in the hearing aid space, also going back to the financial crisis in 2008, we didn't really see a significant impact on the market back then. Whether we do this time around, there's also still some, I guess tapering off of COVID, maybe that has a different impact. We haven't really seen it yet. Obviously if it should happen, I guess it's a good place to be that we have an alternative offering, like we do with the Enhance Plus and other products coming into the OTC space. We haven't seen it yet.
Good. I think that was the final question for this first session here.
I think what we'll do now is just to have a short break. We will be back here 10 minutes past two o'clock. There will be coffee offsite, and then just be back here, and we will restart the session with the GN Audio.
Good. Welcome back after the very short break here we had. We are ready to continue with the GN Hearing and with our CTO, Brian Dam Pedersen. Gitte Aabo, over to you.
Well, thank you, Henriette. I just wanted to take a minute to introduce Brian. Brian has been with GN Hearing since 1999, so I guess close to 23 years. Brian is our Chief Technology Officer, and he is, among other qualifications, the mastermind behind 2.4 GHz. I think in my mind, Brian is a strong testimonial to the fact that the innovation capabilities in GN Hearing is intact. Over to you, Brian.
Thank you, Gitte. I just wanted to start here with this diagram again and explain a little bit what is the role of R&D in all this. When we look at the market, Gitte also mentioned that there is, you could say, the license to play at all in this is high quality products. You cannot sell a hearing aid that doesn't work today because all hearing aids are fairly good devices. On top of that, you need to come with unique design, innovation and technology. That is what drives the churn in the market, and that is what we try to supply in R&D. High quality products that also deliver unique features to the end users. I was at a similar event as this back in 2016.
I actually believe a number of you were in the room back then also, where we discussed where do we want to take our future development. The discussion was also similar back then. Is the hearing aid becoming a commodity and so on and so forth. We laid out four areas that really was the focus for us in the coming time back then, which was a strong focus on hearing and noise, which today also remains the number one problem for hearing impaired. There was strong focus on the form factor and then of course on our connectivity story. Last but not least, data as an asset in how we think devices. We were not able to put too much story on these points back then because we were just embarking on that journey.
I would just like to take you a little bit through what has happened in six years or five years, because I believe it was in June since then. Looking at hearing and noise first, that has been a really strong push for us to improve in that. First with LiNX Quattro and then again with ReSound ONE that was launched back in 2020. There's two elements to that. Of course, the unique M&RIE solution that we have developed and that I'll get back to because we have some new interesting data we would like to share there. Also on a feature we call Ultra Focus, which is a feature that really allows you to get a lot of speech enhancement in very noisy environments.
We use that in across our entire lineup now with our new BTEs in the custom products that will come later in the year and also in Jabra Enhance Plus, which you could say all shares this common platform of noise management that we have developed for ReSound ONE. On the form factor, of course, we have been looking at wearing comfort and onboarding with M&RIE. That is much easier for people to get used to than normal hearing aids. We will also get a little bit back to data on that.
Also, of course, in a new form factor for Jabra Enhance Plus, where we are taking the hearing aid design and cramming into a very small and discreet form factor. On the connectivity and data, that ties very closely together. Usually, when we talk connectivity, we think about audio streaming from phones. Equally important these days is actually how do we effectively get data communicated to and from the hearing aid, both in a fitting situation, but also when we do monitoring and collection of data along the way. We launched our tele-audiology platform back in 2017 with ReSound Smart 3D, and we expanded on that in the beginning of the pandemic with our ReSound Assist Live. That is also the foundation for the work we are now doing with Lively.
Without a strong focus on connectivity, there would be no online hearing sales because there needs to be a way to get these hearing aid fitted. To build on that, we have put focus on our apps also to get what is today actually best-in-class user ratings on the apps, but also our radio platform to ensure that we actually when we measure ourselves against our friends in GN Audio, we actually get as good ear-to-pocket performance as we get on the headsets because it doesn't help us to on a Jabra Enhance Plus to measure against the hearing aid. That is not the benchmark. The benchmark is our headsets, of course. Continued collaboration with Google and Apple, and I'll get a little bit back to that of course, has also been important to build on this story.
Last but not least, Jabra Enhance Plus has required us to build new skills also, and we are really proud to see the FDA clearance of our self-fitting procedure for that device as well. That is, you could say, the things that we have been spending our R&D time on for the better part of the last five years. Going back to talking about ReSound ONE, that is still the, you could say, the platform for us to for delivering great features. We have been talking a lot about M&RIE, and we will continue to talk a lot about M&RIE because we believe it's a really nice and distinguishing feature. But there are other features in that device.
If we start from that point of view, we have gotten the question, okay, you talk so much about M&RIE, what happens with the BTEs and custom products because they don't have a microphone in the ear? Well, first of all, the custom products actually do. That is sort of the nature of a custom product, having the microphone in the ear. But other than that, we have the noise management features, all access directions that allows you to be able to follow what is going on in the environment around you at the same time as you can focus on a speaker in front of you. Then as I mentioned, the Ultra Focus feature that really allows you to home in and follow a conversation even in very difficult environments.
I'm one of the persons who actually have some use of our Jabra Enhance Plus. I spent a little too much time in very, very loud small rooms playing a little too loud rock music when I was younger. I was recently at a party where there was big loud speaker sitting literally here, and I was sitting at a table and trying to have a conversation. That was really not possible without the devices. With the Jabra Enhance Plus in, I was actually able to have a conversation with the people across from me. They then had a problem, but at least I could follow what they said. Then we have M&RIE, which continues to be important to us because of the spatial perception.
If we look at what we have done with that, it is really remarkable results. I'd like to give you a little bit of input to how the ear and localization actually works. I think most people know that you have two cues. There is something about level of sound, and there's something about arrival of time. You could sort of say, if a sound is louder to one ear than it is to the other, then it's sort of coming from over here. If the sound hits one ear before it hits the other, then it's also coming from over here. That's simply due to the propagation of sound. What most people don't know is that those two cues don't work when you're on axis, of course.
When you're trying to distinguish what is front and back, the level that reaches the ears are the same, and the time is also the same because it's either directly in front of you hitting the ear at the same time or directly behind you hitting the ear at the same time. How do you then know as a normal hearing person that the sound is in front of you or behind you? Well, that is why we have the outer ear. The outer ear will color the sound differently depending on whether it comes from up here or back here. Those small cues or colors in the sound is what we can preserve with M&RIE.
That is, when we take in and fit people with a traditional microphone placement up here, even with the algorithms that we have there, it is almost like flipping a coin whether they can say the sound comes from the front or back. There is an error of around 30% there. When we then fit them with M&RIE, that immediately dropped to 20%, which is already a good result. What we then did was to send people back for four months to wear M&RIE for those four months, and then we came back and measured again. We saw a further drop down to the 12.2% that we see here. That is really incredible because we didn't change their pathology. They still have the same hearing loss.
We didn't change the hearing aid settings either. They just got used to the hearing aid, and then the brain relearned how to listen to these cues. That is the first, you could say, data that we have that actually shows that treating the hearing loss properly, you should not only look at the data that you get at the initial fit. It actually takes some time to get used to this, but it's also possible to rebuild these lost functions in the brain that happens when you go with an untreated hearing loss for an extended period of time. This is data that we find really remarkable and really important here, and we have not seen data with anything but M&RIE on this before. Back to the connectivity story. That continues to be important to us.
We see more and more people asking for having normal headset functionality in the hearing aids. That is actually what they come and ask for. Having something that connects to your phone is no longer, you could say, a feature that is unique to any hearing aid company. It's something that people have come to expect, and that's also why we are so proud of being able to continue to work with Apple and now also bring out the headset functionality on the hearing aid so that you can pick up a call through normal voice pickup. This is also an area where we have had really great collaboration with our friends at Audio because picking up sound on the ear is not easy. The microphones we have sit behind the ear, and there's a shadow from there.
Getting the levels right, knowing how to avoid echo when you go out on the phone line, all these things are things that hearing aid companies are not used to. They are not maybe even aware of in many cases. It has been a great collaboration for us to be able to spar with the audio guys and go and say, "Okay, how do we actually work with this? How do you measure this? How can we build a setup that works for a hearing aid when a hearing aid needs to work like a headset?" Going into the new Bluetooth Low Energy standard, that collaboration, of course, is going to be further deepened. This is just our view on where the standard is going.
We cannot comment very specifically on these dates because the work in the Bluetooth SIG is under NDAs, but this is based on public knowledge. We expect this to be implemented in products sometimes during 2023. The standard is not ratified yet, and we expect that to happen this year. We are really excited about this because this is the first time that a hearing aid will become a first-class citizen in the Bluetooth ecosystem. What does that mean? That means that for every single use case we have, whether it's Bluetooth from your TV, it's Bluetooth from your phone, it's in your car, it's on an audio-video call to a loudspeaker, all of these connectivity scenarios, they will also contain a hearing aid part.
That is simply built into the standard that there is a way for the hearing aid to participate in that. There's not a difference anymore between being a small, very constrained, very small batteries device or a big earphone in terms of how we connect to the phones. That is really exciting to us because that first of all means that the adoption of this will not have to be pulled by hearing aids. It's not something where we have to say, "Okay, hearing aids will be the reason that you implement this." No hearing aids is one of the reasons. The other reasons are all the great new features that is delivered by the standard. Secondly, this pickup of this will be very fast.
Secondly, it also means that we can go out and provide a great experience across all our products and don't have to explain that, with this phone you can do this, and with that phone you can do the other thing. We are very active in this work, and we are very looking forward to show you more on this. Due to the NDAs we have, we can't really talk too much more about that today. I would like to talk about the data. As we said, we started in 2017 with the tele-audiology solution we rolled out.
In that was also a program where we go out with user consent and ask them, "Can we borrow your usage data?" Every 24 hours for people who have signed up for this, we will get a log from the hearing instrument, how long it has been on, which sound environments have you been in, how have you used the programs, how have you adjusted the volume, and a lot of other data that you can collect as telemetry from the hearing aids. Today, we have around 36 million data records from around 1.5 million users that we have collected in this program. We are able to take a lot of learnings from that data, both on how the devices are faring in the field, but also who are our users actually and how are they behaving.
We are able to say, for example, that we have around two-thirds in our database today with mild to moderate hearing loss. That's of course important for us to know when we design a device like Jabra Enhance Plus or when we talk NPS, where these are in the target group. We also have a third with severe hearing loss that needs more than what we can deliver with these solutions, and therefore it's still important for us to do our BTEs and our ITE products. We can also look at satisfaction in an objective way, and we write here NPS after second visit is 90%. How do we get to that number?
Well, we look at the people who were fitted with M&RIE at the first visit, and then we look at their return visits after typically 30 days. Then we say, "Okay, there's basically three options here. Either they will return their device, or they will switch to a different type of receiver because M&RIE was not for them, or they will stay with M&RIE." More than 90% stay with M&RIE, and that's a really huge number. The people who get M&RIE are very, very satisfied. Eric up there is not alone in that. We are also using this to get, you could say, the data right in right-sizing our devices.
When we talk about miniaturization and custom devices and rechargeability, there is an inherent conflict because you want your custom device to be as small as possible, and the biggest component we have in our custom device is the battery. On the other hand, you also want a battery that can last through a full day, of course. What we have used is to go in and look at this data and look at the prospect users of our custom devices and say, "What is the day of that user, both in terms of environments and use, but also in terms of how long do they use it?" We know our average user is around 14 hours. At the 19th percentile, this curve is fairly steep. The 19th percentile is 16 hours.
That allows us to then right-size the battery and make sure that we don't over-engineer our products and make them too big just to be able to brag about a very big lifetime here. There's a lot of other insights we can get from this, and we have actually. I'll get back to two more examples on how we have used this a little more actively a little later in the presentation. Let me just touch a little bit more again on the Jabra Enhance Plus because that is a device that is really different. We say it's a hearing first earbud, right? And what does that mean? Well, I saw some commentary on the net. That probably means they have a bit of amplification and then everything good.
That's very important for us to say, that is not what it's about. It's about people who over the last 10 years maybe have experienced that restaurants are getting louder, it's getting harder to hear what is going on because all these young people, they are of course very, very loud when they sit in the restaurants. Like me. The real thing is that it's not the restaurants getting louder. It's about you hearing worse, and it's about getting a hidden hearing loss that really can't be measured, but where you lose the ability to discriminate speech and noise. That's a very known effect. The way we treat that is by these speech-enhancing algorithms and technologies that we have from the hearing aid world.
Yes, there's gain in this, and yes, you fit this to your normal hearing profile, but it is first and foremost about being able to hear better noise. That is the situational use that we talk about when we say situational use for this device. It has been very important for us that this is small and discreet when it's worn. That's because if you look at AirPods, for example, when you run around with those in the ears, they do not scream, "Please come and talk to me," right? They sort of signal, "Yeah, I'm listening to music, so please don't bother me right now." It has been important for us that even though this is an earbud style, that it.
When you wear it and have it in the ears, it sits flush so that you can't really see that you're wearing it when you sit in front of a person, because then you don't get this blockage of saying, "Yeah, you're wearing something in your ear, so you don't want to talk to me." Gitte also touched upon this market access here. This is sold in the U.S. under the self-fit regulation that Bose pioneered. We're actually proud to be number two in a category that was really defined by one of our competitors. This is the way we can put that device to market today.
Of course, this was made also for the OTC, so we are really looking forward to see that market open up and be able to sell this in more channels like we are in Japan today. That is just how you should think about what we are doing with the Jabra Enhance Plus here. We are not trying to make a cheap hearing aid.
We are trying to make a device that actually help people who do not want a hearing aid today, who are in this group that it's not time yet, it's not for me, which is really another way of saying, "Yeah, the hassle with a real hearing aid is really not worth the benefit that I get yet." A little bit back to what we will be doing in the coming time here, and that will be driven very much by an effort in AI that we already have. First and foremost in our sound processing, that is something that everybody are looking into in the industry, and so are we. We're not ready to share yet exactly what we'll be doing there, but trust me, there will be great benefits coming out here.
We can talk a little bit more about what we are doing with the big data AI that we are running on our data flow, because some of it is actually in products today. The audiometry that is put into Jabra Enhance Plus is actually built on models of the hearing losses that we have in our data from the customers that we see taking up this usage. That allows us to build models that based on a few data points we get as input, actually can get very close to what is the average hearing profile. That allows us to do the setup procedure much faster and much more smooth than you would actually go through normally in this. This is also technology that we hope that we can bring into other parts of our fitting.
The other thing is a model of, as I mentioned with M&RIE, we actually have a journey. It's anonymized, but we can see users in our data, what are they doing. Some of the things that we can also see is indication of what happens before people return their device and start to make predictions on those users can we actually identify those before problems with the hearing aid get so grave that they decide at that 30-day follow-up visit to say, "This is not for me." There is a lot of returns that simply comes because people find this too bothersome.
Many times it's small things like it was a wrong tube length that was chosen or the sound is too sharp or other things that can actually be remedied by a visit to the dispenser, but by the time they get around to that, it has been so long that they're simply too tired of it and more or less throw the device at the dispenser and leave again. If we can identify those and let the dispenser make a call to them and say, "We can see that you may need a little bit of counseling on this," then we can actually keep the hearing aids where they belong and help mainly on the ears of customers. That's another thing that we are looking at with this data. Then last but not least, the form factor.
You can then ask, okay, what does that have to do with AI? Today, the engineering process in this and miniaturization of antennas, for example, we also touched about that in a previous session, actually means that it's a co-design between machine learning models we have built to actually optimize these items and then the engineer designing this. There's a lot of internal know-how and tools built up to help us actually get to these very small designs that actually work. It is, I think that there's a testament also on the audio side, it is really not easy to get a signal from inside the ear over here to a phone that is in the pocket over here, especially not on somebody like me, where there's a lot of things in between.
Building a device that can do that's where we use these data models to do this, and that's where we will take the direction of the future. It's important for me to say we do this because there is a need with our customers. We are not creating better speech and noise just because we want to show some numbers. We're doing that because it makes an actual difference to the end users, and that goes into everything we do. That's what we mean when we say the organic hearing philosophy is built into R&D. It's built into the long-term strategies we have for how to approach these things over the next five- 10 years. With that, I will hand it over to Gitte again.
