Good morning, and a very warm welcome to everyone joining online, but especially to those here at the Smith Centre inside the Science Museum in London. It's fantastic to meet existing and new investors here in person. As you probably already saw in your goodies bag, this isn't the first time we are working together with the Science Museum. Thank you for having us. My name is Moritz, and as head of investor relations, I'm honored to lead you through the day. Let's now have a look at the agenda. Today is all about the next chapter of the Tonies story. We are going to show you exactly how we are moving from being a category creator to becoming a truly global icon. For that, I'm excited that we have the full Management Board together on stage for the very first time.
Over the next few hours, we will deep dive into the Tonies experience, show you how we are scaling our growth engine, particularly with our U.S. first strategy, and demonstrate the resilience of our financial model that ensures we keep delivering on our promises. Before we kick off with the presentations, just a few quick housekeeping points to ensure a smooth day. First, please take a moment to switch your phones to silent. During the breaks and the product exhibition, there will be enough sounds to make your day. Second, our lawyers have taught me to point you to the closest fire exits here to the left, as well as in the back. In case of a fire alarm, please follow the instructions accordingly.
Finally, we have a dedicated Q&A session for those that are here in the room scheduled for 1:15 P.M. local time, 2:15 P.M. Central European Time, which will also be streamed online. Please hold your major questions until then. During our working lunch and after the closing remarks, we have set up a product exhibition, so you will have plenty of time to play around and chat with the management team. Now, let's kick the day off.
Good morning. Welcome to our very first Capital Market Days here at Tonies. I'm Tobias Wann. I've been the CEO of Tonies for the last two and a half years. Why a Capital Market Day? Why now? About 10 years ago, our very first Toniebox launched in Germany. After our two founders, where actually one of them is here today in the room, Patric Fassbender. Welcome, Patric. Great to have you here. Spent three years developing it. About five years ago, Tonies IPO'd at the Frankfurt Stock Exchange. This was the last time we prepared a midterm outlook for you. Since then, a lot has changed, and a lot will change in the next three to five years. This is why we're here today. For the next 45 minutes, I want to tell you what you can expect from Tonies and what it means for what comes next.
How we move from a category creator to a true global icon. Before I tell you anything about our markets, our financials, our strategy, I want to start somewhere else. With a child. Imagine her, four years old, on the floor of her bedroom at the end of a long day. What she needs most is to feel safe, to listen, to explore, to invent stories in her own mind. To be in her own world on her own terms. Now, imagine her parents in the next room, proud of her curiosity, wanting her to grow, but also tired. Juggling work, dinner, screens everywhere. The constant negotiation of just one more video. Both have very real, very human needs. She needs security, imagination, a sense of agency over her own world.
Her parents need peace of mind to know what's in her hands is safe, age-appropriate, and genuinely good for her. Nowadays, meeting both of those needs at once has become a lot harder. Childhood is changing. It's all over the news these days, and it's increasingly shaped by passive, algorithm-driven, screen-based content. Parents can see it. Researchers can see it. Now governments are actually acting on it. The headlines are up here. Screen time is among the top parental health concerns. Phone bans spreading through schools worldwide. The anxious generation entering the mainstream. Parents aren't looking to ban technology. They're looking for an alternative, something that gives their child genuine agency and gives them a genuine peace of mind. That space between what a child needs and what a parent can trust is exactly where Tonies lives. More than 12 million Tonieboxes have made it into families' lives.
Yes, 12 million. Over the last 10 years, we built something that had never existed before. The world's largest interactive audio platform for children. Ears first by design. Why ears first? Because imagination starts with the ears, not the eyes. When a child hears a story without a screen in front of them, they are not passive. They are building the world in their own mind. The director, the set designer, the main character, all at once. We call this magic, not machinery. Exploration, not consumption. The child is in control of the experience. A child picks up a Tonie, places it on the Toniebox, and hears their favorite story begin. A small act of choice that opens a whole new world for them. They did that. Not an algorithm, not a recommendation engine, not a parent deciding for them.
On the other side of that choice is imagination, discovery, learning, play. A Tonie picked up at the age of two leads to a different one at the age of four and another one at seven. Children grow with us, not out of us. That's why families stay with us for years and not weeks. Building a company that makes that possible, that is the mission we all signed up for when we joined Tonies. Let me briefly introduce the incredible team that drives it day to day, and that is here today to talk it through with you. First of all, Ginny McCormick, our Chief Experience Officer, a highly experienced industry leader who spent many years at Hasbro and Amazon and joined us about two years ago. Chief Experience Officer. I know this needs explanation. Her role uniquely combines experience. That is what Tonies is all about.
In our case, that means marketing, product, and content. Ginny, in those two years, has already delivered exceptional results. Just think of the launch of the beautiful Toniebox 2 last year. Christoph Frehsee, our Chief Revenue Officer. He built our U.S. business from zero to over $300 million in just a few years. His entrepreneurial perspective is invaluable to our growth story. Both Ginny and Christoph are actually based out of the U.S., as you will hear in the next few hours, that is not coincidental. Then, of course, Hansjoerg Müller, our Chief Financial Officer, who joined us with deep experience in subscription, platform, and digital models thanks to his prior roles at Netflix and Electronic Arts. He has clearly also a strong track record of driving profitable growth.
Behind the four of us stand over 600 Tonies, as we call them, the people who actually make the magic around the world. Before the three take you through their details, I want to give you my perspective of the future ahead of us. Let me start with the business model. Tonies is a great business model. Families join an ecosystem and because our product delivers for them over the course of multiple years again and again, Tonies is built on subscription-like economics. How does this work? It all starts with the box. As I said, more than 12 million to date. A box is always just the beginning of the relationship. With each box come 20 Tonie figurine purchases over the first four and a half years, picked from over 1,500 Tonies, 3,500 digital titles, and more than 350 licensing partners.
Many families stay with us much longer. Actually, many of the first Tonieboxes sold in 2016 are still in use today after 10 years. We also leverage our own IP, and there's more, from digital offers to accessories like headphones. Very important for you to take home. We don't sell a product once. We earn a place in a family's routine, and the relationship compounds from there. The market is noticing. We are the recognized leader across toy in all our markets, and that's what Circana says, the gold standard for tracking retail consumer spend. We are growing faster than any other preschool brand in the U.S., Germany, U.K., France, both for the full year of 2025 and again in the first quarter of 2026. All four markets simultaneously. Today, we are already the number one preschool brand in Germany, the U.K., and in France.
As of the last quarter, Q1, also number two in the U.S. Australia and New Zealand is not on the slide here, but it's the same pattern. We are the fastest growing, also after just one and a half years after the launch, we are the number one property in preschool toys in the first quarter of 2026 in Australia. This is what just a few years of execution look like. The U.S. launched just five years ago. As you can see, the pace at which we grow is still leading the industry today. Again, this is independent third-party data. These are not our numbers, their numbers. Yes, in some ways, we are a toy. We spark joy in children's lives. We enable their development. We are part of how they play. Let me be clear.
When you look at us only as a toy, you're thinking incorrectly about our category. Tonies is a category creator, sitting at the intersection of several markets, toy, education, technology, gaming, media streaming. We don't grow with the market. We take share across all of them. This is the pattern actually you hear again and again throughout the day. In each of these markets, we can deliver unique experiences. What's more, we have parents' trust. Trust in the Tonies brand is the success factor that let us play across them. Our product, as you know, is tactile first and highly durable. Some of you actually know what I usually do to demonstrate that. Funnily enough, most recently, even the German newspapers wrote an article about it. I usually take this box, throw it against the wall, it will still work.
I promise I don't do this here today, so you're safe. Now, here's where it gets interesting. We combine that with subscription-like economics, like in media and like in tech. That combination is genuinely rare. Think of the opportunity we have in horizons. The opportunity overall is massive. As our product world expands, market opportunities, they stack on top of each other. We keep driving further addressable space, our early core, our current expansion trajectory, and further potential beyond that. Each of these horizons, larger than EUR 100 billion. Spending toy and technology, where we started, now gaming and education. Think of Tonieplay or our book Tonies and Pocket Tonies, those are the non-fictional Tonies for kids already in school, to media streaming for kids, not too far away, probably. This is the total addressable space, and we will grow into this with time.