Thank you, Brian. I think, like you also said, the data on M&RIE are really and truly remarkable that we are actually able to document that you can restore hearing capabilities in your brain. That is pretty impressive. So, yeah. Good. Thanks. Brian will be back and answer potential questions after we've had the next session, which is actually on U.S. market opportunities. In that session, we will be joined by Scott Davis. I don't know if we're gonna see Scott up here. I hope. Yes. Hi, Scott.
Thank you.
Hi. Scott is our Head of North America. He joined GN in 2019, and prior to that, Scott has been Head of North America and head of global marketing for Sivantos or Siemens Audiology, and he's also experienced as a senior partner in BCG. Scott, I think the U.S. market is in good hands with you, and I wanna hand over to you.
Thanks, Gitte. It's a pleasure to be able to join you guys today. Sorry I couldn't be there live and in-person, but I have quite a bit of travel next week and just couldn't risk on the side of COVID. I also think it's in the spirit of what Peter was saying earlier about our sustainability efforts. You know, I get a unique opportunity today because I really get to bring the strategy to life that Gitte and everyone has been able to share today. I thought as we started out that maybe I would begin with looking at the baseline and kinda setting a baseline for everybody about the U.S. market. I think similar to what Gitte talked about with the global marketplace, you know, hearing is very stable, growing, resilient market within the U.S.
I think there are probably three big questions that I often get asked. One is, "Scott, is there a pent-up demand associated with COVID still within the U.S.?" I think last March, as seniors got vaccinated, we saw that increase within the marketplace, and we saw that trend continue throughout 2021. At the beginning of the year in January, we had a slight dip as the Omicron variant was at its peak in the U.S. We saw it start to come back in February, and I think the market's continuing to do well in March. Second question I get asked is, "Well, in the VA, Scott, is there still pent-up demand there?" I actually think the VA has done a very good job about managing demand over the course of COVID.
The VA's been able to leverage its CBOC locations. Those are community based outpatient clinics, being able to use remote technology more, and also the Choice program, where they've been able to use independent audiologists to help meet the demand. I think the VA's actually done fairly well over the last year. I think the third thing is around OTC. Are patients waiting, you know, for the OTC legislation to come? I do think that customers are asking their hearing care professional about OTC, but I think that the professionals are asking, "Well, why are you here today?" and able to help move people along their journey. I don't think there's a lot of pent-up demand within the traditional space for OTC.
I also think, you know, patients for a long time have been buying PSAPs in the U.S., and, you know, there's probably 500,000-1 million devices within that space. I still think that consumers have that option. I think when OTC comes, you know, most of those devices will move into the OTC category. I also think what we're seeing now is it's younger people and people earlier in their journey are looking for a different solution that are gonna be able to enter the market because of OTC. When we think about the market and about the, you know, where are units sold, this is how we think about the U.S., and it's really across six main channels. We've organized these from left to right by size and then from top to bottom as well.
Those six segments are independent hearing care professionals, franchise dealerships and manufacturer-owned retail, managed care, government, which includes the VA, big box retailers, and then the online digital space. I think across the bottom, we've put the indicative, you know, market share within each of these. I think it's something that you all know, but it's worth just seeing the data, that the independent space is the biggest by far. It's 2.5 x any of the other channels. I think as you start to think about within that next category of franchise dealership and manufacturer-owned, you know, those top three. You know, have contracts that range from five-15 years within each of those. Some of those are at play every year.
When you think about, you know, the bottom three, where it's more manufacturer-owned retail, a lot of those acquisitions have owners that have a non-compete for one year to two years. After that, many of them are wanting to go back to work. There's a portion of those that are also in play every year. All of those managed care units are actually being distributed through these other two channels. When you look at that, it's 60%-70% of the marketplace, and that's really the must-win areas that we have to do within the U.S. I wanna talk a bit more about some of our strategies around that and some of the things that we've been developing and deploying over the last couple of years.
When we look at VA and government, I think there's probably one thing that really stands out, and that's that VA is flat. When we compare 2019- 2021, the VA only grew by 300 units, 300 units out of 800,000. I think there's a few things associated with that. You know, one is the VA demographics are changing, you know, the number of vets that are actually being served. Then it's also that as active baby boomers are entering the other channels, those channels are growing faster than what we see within the VA. As we think about the big box retailers, you know, Costco has a very big focus now on growing units. Part of that strategy is about how can they do more repeat business.
Costco's business in the past has been very focused on first time users. I think as they now have hearing care centers in all of the warehouses in the U.S., it's much more about how can they get more units, and the way they're driving the more units is basically by getting repeat customers within. Then in the online and digital space, you know, it's super small. You know, as Gitte and Morten talked about earlier, it's also growing really, really fast. I see the online and digital space really playing a role and really helping us to sorta enable what's part of the core business, really helping us within the independent and within this franchise and dealership area.
I think it's because, you know, patients are able to start their journey and continue their journey wherever they want that to occur. I think it's the same that we see within, you know, omnichannels overall and consumer trends about, you know, being able to buy online or pick up in store or where you click and collect. I think COVID helped accelerate that, as we all know. I think now we have a really great opportunity with Lively and Droplet to help accelerate that. As I start to think about within our core business, you know, what are our real main focus areas? Gitte and Brian both shared about the research that we did as we defined, you know, how HCPs think about their preferred brands.
I think one of the interesting things about this as well is it's also about the shape of the triangle for the different channels. I'm gonna start on the right-hand side with Costco and VA. As we think about those two, you know, it's a much wider base, I would say, for those two channels. They are very, very product driven. I think there's two things that really drive that. One is they want the best for vets or the best for the members at Costco. Then number two is about productivity. There are huge requirements and pressures on the HCPs in both of these channels to be able to very quickly serve the people.
I think when you think about in the VA, the VA has had a lot of pressure over the last few years, both from Congress and from advocacy groups about, you know, decreasing wait times and making sure that they can really serve the veteran population. I think from an HCP perspective, they would like to spend less time programming and more time actually doing counseling and working with the veterans to get the most out of their hearing healthcare. That's led to some challenges for us over the last year. I mean, you know the results, and we're not happy with those results within the VA. We released really new technology, and that technology really requires for you to be able to have this listening demonstration.
If you think about what Eric Jackson was talking about, all of these sounds that he could hear, and what Brian was saying about the localization and spatial awareness, those are really super important. We have had for many years a clinical listening experience where we're able to set up a demonstration whenever we do our trainings to really showcase how our technology works. We tried to do that in a virtual environment, but it was really difficult for us to do. One is just being able to demonstrate that technology, and two is being able to work or being able to showcase the workflow and how to actually, you know, program ReSound ONE. It took more time doing it virtually than being able to do it in person.
I think as we talked about in the Q&A session, the other thing that is really important with these two channels and about having the best technology is having this launch cadence. That launch cadence helps so much because it keeps your platform, you know, new and fresh as you're bringing these new form factors to market. What's really exciting as we enter into 2022 is starting March 1, our field trainers are able to go into VA clinics. We have been able to move our virtual sessions into in-person visits now, and really being able to showcase this technology. You know, we started with hands-free that Brian talked about. Next month, we have submitted for VA our rechargeable BTE. In April, we'll begin training on those. That will then go on contract in May.
Then we have the big fall refresh and also with custom rechargeable, which we've seen is a very big and growing category within the VA. Costco is gonna follow that same sequence of product rollout. I think the other things that we're doing is really focusing on simplifying within our fitting software and making that workflow really, really smooth for our hearing care professionals. We've also done some other simpler things but are really, really important as well. We've consolidated our packaging, so no longer do you have three different boxes that you need to find. You know, just some really easy things that make it quicker and faster and easier to do business with us.
You know, the launch of Jabra Enhance Pro within Costco, it's now a brand that consumers know, and they can spend less time talking about, you know, who ReSound is, and it's something that the members know automatically. The other thing is we still have all of our same team in place. This is the same team that has, you know, driven quite a bit of share within both of these channels, and they are really excited to go to work now that they have the tools in their toolbox. As we move to the left-hand side and thinking about the independent franchise dealership and managed care segment, you know, I'd say the shape of that triangle is much taller, and product is still really important.
Part of that importance is like what was brought up during the Q&A, you know, it helps us with our mix. It helps drive our price increase. You know, product is very important within those. But, you know, the services and the relationships also become really, really important within that segment too. I wanna spend some time now talking about, you know, some of the things that we're doing to actually to build that. Gitte talked about the core business and our emerging business. For me, these two aren't mutually exclusive. I mean, they're really interconnected.
I think the emerging is helping to fuel with new patients, earlier patients within their journey, but also over time building this ecosystem, so if someone, you know, may start with a no-touch model, over time they're able to move into this high touch area. Four things that I wanna share. Number one is gonna be ReSound Accelerate, which is our engagement platform, but it's really about building a network. Number two is Beltone Right Beside You. It's a new value proposition that we launched within Beltone for our network owners, HCPs, and patients. Three, I wanna spend some time on Lively and talking about bringing the power of Lively to our HCPs with this in-clinic experience. Finally, I wanna touch on Jabra Enhance Plus and what this means being able to launch under self-fit and having this helping hand for patients.
ReSound Accelerate, what makes this different? For me, it's so much more than a loyalty program. It's really more about engagement with our customers. One of the first things we did is spend a lot of time talking with our HCPs about what would they be looking for in a program. I think the big finding for us is that it's about scale for them. What I mean by that is, as an independent HCP, they're spending a lot of time managing their office and doing different things. I think the second thing for them with scale is that they are just their purchasing power and what they're able to negotiate around that.
We have built within the Accelerate program a marketplace, and it's a one-stop shop where you can go and explore, find out more information. You can order. You can also pay either with your points or with cash. Everything from your clinical supplies, office supplies, equipment you may need, any type of marketing, web design, but it even goes into insurance, retirement funds. We looked at every single thing that an owner could possibly need and put it within this marketplace. The second thing that we did is, you know, by making that really simple, we also wanted to make it simple to understand how the program actually works. Everything is just based on revenue. Every dollar counts for whatever you may do with GN.
You know, the program also comes with all those things that you would expect, all those perks, you know, with priority calls, priority shipping, you know, early access to product. You know, really for me, why is this so important is that over time, and by using the marketplace, we're able to create some consistency that's gonna give us standards and give us something that's scalable. As you think about as an independent hearing care professional, this now gives you a platform to compete within a consolidating marketplace. I think that's really important and what will be the most important thing as we move forward with Accelerate. How's the program done during its first year? I'm gonna start on the bottom left. 50% of our revenue in 2021 came from members of the program.
Of that group, when we compare their sales with ReSound in 2019 versus 2021, we've seen a 30% increase. We also saw within these same groups in 2021 that we had a 15% higher ASP within those. Of these customers, 80% of them are now ordering consistently month- to- month. I think the program has really done what we've asked it to do, and it's gonna give us now a platform as we move forward. We think about this platform, you know, I wanna make it even more real with Beltone now. When I first started with GN, the board asked that I turn around Beltone. That was job number one. It was also one of the reasons that I joined GN.
Beltone is one of the top two most recognized hearing aid brands in the U.S. It has a great group of network owners, many of whom I've known. We replaced the team at Beltone, brought on people that have a lot of industry experience. I'm really proud of what this team has been able to accomplish. It all started with the Beltone value proposition and what we wanted to do. The most critical part of that was building an infrastructure. This is an infrastructure across 1,500 locations, over 130 different owners that we all had to agree on what this would be. Let me just bring that to life about what we've been able to do because we've built this common infrastructure now.
If you see a rendering, you know, a mobile rendering of Beltone's website here. Just across the top, you're able to take an online hearing test. Moving from that hearing test, you can automatically book an appointment, all within, in real-time being updated. Once you enter your information, you're now part of our marketing automation engine. You get automated, you know, the things you would expect. Automated text message and email reminders about your upcoming appointments, what to expect when you're there, doing it with really a local flavor to it. Also we were able to launch a Great Start program, which once you have your hearing aid, it's a four-week program for acclimatization where we saw a 20% reduction within our return rate. We did this in collaboration with Audigy.
This same platform deployed really differently is now available to our Audigy customers as well. When you think about Accelerate in the future, and as we get people on a common platform, we'll be able to deploy this as well within that group. You know, there are other simple things like text messaging and chat now. If you think about for the hearing impaired, that's really critical, so we built a call center. That call center's also helped us with, you know, increasing our conversion rate from calls to appointments, but also ensuring that people show up for their appointments. We have new branding within Beltone. We really wanna push that Beltone is about care, and you can go to any of the 1,500 locations across the U.S. and receive care from Beltone.
We also started working with other brands that are known within the segment to help elevate the Beltone brand even more. Clorox is here, which is a safe and sound campaign during COVID-19. I think if you think about now that we've built this, how do we get more people there? Once they're there, how do we actually increase our conversion within it? We launched the Elevate program, which is all about working with our owners to develop marketing plans to ensure that they have operational excellence throughout what they do in very clear targets and KPIs within. As a result of these efforts, Beltone, you know, has had a double-digit growth within the number of units that they've sold.
We've also seen a significant increase, you know, 20% within our productivity within each of our locations based on what we've been able to do with Elevate. The other thing, you know, we've increased our new owners. So part of Beltone had a lot of owners who were thinking about retiring or working part-time, but we were able to transition those now to owners who are very engaged and wanting to grow the business. As we transition corporate retail, we move those to new owners as well that have really been able to drive the business from a local perspective. With all of this, you know, Gitte talked about the high NPS scores with within Lively, but Beltone is seeing the same, consistently over 60%.
If you think of some of the best brands in the world, you know, hitting that 50% mark is really, you know, is really great results. We're very proud of where Beltone has been. As we start thinking about the emerging spaces, you know, Lively's had a really good start to the year. We've launched new products across, we've expanded to three categories now from two. At the beginning of March, I think it was one of the questions in Q&A, we've actually increased the price, and now there's a new offering at $2000. We've moved from the $1600 to the $2000 mark.
The other thing we've also done with Lively is we've simplified it for the end user in that we've launched a new app, and it is the first time that we've taken GN's app and integrated it in. So now the same place you go for all the care within Lively, you can also go to have control of your hearing instruments. We've added a host of new features that puts more control in the hands of the end user. But I think that, you know, one of the really big and important things with Lively is about the two-thirds of the people who come to Lively and are looking for an in-clinic experience.
When we think about those two groups, there's the severe to profound loss where they really need an in-clinic experience, and Lively doesn't have an offering for them. In the near term, we're gonna be rolling out a connection between Lively and our ReSound Accelerate and our Beltone network. Then we're also working on the other 92% who are looking for an in-clinic experience for a host of reasons. Maybe they're not comfortable with remote technology. You know, maybe they have specific questions that they want to have addressed in person. Maybe it's dexterity issues.
We have a pilot program that we're gonna be launching in the next couple of months because it's also very important how this user journey, you know, occurs, and we need to make sure that it is really simple and seamless for them. I think similar to Lively is with the launch of Jabra Enhance Plus. You know, we've done this exclusively within our licensed hearing care professionals under the self-fitting regulation, as Brian mentioned. I think it's been really amazing and surpassed, you know, our initial expectation, but we had 2,000 clinics that have registered to become Certified Jabra Enhance Centers. You know, there's a commitment associated with that. We have a series of courses that you need to go through. We have guidelines that you sign up to be a part of it.
Why are hearing care professionals wanting to be part of this? I mean, one, they recognize that they can, you know, the potential to have people earlier in the journey. I think a lot of people want to understand how am I gonna incorporate OTC into my practice? How am I gonna communicate about that? When do I actually offer it to patients? They also want to be seen as a leader. They want to have the latest technology within their local marketplace. I think this is really important because, you know, it goes to show, you know, really our commitment to the independent hearing care professionals. It's also I think that end users want to know that there's a place that they can go to have this assistance and this help should they need it.
After we had FDA clearance, we actually conducted a pilot. From this pilot program, we've had our first round of follow-up appointments within our hearing care professionals. This data is new. I think it was Friday that the information was submitted. You know, it's really gone to show that the unmet needs or the expectations that we had, you know, really are being met within the space. I think from the hearing care professional side, you know, it was about, is this gonna be accretive to their business? Is it gonna be additive for them? I think as you sort of read those quotes across, you know, you have people that, you know, didn't want to discuss hearing aids.
You know, they hadn't decided what they wanted or just too early with it or trying to get earlier within their journey. I think from the end user perspective, you know, they are happy because they were not looking for a traditional form factor or a traditional device, and they wanted something that was gonna help them within these occasional sort of use areas. I think that, you know, we've really done a great job about meeting these unmet needs within these patients. Maybe in summary, as we think about the U.S. market, I think it's continuing to grow. It's stable, resilient. I think that as Brian shared with technology, we have a really strong roadmap as we look at 2022 and going into 2023, where we can especially meet those needs within the VA and within Costco.