The scale we've reached today means we are already a through line running through childhood for an entire generation. You know these stats, I get never tired of telling them. More than 12 million Tonieboxes in homes around the world. More than 165 million Tonies, the figurines. The average child spends around 280 minutes a week with their Toniebox. That's close to five hours of active screen-free engagement. Now, here's a way to look at those 280 minutes that we report every quarter. It's roughly about 7% of a young child's entire awake time. The box is not a device used occasionally. This is what it means to be part of the child's daily rhythm, wake up, play, bedtime. There's still lots of space for us to grow into.
Most important, I think, to all of us here, every additional minute we earn is a minute more of imagination, is a minute less of passive consumption. Shortly after I joined Tonies, I formulated a vision, for us to become a global icon. I made a commitment: pick a small number of priorities that can get us there and then stick to them. Today, those priorities define what we do, and just as importantly, they define what we do not do. There are three. First, build an ecosystem that compounds value. Second, win internationally, U.S. first. Third, extend our story of reliable, profitable growth. One strategy executed across three fronts. Today you will hear from the three people here responsible for each one of them.
Ginny on building an ecosystem that compounds, Christoph on winning internationally, U.S. first, and Hansjoerg on extending our story of reliable, profitable growth. It is no coincidence that these priorities are also the three elements of how we run through the day-to-day. Before they take the stage, let me give you my CEO view first, starting with how we are shaping the future of childhood by building an ecosystem that compounds value. The thought I want you to take from this chapter above all else, you are looking at an ecosystem business. This is not just about the box. It is about building a self-compounding system. At the heart of this ecosystem, the device, clearly. Around it, an above the box content portfolio, the Tonies themselves. I will show a bit more in a few seconds. Beyond that, accessories and wrapping all of it, the digital experience through our app.
No single layer alone creates the value. It is created in the interaction between them. Content drives engagement. Engagement drives habit. Habit drives repeat participation, the ecosystem grows household lifetime value over time. The discipline I apply is simple. Everything we build must fit and compound within this ecosystem. To start with, we have been steadily extending that above the box portfolio I mentioned year after year. Think of these as differentiating a child's engagement. We are building breadth, so we can be more tailored for different ages and for different use cases. We have book Tonies and Pocket Tonies offering non-fictional content for older children. My First Tonies is for the very youngest.
From the classic Tonies right from the start in 2016 to Pocket Tonies in 2023, Book Tonies in 2024, My First Tonies and Tonieplay as major innovations around the Toniebox 2 launch in 2025, to now Cuddle Tonies, our newest addition this year. Each new format means a new way into the ecosystem and a new reason for a family to stay longer. Like with any ecosystem, we are backwards compatible. A family that enters early does not exit when their child grows. The ecosystem grows with them, so does lifetime value. Of course, there is much more to come. A key part of this ecosystem is content, the heroes of their childhood. They are all here in one ecosystem. Bluey, you heard it yesterday. We just launched, now exclusive to the Toniebox, a major driver of acquisition and retention this year and for the years to come.
There is so much more. Pikachu, Mickey, Peppa, Chase. We have Minecraft and Hot Wheels. It is important for me to say we are not distributors of that content. We invented a completely new way for kids to interact with these characters. Let me show you in one picture. Here you see the sheer breadth. Make a count. It is about 70 Tonies on one slide, but that is less than 5% of the current portfolio. Think about what this means. A child can access all of those with just one platform. When you want to watch your favorite TV show, where do you go? There are so many different offerings, it is fragmented, right? The Tonies' platform, however, is not. Now, let us move on to our device strategy. You have heard us, me say device all the way through these presentations in the past today.
Then we launched the upgrade of our wonderful Toniebox from 2016, the Toniebox 2 in 2025, an even better device than we had ever before. The truth is, and I realized this when I joined, if you want a real ecosystem, we should ultimately no longer think in terms of one device. Therefore, let me say this is my personal one more thing moment of this presentation. In the future, we'll say devices, plural. I'm proud to announce that this year we will launch Toniebox Lite. Here it is. The Toniebox Lite brings what a Toniebox is supposed to. The listening experience that makes Tonies special to more families. An accessible entry point launching in selected markets later this year. Sitting next to our flagship product, Toniebox 2, on shelves. Whatever the device, the Tonies promise doesn't change.
You can expect independent, intuitive listening, extensive content for every age and interest, a tactile experience, and a parental peace of mind. Those four things are foundational, they're non-negotiable. They are the defining features of a Toniebox. What a Toniebox Lite adds is, first, addressable market expansion. This is about accessibility. Toniebox Lite will help us lower the barrier to entry into the ecosystem. Second, we have a more compact design, as you can see. The Toniebox Lite is a companion at home and beyond, on family vacation and on the go. Third, we'll see an uptake in multi-device ownership. Tonies families adding devices for siblings or secondary locations, for grandma's house or the living room. Same promise, just made to a larger group of people. It means more families earlier and more devices per family. That is as far as we will go today here.
I know you have many questions. I tell you in only a few weeks, we will release further details on Toniebox Lite. As you'll be introduced to the product in more depth, the strategy, the specs, the commercial details. Our half-year earnings call on August 20 will provide an ideal opportunity for us to answer all those questions you have. While we will not take questions on Toniebox Lite today, I'm sorry, let's say it's worthwhile to stay tuned for our next investor interactions in the second half of the year. Here comes the second priority. Win internationally, U.S. first. Before I talk about new markets, one thing has to be clear. Growth is not just a game of new markets. We still have a long way to go in the markets we already serve. Take the U.S., for example, North America.
Even there, with all the market-leading success, only around 12% of relevant households have a Toniebox today, 12%. We are winning the market, and we've still reached just a bit more than one household in 10. Imagine a world where that gets closer to 58%. That's the number we have already reached in DACH, so Germany, Austria, Switzerland. Even there in DACH, where we are long established since 2016, our ecosystem economics give us tailwinds. We are still growing, +5% in 2022 and 2023, then +11% in 2024, and now +16% in 2025. We're not done. As I said, Pocket Tonies, Book Tonies, Toniebox 2, Tonieplay, all these new product formats with more potential right in front of them. Our first global campaign, new channels, meeting parents where they shop with sales campaigns on TikTok, and now entry into the grocery segment.
If you've been paying attention during our Q1 call earlier this year, the first quarter in 2026, up 28% year-over-year in DACH. That reconfirms our momentum. Established markets keep growing when the ecosystem keeps expanding. Beyond DACH and North America, the rest of world, as we call it, the markets we are already in are still growing rapidly. That's 100% CAGR on a multi-year basis. Each market layers in as it launches. This is what disciplined international expansion looks like. Every region growing. They don't substitute. They're additive. Of course, with all the room to grow still, this market view would feel pretty incomplete without looking at the world still out there. Something I said many, many times. Today, we are activated in more than 100 countries. Contrast that with our current core markets, DACH, North America, U.K., Ireland, France, Australia, New Zealand.
In all these other markets, we never ran a campaign. We never set up a local team. We never signed a single retailer. Families found us anyway. That is what I call global product market fit. There are more than 570 million households with children in our core age range, 570 million. A very, very large part of that is the world still in front of us. A fair question you ask now, and actually many of you did in the past, if you have so much demand across the globe, why do you not go there? Why not go to Europe? You're already established in several European markets and expanding it into more lets us tap into real synergies, into our operations, general partnerships, the infrastructure we already built. Of course, an existing category and a category we actually created. Some asked for Latin America.
They see the potential to scale across two large language groups, Spanish and Portuguese. It's just one localization effort, and that opens up many markets. Lastly, Asia. Enormous number. Enormous number of households and strongly digital mobile-first parents with a very strong appetite for premium trusted brands. The honest answer is we will, but on our own terms. For two years, we were very deliberate. Device innovation and winning the U.S. We rebalance that focus towards international growth again. Here's another moment that makes me genuinely excited. I'm proud to announce that by the end of 2027, we plan to launch at least two new international markets. This is what our global product market fit allows us to do and what we intend to use throughout the years to come. Then our clear ambition, we want to be in all major regions by 2030.