I think that we have lots of plans in place between our ReSound and Beltone with now a platform that we're gonna be able to leverage and complement that within this emerging segment, both with Lively and with Jabra. With that, Gitte and Henriette, I'll turn it over to you for any Q&A.
Yes. Thank you very much, Scott. As I can see a lot of hands here, we are ready for the next Q&A session, and I think this time we'll start with David.
Thanks. David Adlington from JP Morgan. Two questions, please. Just on Enhance Plus and the price point, the $799, I think. Just wondered any feedback on that price point, any additional volume or how much additional volume you think you could drive with a lower price point. And then secondly, just on ReSound Accelerate, do you charge for that service for being a member? Why have you only got 50% of customers signed up? What are the barriers to that being higher?
Scott, do you wanna comment on that?
Yep. I'll take the first one on Jabra Enhance Plus first. No, we actually haven't had, you know, pushback from the HCPs with the $799 price point. You'll remember Bose had launched at basically around the $800-$850 price point. I think that set the bar and the expectation level within. Our HCPs are also charging for their services, you know, on top. That is up to them whether they want to do within the self-fitting or not. I would say, you know, we haven't had pushback on the $799, you know, price point. I also think when you start to compare the technology from a consumer standpoint, too, you know, we put a lot of technology in this device as what Brian talked about.
I think it's a signal also to the consumers about the quality of the product, as well, and things they might have been experiencing in the past with with similar PSAP type devices. On the second part with Accelerate, as a lot of things in life, it sort of depends. What we've been able to do with Accelerate is we've created a very structured approach now to discounting. Instead of other discounts that might have been applied, we've been able to shift that and now put it into certain services that we're able to offer. Then there are other services that we actually charge for, and then that actually depends on, you know, what the service is, of what that looks like.
I think the last part of the question around 50%, like how do you increase that even more? You know, from my prior experience with loyalty program, I am super excited that we've been able to get to 50% this, you know, over the first year. That's actually a really good result. I would say the second part of that is within this category, we also have, you know, for example, hospital systems. So many hospital systems won't participate in programs such as this. I think it also depends, you know, we will never reach 100% penetration, you know, within this category. You know, I would love to see us grow another 10 or 15% within.
Thank you, Scott. Let's move to Maja this time.
Thank you very much for taking my question. I'll stick to one this time. I'm just wondering on the Jabra Enhance product. Now, you're selling through healthcare professionals, but you've also talked about the opportunity selling at Best Buy and other channels. Have you already raised that plan with the healthcare professionals, hearing care professionals? Do you anticipate that there is going to be a backlash from this?
Do you wanna comment?
Yep, no problem, Gitte. We've been very transparent throughout the entire process with our ACP customers, and this is about giving them a head start, you know, and that's our commitment to them, is that under the self-fitting guideline, you know, and with state requirements, it needs to be sold from them within our opinion. We're giving them a head start now to market within their local communities, to position themselves really well, and also to think about how it's gonna fit within their practice. We've talked about once OTC hits that, you know, these products are gonna be available in a whole host of other channels, like you mentioned, with Best Buy or Amazon, Costco or Walmart, you know.
It gives them a chance to think about how they're gonna integrate this and compete within the marketplace.
Thank you, Scott. I think Maja just had a follow-up question, so let's just take that, and then we move to Christian.
Sorry. Just as you discussed about Lively, where you know you offered in-person consultation with some Lively customers. Well, are you also considering to make the link between you know a Best Buy customer and your professionals that are selling these products to say, like, "Okay, in case you have a problem, like maybe online, you can go and see this professional." Or is there any plan?
Yep. Gitte, you okay if I take that, Gitte?
Yeah, absolutely.
Yep. As we think about our Certified Jabra Enhance Plus Centers, you know, part of that is exactly that. If you need some additional hand-holding or if you need questions, we have a locator on the Jabra site. In the future, if you were to buy this at Best Buy or anywhere else, then you are free to go to those clinics and ask questions and to get some additional, you know, help if you need it. I think for me, what's really important about that is that's part of building this ecosystem within GN. If you think about it, that device might not have been right for that person. Now the hearing care professional can start to have that conversation with them and to help move them throughout their journey.
Maybe they start with the Jabra Enhance Plus, but at some point in the future, you know, now they know where they can go as their hearing loss progresses or once they're ready to take that next step.
Thank you, Scott. Let's move to Christian.
Yes. Thank you for taking my questions. I have two somewhat related questions. The first is for you, Scott. Can you talk about why you believe the franchise model is the right one for Beltone? It seems like it's somewhat in the opposite direction of where the rest of the industry is moving with instead having direct control over their retail assets. Somewhat related to this, as I understand the Lively acquisition, that is in part a lead generation model. You talk about these two-thirds of customers or leads coming in, potentially wanting to have a physical interaction as well.
How do you ensure that you capture the value best in those patients when you don't have, say, the full control in the retail business? A third tack-on question. If we compare the ReSound Accelerate program and your Beltone franchisee network, what does the sort of profitability look like between the two? Is one of them clearly more advantageous than the other, or are they similar? Thank you.
Henriette, maybe I'll take the first two. I'll let you take the last one.
Yeah.
Okay.
Sounds good. Yep.
Okay. The first thing is just to be clear, Beltone is a dealership network and not a franchise network. I just wanna be, you know, clear on the difference between that. I think one of the things for me in my experience has been that, you know, hearing aid is very much a locally driven business, and it's very important, you know, having a presence within your community, knowing where to market, how to market, you know, and that one-to-one relationship. I think in the U.S., I very much found that that local ownership is better than corporate ownership. I think we've seen that within the corporate-owned stores we've had. As we've transitioned every single one of those, we've seen an increase within the business whenever it goes to a local owner.
I think, you know, for us, I think it's very, you know, that local ownership is really, really important. I think, you know, the managers and the owners, you know, having that financial incentive to really drive the business forward is really, really important. You know, I want to grow that and expand that dealership network as a result. I think on the second question with lead generation, we have had several meetings now over the last couple of months between our ReSound Accelerate advisory board members and our top Beltone owners with Lively. We have now defined what a pilot program is gonna look like. Some of the things that you mentioned are all part of the conversations that we have within those.
Maybe I don't go too much further now because we're gonna be testing several different things because it's very important that the user has a very seamless experience, and so that this is very easy for them to do. I think over the midterm, we'll be sharing more with what the results of those pilots are and what that program looks like, you know, once we see what the end users are looking for within it.
Maybe let me get back to the profitability question you asked. Look, I don't wanna go into details on ReSound or ReSound compared to Beltone in the U.S., but I do wanna say that the U.S. market is obviously very important to us in terms of profitability. I mean, price levels in the U.S. are higher than they are in the rest of the world. Both the Beltone network and also ReSound in U.S. is clearly adding to our profitability. Good. Thank you. Let's go to Oliver.
Okay. Oliver Metzger, ODDO BHF. Two questions. The first one is on your improvement in Beltone productivity or sales. You mentioned you had some programs, also you had some new ownerships. Would you say that the increase was related to bringing up, let's say, 20% change in 20% of the ownerships translated to huge gains and the programs just contributed little or was it more a broad-based improvement you saw? The second question is on ReSound Accelerate. You mentioned or say, you claim to have a leading approach in the industry. Given your experience, what's your view how long such a competitive edge might last, or how much time does it take for competitors to catch up?
Yeah. I think on the first one within Beltone, Elevate is viewed within Beltone as being super important from an owner's perspective. You know, part of what that program does is we're able to go in and, I mean, one, we mystery shop. You know, two, we're able to go in and we start taking metrics, and we're able to compare those metrics against our benchmarks across the Beltone network about what's best in practice. Then we're able to identify, is it training that's needed, you know, for the front office staff or within an HCP? Is it marketing pool? You know, is it the type of marketing you're doing? Is it your right marketing mix?
You know, there's a whole host of things that we're able to evaluate and measure and then determine, you know, what it is that's the right next step in order to drive that productivity. I think where the new ownership gets really, really important is those new owners are very receptive and open and want that level of feedback and that degree of collaboration. It's actually created this really great win-win environment for us both to be able to do that. I also think one of the things that's really, you know, special and unique about Beltone is that Beltone owners don't compete with each other. They are in defined geographies. As a result of that, Beltone owners are very much about sharing best practices, about working together, and about elevating the entire network.
You know, I also think within those new owners, they've been able to bring in some outside ideas and some fresh perspectives too, and then we're able to leverage that and share it across. That's what the Elevate team is able to do, is to take some of that and pepper it within different parts of the organization. To the second question on Accelerate, you know, it has taken us. One is, you know, we've hired a team of people who really know this industry and know how to build engagement programs within it. One is I think that's an advantage that we have. I also think that the infrastructure and the technology to pull all of these different sources together, that's taken us a couple of years, and we're still not where we wanna be.
There's still more that we're gonna do. It takes quite a bit of time to get that in place and to really be able to build it. I think one of the things that we also had as an advantage is Audigy had the beginnings of this infrastructure, and we've been able to leverage Audigy now as a bit of a center of excellence to help accelerate for, you know, this program for us as we started to develop it.
Thank you, Scott. I actually think we have a question online now.
Yes, I think we have a question from the queue. Julien from Exane, if you can unmute and show us your pretty face, and then we have you on the screen here as well, I guess.
Yeah. Hi, everyone. I don't know if you can hear me and see me.
We can.
Okay, perfect. Thanks, thanks for taking my question. Good afternoon, everyone. Two very quick ones for you, Scott. First of all, have you heard about Bose maybe winding down and closing its hearing aids business, I mean, even before the start of the OTC regulation implementation, et cetera? Any thoughts here will be super helpful. Second question still on OTC and on, like, on the Jabra Enhance Plus. It seems that you charge $200 for service with, like, with the device within Beltone. First of all, is it mandatory for the customers? Do you think that this is, let's say, the ideal long-term business model for OTC? I mean, do you think competition will follow with similar offer, et cetera? Thanks a lot.
Thank you, Julien. I don't know. Gitte, do you want to comment first?
Yeah, maybe just a comment on Bose. I mean, normally we don't comment on our competitors, and I think that is still good practice. So maybe you wanna ask Bose what they are thinking about their business. You wanna comment on the next one, Scott?
Sure, Gitte. Yes, within Beltone, there's a $199 service fee that's basically for the provider's time in order to do the hearing assessment and the hearing test, and all the different. You know, there are different tests that may be required depending upon the state. That ensures that everything's done. We actually have, you know, a statement on that with on-- if you go to shop.beltone.com, you'll see that listed and also about that that's a requirement that we need to do. I think that we've left it up to each of the HCPs about what that service price would be. Beltone, all the network owners came together and decided that was what they felt would be appropriate, so that's where they've set the price within the marketplace.
I think when OTC comes, you know, the requirement of the OTC regulation is that you need to be able to self-diagnose, self-fit, or self-test and self-fit without the need for the intervention of a hearing care professional. I think that's still gonna be the case once we see the final regulation. It doesn't exclude from being able to offer services if you want to do that. You just need to be able to buy the device and be able to meet those three requirements. I do think that a lot of hearing care professionals now, and this goes a little bit to, you know, unbundling within the marketplace and for professionals to start thinking about this unbundling, you know, as when I mentioned about giving them some time to see how OTC would integrate into their practice.
You know, yes, I see people being able to charge for their services in the future as they offer just a pure OTC device.
Thank you, Scott. I think. Let's just take one final question from Veronika, then we need to close up this session.
Thanks. My questions are also for Scott. The first one is just, it's Veronika from Goldman. The first one is just, Scott, obviously, you've come from a business that is an owner of what is technically the biggest online player in the U.S. market. I just love your thoughts now that you have Lively under the belt, how do you think the two platforms compare? Inherently, you know, I'm sure you're gonna say Lively is, of course, the best asset out there, but I'd love to maybe get some pluses and minuses. Then my second question is, obviously lots of focus on the VA and Costco for you. What are your share ambitions?
What's the point when you think we can start seeing an inflection in that share momentum in those two channels? What is it that you know, is it really about the BT? Is it about the BT and the IT? Is it about the new platform? If you can give us some guidance on that, on those, that would be helpful. Thanks.
That's great. Veronika, you know, I was at Sivantos when we did the acquisition of audibene, and, you know, I worked very closely with that launch in the U.S. Yes, you're right. I know that program really well. You know, it's interesting because the two are really different in a lot of ways. Yes, it's online platforms, and it's a place, you know, a new place for consumers to go and find out information. But why they're so different is the user journey and, you know, what that experience is. I think that hear.com is, you know, there's a lot of interaction between, you know, the staff at hear.com and with the patient.
I think that Lively in the early stages is much more the end user is empowered, and I think that Lively really tries to empower the end users, you know, for on-demand care, you know. You always have access to the audiologist and, but you can also do that remotely. I think it's just a difference. You know, hear.com goes a little bit more to the high touch side that Gitte talks about, and I think that Lively is a little bit more in that, you know, lighter touch side of it. I think that's probably the two biggest difference between the models. Then, of course, you know, hear.com, you know, I think today is still all 100%, you know, with a sort of buy online and pick up within clinic.
Of course, that's different with Lively, where they've been able to leverage ReSound's remote capabilities to really create an in-office experience virtually. The second question, Veronika, was on expectations between VA and Costco, and when do we think we will start to see some changes within that share. I think that
Obviously, we don't guide specifically on the share in VA and Costco.
Okay.
I just wanna say that.
Okay.
You can still comment, Scott.
Yeah. Okay. I wasn't gonna go there on share, Gitte, but I would, but thanks for stopping me just in case. I think that, you know, what we are launching now, you know, is a great reason for us to be able to talk about ReSound ONE and to be able to talk about M&RIE again as well. I also am very excited about the fall, about what we're gonna be able to bring with the new platform, but also within the rechargeable, you know, ITEs. On the Costco side, I'm excited about some of the software improvements that we're gonna be launching, you know, over the course of the next few months too, that are gonna help within their workflow and productivity.
Thank you very much, Scott. I think we now have time for a break, and this will conclude the GN Hearing session. We can, of course, come back to questions later again, but we'll have a break, 15 minutes, so 20 minutes to. We will start again, and we will have GN Audio on stage. Thank you.
Good. We are back here in the room in Copenhagen. I think we are fresh on coffee and cake and ready to kick off the next session. CEO of GN Audio, René Svendsen-Tune. Go ahead.
Thank you very much, and good afternoon to all of you, both in the room. It's very good to see you here, and of course, also to everyone online. We appreciate you taking the time. It's challenging days we are living through, so we are very happy to have your attention here. Thanks to my hearing colleagues, we will now shift to audio. We will get out of this. To here. I have brought some of my colleagues here today. I will spend a little time, sort of looking back, setting the scene, talk a little bit about ambition, and then I have Holger Reisinger who is running our, what we used to call our office business. Now we call it professionals because we are not always in the office anymore.
I have Aurangzeb Khan with me to talk about collaboration and video and the ecosystem and to a large extent, the technology we bring to this space. Then I have Ehtisham Rabbani. Some of you know him well because he was trying to list a company here called SteelSeries, and now they have joined us instead. We are very happy to have them on board. I thought might be good to always look a little bit back before you look forward. Actually, this speaks to the recent six years of GN Audio's performance. We have shown a nice top-line growth, 24% CAGR over the six years and a little bit better bottom line improvements of 30% CAGR over the recent six years.
In 2016, we were number two professional headset vendor in the world, and we were top 15 consumer stereo product vendor. Today, we are number one in the professional headset market in the world. We are top five. True wireless defines now this stereo consumer business via an emerging player, let's call it that, in video and collaboration, and with having SteelSeries join us, we have a very well-established position in gaming. Of course, you will say, "Now what?" Because with that history, of course, we are somehow obliged to find ways to deal with this going forward and see that we can bring corresponding or similar growth and profitability to the years to come. That's what this will be all about.
We'll try to discuss where this growth should come from market perspective, trends, and of course, how we will respond, and then see how we get there. I thought before we do that, maybe we talk about little bit about what is on everybody's mind, namely supply and how do we deal with the volume requirements we have from the market and how can we respond to that. I thought we start talking just a bit about the model we have created and developed and nurtured over recent years, and a model that is very resilient, very scalable, and has served us really well. We do the R&D, we do the innovation, we pick the components, we source the components, then we hand it over to our contract manufacturers.
They do the product, and then we outsource a global distribution machine. We have very large suppliers doing that for us, and they can deal with the volume in the field. This has worked beautifully. There's just one issue with that, is that the silicon components have not been able to follow the volumes we can take out of the market. We have talked about this a lot. It led to us guiding for a negative growth in Q1. Also talking about the year would be a supply-driven year. What we have seen is we saw this massive decline in commitments or sort of the weakening commitments in Q4. We have seen a difficult January and February, little bit better March.
The good thing is that now we get what our suppliers are promising us. They don't promise as much as we want, but we're getting what they say. So far so good. A week ago we had a situation, COVID situation in China, and of course, that has caused a lot of debate, discussion, and hassle around. I thought the simplest way to talk about this is some red, green, and yellow dots here. Just so for all of us, for products to come out, we need components, we need manufacturing capacity, and we need logistics capacity. If I start in the middle one, that has not been a problem.
We have had all the capacity we needed, and actually in excess because we have not cut it back with the lack of components. On logistics side, well, we know about, we hear about it's a challenge and it's expensive, but it's manageable. We can get the capacity we need. That's not the problem. The problem is, the component which turned yellow in Q3, red in Q4, and has been red and is red still. We are not getting all we need. Last week when the whole thing shut down in Shenzhen in southern China, then they all turned red. What happened there was, of course nothing happened to components. It's the same.
We get the components we have been looking for all the time, but the factories shut down and logistics shut down. Now we are a week later. Factories are to a large extent open. Logistics to some extent open. The way we organized in Southern China is that we have different sites, and some sites are fully operational. We have this concept in China talking about locked campuses, where if you're on a locked campus, you don't have traffic in and out, so everybody goes back to work. We have some logistics in open campuses, and they are still waiting. What I'm trying to say with all this is that it locked down for a week completely. Didn't have any impact on the components because it is what it is.
It did have impact on manufacturing for a week, but nothing we cannot recover very fast because we have capacity, and it had impact. We couldn't ship products that are already there out of the region, out of China into different parts of the world. We are now a week later, we are shipping. We are manufacturing again. I think what Peter also said here, it will likely have some impact for the first quarter, assuming there is not a big new lockdown coming. If there's a month of lockdown coming in April or May, of course, we have a completely new situation, but that's not what it looks like. If that's the case, we may have some slippage from last week of March into first week of April. That's it.
While this may have an impact for Q1 for the -25% we have talked about, it's very unusual we guide for a quarter, but we have done that. It will have no impact for the first half. I guess that's what I can say about this. It's clear this is with what we know today. I mean, it was quite dramatic. They locked down 18 million people for 50 cases of COVID, but that's the way it was. It is opening again. What happens in two weeks from now, I don't know. That's what I wanted to say about that now. I'm sure there will be probably a few questions on that matter when we get that far.
Intention was to calm down the situation a little bit. Just like we have built what we think is a very strong supply chain machinery, a very scalable thing, we also built over the years a very solid go-to-market machine that we are using for different purposes. We are not gonna sort of talk a lot about that, but I just want to repeat the machine here. We have a two-tier model. We have distribution partners around the world, 15, 20 large ones. Behind them, we have resellers who are selling enterprise products into different markets. Some of them are regional, some of them are domestic, some of them are cross-regional, big and small. We have thousands of those across the world. We have our own sales force dealing with large global accounts.
Top 500 world accounts. They are selling a concept. They are sort of driving our solutions to these customers. We don't fulfill. Everything is handed back to the channel, and they fulfill whatever these global accounts sell in conjunction with resellers around the world. This is our model. This is very scalable model. We are not intending to touch it at all. It delivers. You can say every time you put a new product of enterprise nature into the market, the same machine can tackle that. This, of course, gives us leverage. It drives barriers because we have a very subtle model that competition cannot just copy-paste.
Of course, it gives a lot of loyalty because we bring business to the channel, and they bring business to us. To setting the scene and talking about the business going forward, we are looking into a market of around $35 billion. Big part of that is consumer, where we have a small piece. If we take it sort of where we are today, you can say we have around $5 billion for classic enterprise business in terms of both audio and video. We have around $5 billion now for gaming gear with the acquisition of SteelSeries. We have different market shares in different spaces, but we are well and solidly represented in all of them.
We are number one or number two in the enterprise parts. We are sort of top five true wireless player, as I said, and have a solid position on the gaming gear side as well. Most of these markets are growing to double-digit. At the high end of the gaming space, we are growing sort of 7%, 8%, 9%, but also close to 10%. So there's a nice market out there growing with $3.5 billion a year, basically, what we are looking into. So that's the market starting point. Like, Gitte spoke about the trends, where do we have headwind or tailwind? We think we have a lot of tailwind actually right now.
We are starting with the fact that we have talked about the hybrid work for a long time. Work is something you do, not a place. That has become, of course, even more relevant, way more relevant with the COVID period, where we were forced to work from where we were, and once in a while, maybe we could come to the office, maybe we couldn't. But what these systems showed is that actually they were super agile, scalable, and actually within weeks we all could work where we were. What also happened in this period was that, where it was not customary three years ago, that you had a conversation with the video camera switched on, now you do.
We saw the video communication machinery accelerate dramatically through COVID, and there is no sign that it will somehow turn back. It's here to stay. We have talked about this consumerization, about enterprise products. People want not only a tool, they want something for the music, they wanna look good, it needs comfort, and they wanna bring it out in the private sphere if that's needed, basically. We see that unified communication, the internet communication is moving beyond the office. We'll talk about that more. We have seen gaming go mainstream. This is not something for 90-year-old boys in a dark room anymore. This is for grown-up people like ourselves, and it's all over. It's a communication platform. Ehtisham is gonna talk a lot more about that.
Finally, of course, the sustainability matter that Peter spoke to actually drives a lot of headwind. Building conference call systems of course helps the environment if we can cut out flight traffic across the world. Also we can do a lot with our products and the way we build the business to drive sustainability, so we can turn this into a tailwind as well. On that background, sometimes pictures speak more than words. This is our ambition. This is what we want to do. We are an audio mainly leading player in our markets. We wanna be an audio and video and gaming gear leading player in this total market.
We have just seen that the markets are there, so it's really all up to us and those who will try to stop us. We'll do our best. That's the ambition. How will we do that? Well, in this space, we can see three businesses in high growth markets, namely what we now call professionals, what we call collaboration and video, and the gaming space. These are growing markets. If we can take share in these markets, we will grow very nicely. We have two spaces where the market growth is less, the contact center business and the consumer business, but there's a lot of space to take share in that space. We're not number one. We could start with that, but there is a share gain play.
The final one is what we now call industry solutions. These are what we also call desk-less people. They're out of the office. They're doing work on the road or in the field, or at least, moving around and a segment we think will develop or can develop a market that can be made very nicely in the years to come. Holger, Ehtisham, Anders will speak to these high growth spaces, so I thought I would say a little bit about this desk-less workplace or these industry solutions. What happens here is a couple of things. One is that we see this virtual communication going places where it was not before.
I mean, we have seen through the pandemic that universities they created fully virtual auditoriums. We were selling cameras and speakers and so forth. We have seen you can visit your practitioner, your doctor remotely, and it will be supported. We have seen sort of close to office cases happen with this technology. We also see now that there is a space. We have been watching people using walkie-talkie for tens of years. Right now, this is getting a bit old-fashioned. You have your 4G, you have 5G, you have data connections and so on. You can build better communication tools than the walkie-talkie can do. You can have the same functionality, but you can do it with better tools today by using mobile phone technology.
Finally, it's not only about personal communication. When these tools are there's a lot of data collection you can create, you can have, you can monitor in the retail. Are there any more sort of cans of sugar left? If the system tells there's not, then you go and put some more in. So there's a lot of stuff you can do with this IoT kind of thinking, both on personal communication, but also driving data collection and so forth. Of course, is it just us who are thinking about this? No, it's not.
This is a quote from Microsoft earlier this year, and they say here, "Together with our partners, we're equipping frontline workers with tools that allow them to stay connected with their team and company." They're doing this. They're building all the infrastructure to make this happen. It's up to us or someone else, but we will try to be the ones to go and help them and support them with endpoints. They are not the same necessarily as we bring into an office or into a home, but it's a different endpoint that serves specific purpose in a specific segment. Be that hospitality in the hotels, restaurants and so on and so forth, there's no need for walkie-talkies. They would be these much smarter tools tomorrow, as an example.
Of course, the question is how big is this? The reality is there are 2 billion deskless workers out there. Not everyone will need or will get a tool that they want, but over time, maybe. Eight out of nine companies have deskless workers. These companies are our customers already. They buy from our resellers. They already have UC structures in their companies. They just need to move it on to this space. Of course, this is a market to be made. It takes infrastructure like unified communications. Many, in many cases you will need special software. Say, hotels, they will need software built on UC using end devices like we could bring to make a meaningful application for that. Others will need others.
New ecosystems will have to be built. It's gonna take some time, but the technology is here to be exploited now, basically. Of course, what about us? We are already looking into this. We are working in this space. We are selling headsets to transportation. We are in logistics. We are going to the educational sector. We have been working with healthcare applications and so forth. We are selling hearing protection gear to defense and security and so forth. We are doing this, but of course not in a systematic, very scalable way. That's basically where we want to go. We have said earlier also that there's a lot we can do with our own technology. We can do market making with the right partners.
Likely, we will need M&A to accelerate this, to make it happen faster, like we have done when we went to the video space. We maybe could have done it ourselves, but it would have taken time, and we did not know whether we would have landed in the right place. We acquired ourselves into that skill, and now we have it. We may do exactly the same here if we wanna get faster to say, hospitality end endpoints. Maybe they're out there, maybe we can buy some technology and then get there with speed. That's the logic. This is all we're gonna say about industry solutions today. We are strategizing in this, we are investing in this, and this is, we're very determined to make this a next bigger thing for us.
That's what I had for now. I will invite Holger Reisinger. Holger is an audio veteran. He's been with us for many years. He was instrumental in the key architect behind the Evolve product line. This is the best-selling enterprise product portfolio out there ever. He's gonna talk about the professionals. He also runs, I would say, our strategic alliances team and also the global accounts team that we have. Over to you.
Thank you very much, René. Warm welcome from my end. Good afternoon also to the people online. I'm glad this time René was not calling me the dinosaur in the company. Maybe it's good for you to get a little bit better understanding what we're actually doing in the professional solution space and in this large enterprise business. I really have the pleasure to lead some very powerful teams within the organization, maybe starting with the global and international accounts organization.
Mm-hmm.
It's roughly a team of 100 sales and marketing people. We run them in a virtual setup, so they are reporting into the sales offices we have in the regions. This team has built a white glove service for a select set of roughly 300 accounts. Think about the largest banks and insurance firms, think about big automotive, pharma, retail organizations, et cetera. As René said, we are selling indirect, but we have high-touch people sitting with those customers together, identifying their needs and pains, and translating that into product roadmaps, into things we have developed. Using those insights, activating them actively in our product development. Another part of the team is working with what we call alliance partners, the large ecosystem vendors.
This entails companies including think Microsoft, think Zoom, think Google, think Cisco, Meta, these type of companies. Firstly, they love those insights from more or less the same enterprise businesses they are dealing with. Secondly, they really appreciate that we have our subject matter expertise to make their solutions shine. Jointly, we build something that really excites user and drives these great experiences those platforms can deliver. Lastly, we have a joint go-to-market because they are selling through major global system integrators and DMRs. It's more or less the same go-to-market network and two-tier system Rene was talking about we are leveraging. We have a lot of things in common when we identify opportunities, address customers, and position ourselves and the value that we are driving together. That's what the organization is doing and what I have the pleasure to lead.
I'm taking you on a journey now through the next nine slides, and it's a little bit like a history, what we have been on, but the purpose was the perspective I was describing is to really educate a little bit on the enterprise market and more importantly, the future opportunity. Let's think back. I mean, we in GN talk about hybrid working, or it wasn't called back in the day, it was called remote working. We called it new ways of working for more than a decade. What was that? First and foremost, there was a place called work. We are going there Monday to Friday, nine to five, and get stuff done. It has been a location, right? And then there have been a small, exclusive number of people who were in a remote work setup.
It was down to a special role or a special position those people already were having, but it was an exception. That was not the rule. Suddenly, the pandemic hits. With lockdowns almost everywhere, people found themselves in the situation to get stuff done any place, any time, with the tools that were given to them. That's ultimately what happened recently at large scale, and there have been businesses adopting this way of working in less than two quarters, what some of the big companies, including the big tech I was describing, developed over the last decade. That's why it was possible. Think about ubiquitous internet access. Think about wireless technology. Think about these powerful UC platforms. Think about cloud. That's why that scale could suddenly happen and was in place.
Work is now what we do and not a location we are going anymore. What that means for our categories, it was not just a nice-to-have tool some exclusive people needed to get stuff done. It became business critical. It was the main driver where people remain productive no matter where they are. That's the big thing that has happened. With this great positive impact we had on people's productivity, no surprise that during the pandemic, the market literally exploded. What I brought you here on this slide is on the left-hand side, what we call these personal solutions, so primarily body-worn headsets, audio technology you put on your body. On the right-hand side, part of the slide is what we address in the collaboration solution. Think about video and audio collaboration.
This is still very favorable growth numbers we foresee on this much higher base we have accomplished during the pandemic, right? Why is it still growing at such fast pace? I get this question quite often, and the answer on a macro level is very simple. The penetration rate of this technology is still extremely low. Before the pandemic, we saw an attach rate of roughly 17% amongst the workforce of the professional solutions we are providing. Nowadays, it's around 20%. When you look to the collaboration side of the slide here, some of the penetration rates are even much lower than what I was just talking. That's a fundamental driver out there that will still give us ample opportunity to grow our business.
You saw the chart on the left-hand side of the slide here, on the slide before. I wanna double-click now a little bit on the underlying micro drivers. UC is now available to 98% on a global scale of all professionals. With that availability of UC, adoption of voice and video is picking up. What people now experience is when they are not using professional devices or when they are using what we call wrong devices, consumer-grade tools, that they are not able to leverage the powerful UC platforms these vendors are providing to them. At the same time, we have this effect of work from anywhere, that means there's more location, more places in those locations, and more spaces that needs to be outfitted. Last but not least, the requirements of those users are growing.
We are used to customized and adjust the tools that are given to us to our needs, or we are even making the selection ourselves. On the back of those trends and needs, we see three other main drivers for growth. Firstly, people become more demanding. Our devices become more desired, so there is a strong replacement happening, what so-called consumer devices into professional tools. These more demanding users, they want wireless freedom. They want multi-connectivity. They want longer battery life. Usually, they are getting more demanding in the quality and in the capability of the devices. Price points, average price points, of the equipment users are buying is going up.
Organizations who embrace the way of working, becoming more attractive for employees, providing them more autonomy and providing more flexibility to the way they work, became not only more powerful winning the war for talent, but also more resilient to shaky economics around us. These are underlying trends. Hybrid work means that people work at least from two location. It's the office and it's so-called home office, and then many locations in between. On the go, other locations, satellite offices, shared spaces, et cetera. That means there's more people outside the office, and if you wanna stay connected and collaborate virtually, you have to outfit more spaces in the organization. You are not meeting them on the corridor anymore. You need more equipment in the offices to stay in touch with the increasing number of people who are in the field.
That's number one. The individuals, especially when they're on the go, when they cannot rely on the IT organization, they figure out themselves what's good for them, what enables them to perform their task. Those workspaces look very different, what you have at home, what you have at the office. Office layouts are changing. They're adjusting to people being in a more flexible fashion, breaking out in small teams, needing concentration spaces, et cetera. The environment is changing. You need multi-connectivity. You need charge for the full day and stuff like this. What we figured out in our research that those people who were trying to deal with all that with consumer-grade devices, is they get an opportunity to use professional tools. Firstly, it's not many. Six out of ten who use professional UC platforms are not having professional tools available.
Those who tried those, more than nine out of 10 stick with a Jabra Evolve type of product when they saw the performance compared to what they used to use as a consumer or experiencing non-use. The two main barriers for those guys, either my company didn't offer it or I haven't been aware what this category can do for me. That's, in my eyes, a fantastic opportunity moving forward. René spoke about our channel. I wanna talk a little bit about our customer base. The customer base has massively diversified. Now, it's almost all segments, and you can see one thing here that the SME segment has particularly grown. Number one, a more diversified base. Number two, all those segments grow double-digit, then SME becoming increasingly important. Why is it happening now?