That brings me to my last topic, our story of reliable, profitable growth, and how all of this translates into a midterm financial ambition. Hansjoerg will take you deep into financials after lunch. I want to spend just a few minutes on how I think about Tonies' financial path forward. Let's start with the past. We continuously delivered. Five years since IPO, five years of delivery. Every year, guidance met or exceeded from more than EUR 250 million in 2021 to EUR 630 million in 2025. I can tell you, this was not always easy. 2021 was still mid-COVID. Who remembers? With the consumer confidence crisis that came with it. In that same year, we ran our very first full year of U.S. operations and launched France.
Last year it was tariffs. We mastered them, shifting production to Vietnam in record times, finding the right commercial response, working closely with our partners. Five years, five deliveries, no exception. The present continues that line. In 2025, we delivered EUR 630 million in group revenue at an 8.6% adjusted EBITDA margin. For 2026, I want to reiterate our guidance here loud and clear, more than EUR 760 million in group revenue, over 20% growth year-on-year. North America up more than 30% and a 9%-11% adjusted EBITDA margin. What's even better about that continuous delivery, it's structural. Every box that enters our ecosystem leads to 20+ Tonies over its lifetime. That's an observed behavior across all cohorts we've ever acquired in every market.
More than 60% of the lifetime value of the cohorts we have acquired since 2020 is still in front of us. It's simply the future purchases from boxes already in homes today. On this slide, you're looking at a billion-dollar business. One could say quasi-banked. Before I close, one question I know is on your minds, and you probably want to hear from me, artificial intelligence. I tell you it's on ours, too, and I want to be clear how we think about it. It's not hard to find a newspaper headline these days along the lines of those that you can read here. AI productivity is about to become visible and investable, and it will divide the best from the rest. We here at Tonies intend to be among the best.
First, AI is a structural tailwind, and we are capturing it already today across the value chain, from supply chain to marketing, to sales, to customer happiness and product management. Honestly, I'm personally always impressed to see this myself at Tonies. It's one thing to hear from someone what AI can do now. It's another thing to see how we put it to work every single day. Just another day, we had a launch assessment for a new product line. Dealing with this new data, some tweaks and twists to handle, we estimated would have meant normally one week for a data analyst, maybe a bit more to put this together. We stitched together Claude and Snowflake, and we did it. I was in the room. We did this in 30 minutes, so not days, half an hour.
I considered a CEO task, my CEO task, to empower our Tonies employees in such ways constantly. Another example, and you can check this one out for yourself if you want. We launched an AI chatbot in several markets the other week. The results are, quite honestly, hard to believe, even for me. One market got an 80% automated resolution rate in the very first week, and our customers are loving it. This is happening now. We are a dynamic, innovative company. We pursued profitable growth for a decade now. We constantly upgrade. AI is just another page in that playbook. If you look at how parents, our customers, are actually thinking about AI, there's a real reason to be bullish. Most parents believe AI will be crucial to their child's career, and I'm sure many of you in this room can relate to this.
They see it as beneficial in education. They want their kids to be prepared. Around 2/3 of moms are actually already using AI themselves for parenting tips and recommendations. Parents see the opportunity. They understand that AI is going to fundamentally transform how their kids live as adults, and they want them to be ready for it. Here's where it gets interesting. At the same time, parents are deeply worried. More than 2/3 fear it could hurt their child's creativity. Around three-quarters worry an AI toy might say something inappropriate, untrue, or unsafe. Most parents want stricter guardrails on AI for kids today. Here's the tension. Parents want their kids to benefit from AI, they're not willing to sacrifice trust to get there. That's exactly the space we are built for.
That tension between the momentum behind AI, the good, and rightful fear of parents of the risk for their children, is actually an incredible business opportunity. Figuring that out, contributing to the resolution of that tension is, of course, extremely hard. We are here at Tonies set up for the challenge. Parental trust is what we've spent more than a decade earning. We can build on that. We are already at the forefront of the AI opportunity. You know we have a strong innovation pipeline, and our efforts to build AI into our business are scaling up today. That is what gives me confidence, that AI is an opportunity that we have and should take, all while preserving that unique edge of magic and of sparking joy and imagination. Now, where does all of this leave the future? It's clear to me our profitable growth story continues.
Today, in 2025, EUR 630 million top line, 8.6% adjusted EBITDA margin. That's the starting point. In the midterm, we target more than EUR 1.4 billion in net revenue at a 16%-18% adjusted EBITDA margin. As we will hopefully convey clearly to you today, there's a clear plan behind this, built on priorities and runways. Over the past years, we promised you to reach our financial targets. More than EUR 250 million in 2021, more than EUR 630 million in 2025. We delivered continuously over and over again. Today, we are reaching for more than EUR 1.4 billion, we are confident to deliver it again. EUR 1.4 billion. Here's the thing. What we are doing at Tonies is much more than a number on a P&L, more than a revenue line or a margin. It's much more. It is building a true global icon. Think about what a global icon is.
We basically covered it all today. It resolves the tension no one else has solved. For us here at Tonies, that means we give children agency, imagination, and joy while giving parents trust and peace of mind. A global icon earns its place and emotional connection in key life moments. Your very first device, the one you still remember when you have children of your own. A global icon scales across formats, markets, and generations without ever losing its purpose or meaning. That is exactly the company we are building. With that, welcome to the rest of the day. My colleagues will take you through all the details. For those of you who are here in person in the room, we will have time to talk and walk through the immersive experience we've set up.
For everyone on the screens, obviously for everyone in the room, there will be a structured Q&A at the end. Now, please join me in welcoming Ginny, our Chief Experience Officer, on stage.
Thank you, Tobias. Hello, everyone. One more time. Hello . All right. For more than 25 years, I've been helping companies understand and serve families around the world. In fact, last night after the game, I did a bit of an audit. I've worked on brands that have endured for over 90 years, and some that have only survived for a few. In that work, I start to understand patterns. What's truly differentiated? What stays with families, as Tobias said, generation after generation? That's why I'm so excited to be at Tonies. Tonies is one of those rare brands, I'm going to share with you now how we're shaping the future of childhood. In our time together, we're going to cover three things. First, why are we uniquely positioned to win in this change with how parents think about entertainment and education for their children?
How we are building differentiated content with Tonies studio and our proprietary data, how we're engineering the ecosystem to stay with families for long-term engagement. Let's jump in, or as we say at Tonies, ears up. There is a broader culture shift happening about parenthood, this presents a new paradox for parents. Their children have more access to content and technology than ever before, it's exponentially growing every day. For parents, they are torn. Of course, they want this child to be curious, independent, engaged with the world around them. At the same time, every parent knows your number one job is to protect that child, they know they now need to protect against technology. Why?
Well, this is the first generation of parents who grew up surrounded by social media, constant connectivity with their phones, algorithmic feeds, they know firsthand the positives and the negative consequences. Many are conflicted about their own relationship with technology, they are stopping and pausing before they give that technology to a child whose brain is literally still forming. This experience is amplified in culture and now validated in research. Unlike five or three years ago, now there is tremendous research showing the impact of technology and screens, especially on early children, in their cognitive, social, and emotional skills. The research continues to evolve, the verdict is absolutely clear. Excessive exposure to screens in the early years has developmental trade-offs, that's why the conversation has shifted from families and schools to matter of public health, national policies.
Over 40 countries are drafting or have already implemented technology limiting access to children. The U.K. had an announcement today. We also saw big shifts. Sweden, who was an early adopter of screens in schools, reversed their position last week. This is not a trend. This is now, because of the research, an established fact about child development. Over 10 years ago, Tonies pioneered the need for something different for families. It was designed around a powerful belief that children should, of course, have technology and content, but it absolutely has to be delivered in a way that supports their development. I'm excited to share with you, today, we are announcing the Tonies Advisory Group. This is a group of experts from around the globe, neuroscientists, educators, psychologists, all who understand what is happening in these trends.