Because as I said earlier, these big companies, the first movers, the early adopters of technology, they built that infrastructure. Now it becomes affordable, and it's accessible, it scales also for smaller businesses and also for public sector. Those who have access to that technology and consequently have a need for our products, that base has grown. The key thing for me is we are growing and taking share in all segments. René was talking about the deskless worker opportunity, right? Here I'm still talking also about still what we call the back office, so there are indeed a lot of front office people. Our high touch teams are of course touching these enterprise accounts and selling our entire portfolio, including what they need in manufacturing or in transportation and logistics, or in people having a front office role.
The task we are having here to broaden that access to those opportunities is also to educate the channel who is serving those customers. They have to carry that message on that we have great solutions for deskless workers as well. Just to make you believe that all this is true and happening and hybrid working is a reality, unfortunately, I cannot name those people here, and I don't want to show the logos of those companies. Just to give you three examples, and I hope you can all relate to those use cases. Number one is talking to, yes, we give our people more autonomy. We want them to work more flexibly, so we also have to realize they use multiple devices, and they're probably also willing to attach more devices.
Those who use a headset with a smartphone, with a PC, and are now increasingly in other locations that might not be outfitted, bring a personal speakerphone, bring a personal camera. We are having always the opportunity to sell more than a single device. Headset, speakerphone, camera, I count three. Some of them buy two headsets and leave one behind at the office or at home. The second decision-maker here is talking about the fact, yes, we want people back into the office, but wait a minute. What we have experienced in our remote working time is actually the flexibility and the work-life balance. Not all of them are wanting to be commanded back to the office five days a week. There's a lot of people who will stay away at least two days a week working from another location.
This decision-maker is talking about that we have to care about all roles in organization, and we have to give them more choice. They can work equally productive and flexible no matter where they are. The last person, obviously being somewhat related to contact center business, et cetera, is talking about that the employments are getting more fluid. People have massively changed jobs and roles. They have left the companies who are not offering flexible working, but due to the fact that they enjoy flexible working, they have a tendency to change jobs more frequently. This usually drives a higher amount of replacement rates in the business, what is also a growth driver for us. Let me go a little bit deeper on this SME segment, and now I'm talking really about the S part, so really small firms.
Think about little law firms, doctor's offices, I don't know, marketing agencies, consultants. Here there's no IT department backing those people. It's very often the business owner or the individual making a decision for a product, right? They are not necessarily looking at fancy IT infrastructure and standardizing the setup and layout. Most likely, they are approaching it from, what's good for me as a consumer. What brand do I know? Where can I access it? Probably online or offline retail. They are in touch with professional businesses who have these professional UC platforms, and very often they are confronted with the situation that they made the wrong choice. Our job now is actually to really make them aware what the difference is between a professional tool and a cheap drilling machine.
I mean, try the green and the blue Bosch if you're into drilling. I don't know. There are definitely people willing to buy professional devices, but they need to know that they exist, right? We have to market ourselves, brand ourselves accordingly, and we need to be present where these people are shopping. I think this is a great upside for us. Summing up what I said, we got into this very favorable leading position like René Svendsen-Tune described, because we do a good job with these ecosystem vendors. They need us. They also want us to be successful, because if the endpoint devices are bad, then it creates a bad reputation for the platforms they are building. We have a symbiosis, you can argue, together.
We are really driving innovation together and the products we are providing are differentiated because we have these deep insights as industry leaders. There's a huge opportunity to drive that conversion from non and wrong use, like I described. Yes, we have the ambition. I mean, we have millions of devices deployed. We are selling every month, millions of devices. That mind share we are having with those people using these personal solutions, we want to carry over into the infrastructure piece. When people have preference for personal owned Jabra devices, they will also have an increasing say about infrastructure. Endpoint devices in meeting rooms, et cetera, the company should choose. I think that's probably a good handover back to you, René, introducing our next speaker. Thank you so much.
Thank you, Holger.
Thank you.
Next speaker will be Aurangzeb. He's also a veteran. He is a Silicon Valley veteran. He is the founder of Altia Systems, which joined the GN family two or three years back.
Three years.
Yeah, three years ago now. We were looking around. We decided we wanna be in video. We needed the best technology out there. We did our own research, and we also got a quite strong hint from Microsoft to actually talk to this guy. We did. Here we are. Please.
Thank you. Thank you very much, René. Good afternoon. Thank you very much for your time and interest. It's great to be here and also very good to see the folks online on Teams and through the online media. Look forward to a great discussion with you down the road. Collaboration is changing in a very fundamental way. It's an exciting time to be in this space because it has fundamentally evolved from something a few people did to something hundreds of millions of us do every day. As René said, you know, we've been fortunate to be part of high-performance teams driving a number of industry first products, and that journey continues here. Let me pull back a bit and talk a bit about what's happening in the market around us.
You know, many times the world changes slowly, but sometimes it changes all at once overnight. That's what happened with the pandemic back in March of 2020. Satya Nadella said that around that time, he had seen two years of growth in collaboration in just two months. Video really took off because people were finding and are continuing to find a human connection through video. It helps us communicate and relate better when we can see and read the body language of the folks we are working with. The numbers are quite staggering. Before COVID, for example, Microsoft Teams had 20 million daily active users. That number is now up to 270 million active users. Zoom, another company we work very closely with, was at 10 million daily active participants, now over 350 million participants.
As Holger said, as René alluded to, this is a sea change in how we live, learn, work, and play. It affects all aspects of our life, and we believe this will be a sustained change. Because once we have found how well these products and technologies work, provided you have the right products and the right technologies, it's just a great empowering experience, especially for knowledge workers and down the road for 2 billion deskless workers. It's just a very powerful way to conduct our lives. This gives you a landscape of the market opportunity that goes with that collaboration UC service explosion. We are seeing 500 million people needing new products for their personal spaces. We've had webcams around forever. They do a certain job.
We have invented a new category of experience with the PanaCast 20 that I'll tell you a bit more about. That simply elevate the experience in very meaningful ways that matter to people who are using it for work or for education. If you look at the small and medium and large meeting rooms, we've pioneered the technology to create a multi-camera array system to address the huddle room opportunity. That opportunity is continuing to grow. If you look at the small, medium, and large rooms where these kinds of layouts are deployed, the video penetration has been quite small. It's on the order of 10% growing to 45% in small rooms and on the order of 10% growing to more than 20%, 25% in medium and large rooms.
As Holger alluded to, very large opportunity for penetration and growth in building out new rooms and new facilities. There are, of course, opportunities in other spaces also because many verticals. René provided the example of Albuquerque, which we're very happy to have served, one of many, many K-12 educational opportunities that came to us that we enabled for tens of thousands of classrooms and students to continue with their education through these challenging times. There are changes happening in public sector with government processes and telemedicine and so many others, all of which will require new workflows. We have an amazing opportunity here to grow our collaboration market segment share, and particularly the video-enabled capabilities in that by 2 x-4.5 x over the next few years.
Now, there are many companies that recognize the need for this collaboration change, and we took a particular approach to driving that change. I'll talk a bit more about PanaCast 50 and PanaCast 20, but essentially, we aim those products to help remote workers and people who work at the office, as well as people who work at a third place in between to meet any work environment. For remote workers, many research studies show, and I'm sure you have your own data, that it's actually worked out very well. The vast majority of people said they have a better work-life balance, none of us miss having to commute, and we use that time, for example, with our families and children. It's been a pretty good way.
With products like the PanaCast 20 or the Jabra PanaCast and Speak, we've had a good array of solutions, certified professional-grade products that allow us to collaborate and work effectively when we are in a remote situation. However, there are studies that show that remote work alone isn't the answer. Our own team has grown quite a bit. We've more than doubled in the last two and a half years, and we found that when you have social capital with relationships built with people already, people you have worked with, that allows you to interact with a lot of fluidity and a lot of comfort. Many times, new people who join the team don't have that same level of comfort. They haven't yet built that social capital. The nature of work changes, the nature of the office changes. What you do at the office changes.
You don't need to go to the office to do the routine stuff. Work is not a place you go to, work is a thing you do. You go to the office to build that social capital and that relationship, all the things that allow you to contribute a strategic thinking, to brainstorm, and to propose new ideas with comfort. These requirements, we believe, mean that people will continue to not only work at home, but they will return to the office. We're seeing that. We're seeing many studies support this, as well as develop that meet anywhere solution. We did a study ourselves, through The Harris Poll. We surveyed over 5,000 people around the world in the U.S., U.K., Japan, Germany, and France, and the data was quite clear.
The vast majority, 84%, said that they needed solutions which allowed them to be productive in all different kinds of environments. Holger and the team pioneered the idea that when you're in an open layout space, you need quiet focus spaces. The headphones give you a personal space to work. We're now expanding that, so many times I'm at home by myself, and I'll be working with six, sometimes 50, sometimes 300 people in a big webinar who are literally spread out all over the world. That big display in front of me and my PanaCast 20 and my headset or my Speak are the way in which I communicate with that group. Those are my brand. If those present me well, I look good, I feel comfortable, I'm presenting well.
If those look grainy, if my voice sounds tinny, I'm not comfortable, I have cognitive dissonance, and the whole experience is not working very well. Of course, small and medium video-equipped meeting rooms are essential, and there the requirements have changed. People want to be included, they want an equitable experience, they want a flexible experience. If I'm at home and I have a camera focused only on me, and I have a certain amount of pixel real estate, I don't want to be disadvantaged when I'm in a group setting. In the old days, we used to talk about physical real estate, the corner office, whatever, however many square feet you have. Now it's really pixel real estate. How well are you presented on that display when you're in a group? Being able to do that well makes a huge difference. Offices are also changing.
They're creating hot-desking environments where people want to be able to come in, put their PC, and collaborate very easily. All of these new changes are driving innovation, and of course, we're happy to have participated in this innovation. PanaCast 50 and 20 represent a new generation, a state-of-the-art generation for audio and video collaboration devices. As you can see here, we have products that range across that entire spectrum, and what I'd like to do is share a bit about the new generation of video products we have built and the insights which drove those products. When we spoke to decision-makers, IT professionals, customers, to try and understand what they cared about, a few threads of value came back very clearly, right? First, people want to hear and be heard clearly.
I want the tone and timbre of my voice to carry all the way through so that when the person hears my voice or I hear other people's voice, it's a natural voice. I'm not trying to figure out what they're saying. I'm not irritated by the quality of that sound. But now equally important, people want to see and be seen clearly. We want to look good when we are on TV. We want to look good when we're on that screen in the UC service. Particularly in the last few years, we think uniquely we can provide information.
You know, we were a very early pioneer in building AI into our devices to anonymously count the number of people and provide that as metadata, as a numerical count that could be used to make decisions about the design and layout of the spaces, the seasonality, and ways those spaces were used. That's becoming very important. Really at the top of it, natural and pleasing experiences tie us all together. It's something Gitte started with, and it's something we've believed in very well. We use state-of-the-art audio and video technology with real-time edge AI built into our devices to provide a pleasing experience. Nobody wants to really deal with, you know, three cameras, eight microphones, four speakers, nine processors, two AI engines. But if we give you a good experience and you're able to have a good meeting and able to conduct your business well, that's it.
That's what we believe provides compelling and differentiated value. Of course, we play well with the ecosystem. We are a good citizen and a good partner with our customers and with our ecosystem. Now, out of all of those dimensions, I just picked one dimension, and I'm sorry, this is a bit of an eye chart. I will not narrate it for you. We spoke about those three areas of use, the personal use, the Meet Anywhere use, and the meeting room use. Our products deliver specific, unique value in each one of those environments. In the meeting room space, we were the first to pioneer a multi-camera array technology that could give you any field of view up to 180 degrees. That continues to be very important.
In the personal space, we are the first ones to pioneer a state-of-the-art edge AI processor built-in that autonomously improves the experience of your meeting. I'd like to share a bit more with you on these dimensions. Starting with PanaCast 50. PanaCast 50 builds on the heritage of Jabra PanaCast, which really was a realization many years ago that cameras fundamentally are quite old. They haven't changed in hundreds of years. This camera here, most cameras have one lens, one imager, and they have a certain field of view. If you push it much beyond 80-90 degrees, they start to create a lot of distortion. We believe the right way to solve that was to create high-performance multi-camera arrays that could react with very low latency, doing the kinds of things that we do in collaboration, but in many other use cases, including IoT.
We invented all the algorithms, all the core technology, all the silicon technology to build the PanaCast vision processor, which allows us to do that. One unique attribute of this processor, we put all the pixels mathematically on a cylindrical panorama, but as you're seeing here, one unique attribute is it maintains human-scale fidelity. If you take a single camera and make an ultra-wide angle lens, you see up to 90% distortion in the X dimension. People look trapezoidal. They don't look normal. In our devices, they look how they look, no matter where they are across that 180-degree field of view. That releases stress in your brain. You're not irritated by what you're seeing. You're just having a great conversation.
Of course, with social distancing, the two folks here would not be visible, only the person in the middle would be visible. Intrinsic to our devices is the use of AI to create real-time data and information, and to use that AI within the device to create pleasing experiences. An example of that first attribute is shown here. This is a popular camera in the industry used for UC collaboration. You're seeing three people. You're seeing Suna in the middle looking a little narrower than he is. You don't see him in person, but trust me, that's correct. Then the people on the side are looking like they're being pulled up to the corners. That's not normal. Your eyes and your brain is trying to figure out what is going on. You're dealing with that dissonance.
Actually, more importantly, there were two more people who were completely left out. If you're not on video and you're in a conference, you don't count. You're not an equal citizen. That's a pretty annoying feeling. Nobody wants that. We uniquely address that challenge. Include everybody, maintain human-scale fidelity, and be equitable in your presentation of all the people. We combine a real-time audio signature using a dedicated audio AI processor in the PanaCast 50 with the knowledge we have from the video AI processor on with the vertices, where all the people are. We know who is speaking and where they are situated. We also know, for example, if the next person speaks, if they're next to them or far away.
We work with movie makers to understand the psychology of human perception, and through that, created a set of algorithms that run in our device to frame the shot. If two neighbors are talking, it'll frame it one way. If two people far away are talking, it'll zoom out and then zoom in. We won't bisect people. We don't leave people half in, half out. We do things that you don't perceive, may consciously be aware of, but that give you that much more of a natural experience, a natural, respectful, engaging experience. It's for this reason that these products are winning awards from the best and brightest in the industry and of course, thankfully, from our customers. The whole idea is to manage complexity to deliver simple and natural experiences.
People don't really care about the amount of hardware, but we do think they notice when the experience is just that much better and that much more natural. Intrinsic to that, of course, is the incredible history, a 150-year history of innovation at GN in audio technology. Here we built our own DNN to do the beamforming vector definition, the direction of arrival vector. We also built an electro rigid architecture to give you high-fidelity sound with full music range reproduction through those speakers and many other technologies, particularly including also full duplex. You can interrupt each other, talk over each other as we do in real life and still have a good audio experience.
The purpose of all these technologies and all of that AI is to deliver a very natural experience, and we're very pleased to have worked closely with Microsoft, particularly over the last year, to deliver the next generation experience. You may have heard about Microsoft Front Row. You may have heard about Intelligent Gallery View. That is a technology that we have pioneered, which will be coming forward with Microsoft, also with Zoom. The idea here uniquely is that when you are having a meeting now with this technology, you will be able to first see everybody in context of each other. All those six people, where they sit and how they're situated. Then we take the last four active speakers and give them prominent real estate.
We focus in on them and show them that much more equitably because they are very actively participating in that conversation. We work hand in glove with the UC service providers to not only certify the devices but to certify and improve the experience. They can use these multiple streams coming out of our device to create that kind of a compelling experience. You're seeing a tiny vignette of a video shot here. That's the remote experience. This is how it is presented in the room when you are present in that room. We pioneered, and we are still the first and only device to not only deliver a 180-degree field of view or an intelligent gallery view or a virtual director experience, but also simultaneously implement a whiteboarding technology where you can see the whiteboard on the right side. It's a very large board.
It's about 4 ft tall, 8 ft long. It's 90 degrees to the camera. We're able to extract, rectify, and present it as if you're standing directly in front of it. I often, you know, think with my hands. I like using the whiteboard a lot. If you're not in that room, somebody walks up to the whiteboard, generally people are lost, and they're irritated because they've just lost being part of that conversation. That is not true anymore. If you have an MTR system or a Zoom Rooms system, you'll be able to bring in a second video stream of that whiteboard.