They have agreed to share their research and their expertise directly with our teams. This board understands the importance of audio. It's something many of us take for granted, but audio, unlike anything else in early childhood, is impactful. It literally builds your brain through this active engagement. I'm not a scientist, so rather than hear it from me, I thought you may like to hear from some of our experts.
I'm Dr. Marta Deiros Collado. I'm a clinical psychologist and a mom of two. We've got some really great science on audio stories, like listening to stories, which is that it actually switches on the same parts of our brain as reading a book. I think Tonies aligns beautifully with all of my values. It builds that connection between parents and children. It allows parents to give children something that's meaningful, entertaining, and joyful. Kids are learning something just by listening to that.
I'm Michael Levine, my background is in child development research, public policy, and philanthropy. Kids are consuming so much interactive media, it has caused a societal rift. Audio is an extremely important alternate. Tonies offers an alternative to screen time use. When Tonies, in my family, is at its best use, it's in activating them to play together and to connect the learning and the experience that they hear on the Toniebox. That's when the magic happens.
I'm Katharina Meier-Batrakow , clinical psychologist with focus on child development and child psychology. My main area of focus is infant and child sleep. What fascinates me most about sleep is that many different factors come together. For example, biology, development, emotions, family life, and even culture. I also think the collaboration with experts and scientific evidence is very important. Tonies really try to improve by talking and listening to the needs of families.
This commitment to research is not new. In fact, for the past three years, we've been working to do independent research with leading universities, and we've been doing this both in the U.S. and in Europe. Let's look at the results. This is what independent research says about the impact of having a Toniebox in your household. These are huge shifts, 53% increase in a child's attention, 66% improvement in vocabulary, and most significantly, a 25% drop in excessive screen time when Tonies is in the home. The research validates what families have been telling us for years. Tonieboxes improve their children. They improve everyday family life. They add tremendous value. Now, let's move to our second chapter. Let's talk about content. Content continues to be one of Tonies' strength and most difficult-to-replicate tools.
This isn't because of the depth of our portfolio, although it is deep, it's also because our experiences are differentiated. As we just heard, audio content meets families in a way that traditional media, movies, entertainment often does not. Our ecosystem at Tonies is based on a very simple insight. A child's relationship with audio evolves as they grow. At Tonies, we do not believe in one childhood. We don't believe in one audio. There's different ages, there's different stages, there's different moments, that's why we've developed our ecosystem. Of course, we all know Tonies is more than audio. These amazing figurines and our Cuddle Tonies are tactile, right? That's a key part of how children learn, especially in those little years.
Let's talk about audio for a minute, because it gives us a very clear lens to see changes in behaviors, interests, and independence. Let's start with our youngest listeners. Those early sounds, those da da become dada, become words, become "Dada, I love you," that fuels the family. They understand action and reaction through audio. Of course, it's a soothing tool. It gives them emotional regulations at the moments they often need the most. When children grow, four to six, this is the age of their independence. They're choosing their audio. They're creating routines in how they use audio in their everyday life. This is the age of imagination and discovery. It's the age of questions. When? Where? Why? Why? Why? No, why? This is what happens. Audio brings that to life, this is how they bond as family. Music, stories.
Children grow up, they become more complex. Of course, they can handle more depth in their content, more logic, more rationale, more emotional topics. They also are looking for interactivity. They want to choose. They want content that connects them with their social environment, which is surging at this point. This is the phase that they start creation. All of these insights have been operationalized in our ecosystem. As you can see, we move families from the very first My First Tonie, all the way up to our older content. What's really critical for you to understand is we never lose connection with the family. We continue to deepen trust year after year, product after product. All of this amazing content is powered by Tonies studio. As you know, global entertainment brands have their own internal studios. Do we.
Tonies studio is our creative engine. It's where we bring together our expertise in storytelling, child development, and ears-first audio. This team is amazing. Combinations of producers, scriptwriters, musicians, audio experts. We work with a diverse network of partners from ideation to the final production. This team obsesses over details many of you may not initially recognize when you're listening to the audio. Want some examples? How many words per minute can a two-year-old handle? What's the right way to build suspense that's exciting but not scary for a seven-year-old? These are the expertise that we have in our studio. This is why, regardless of the age or the stage, our Tonies products have the highest quality bar, and that deepens families' trust and has them come back purchase after purchase.
Speaking of trust, we have the trust of over 350 partners who have chosen Tonies to extend their brand. We are not simply another licensee or a distribution outlet, but for partners like Disney, Hasbro, Paramount, we're a translator of their beloved brand. This has shifted over the years. Initially, we were working with existing stories, but now these partners see us as a true creative partner. We take their IPs and create bespoke in-character stories, things that you cannot find anywhere else. The reason we can do this is because we have earned this trust after years and years of high-quality reviews, consistent execution, and of course, the consumer's response. An average of 4.7 stars on Tonies, and the sound we love most, the repeat plays day after day. This trust creates a flywheel.
When parents are making choices, some of these partners immediately signal safety to them, quality, and of course, the brands their children know and love. As we bring more families into our ecosystem, we have broader reach and deepening engagement, and that is incredibly valuable to these partners. This wheel connects, and it's very difficult for anyone else to disrupt, which is why this partner chose to launch exclusively on Tonies. Pokémon. Number one global toy property for four years. It's a phenomenon. Why? It's equally appealing to children and the parents who grew up with this decades and decades ago. It has cultural scale, nostalgia, and enduring fandom. This is the type of partner that can immediately extend our reach and also serves everyone who's in our ecosystem.
When we worked with Pokémon, they have a deep canon of stories, of course, but we're not using their stories. They entrusted Tonies studio to create exclusive content based on their characters. I'm super proud of this work. I had to beg for a sneak peek. For your ears only.
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We are so excited. Obviously, Pokémon fuels collectability, and we can see this influencing the Tonies ecosystem. Also, Pokémon has a wild fan community, I was thrilled to see their response. Across Reddit, fan forums, you see this comment over and over and over again. "I don't even have a child, I cannot wait to buy these Pokémon Tonies." Now, let's talk about a capability that I think at Tonies often is misunderstood by people from the outside. Many companies talk about content, right? They talk about a library. At Tonies, for us, content is a system. It's one that continuously improves with every listen. Of course, we have sales data and we have download data, we have much more. We understand how families use our product.
We understand when they put a Tonies on the box, when they take it off, when they repeat it, what time of day they're listening, how routines form, and of course, this data is all captured within local guidelines. With over 165 million Tonies sold, that's a lot of data to learn from. We put that in practice. Let me give you a very simple example. When we initially launched our PAW Patrol Tonies, we were working with Paramount their existing stories, we saw how children put them on, when they listened, how often they came back, we compared it to other content within our portfolio for the age. When it came time to introduce new PAW Patrols based on the new season, we made many improvements. We shifted to add more character voices.
We added sound in moments where the story was falling off and not holding children's engagement. We increased audio effects to make moments more dramatic as they imagined. Now these are some of our top performers. Our moat isn't a single title, it's not an individual franchise, but it's our listening and learning system that only Tonies has. Let me tell you a story of a brand. It started with a single Tonie, but it became a beloved tradition for families. Using our data, we saw that box usage spiked in evenings as families were putting children to bed. They were using all kinds of Tonies, some maybe not for the sweetest dreams, maybe some a little more exciting. We saw the opportunity, and that's what led us to create Sleepy Friends. This is our unique approach to bedtime rituals.
It has calm characters, soothing stories, and soundscapes that lull you into the sweetest dreams. We know that because in over 3 million families, this is their nightly tradition. Sleepy Friends, though, is now moving beyond the box. We are partnering with Carlsen, a leading German publisher, to launch a series of books next year. Of course, this will expand our retail presence. We'll be beyond the Tonies aisle and into books. We'll launch with over 3,500 bookstores in Germany. This will be a tool to introduce new families to Sleepy Friends, but also Tonies. The headline I want you to take away is this is a signal of our future. Not only will Tonies be the destination for great childhood brands, we will also be the creator. We will move from licensee to licensor, and this is just the beginning.
Our third section, and most critical, how families stay. Why do they continue to age with Tonies? In other children's brands, especially those I've been part of, they have a unique structural challenge. They focus on segments like infant or preschool, and that means growth requires constantly acquiring new households, younger children. That's not a barrier for Tonies, and in this chart, you can see how households evolve with us. My First Tonies, our first listening experience, is 80% activated in households with children under the age of two. That gives us the opportunity to introduce them and create these listening rituals. As children age, you see classic Tonies. It serves our youngest ages, but also ages up with the child in our figurines.
Tonieplay, which we were very proud to launch last year, has been activated in households with children three to four, 40% of the time. Book and Pocket continue to age up as you see children grow with Tonies. As you can see, the family stays with us. We do not lose. That we've talked about how we grow within an age, let's talk about something equally important. How do we deepen engagement at each age? Well, I'm going to share with you four mechanisms that we've established across the portfolio. First is relevance. Kids, just like adults, are trend-driven. They know when something's hot and when it's growing, and that's why at Tonies we stay very close to kids' culture and evaluating emerging trends. A great example of this is Ms. Rachel.
For those of you who do not know her, she is YouTube's favorite preschool teacher based out of the U.S., and when we brought her to the Tonies' platform, she became number one in U.S. downloads and number two in the U.K. A phenomenal example of when a creator trusted by parents comes into our ecosystem, our community responds. Now let's talk about routines. You heard me talk about the relevance of bedtimes and being part of daily family life. Let me share a fact with you. Families who own at least one sleep Tonies double the number of Tonies that they buy in their lifetime. Let that sink in. One single figurine can double a family's spend with Tonies. That is the power of routines, because that daily listening drives deeper engagement that leads to more demand, which of course leads to more purchases. Seasonal moments.
Now, these are a bit of a special routine. The simplest way to think of them is thinking about holidays. Of course, for children, the most magical time. We have content like Grinch in the U.S. or the Tonies Advent Calendar, which is a Tonies original we've created. In Germany, children on average listen 14 minutes per day from December 1st to December 24th, just of that one Tonie. That is the time they are making their wish list, talking to Santa, and parents are making purchasing decisions, and Tonies is present the entire time. Now let's talk about serialized experiences. This is a new format we've launched from Tonies. Many of you know us for single listening sessions, but now we have content that evolves across multiple listening days.
A phenomenal example is our Today with Tonies podcast, created in the U.K. for children under the age of four. It has daily content and of course cliffhangers, like the answer to a joke or riddle that's revealed the next day. So this naturally encourages a listening behavior, and it's how many families start their mornings. This format is an example of how we will enter new categories. I'm sure many of you can immediately see the connections between sports and serialized experiences. We can follow seasons, we can highlight moments, and all the while help Tonies' ear-first experiences come into new households. Sports fandom, its shared identity as a family is a natural extension. Now all four mechanisms together drive deeper engagement, relevance, routine, seasonal moments, and serialized experience. And speaking of relevance, I'm sure none of you missed our big news yesterday.
Yes, you can believe it, Bluey has come to Tonies.
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It is impossible for me to overstate the strength of Bluey, I know for many of you whose YouTube feed or videos does not look like a preschool family or like mine, that may be new news. Let me give you some context. Bluey was the number one streamed show in the U.S. last year. Please note, I did not say number one children. Number one show across all content, that was for the second consecutive year. 45 billion minutes of Bluey were viewed in the U.S. alone. It's the number one preschool property, that's why we are so excited to give this to our fans who reacted with joy, squeals, and a whole lot of social shares yesterday when we sent out our pre-order announcement. Of course, we're bringing Bluey to Tonies as a full ecosystem launch.
For new families who don't know Tonies, there's a Bluey with our beloved Toniebox 2. We also have three classic Tonies representing the key characters of Bluey, Bingo, and Muffin. Of course, a Tonieplay game, so children can have their own interactive stories with Bluey. All of this is surrounded by accessories, our to-go bag, and sleeve. This is how we talk about launches. Across our whole ecosystem, this content is exclusive to Tonies and uses the entertainment voices, and we know that's very critical to our audience. While it's fun to talk about the new, I want to also talk about a part of our portfolio that continues to grow. These are our evergreen titles. At Tonies, content becomes valuable year after year. Here's three examples for you.
We have Our Favorite Children's Song that launched in 2021, in 2022, Gabby's Dollhouse, and in 2023, Spidey. You can see one of our owned originals, but also two licensed content, Boy and Girl. Despite having launched years and years ago, these are in the top played Tonies in the past six months. Right? Amazing. They continue to delight consumers as they discover our ecosystem. This is how our launches become long-term assets. I am going to end with something that I hope you will enjoy as much as I. I want to talk through what happens when families fully engage in the ecosystem. We've talked and shared with you a lot about an average household. Right? You know our 280 minutes, they have one box, and roughly 20 Tonies over the four and a half years.
What I want to share with you today is our super fans. We define these as the top 10% of households that engage in listening and buy. They are completely different. They listen to Tonies 600 minutes a week. They use their box 325 days a year on average. They own over two boxes. They were six times more likely to upgrade to Toniebox 2. Their collection in that same period goes to 50 Tonies. Hopefully you understand that the average family is not our ceiling. It is our beginning. We have covered a lot. We have talked about the shift that is happening for modern families and why Tonies is uniquely able to lead. We have talked about how we built differentiated capabilities through our partnerships, through our own IPs, through Tonies Studio, through our listening data.
We have talked about a business designed for enduring engagement, one that grows with children, that strengthens the relationship with families over time, and becomes more valuable as our ecosystem expands. This is what gives us confidence. Confidence in the relevance of this category as solving a need for families, confidence in the strength of our model, and confidence in our ability to be the next global icon for families. Now we have a 15-minute break.
As announced earlier, we are progressing through the day, and you will now hear from Christoph, our Chief Revenue Officer, on scaling the growth engine, how we win internationally, U.S. first.
Good. Thank you, Tobias. Hello. I'm Christoph Frehsee. Or Frehsee, it depends, when you live that long in the U.S. or in Germany, you don't anymore. Yeah. Let me tell you actually how I got to Tonies, and what made me understood that this product has truly global customer appeal back in 2019. My son, who lived in California, received a Toniebox in California from his grandma in Germany. Basically within days, Tonie time, that's, he coined the word, became his favorite part of the day. It was basically story, music, and at the time, everything dinosaurs. Like T-Rex, Mosasaurus, all the things. Wow. The best part was I got my phone back. It became his prized possession. Toniebox had to go everywhere.
When it was his turn on sharing day, he took his Toniebox to his little preschool in Palo Alto for show and tell. In the evening, I got this picture. That's him, little Christoph, with his little collection. His friend Michelle. I asked him, "You took the box. How'd it go?" He's like, "Well, now everybody wants one." Michelle asked, though, only if we had Frozen. Jason next to him, he wanted the PAW Patrol. By the end of the week, every parent and also every single teacher ultimately was asking me where they could get the singing and talking box that all the children were talking about. I remember thinking, wow, here we are in Silicon Valley, birthplace, iPhone, iPad, YouTube, social media.
If this product can have such engagement, but also word of mouth, word of kids, word of mom, there's really a much bigger opportunity here. When the opportunity came to join Tonies and jumpstart the U.S. business, I, yeah, jumped on it and never looked back. Today, in the next 30 minutes or so, I want to do three things. First, bring you up to speed and show you how we've built Tonies internationally over the last six years. Second, explain to you a little bit the growth engine. We're going to get a little bit tactical there behind our success. Third, show why we believe truly the runway to ahead is even larger than the road behind us. Past, present, future. Good. As Tobias showed us, basically demand is not limited by geography.