From this one physical device, we are delivering multiple video streams concurrently, and there's a rich roadmap ahead of more innovations to come, all of which will leverage the level of AI and our core innovation in building those algorithms and helping them run efficiently in these kinds of devices. Telemetry is quite important now, and the anonymous people count data we now have integrated Microsoft Teams as a piece of telemetry that they're using. For example, if a room has a capacity of, let's say, five people, if we detect that there are five people present, Microsoft can use that data to put the panel at the outside of the door red, saying that that room is at capacity. IT can also store that anonymous information to create data lakes of information that they can use to figure out the seasonality and pattern of use.
How do people use the physical real estate? What would make it more optimal for the needs of the people who use that building and that real estate? These are just the start of a rich array of kinds of data sets and information that will become available through these devices. These are now being rolled out through Microsoft Teams as leadership features. Earlier this year, Microsoft talked about how they are rebuilding their own campus, redesigning all of their many thousands of spaces to put employees first, to create compelling experiences that matter, and to measure the result of and value of these efforts. You're seeing on the left a design of such spaces. PanaCast 50 is intrinsic to those designs.
You're seeing the Front Row layout, you're seeing transcription around the side, slides on the screen, and at the bottom, the Front Row experience is the PanaCast 50, allowing them to use 100% of that physical real estate. Anything else, they would basically waste about 40% of that room. They have also just announced earlier this month the enhanced Microsoft Teams room experience. It's a brand-new category, one of a brand-new category of rooms that are being implemented by themselves and by their top customers worldwide. That room architecture, that room topology, fully benefits from PanaCast 50. You're seeing that round table in the front, PanaCast 50 right behind it, and a projected screen creating a large amount of pixel real estate to bring in all the remote people who are not physically present, as well as the whiteboard on the right-hand side.
All of the technology gets orchestrated through the PanaCast 50 into Microsoft Teams. Now to touch briefly on the personal side, you know, this is my go-to device, Jabra PanaCast and Speak, mostly if I'm going to be in a group setting or this if I'm at home. PanaCast 20 is a new category of personal devices, and it brings differentiated value that is immediately visible to people, on a few dimensions. Let me take the first one. On the left two video panel grabs you're seeing, Avi is using a popular webcam on the right picture right here, and this is a dumb camera. It exposes for the average amount of light, so it gives you a great view of his driveway, but Avi is silhouetted, and he's off to one side because it has no comprehension of Avi.
In the picture on the left, the camera knows the person of interest is the person, it's Avi, and that we want to make him look as good as possible and put him front and center. If he moves around, the device will unobtrusively track him, keeping him front and center at the right scale, whether he comes close, if he goes far away. That's what's being illustrated by the lady in the middle. A really powerful feature input from educators and others, you know, when you're in a STEM class, you're trying to show an organic molecule, you would like to show something. You're trying to do a show and tell. You're teaching people about molecules. You wanna show a two-dimensional molecule, and you want to be in set so you can describe and explain what it is.
This camera natively produces dual video streams, but because some services cannot handle that, we combine them in the device to create one composited video stream, which goes out to any UC service or streaming service or your favorite way of consuming video, but it allows that person to do a great show and tell. You could do a pitch deck. You could do so many other things. You could have a whiteboard or a flip chart. It allows you to have that flexibility, a very powerful tool for educators, for salespeople, for anybody who's trying to do a show and tell or share information. It is for this reason and many that the product's been rated very well, and I'm happy to say earlier this month, ZDNET gave it a rating of 9.5 out of 10.
We believe it is a category-defining product, and we believe this wave, you know, once people get used to good technology, there's no going back. To Holger's point, certification matters a lot. Really would like to make a pitch for that. Those are not trivial things to achieve, and we work very, very hard to achieve ultra-low latency, high-quality experiences, and that manifests in the fluidity and naturalness of your meeting experience. It's a high bar. We're happy to achieve it and happy to continue striving. Now looking ahead, you know, Holger touched on this briefly, and Ehtisham will build very strongly on this. Collaboration is right at the threshold of combining physical and virtual worlds. We're seeing that a bit today, right? There's a number of us here.
There are many of us who are not physically present who are seeing and following and will interact with us. That will continue to grow in very powerful ways, and let me give you a very simple experience. All of us know to raise our hand. I know how to raise my hand. I got taught that in kindergarten. If I raise my hand in the real world, why does it not show up as a raised hand in Teams? Why do I have to press a button, find the menu?
We've been playing with that. It's a very tiny example of the work Elias and our R&D team is doing. In our device, we can detect skeletal frameworks of people. We have a rich array of information about your face, your posture, your areas of interest, what you're looking at, where you're looking. What he just did can easily get turned into a hand raise in Teams. That's just one example. There are many more to come, and I hope I have a chance to come back and share more of those with you down the road. Thank you very much.
Thank you very much, AK. I think if you just push the button one more time, we are ready for the next Q&A session. We just have the audio team here on stage with me. Who would like to start the session? Let's start with you, Christian.
Thank you. A couple of questions. The first one is unfortunately on the supply situation. You said, René, that as I understood, you're reasonably confident that you won't see similar lockdowns, looking forward as the one that you experienced last week. What gives you this confidence?
I tried exactly not to say that. I said if, I mean, whatever lockdowns come, I don't know. Right? What I said here is that this one that happened here, I mean, it was full lockdown first. It started in a part of Shenzhen, and then it became full lockdown at Shenzhen. It hit the factories and logistics. It had nothing to do with components because they were following their own, they are living their own life. This was a specialty, and it opened next week, partly, the factories we are working with, the partners. They're all running, but not all logistics is running. What I mean, I talk to these people every day. What it looks like is it's gonna open.
Whether there's a new lockdown in a week, I have no clue.
Makes sense. Second question, when is the future? That's of course a specific question to your slide number 90, where you showed that in future, sort of as far as I could eyeball out of it, that you believe, I believe indicatively, that video might be as big as your gaming franchise. Is that something we're talking about five, 10 years down the road? I believe you might have put some thought into that.
Yeah. We have not guided exactly when and what, but it's clear that if we have not made in five years a very significant video play, we will not succeed. Right? This gentleman does not have that much time basically. We have to succeed now. As I think we try to display, we have very strong technology components in hand now. The products are coming out, and of course, we need to start taking share. The market is here, and the penetration is actually lower as the two gentlemen talked to. Of course, if we can feed that market fast, there should be a chance of building a business part.
We need more products. That's clear. We need a different room. We need perhaps also lower price point products, but it cannot take 10 years, then it's gone.
Thank you, René. Let's go to Maja.
Thank you very much. René, if we just look at the general situation in audio, I mean, I do remember the times 2007, 2008, 2009, and I believe some others in that room as well. Audio did have quite a disastrous performance, if we can say so. You know, the business confidence surveys that are coming out of the U.S. from the CEOs are actually more bearish. They talk about freeze in hiring but also holding off on some CapEx spending. What is your thinking about the current situation, and how would audio fare? Should we take 2007, 2008, 2009 as a reference? Do you believe the business is in a different situation? That's the first question.
The second question, I guess there isn't a cookbook recipe that you could give us with like, you know, four weeks of stop in manufacturing are manageable for full year guidance, or if the ports are closed or, you know, logistics is down for five weeks, we'll still be able to squeeze it out somehow. Is there anything that we can all just kind of monitor, or is it will be just very depending on you, your performance?
Yeah. Let me take the first question first. I joined the board of GN exactly when that happened, and I remember very well that it was no fun really. I think GN is in a completely different spot today as regards a lot of things. I mean, our presence in the market, our engineering capabilities, the way we have established ourselves in the channel and. I'm not saying that the world cannot go through a tough time to be seen. It's. I think we're all affected by whatever happens in Eastern Europe as we speak. I think the business model of GN is quite resilient, I think, as we speak.
I think we have two different models, but in audio, I mean, we built this whole supply chain and the go-to-market machine to be scalable up and down. Of course, we don't wanna scale it down, but it is actually quite resilient from that perspective as well. If I look at the total GN model, I think also it's way more resilient today than it was, it is now 15 years ago, almost 13 years ago. I think will the world go through tough times? Maybe so. I think what we saw when the pandemic hit, that we are in categories actually that people don't cut back. They actually do the opposite.
I cannot say that there will be no cutback in investments in this kind of tools, but it is something that actually helps productivity. It helps you cut travel costs, it helps you this and that. In that sense, we are perhaps hopefully in categories that are less vulnerable to this kind of situation. I mean, if you look at the situation in recent three-four months here, this has been a component issue only. We have ample manufacturing capacity. Logistics can be. It's not cheap, and it's not easy, but it's available. We fly things around and so forth, so it's doable.
If you go back to 2020, of course, we had a situation in late February, early March, where everything stopped. We sold out what we had in our own inventories, and the channel stock was emptied and so forth. Still, I mean, when we ended the year, I think we had delivered 42% growth, right? We had absolutely no growth in a couple of months in spring. Could we come back if we have three weeks of shutdown in China, not if it happens late in the year where there is no catch-up time, but if it happens in Q2, if we can get the components? I would believe so, actually.
If we have, I mean, we can speculate all kind of things, but if there's a shutdown more than a week, for sure, we can come back if we get the components.
Good. Thank you, René Svendsen-Tune. Let's go to Niels Granholm-Leth.
Thank you. Two questions, if I may. First question on capacity and especially in relation to your collaboration business. Which are your bottlenecks in terms of capacity right now? Is it entirely components? And what kind of access to manufacturing capacity do you have? And then a second question would be, what are your plans to enter new categories such as microphones, lights, et cetera?
You wanna say, Surya?
I think on the first one, I'll just echo what René said. We are not constrained through capacity. We think we're good there. We are seeing strong demand for the products. We are a bit constrained on component supply, and that's also actually we're addressing it in multiple different ways, I'll just say. Capacity is not an issue to us.
Manufacturing capacity.
Manufacturing capacity.
We have been severely component constrained.
Yeah.
You have two. We get more components, and there is a redesign done also on this product actually, so we can do with other, with alternative components.
Expanding the sources of supply.
Yeah. Now I forgot the second question.
About the entering new categories.
New categories.
I'm gonna talk to it.
I think a content microphone is of course an obvious discussion. We have not announced that we will go there at this point of time. If you think about all of us as sort of personal streamers there, that would be one day quite obvious thing to have in an office as well, right? We have no product launches. There are other categories. We can also talk about software sort of carrying across various devices in the office and so forth.
Good. Thank you. Let's move down to Veronika.
Thank you. Veronika from Goldman Sachs. Two questions from me. One, I wanna circle back on the component supply, Rene. Obviously, you have your light system, but I think all of us are sort of trying to understand just how much progress you're making and how much progress you need to make to hit the guidance. I don't know if you're able to talk about if, you know, if you need to get to 100 in the second half, are you at 50 today? Are you at 70? Were you at 50 yesterday, but you're at 70 tomorrow? Just give us a little bit of a sliding scale, I don't know, index, whatever you feel comfortable, just for us to understand how much component availability improvement you need to see as we transition through the next quarter to hit the guide for the full year.
I appreciate it might be a difficult question, but please help us. My second question, thank you for the video presentation. I thought it was fantastic. It seems like you have great technology. I'd love to hear a little bit what the selling process looks like. You're obviously going up against some very well-established players. I appreciate the market's growing a lot, but I'm just curious, you know, other than the technology and the R&D and the software that you've put together, what else do you know, how else do you compete against Cisco and Logitech in particular?
Happy to comment on the second, but I'll pass the first one.
You take the second one, then I'll come back to the other one.
Should I go with the second first?
Yeah, do that.
Sure, you know, thank you for that. That's great question. I would say that we've tried to leapfrog the competition by delivering a class of experiences that they're not able to deliver today that matter. When you look at Microsoft Teams or Zoom and others, the whole idea of intelligent gallery view is front and center. That is sort of the high bar. You know, we deliver that uniquely in two ways. One is just the quality of it, because we have three 13-megapixel cameras, so lots of pixels to work with. We can just give you that much better visual quality of the experience, zooming in and so on. Secondly, also just the fact that we can cover that whole space and provide the panoramic view. Nobody else can do that.
To the extent that, you know, we have many worthy competitors, lots of great technology to the extent that we're able to eclipse and leapfrog that technology, and we did that purposefully through the architectural innovations we built into our device. All of that hardware, all of the homegrown processor, all of that is very carefully selected. That also allows us to have a runway ahead. You know, we're not talking about more products in this category, but as we design all the layers of this many-layered cake, it is designed to progress forward quite well.
Maybe the other part of that question, of course, is the channel. I mean, are we ready to start selling this? What you will find out there is that, to a very large extent, the same companies, especially, I mean, there are AV specific specialties out there, but a lot of the large volumes will be sold by large resellers like Bechtle or other. They have installation services, they have multiple categories and so forth. We don't go necessarily to other places to mobilize the channels. I guess we are at a point, I mean, our sales guys and the channel partners are eagerly waiting for us to bring out more volume as we are planning to do that.
Exactly.
My first.
Yeah. Will you?
Your first question, I try to somehow. Yeah. I think I don't have a formula for that, but I think, as we discussed, some of us at least when we talked to the Q1, everybody understood that if with the 5% guidance, if we have minus 25% the first quarter, we'll have to have growth in all the other quarters for that to make sense, right? That's still the case, of course. There are two parts to that. One is that we have been redesigning quite a lot of products, especially a little bit older high runners that somehow take a lot of volume where we did not want to risk to transition fast to a new product.
All that is on plan and will be released during the second quarter here. We have that ability ready when we hit the second half. Of course, you can say many of you have calculated that we have talked a little bit about price increases as well, that the volumes we need for the full year to make the guidance doesn't need to be a lot higher than last year. Of course, we wanna do better than that. I think, I mean, our own comfort with getting, I mean, when we speak to the suppliers, when we see what is available, when we get the numbers in for second quarter, it looks okay actually.
We are comfortable that this is a meaningful guidance still. Could we get a lot more product components soon, fast, and in second we will do more.
Thank you, René. Let's go to Oliver.
It's Oliver from ODDO BHF. One question regarding the synergies between the audio space and the collaboration space. As Altia was acquired, it was the idea about having the offering from one hand. Now after some years, how has the market accepted this common offering? Is the market already in a position to say, "Okay, you're the number one in audio, and therefore we give you also the chance in video" or do you have really to fight to get a lead in video for it? That's number one. Number two is just about a general bottleneck in network capacities. I'm not sure whether I'm the only one, but sometimes I'm on Teams and the network connection is not that good. Basically, you have to switch off video.
If you talk about really the best camera, the best resolution, do you still see there a meaningful bottleneck from network capabilities that you have the best product, but in reality you cannot use it in this resolution?
Yeah. I mean, I'm sure Hugo will have a comment. Maybe I'll... Sorry, do you wanna.
I mean, I can comment on the audio part, right?
Yeah.
I mean, the companies are very happy with the quality and the performance of our products, and they really appreciate that we are entering the video space, and audio is a big part of that experience. Not only that they expect us to innovate, they also expect great quality. What we are demoing to them and what they're experiencing with our products is exactly what they are confirming back to us.
Yeah.
You make a difference.
I think to that point, you know, we wanted and needed to expand our portfolio, and now we feel with this new architecture and this expansion to the portfolio, we're in a unique position. The audio heritage opens lots of doors, but our innovation in video, what we've done, with the experiences that the key UC providers care about the most right now also make a big difference, right? We're finding that although there are many worthy competitors, we feel quite confident and comfortable based on the purchases by the most sophisticated buyers in this industry about the value proposition of our products. Now to your second question, you know, having to turn off the internet video because of. I'm sorry that that's the case, but it does make a difference.
I'll give you a couple of simple examples. Let's say that you don't turn it off, but the internet throttles you down to low resolution levels. You're not doing 1080p, you're not doing 720p, maybe you're doing 360p, right? You know, in our devices, even in the PanaCast 20, we have state-of-the-art 3D noise reduction built in. What that means is that when you go to low resolution, you know, often you see pixelation or you'll see graininess or what are called dancing pixels, a lot of noise. It just doesn't look very good. We have algorithms built into our processors that understand and eliminate those kinds of noise sources. Technology can do this without loading down your PC. We're not loading your PC with anything else. We're not loading the network. We're not sending more pixels to the network.
In some cases, actually a little bit less because we filter all that noise out. Hopefully you don't have to turn your camera off, but it will still provide a meaningfully better experience when you leave it on. Yeah.
Good. Joseph?
Thanks. A question for Holger, please. What is your transparency in terms of large tender orders for the remaining part of this year? Are you aware of any super large tenders that will come up during the next few quarters? Are you even going to ship? Have you already won any of such tenders for the rest of this year?
We are usually not commenting on those detail level, but we have normal business, normal order intake. Since first of February, we also increased prices, so all good actually. No abnormality or whatever.
Maybe just because it was actually, to your point, years back, we were sort of. You could see the tenders in our business, but it's hard nowadays actually. It is a flow business, of course, there are big deals coming and going, but it's hard to see them in the quarters really anymore.
Is it realistic that you would see any larger orders that would represent several percentage points of your full year revenue coming in later this year?
No. I mean, I can't say. I mean, if. I think it is a flow business. Of course, there is also a constant flow of big deals coming through the machinery. It's hard to see in a quarter that something happened. When it comes to the video business, we can still see that because it is. You can say, it's smaller and in that sense, you still have these. Hopefully soon we can't see that either.
Yeah. Thank you. Is it possible that you could comment on your order backlog during Q1? Also, back to a very popular question on the order backlog, maybe talk about the quality of the order backlog. I'm sure everyone is placing orders with everyone. How do you see the level of the backlog and how have you seen the composition of the backlog develop? Once things hopefully normalize, do you then expect the backlog to be reduced by 50% day one, or what do you think?
It hasn't really changed. You can say the order inflow has more or less matched the output. The backlog is still very much there. I guess to your point, when the market normalizes, then people wanna have the latest sort of demand and whatever old sits there from a couple of months back or many months back will disappear. I think that's gonna be the same again. Right now, of course, there is such a pressure on supply from everybody. We don't really see that anybody has succeeded so far to bring out volumes to a point that we would have lost business.
I'm not saying this cannot happen, but because you're right, distribution will try to get products in hand, and the end cost is the same. Right now the supply is just matching what comes in as we speak.
Good. Thank you very much, gentlemen. I think we will just have a 10-minute break. 15 minutes past, we'll be back here with the final session on gaming and SteelSeries.
I think we are ready to get going here in Copenhagen and we have a bit of refreshment for you guys here. Online, I'm very sorry we couldn't make it for you, but there is a bit of popcorn, and we are back in the game. Now I think we will hand over to our newest members of the family, SteelSeries, and René, maybe you just want to say a few opening remarks here.
Yes, thank you, Henriette. The last speaker of the day will be Ehtisham. As I said earlier, some of you know him because he has been the very successful CEO of SteelSeries for quite a number of years now. I met this gentleman a couple of years back, and very, very pleased that late summer or mid-autumn we found a deal with the owners of SteelSeries, and now you have joined our company and let's talk gaming gear.
Thank you, René. I hope you're enjoying the popcorn. I'm Ehtisham, as René said. It is a pleasure being here. First of all, I wanna thank my new colleagues at GN for making us feel so welcome. All 400 of us Steelheads for making us feel so welcome. Thank you, all.
It has been a really interesting journey for us. You know, I see some familiar faces out there. There is going to be some repetition, I apologize. For the new folks, Maja, you asked for this, we are going to give you background. We are going to give you all sorts of background on both the business and on the brand. Starting out, SteelSeries was founded in 2001. It was founded right here in Copenhagen. It was founded in the basement of a building which actually is not too far from here. It was founded to help eSports professionals win. Simple. Here we are 20 years later, and we are a leading gaming lifestyle brand. We have become the number one premium gaming audio brand in the world. Highest ASPs, very loyal following.
We've done this through a seamless stitching together of hardware and software that's proprietary to us. You see the patents, you see the fact that we already have over 5.6 million users using our software. That's been the formula. Currently, we're only playing in a handful of categories. Gaming audio is our largest category. It's about 56% of our business. We're also in gaming keyboards and gaming mice. We've got a little bit of presence in gaming surfaces, gaming controllers, and accessories for controllers. But one of the things you'll notice is there is a lot more, and we understand that we're God, we've got so much runway for growth over here. These products have been really well-awarded.
We happen to be one of the most awarded brands in gaming, which obviously, you know, makes us feel good, but it results in revenue. One of the things you'll notice is a really nice revenue trajectory over the last many years. 41% CAGR since 2018. Last year, we had DKK 2.7 billion, which I think is a good number. It's a fine number. We could have done more. The number one thing driving our business results right now, not surprisingly, is component supply. It's no different than any other consumer electronics business right now, which is our numbers are being driven by how much supply we have. DKK 2.7 billion in 2021, I'll take it.
Our EBITDA was 13.6%, which was a new high for us. Part of what's behind that number is scale. We're finally seeing the scale of SteelSeries kick in. One of the things I get excited about and we'll talk more about is that's just SteelSeries scale. Now that we have GN Audio scale as well, I get super excited about where we're headed. One of the questions I'm sure you'll ask me, so I'll just preempt it, is what are you gonna do in 2022? Right? You're gonna ask me that. We've guided the market that the SteelSeries business is gonna grow over 10%. We're absolutely there. We're going to drive towards delivering that number. Right now we have a global footprint.
We are well distributed. We've got offices around the world. One of the things we're really proud of is how this little Danish brand has made it big in the U.S. That's really a point of pride for everybody who works at SteelSeries. We've got so much white space, you guys. APAC is a massive white space. We just opened our office in Shanghai last year, so we're just really now getting serious about APAC. When you think about new categories, when you think about new geographies, one of the things, hopefully, that you'll walk away with is we're just getting started. Everything that we do starts out with our brand mission. Most of us at SteelSeries are gamers. One of the things we believe in is that gamers are awesome.
Something that I personally believe in is that gamers are smarter than non-gamers. For those of you who have kids who are gaming, guess what? They're gonna be amazing. Just don't let them overdo it, right? Keep it under control. They're gonna be better than their non-gaming classmates. Our goal in life is to make every gamer feel like a star. You wanna walk away from every experience going, "Wow, that was amazing. I didn't win, but I loved it, and I connected with my community, and I made new friends, and I scored some points. This is great." The way we do that is, again, by building a comprehensive platform that brings hardware and software seamlessly together, that connects gear with games, with gaming communities, and with eSports.
That connection point is critical, and hopefully, you'll get a sense of what I mean by that connection point. This just isn't about selling hardware. It's that whole ecosystem that connects all these things together. Now, gaming has changed a lot. I'm a lifelong gamer. You know, I used to sit alone in my parents' basement and game. But today, gaming is massive. Gaming has become mainstream. René talked a little bit about that. Today, gamers are everywhere. It is the largest form of entertainment. It's bigger than movies, music, TV, streaming video combined. That's the business that we're playing in, is this massive entertainment business. Couple of myths about gaming that I just wanna explode right up front. Many people think it's a young man's thing. It isn't.
Over two-thirds of all new gamers are women. I know. Over half of new gamers are over 45 years old. Here's a fact, once you're a gamer, you kinda stay a gamer. It never leaves your bloodstream. You may walk away for a few years, but you'll be back, and you see that in the numbers, in the consistency of the business and the growth levels. The other myth is that gaming is just an activity. You start gaming, you end your game, you walk away. That's not true. When gamers are not gaming, they're watching games and gaming and influencers. You can see the growth in hours viewed. It is absolutely massive. This is one of the things that's making gaming so much bigger than mainstream media.
The other thing is that gaming is also one of the largest social media platforms in the world. Over 700 million plus gamers use gaming as their way to connect with their social network. They're not gaming, they're not watching a game, but they're on the platform so they can talk, and they can communicate, and they can share. You know, we've talked a little bit about the Metaverse, or I'm gonna say I've talked about it a little bit. Gaming obviously is a key pillar of the Metaverse. One of the things, one sort of very quick example there is how you know, you're seeing live concerts being held in gaming platforms. It's really very exciting. Has anybody seen a live concert in a gaming platform? Anybody here? I'd be so impressed if somebody did. Okay.
We'll save that for the next time. Big stars like Lil Nas X, like Drake, like Travis Scott, all these folks have done massive concerts in gaming platforms. These are live concerts, huge followings. Just one small example of how the virtual world and the real world are coming together. In this environment, you know, it should not be a surprise that it's, you know, you're seeing explosive growth. Esports is another key driver of that explosive growth. It's not just the fact that these virtual and real worlds are coming together. There are over 500 million viewers of esports today. It is one of the fastest-growing sports in the world. That is a key fuel to this whole gaming gear market.
You know, in 2019 there was a major milestone reached, and that was when a single championship, which was the League of Legends championship, got over 100 million views. You know, when I was sitting alone in my parents' basement, I would have never imagined that there would be a gaming championship that got over 100 million views. That's where we are today. As an aside, that was won by a team called FunPlus Phoenix, which I'm, you know, we're very proud with. It is a SteelSeries team. It won that LCS championship. A lot of mainstream sports, traditional sports, are finding their way to esports. You've probably seen all the news stories. They're investing in teams, they're investing in arenas.
One quick example of that is that we partner with Mercedes-AMG Petronas on their esports franchise. We're also partnering with teams like the Cleveland Cavaliers on their esports franchise. This is everywhere. It's NFL, NBA, FIFA, F1. It is all going the way of esports. I think in 2021, we had another major milestone, which was when Sports Illustrated had an esports team on the cover for the very first time. Because, you know, there's been a little bit of a debate on whether esports is really a sport or not, and I think by Sports Illustrated putting this esports team on the cover, I think it was a pretty strong statement that esports is a sport. I completely believe it's a sport.
That, by the way, is a team called FaZe Clan, which is another SteelSeries team. We're really proud of that as well. I know when I say esports, some of you are familiar with it, for some of you, it may be new. I wanted to give you a flavor for esports.
What's the difference between casual gaming and hardcore gaming? Well, what's the difference between running a mile and running a marathon? It's all about dedication, obsession, and passion. You've gotta have the right mindset, and you've gotta have the right gear. There are rules to the game, but there are no limits to how you play it. There's only guts and skill and a drive to beat the best. For only those who dream about the battles and long for the victories
Yeah, don't tell me that's not a sport. Esports is a big driver of the business, and it has resulted in a gaming gear category that is growing. The overall gaming peripherals business is over $15 billion. Right now, we're playing in a fraction of it, as I said. We're playing in about $5.5 billion of that $15 billion. The bar graph that you see on the right are the core categories we are in today, which is gaming audio, gaming keyboards, gaming mice. That's what the bar charts are. As you can imagine, we've got our eyes set on the $15 billion. We wanna be masters of that $5.5 billion first and then expand out.
As we do this, our focus is gonna continue to be on the premium gamer. We're a premium business, highest ASPs in most of the categories we play in. Now, why is high-end gear important to premium gamers? It's fairly simple. These gamers, they're enthusiasts. They're playing 10+ hours at any given time in any given day, and when you're putting that much time into your gaming, it needs to be comfortable, you need to be able to communicate seamlessly with your teams, and you need to win, or you need to have at least a chance at winning. You need the gear that gives you an edge. You wanna emulate your favorite esports professionals, right? You wanna be just like the big guys.
One other thing which is really important with gaming gear is that it needs to be cross-platform. Gaming is absolutely ubiquitous. Gamers are gaming on every single platform. You know, as we say, 85% of console gamers also game on a PC. 70% of all PC gamers also game on a console. Everybody's basically gaming on everything, and you need gear that cuts across all categories. All right. With that, you know, one of the things that has driven our business is a pretty simple formula. It's hard to execute, it's very simple in its thinking, which is be on the cutting edge, solve needs, solve problems, address needs before anybody else does, be first. Provide the best solutions. Don't just rely on hardware.
Use hardware and software seamlessly stitched together to provide the best solutions, and then be best in class in market activation. Those are the three sort of pillars, the tenets of our business, and I'm gonna give you a little bit more flavor on these things. Let's start out with innovation. I alluded to the fact that, you know, our whole mindset is how do we solve problems for gamers that nobody else has solved? How do we make that experience so much better? First of all, it really helps that most of us are gamers, so we're basically trying to make our lives better as well. We obviously work very closely with esports teams, with some of the biggest influencers in the world. The orientation very much is, let's do something that makes a difference.
You will not see us throw technology into stuff for the sake of throwing technology into stuff. That makes things complicated. That actually makes the experience much worse. Everything is done with a very, very specific purpose in mind. That has resulted in a number of firsts that makes us very unique. The very first dedicated gaming headset ever made was by SteelSeries. The very first keyboard, which had mechanical switches was SteelSeries. By the way, that's the standard now for gaming keyboards, is mechanical gaming keyboards. The very first mouse that had an onboard processor, so you could actually save your settings on the mouse and take it with you was SteelSeries. The very first official Apple game controller was SteelSeries. We brought high-fidelity audio to gaming.
I know, it sounds like I'm bragging, and I guess I am, but what I wanted to showcase for you is you don't have to be massive to be the tech leader in your business. We have been leading this business from a technology standpoint for years, and now you're starting to see the results. You're starting to see us starting to hit critical mass. I won't go through the rest of these. The only other one that I wanna point out is in 2021, we launched SteelSeries GG. GG is the very first integrated platform. It's a software platform. It's the only one of its kind in our business, and I'll talk a little bit more about that.
One of the things, as we're working on innovation is we have a very strong sense of Danish design. What do I mean by that? You know, I talked a little bit about that, which is, look, solve problems. Keep it simple. Don't make it too complicated. Make every product a joy to use, right? That's what we mean by Danish design. We try to do this in a way that is responsible to our planet, to our people, to the communities we work in. Our goal is to make a real difference. What I wanna show you is how we talk about our problem-solving mindset when we talk to gamers.
At SteelSeries, we solve problems. Not climate change-level problems. Sorry, future generations. Video game problems. Like when gamers communicated by taping microphones to their faces.
Seriously?
We had an idea: attach mic to headset. The gaming headset was born. Sounds good, right? Well, yeah, but not as good as it could, so we brought high-fidelity audio to gaming. We didn't do it for the awards. We did it so you could get immersed in your games, hear bad guys better, and yourself when you get shot at. Innovation is in our blood. Always has been, always will be. For glory.
Hopefully that gives you a little bit of flavor of how we approach our products. It's about solving real problems. All of this has made us the number one esports brand. Why do I say that? What's my basis? It's two things. One, esports professionals have won more money using SteelSeries gear than any other brand. Number two is, when Newzoo, which is probably one of the largest researchers in our business, when they go out and ask thousands of gamers around the world, "Who do you see as the leader in esports?" SteelSeries is number one. We are the number one esports brand in the world, which is hugely helpful.
Because esports, while itself is a pretty contained group of folks, you know, 500 million folks, and there are over 3 billion gamers, but these 500 million folks, they are the trendsetters, they are the tastemakers, they actually dictate what happens in the rest of the industry. As a result of this, we have over 300+ major influencers around the world. We've got thousands of micro-influencers around the world, but over 300+ major influencers. We've picked out a couple of favorites. Some of these folks you may recognize, some of you won't recognize. They're all sort of gaming dignitaries. You'll recognize Henry Cavill, who played Superman, you know, Man of Steel. We loved it when he called himself a Man of SteelSeries.
At the bottom, you've got Hafthor. Any Game of Thrones fans over here? One. The Mountain. He's a regular streamer for us. When you take our social networks, when you take our influencers, when you take our esports teams, when you add it all together, it's 150 million people in this network. It is one of the loudest megaphones on the planet. We love it. It's not just about reach, it has to be about engagement. This is a very important metric to us. It's not just how many people are viewing your stuff, but are they interacting with it? Are they sharing it? We have the number one engagement rate on social media. That's a really important point.
Now, I wanna show you an example of when we use this megaphone, what are we saying to consumers? How are we telling the SteelSeries story? This next video really just lays out the SteelSeries story.
At SteelSeries, we make gaming gear so you can be anything you want, except one thing, ordinary. Why pick on someone your own size? Fight the biggest bad guy you can find. Why score a regular goal? Do something that makes your opponent lose their mind. Why build a boring little house? Create something nobody's seen before. Now that's beautiful. Why waste your ammo on this guy? He's so good at games, he just nades himself to death. Why settle for just one trophy? Send us a DM when you win ten. That's the mentality we love at SteelSeries. That's why we make the gaming gear you need to destroy ordinary. Get in game and go for glory.