Today, we operate in five markets, 10 countries, yet Tonies boxes have been activated all around the world in more than 100 countries. Families are basically already telling us where demand is. Our job is simply to meet them. Our growth was sequenced and intentional. Started out Germany, Austria, Switzerland, U.K., Ireland, U.S., 2020. Immediately after, France. That helped us unlock Canada, we added Australia and New Zealand in 2024. Each market was chosen deliberately. Each market taught us something, each launch made the next one easier. When I had the pleasure to join Tonies, we made just over EUR 100 million. That was a big deal back then. The revenues, though, came entirely from DACH. Since then, we've grown the company more than sixfold. DACH itself, in the same period, has more than doubled, beyond EUR 200 million last year.
At the same time, we added another EUR 400 million of additional revenue outside our home market. As you can see, blue, the U.S. or North America, has become our largest market and one of our fastest growing as well, demonstrating that the Tonies model can succeed well beyond its country of origin. In fact, we call the U.S. now our second home market. Importantly, in the same time, though, we did not sacrifice profitability to get there. Growth profitability actually improved, from EUR -15 million at that time, and we burned some money, to actually EUR 54 million adjusted EBITDA. That is from - 8.1% adjusted EBITDA to + 8.6% within four years. Tonies has proven it can scale across markets, grow revenue, and increase profitability at the same time. I think that combination is quite rare.
Let us look at the market that really put our model to the test, the U.S. Like Tobias also made it clear, one strategic choice mattered more than any other in the past, to prioritize the U.S. Not because it's easy, but because it was the largest opportunity and the toughest test. The U.S. has roughly five times more children than in Germany, and families also spend more than one and a half times per child on toys, entertainment, educational product, the intersection where we operate. Together, that creates a seven and a half times larger opportunity than our home market. We knew if we would succeed there, we would gain more than scale. We would build the capabilities, partnerships, and confidence to expand locally. There's tremendous value in the U.S., not just financially, but also strategically.
The U.S., it's the largest consumer market in the world. One currency, one shared language, yet enough diversity to actually reflect many of the dynamics that we see globally. This is where you compete for attention with the world's strongest and biggest brands. This is where you partner, actually, with the biggest licensors, the most sophisticated retailers, and also the most advanced digital platforms. I experienced myself, when you sign with Disney, Netflix, or Warner Bros. in the U.S., every licensor in the world afterwards takes your call. At the same time, and that is really interesting, the U.S. has one of the most consolidated retail landscapes anywhere. Basically, Target, Walmart, and Amazon service more than 85% of preschool consumer demand.
That means when you master this and you earn meaningful space at those two retailers, Target and Walmart, for example, every conversation around the world with other retailers truly changes. Perhaps more importantly, the U.S. also made us a better company. To win in the U.S., we had to grow up fast. We had to strengthen basically every capability across the business, from product to operations to marketing, retention, and also sales. The U.S. was not just a market opportunity, it was our proving ground. Five years later, the results speak for themselves. Our largest market, we generate more than $300 million in net revenues. We're present in more than 7,500 point of sales. That means we've earned shelf space virtually everywhere where parents are.
Not just Target, Walmart, Amazon as digital, but also Kohl's, clubs like Sam's Club, Barnes & Noble, Macy's, and many others. In Q1, sales volume, Tonies is the second largest preschool manufacturer in the U.S., just behind Spin Master, who own PAW Patrol and Melissa & Doug, ahead of Mattel and Hasbro. That ranking, actually, Circana data, does not even include our own website sales and not fully our Amazon volume. You make the math where we actually stand. Most importantly, we have achieved this scale while reaching only approximately 12% penetration. Put differently, nearly 90% of U.S. households with children are still ahead of us. How do we do it? Like Tobias said, we declared the U.S. our second home market. That means we built a real U.S. company there.
We built an organization with more than 100 team members in North America, also a new headquarter in Boston. Fun fact, I am actually for now still the only one with a German accent over there. Besides the team, our retail strategy really worked. From day one, I would also say it was our retail chess game. We played it very deliberately. I knew that Target, or Target, like we call it in California had to become really our lead retail partner. The Target mom was not just a perfect customer, it is the customer. Bullseye, no pun intended. We knew if Target truly embraces the brand, Walmart would take notice, that is exactly what happened. We built Target from, you have to earn your stripes also there, 4 ft-8 ft , even now 12 ft. Let me tell you there a little anecdote.
From the first meetings, I remember this vividly, they made it very clear that they would never think that our brand could earn more than 4 ft in line at Target. They clearly said the productivity we require, Christoph, is really high. We own the space, looks like this now, 12 ft. As I said, as this Target went from 8 ft-12 ft , around that time, Walmart really woke up and was like, "Oh my god, we are missing market share here." They positioned us in a way, they call this the trend pod. It is 11 ft, the end of the aisle on the racetrack, very dominant position, invested heavily behind the brand.
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That was the feature in last year's holiday campaign. To be clear, you might think, well, you buy yourself into that clip. That's the Walmart clip that runs that. Tonies, Nespresso, Apple. Right. No. That kind of visibility at Walmart cannot be bought. You have to earn it with foot traffic and relevance, and that is what Tonies brings to retailers. We obviously also had to build cultural relevance in the U.S., so when we launched TB2, we launched it at America's most important commercial intersection, Times Square in New York. We also partnered with some of the most influential voices in children's entertainment. Ginny introduced earlier, Ms. Rachel, the nation's number one preschool teacher, 5 million Instagram followers with her beautiful figurine here, Criss- Cross Applesauce. Let me show you how she goes really to battle for us with her fans.
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That's Ms. Rachel. Next up, Laurie Berkner. Laurie Berkner is actually one of the most recognized names in children music in the U.S., with more than 700,000 YouTube subscribers. She's also a partner of us that goes on tour with us and fills actually halls and concert halls with little kids where you take your child for the first concert.
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Of course, they do. Well, if you ask Snoop Dogg what to get for your kids in the next holiday season, he'll tell you.
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It's actually really cool, Tonie, if you get a hold of it. Bow Wizzle, it's about affirmations. It really gets you started in the morning. Winning the U.S. ultimately required three things, a local team, retail excellence, and then also building cultural relevance. Together, those capabilities have become truly a blueprint for growth in every market we enter. By now, I think you got it. Business model is quite simple. At the core, growth is driven by two compounding levers, household acquisition on the one hand, and customer lifetime value. Acquisition is driven by the market size, distribution, brand awareness, and lifetime value is driven by the quality of the content experiences, the partnerships we form, and our truly outstanding understanding of our customer behavior. Looking ahead, of course, we expect Toniebox Lite to help us accelerate household acquisition, as Tobias mentioned.
I think it was also very clear from Ginny's presentation how our investments in our content experiences and the partnerships we form truly further will accelerate and strengthen our ability to increase lifetime value. Let me show you how this formula played out in numbers in the U.S. from what we want to share today. That basically our in-store base, cumulative, grew with 104% CAGR between 2021 and 2025. While the figurines, the attach sold grew even faster at approximately 139% CAGR. This is truly the compounding effect in action. Importantly, this formula repeats itself. Once a market reaches minimum efficient scale, the install base compounds, attach compound, and also with that, obviously, profitability flows. Today box sales become tomorrow's reoccurring demand. That's a formula. We have shown that the model travels from Germany, our home market, to the U.S.
Two markets with, I think you agree, very different consumer behaviors, media habits, also retail landscape. We have seen the same formula drive growth and profitability in very similar ways. Let's look at the growth engine that powers it. Our growth engine is not built around a single channel. It's built around three channels, true omnichannel, each serving a distinct purpose: Tonies.com, wholesale, and marketplaces. Each channel plays its role in acquiring customers, building engagement, and maximizing lifetime value. Together, they form one integrated distribution engine. Let's start with Tonies.com. Yeah, Tonies.com. It's the home of the Tonies. It's our most important channel for actually initiating new households and retaining existing ones. Over the last six years, we have built what I believe is the best customer acquisition experience in the category. The reason is simple.
Unlike traditional retail, we're not limited by shelf space. We can help every family build the perfect Tonies experience from day one. Let me show you, we do this kind of like Half-Life, how our bundler works on the website. Imagine I buy a set now to get my little niece, Hannah, who lives in Washington, D.C., into the system. I take a red Toniebox. I build her collection. I know she loves "Moana" what else? "Zootopia." We've been to the movies together. Great film, actually. She's a huge "Frozen" fan, so Olaf as a Cuddle Tonie s into the bundle. I want to help my sister, let's definitely get Sleepy Sheep for bedtime. That will double her future value also, we heard. I can't check out without games.
Gabby's Dollhouse game is actually also really fun if you want to play that. That should be good for attach. System is smart, says you need a controller before you continue. Headsets because yes, we love when they listen to Tonies, but sometimes it's good they listen by themself. A Creative-Tonie. I'm a big fan, it's actually Blanco is a huge SKU because people actually design and make it look like whoever sends the messages. My sister and her daughter are a lot on the go. I take also a bag to keep it all together when they travel. Hannah likes a night light at night as well, the crocodile. Ta-da, checkout EUR 323 plus tax. Before long, I have actually built a completely personalized experience around that child. Ultimately, no retailer can offer that level of personalization, right?
No retailer can offer that level of assortment also. The result is a significant higher basket value at the point of acquisition. We can clearly see, because customers built their own ecosystem from day one, they also tend to exhibit stronger lifetime value over time. Second channel, that's real fun, wholesale. Our retail partners, right? Our retail partners provide us with basically the physical manifestation of the brand. It gives us, in every country, national reach and builds brand awareness in trusted retail environments, from small mom and pops to big chains. With that, access to millions of families where they already shop. Being also carried at retailers like Target legitimizes the brand, because ultimately, customers trust the curation of those retailers. Unlike online channels, retail allows customers actually to discover the brand physically. They can touch the product. They see all the figurines.
They experience also the quality of the product. In many stores, they can actually press a button and get a taste of the audio experience themselves. That moment really matters because Tonies is a product that becomes even more compelling once you touch and experience it. Retail plays also a unique role in collection building. Families often come into a store, say, "You can only pick one," but, well, they leave with several. Wholesale is not simply a distribution channel for us. That's truly, it's a partnership. It's where we introduce the brands to millions of families, where they discover it and their journey begins. Personally, I really love selling to retail this brand because it's a true win-win. Retailers actually prioritize Tonies because we combine this high-value customer that we bring in with the predictable recurring demand that Tobias also talked about.
Currently, we're in 25,000 doors point of sales globally right now. Fun fact though is most retailers initially list us as a toy. Remember Target saying you're only going to get 4 ft? What they quickly discover is that we behave very differently. At first, they're attracted by our customer profile. We bring in the cool mom that listens to Ms. Rachel. We bring in parents, millennials, and Gen Z families. It's a premium customer, above average spending power. What really changes the conversation is what happens after the first Toniebox is sold. As retailers build what we call their native install base, these households come back, and retailers see customers returning again and again and again for characters, games, and accessories.
They see a very high purchase frequency, much higher than other brands can offer, and they see growing demand from households they have already acquired themselves. In many ways, the model resembles the traditional video game console business. A platform creates future demand. Unlike video games, we retain the physical collectible nature of our figurines. That will not go away. While much of the gaming has moved towards digital downloads, subscriptions, game passes, our business model remains highly productive for physical retail. That combination is powerful and also sought after. Retailers initially buy a toy, but they ultimately discover it's a category of its own. Because our platform is connected, and that's where the fun stuff starts now, we can help retailers also understand the value that install base in ways other brands that they carry cannot.
Next slide is going to get a bit technical, so bear with me. Most retailers can tell you how many boxes they sold. They can also tell you how many figurines they sold. We can get one step further. We can connect those sales back actually to the activation behavior of the boxes from that retailer. Retailer here, every box is 10,000 boxes, and every figurine is 100,000 figurines. 50,000 boxes, 500,000 figurines sold. They feel great at first glance. 10 Tonies per box is already really, really attractive attach rate. There's little reason, they do this with 4 ft, to expand space. The activation data that we can show them tells a different story. Actually, in this example, yes, you have built this install base, but here's what.
Your people, your customers, only activated 200,000 of the 500,000 Tonies you sold on their boxes. They actually purchased another 400,000 Tonies elsewhere. The retailer actually served only 33% of that consumer demand. Tracking? The reason is simple. A typical 4 ft section can only carry 32 to 48 Tonies. Families quickly outgrow that assortment and begin purchasing additional characters elsewhere because the retailer simply does not stock them. At roughly EUR 20 per Tonie, this equals a missing demand of 400,000 Tonies, represents approximately EUR 8 million potential retail sales flowing to other channels. That changes the conversation. What initially looked like a successful category, 10 Tonies per box, reveals a much larger opportunity hidden within the retailer's own install base. That is how you grow from 4 ft to 8 ft to 12 ft at national retailer.
The same data helps us also resolve a channel conflict because you're like, "Wait a second, where did the other 300,000 figurines go?" We can show, retailers sometimes worry about the growth of Amazon and Tonies.com. Using activation data, we can demonstrate how households move across channels and how the entire ecosystem contributes to the category's growth. Just as importantly, the same retailer can see the 300,000 Tonies sold went to boxes purchased elsewhere. Happy about this. That realization changes also the conversation, because instead of viewing those channels purely as competitors, zero-sum game, retailers recognize the opportunity to capture ongoing content purchases from a much larger install base. They really want to leverage their unfair advantage, which is physical presence in many markets.
Instead of arguing about which channel gets credit for a particular sale, the race really becomes serving as much of the install base as possible in their physical presence. That's the power of a connected device. The result is that Tonies can actually win across all retail formats. It's also very special. I would say, most brands are really dependent on one or two dominant channels. Tonies is different here. Parents do not think in retail formats, right? They think about solving a need for their child. That allows Tonies to really show up wherever parents, but also gift-givers, like grandparents, already shop. Bookstores, Barnes & Noble in the U.S. or Thalia in Germany. Mass retailers, talked about Walmart or Big W in Australia. Specialty stores, Smyths Toys, huge chain here in the U.K., France, and also Germany. FAO Schwarz, JouéClub.
Here in London, I would recommend that you actually go to John Lewis. We're in grocers, drugstores, pop-up concepts we tried, and even vending machine. This significantly really expands our addressable distribution opportunity while reducing the dependence on any single channel. There's another reason why Tonies' growth engine has proven so scalable across the markets and geographies. Here's what our retail relationships buy us globally. I talked about it took us five years to get to Target. That forced Walmart's hand, went much quicker, two years. Now, it accelerates expansion everywhere else. The impact goes beyond. When we entered Australia and New Zealand. We basically cover directly two major retailer, both with 8 ft. They watch closely how Target and Walmart allocate space to spot trends in their own markets.
Within year one, we secured two leading retailers, and together, they represented more than 80% of the local retail network almost immediately. The same happened also as we jumped from the U.S. to Canada. As I said before, success in the U.S. shortens the path to scale everywhere else. The third channel is marketplaces. If wholesale is about reach, Tonies.com is really about the engagement collections. Marketplaces basically sit at this intersection. They help us acquire new households, strengthen customer lifetime value, and maintain also commercial control. When I say marketplaces, I mean mainly Amazon, which we operate, and that's important, as a third-party seller, but also local players like Cdiscount in France or also walmart.com in the U.S., where we supplement as a seller, Walmart's owned inventory. Marketplaces work because they align perfectly with how modern parents shop.
In the U.S., more than half of product searches start actually on Amazon. 70% of all adults in the U.S. subscribe to Amazon Prime. That means we're on the phone. Like Tonies.com, marketplaces allow us to offer our full portfolio without shelf space constraints. Because we operate primarily as a third-party seller, like I said, we maintain control about pricing, assortment experience, and valuable customer insights. I've discussed the engine, but now I show you three boosters here that I want to talk a little bit more. It's kind of our unfair competitive advantages. These boosters are particular powerful. First one is our app. Here we go, on the left side, our app. When you buy a Toniebox, you have to register the box. Actually, parents give us, most cases, the child's age and also content preferences.