By the way, you've now met Lars, our mascot. You saw him all over that video. One of the lines in that video is, you know, "Why pick on someone your own size? Go and find the biggest, baddest bad guy out there." That's always been our approach as a company. We've taken on companies that are far bigger than us, and I think we've done pretty well, and I think now as part of the GN family, we have the opportunity to do even better. All of this, the products, our influencers, esports, all of this has resulted in us becoming the premium leader in gaming audio. What you see over here is a graph that just sort of lays it out nicely. On the X-axis is brand perception.
This is again a survey with thousands of consumers, gamers around the world, asking them, "Who do you see as the premium leader in the space?" It's SteelSeries. And then on the Y-axis is actual behavior at point of sale. In this particular case, this is data from Amazon US, but it's representative of what we see around the world, which is we're perceived as the number one brand, and we have the highest ASPs. We're gonna continue playing and focusing at that high end. And that is gonna be really important because we have set our sights on the whole gaming rig. That's where we wanna be. You see a whole bunch of categories over here.
They're actually, if you look at some of our influencers' gaming rigs, they're far more elaborate than this. There's a lot more. We've picked a pretty standard gaming rig. One of the things you'll notice is we've got two new things on there. Some of you have seen these before. We've got our brand new gaming speakers. We're not in the gaming speaker market yet. We will be. In fact, if you go outside to our demo station, you'll be able to hear the speakers. I really encourage you to go and hear them. They're pretty awesome. The other thing, somebody asked about microphones, and you'll see number seven in there. That is not a mock-up or anything. I mean, that's the actual microphone.
We're getting into the gaming microphone business. I'm not gonna give you any dates as yet. Both those things are pretty much ready to go. Then we're working on additional categories. Our goal is to be the premium leader across the entire gaming rig. We are going to play in that entire $15 billion segment. It'll take us a while. It's not gonna happen tomorrow. It's gonna be gradual. We'll get there step by step, but that's the goal. All of that rig, one of the things that ties all those products together is software, right? That's the glue. That's what brings the entire ecosystem together. What we launched last year. We've been working, by the way, on software for over a decade, so software is not new to us.
In fact, we have more software engineers than we have hardware engineers. What's new is we've brought all these different software offerings under one roof, one streamlined experience, and it's called SteelSeries GG. It already has 5.6 million installs. There are 2 million monthly active users. Doesn't impress me as yet. We're just getting started. What does impress me is we're speaking to two really, really important constituencies. On the one hand, we've got gamers who have never, ever bought a SteelSeries product. They make up 24% of the people using GG. On the other hand, we've got gamers who love SteelSeries and are using more than two of our products simultaneously. They make up 21% of the GG user base. This is exactly what we had in mind.
It's an acquisition, conversion, and retention tool, and we're just starting to see the numbers go up every single month. What you'll see in here, you know, this is somebody's homepage on their GG experience. On the menu bar, you'll see a whole bunch of applications, right? So these are services and applications that they have chosen. They've got Moments on there. Moments is a proprietary piece of software for SteelSeries. It is the fastest, I think, easiest way for you to capture your game highlights, edit them, and then share them with your social media. I mean, for those of you who game, you know, it's so frustrating. You had this amazing kill shot in the game, but there is no proof of it. Nobody saw it except for the people who are playing with you.
Moments changes that because we automatically capture your highlights, and so you have it there, and you can, with one click, send it out to your social media. We've got SteelSeries Engine, which customizes all your SteelSeries products, and we're adding more and more services. The next big thing, which I cannot wait for, we are in alpha on this, in early access on this, is SteelSeries Sonar. This is going to be the most advanced audio suite in gaming. Hopefully, as I'm talking, you're sort of starting to go, "You know, you sound a lot like GN Audio," because the things we're focusing on are very similar. So what you see on the top there is a parametric equalizer. It allows you to control this every...
If you think about a frequency range, it allows you to control every little point within that frequency range, not just preset bands, but anything within that frequency range. I can tell you right now, the game developers are loving this. We've been working with, you know, people who make Fortnite, CS:GO, VALORANT, because one of their complaints has been, you know, "I sound engineered my game to sound a certain way, and it is so frustrating that it doesn't sound that way to a lot of consumers." Well, guess what? It is gonna sound exactly the way they intend it to be. That is what the parametric equalizer does. What you see below that is also a first in gaming. If you think about, you know, you're gaming, right?
You wanna control how your game sounds. You have a team that you're communicating with. You wanna control how you sound to your team, and you wanna control how your team sounds to you. Three different audio streams are happening. Till now, you could not individually control them. You had to. It was one control for everything. If you optimized the controls for your game, guess what? Your team sounded awful. What we are bringing to the market is the very first audio suite that allows you to control each one of these things separately. Huge breakthrough. It's something that we like to call X-ray hearing. Kind of reminds me of the story of Eric and hearing fish, you know, like no one else. That's kind of what Sonar does for you.
What you see over here is a stack of barrels, and what Sonar will help you do is almost see the hidden enemy, that sniper, the guy who's probably gonna kill you in about two seconds behind the barrels before anything happens. It is hugely powerful. I could go on for forever. What I do wanna do is sort of wrap this up and talk a little bit about our many vectors for growth. Look, we're a growth company. You've seen the long-term structural changes that have happened in media consumption, how people communicate, how people talk to their social networks. All of that means that we're in a growing category. Not only is the category growing, it's also premiumizing.
The fastest growth part of the category is the premium side of the business, which happens to be where we play, so it actually works out quite nicely. Number two is market share gains. We have opportunities to grow share in every single category we play in. We have not tapped out on that at all. One of the ways we're growing share is by increasing our point of sale experiences. Thousands of more doors where if you walk in, you'll be able to touch and feel and listen to SteelSeries products just like outside. Number three is organic expansion, new categories, expanding into new geographies. We have a lot of runway for growth over here.
Finally, I think software is gonna be a major acquisition, conversion, and retention tool for us. We're just getting started there. With all of these different vectors, our plan is to use M&A strategically to accelerate some of these things. You know, as René said, you know, we can do all of these things on our own, but there may be times when we wanna actually acquire someone to accelerate our ability to get there. The great news is now that we're part of GN, there's so much more. You've heard about all the great technology from the hearing aids team, from the audio team. You know, we're taking it all in. We think there are amazing gaming applications of so much of that technology. That's gonna start making its way into our roadmap.
There are revenue synergies, expanded distribution. GN is present in places we're not present today, so that's an easy opportunity right there. Our ability to serve more of our customers directly, that's gonna be huge. Scale, right? I mentioned how scale had really given us an all-time high EBITDA. That's without GN Audio's scale. When you start putting all of those things together, we're super excited about where we're headed with this. We have committed to delivering DKK 150 million in operational synergies. Half of them will come this year. We're on track. It is part of how this business is gonna play out, where we really benefit from being part of this great large company. With that, thank you all.
Thank you very much, Ehtisham, and maybe invite René on stage as well. We are ready for the next and final Q&A session. Maybe we start with Niels this time.
Thank you. A question on entering new categories. Gaming cameras is one of the faster-growing categories. How quickly would PanaCast be able to redesign one of your cameras into a gaming camera? That would be my first question. When it comes to other categories like speakers and microphones, will you enter those categories in 2022?
[Aurangzeb] and I are gonna be best friends now. That's pretty clear. We definitely think there are applications there, but we've got a little bit of work to do to figure out how to bring in the gaming. You're absolutely right. There is definitely opportunities there. On the categories then, I've learned my lesson. I don't commit. When you look at the speakers, you're like, "Okay, you're not that far off. You're ready to go." You know, this is not just about sort of a hypothetical exercise. We actually have real products, just need the final finishing touches, and we'll be ready to go. That was a non-answer answer. Hopefully, that worked.
Yes. Go.
Thank you. Thank you for setting this up. So, we've heard three CEOs very excited about their business. I guess you're all competing for capital. How is this organized at GN?
Gitte, you wanna-
Sure. I can take that one. Yeah, we get that question quite a lot. Of course, like many other bigger companies, we look at big opportunities. What's clear, despite Ehtisham being very convincing and with a lot of big opportunities, not that we now take money away from the two other business and put more into this area. We're not gonna spend less in hearing to spend even more in gaming or in audio for that matter. We of course look at all the opportunities we have in hearing, in audio, and now in gaming, also in video. Gitte, René and I actually manage that quite well, I would say.
Of course, sometimes together with the board, depending on how big an investment if it's a SteelSeries size, then of course, we need them to give us a nod before we go down another path. It's a portfolio discussion, and we have a balanced view on that.
Gitte, do you have anything else?
Maybe it's also fair to say here that actually we have not been in a competing situation as I remember at all. We are looking at a lot of potential targets, and we go after very few. I mean, we always need something that is part of the future, not part of the past. A lot of stuff you can find there is actually more part of the past than the future. I think sometimes I would wish we had more candidates, and we would be in some competition, but we are not really.
Good. Mattias, go ahead.
Mattias Häggblom, Handelsbanken. I'm thinking about this culture fit between, you know, SteelSeries and this go for glory style, which I love.
You know, so how do you keep this entrepreneurial spirit within the GN Group? You know, interested in both gentlemen's perspective on that. Then, obviously, you've been growing historically at a fast pace, 41% now you're guiding for 10%+ given the component shortages. Help me understand to what extent, you know, the pandemic may maybe boosted that number to certain degree, or what else there is to think about this long-term trajectory compare to what you're guiding for 2022. You wanna start?
Let me start with the second one, and then we can share the first one. On the second one, look, there's no doubt that the number of hours gained grew during the pandemic. Here's the thing, we didn't have, and most people didn't have products to sell anyway. If there was a free supply of products, we would have seen a level of lift that did not happen, could not happen just because the components weren't there. As a result, we're not looking for a big market correction. In fact, if you buy Newzoo's projections, there is no market correction. There's actually, you know, continued growth. I think, as I said, that's because the demand in the market was so much bigger than supply that you never had that bubble.
On the second one, or on the first one, so far it's felt really comfortable. Look, we're, you know, we're a company that's focused on solving real problems using innovation. You know, that's exactly what you're hearing from GN. I think one of the things that René and Gitte and Peter and the board have been great about is saying, "Look, let SteelSeries be SteelSeries." We are operating, we've got our own product development, our own software development, our own marketing, our own sales. The places where we are really leveraging the synergies is by combining operations and by combining some of the back office financial functions. But other than that, we're like full speed ahead, and now we have all these colleagues to tap into their expertise and the technology that they have.
I think I have to add on to that, but I think that it seems that we are not gonna change the brands apart in any way or shape or form combine the two brands.
Not sure they can hear
you. Sorry. Okay. I'll try this one. What I just try to say is that there's a very clear decision. We will not try to interchange the brands. We will not somehow co-brand anything. The whole marketing machinery and community machinery that sits in SteelSeries, we will not. We may learn from it and copy-paste it in other parts, but we will not try to integrate this method. It is, you said, it's really a back-end scale machinery and, of course, a sharing of technology where there's a lot we can do both ways, actually.
We have another question from the Teams channel. Julien Dormois, I think you have a question. Can we pull him up on the screen?
Yep. Can you hear me and see me?
Yes.
Okay, perfect. Thanks. Thanks a lot. Yeah, I have, let's say, two questions. The first one on SteelSeries and on the profitability. I know, René, that you sort of guide for 14%-15% EBITDA margin this year, I think, for SteelSeries. The question is more over the midterm. Do you think that SteelSeries might achieve a sort of closer profitability level than the core GN Audio, like in the 20s, for example? That's my first question. Sorry, René, to, let's say, come back on it, but I would like just to jump back on the audio guidance for Q1.
Basically, my understanding is that Q1 will be a bit below the initial guidance of -25% sales decline, as some has, let's say, slipped into Q2. Just to be sure I'm right, or there is, let's say, still a scenario in which you can hit the -25% in Q1. I don't know if you can ship enough products before March 31st. Thanks a lot.
Maybe I take the latter one first. On the Q1, I mean, we had the minus 25 guidance out there. I think it's clear that we were on that path. As I told, we had this massive sort of full shutdown a week back. We're opening now. We are shipping out. There is a risk that the cutoff will not allow us to ship all we need. This is not a component issue. I also wanna stress that. It's really about getting products that are made to package, then get them out of the door. Yes, there is a risk that we will not meet the -25%.
Assuming there is not a new lockdown coming, this will come back right the first week of April, basically. What I try to say also here, if this happens, we will not do anything silly, but of course, we will ship as fast as we can because our customers are waiting for the products. Will we make -25%? That would be fantastic and great, but we don't really know, right? For the first half, no change. On this, we have the situation you spoke to that we have a new lockdown, which cannot be somehow in our planning.
To the profitability question, I mean, if I look also long-term, I mean, already now we are assuming that the combined entities will deliver the 20% profit level EBITDA margin that we have guided for. I think we think that there is opportunity to actually sort of keep rising the profit margins of SteelSeries as we get the scale and we get the different products, we get the synergies in and so on and so forth. Would there be long-term higher margin potential on the enterprise side than in SteelSeries? Likely so. So you could say the combination probably will be a bit higher profit margins on the enterprise side and a little bit lower on the gaming side.
The target clearly is that we will beat the 20% margin. That's been our statement since we launched this venture.
Thanks a lot.
Thank you, julien. Let's go to Veronika.
I'll just make it a quick one. Obviously, we've heard about lots of parts of the business, but we haven't heard about the old consumer set of headphones in the Jabra brand, today, René. Just curious, kinda is that still strategically important to you. How can you leverage this bigger, broader consumer brand that you now have with SteelSeries?
Yeah. Yeah. We simply couldn't talk about everything today, so we tried to park it there. Yes, that is still as strategic for us as has been. What I try to say in this, we are a top five true wireless brand. The true wireless is defining the consumer stereo category. Nowadays, we will be investing in this. We see the same cross consumer-enterprise synergies coming as we have been working for time. Then I think what you alluded to, of course, is that with these two, these are two brands, but and two categories, but of course the outlet is the same.
Whether this goes to Best Buy or this goes to MediaMarkt or this goes to something in Singapore, Australia, we will go through the same channel. We will be very careful we don't dilute, you could say, our impact from the two sides, but it's clear that from a channel perspective that we have synergies. I would expect one day that we might have a true wireless gaming headset. I don't know. It's up to him. Also, probably technology levers we can drive in the future.
Christian.
Thank you. A couple of questions as well. When we think about sort of the medium to long term, how expansive a view of the sort of gaming gear market do you have and do you think would be relevant for SteelSeries to play and to sort of be the best established or continue to be the best-established gaming brand? Are we talking about also potentially down the line, going into monitors, going into chairs? How broad a category are you defining? Then second question, these very sort of specific commentary that you've had around last week and manufacturing a sort of a hiccup, is that also relevant for SteelSeries when we think about Q1?
That's my two questions.
All right. On the first one, look, I think we have the right to play across the entire gaming rig. The conditions for us entering a category are pretty straightforward. Can we bring something to market that truly helps gamers improve, that it helps with the experience? We don't do me-too products. Sometimes it takes a while to figure out how can we truly add value to a category, but that is absolutely critical. The second piece of it is we only play or we play at the high end of the market. We need to be able to enter categories on the premium side of every TAM in that category. If we can meet both those conditions, it's fair play.
You wanna answer the second one?
Look, we, you know, it's very much like GN Audio. It's a lot of the same manufacturers. It's a lot of the same logistics. We go through the same thing.
Yeah.
Niels.
Two questions on gaming. The first one would be, have you adjusted prices on your gaming products similar to what we are hearing from GN Audio? If no, why not? Second question, can you update us on the extra spend that you are seeing among your GG users?
On the first one, we took up to a 10% increase last year on our wireless headsets because that's where the components are most scarce. That already is baked in. We'll have the full year effect of that, which will be good. On the second question, on GG, I wanna hold off because GG is growing so rapidly, Niels, that any number I give you right now in two months is going to be moot. Right? Let's wait till it stabilizes. But what I can tell you is 90-day conversion rates, where we're taking that 24% of gamers who have never bought a SteelSeries product and converting them, that 90-day conversion rate is much bigger than what we expected.
We think there's a lot of potential there.
Thank you, Ehtisham. Do we have any final questions before we round off? That doesn't seem to be the case. I think this concludes today. Thank you, Ehtisham. Thank you, René. Thank you to the rest of the team here today. Thank you for everybody attending here in the room, attending online. We really appreciate that you took the time to be with us for a full day today. We will just outside the room here in Copenhagen have drinks. You can explore the products. You can explore the gaming room. We'll also have dinner just in the room next door as well just in half an hour or so. Thank you very much for coming today.