That really allows us to put them on the customized journey all along the Tonies experience. The second one is our app. That was the first one. The second one is our first-party data. I showed you already how we use it with our retail partners. Of course, we use it for customers for better experience. Lastly, for the business, it helps us making better decisions all across forecasting and supply chain as well. Third one is our real-world fandom. We have life experiences. I mentioned already Laurie Berkner in the U.S. But in Germany, you have Tonieboxes for museum tours, and in the U.K., we took a London taxi to have Santa Claus deliver Tonieboxes to hospitals before the holiday season. We engage our user base in real-life experience, and that is really priceless.
Together, these three advantages strengthen acquisition, increase engagement, and expand the customer lifetime value across the entire ecosystem. Each channel basically reinforces each other. That's the flywheel, and these advantages help it spin faster every time. Now, third chapter. So far, we discussed the engine. Question is, where do we go from here? So far, we're focused on what we've built, a business spanning five markets, 10 countries, more than 12 million Tonieboxes sold, and a proven growth engine that has scaled across geographies. We believe the opportunity ahead is significantly larger. Within our existing markets, we continue to see substantial room for growth in households' penetration, distribution, awareness, and engagement. Beyond that, Tonies households already exist in more than 100 countries around the world, creating a really strong foundation for future expansion. In total, we estimate our addressable opportunity exceed 570 million households globally.
In short, significant growth opportunities both within our existing markets and in new geographies. The question is not whether there's room to grow. The question is where we go next and when. When we evaluate markets, we do this with two lenses: strategic attractiveness. We check market size, language leverage, and competitive dynamics to maximize our reach. The other dimension is operational readiness. We look at our infrastructure, existing demand, and content localization to maximize ROI. Together, these criteria both determine where we go and when we go. Over time, we have developed three repeatable models for entering new markets. The first is a fully owned operation, as demonstrated in France. France is a really culturally distinct market, and they had an established player at the time. We went head-on, built local capabilities, localized the experience, and successfully competed. Four years later, we won.
Or [Non-English content ] in French. The second is our adjacent expansion, as demonstrated in Canada, a market that is very similar to the U.S. While requiring French language capabilities also for Quebec, we support Canada from our existing organization in the U.S., allowing us to leverage teams, content, and infrastructure already in place. The third one is the distributor-led model that we applied in Australia and New Zealand. It is highly efficient for us, because we combine local expertise with our proven launch playbook and existing portfolio. Three different market requirements, three different approaches, the principle remains the same. For future launches, we will continue to obviously invest in those launches, but each one will benefit from the capabilities, the content partnerships, and the experiences we have already built. Our road ahead, EUR 1.4 billion, as Tobias said, by 2030.
Importantly, that ambition does not require us to reinvent the model. It starts by continuing to grow the markets we already serve. Remember, DACH 58%, but only approximately 12% penetration in our second home market, the United States. Significant opportunities remain there across awareness, distribution, household, and engagement. Beyond our existing footprint, we see very attractive opportunities across Europe, across Latin America, of course, but also to expand further in Asia and Pacific. Tonieboxes are already used in many of these markets today. What we shared today, our ambition is basically two new markets by the end of 2027, and to be in all major regions by the end of 2030. The next chapter is not about building a new growth engine. It is about scaling what we already have. Our ambition is built on this proven growth engine.
Over the last decade, we have proven that this model actually works. Importantly, that model and this engine also becomes stronger with every market we enter. Our data compounds, our operational playbook compounds, our licensor relationships compound, our localization capabilities compound, our distribution credibility compounds, most important and absolutely priceless, our fandom compounds. I believe we are still in the early chapters of the Tonies story, and by now, I hope I have convinced you of two things. First, the product is proven across markets, cultures, and also retail formats. Second, we have absolutely built a repeatable growth engine with the operational and commercial capabilities required to scale Tonies globally. The opportunity ahead is substantial. More than EUR 1.4 billion in revenue and 16%-18% EBITDA margin by 2030. After lunch, Hansjoerg will walk you through the final model that underpins that ambition.
Welcome back. I hope you enjoyed the break. Wonderful London weather. 27 degrees, I am hearing. Sun is shining. When Tonies comes to London is actually giving back. Isn't that great? Now we have two more important agenda topics for all of you. You first hear from Hansjoerg, our CFO, about our resilient financial model, and then we have Q&A, where we will all be, all four of us will be on stage and happily take your questions. Please welcome on stage Hansjoerg Müller, CFO at Tonies.
Good afternoon. Welcome to the last session. Before we open it up to your questions, before I take you through our resilient financial model, let me give you a bit of perspective on myself. Many of you already know me. For those who do not, I have spent my career in similarly strong ecosystem environments. At EA, at Netflix, both businesses are built on similarly strong cohort economics, the same mechanics you will see a lot more of in the next 30 minutes. If there is one thing I learned, the key lesson I took from these experiences is the real strength was never a single product. It was always the ecosystem around it, and this is exactly what we have at Tonies in a strong and powerful way, and it is what drives our financials. If you take nothing else away from the next 30 minutes, take these three things.
One, and you have heard this now a couple of times, we are much more than a toy. We run an attractive, predictable, resilient ecosystem. Two, our track record. This is your, our confidence in our ambition. Three, what the ambition actually is. More than doubling revenue to EUR 1.4 billion by 2030, and more than doubling profitability to 16%-18% in the midterm. What to expect today, this is how I structured my session. First, the basics, how our ecosystem economics actually work. Then I will get more into our track record, and then I will deep dive into what to expect. With that, let me introduce to you into our ecosystem flywheel. You have all been to a toy shop, right? You walk down the toy aisle. Most likely, you find a plastic toy. A very linear, short-lived, sometimes singular moment of joy. What we do at Tonies is different.
We take the best out of toy, and with that, we touch so many areas at once, sparking joy and magic moments, fostering child development, and for parents like some of us, giving a real sense of peace of mind. In addition to toy, we reach into education. Think Pocket Tonies, Clever Tonies, and that is only the start of what a journey into learning could look like. We bring in technology, the box itself, the data library Christoph spoke about earlier. We bring in gaming. Think Tonieplay as the category innovation in audio gaming. Most importantly, the recurring pattern of media and streaming.
In fact, more than what is shown on the slide here, with new content, we now just entering sports, as Ginny has shown you before. Yet another vector a classic toy can simply not deliver on. Summarizing, the box purchase is merely the entry into that ever-growing ecosystem. Let me get you one level closer to how our ecosystem economics behave. Namely, they are subscription-like, with purchase patterns that drive predictability. We manage cohorts. This is how the cohort model works. What you are looking at here is the attach behavior of every cohort. The number of Tonies activated year by year for each year's intake. Take 2021 as an example. You see a year one purchase, a year two, a year three, a year four. The families who entered in 2021 bought a certain number of Tonies in that first year, and then they kept going.
Now look across the vintages. The same year one purchase is more or less the same in 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024, 2025. The year two purchase, again, is remarkably consistent, right? The year three purchase, the same. You get the idea, right? This is what consistency looks like, and that gives us predictability and resilience over time. What does that mean? We can plan and build our forecasts on cohort behavior we have now observed for years. Obviously, what is shown here is in units, the same is true for revenue. What does that mean? What does this tell us about the model? Four things. First, it works anytime, as you can see here. Every cohort, every vintage shows similarly stable behavior. Second, it works everywhere. We saw this in DACH first. We saw the same kind of behavior and predictability when we launched in the U.S.
Every market behaves subscription-like. What you see here in the chart is just a global aggregate of this. Third, the ecosystem compounds. A growing portfolio structurally feeds the cohort stability with new formats. My First Tonies, Cuddle Tonies, Tonieplay, Clever Tonies, they all add lifetime value to cohorts we already have, not just new ones. Fourth, it is resilient against saturation. Newness is baked into the product's DNA. When we launch something like Bluey or Pokémon, which Ginny just showed you, the whole ecosystem feels new again to our families. Now that you have seen how the cohort model works, let me show you its longevity. Longevity starts with early entry. No device enters the child's room younger than Tonies. I only need one number to show you that: 79%. That is the share of children who get into Tonies aged three or younger.
Now compare that to, for example, an Amazon Alexa or a Nintendo or Roblox. We are simply the first device in the child's room by several years. Why does that matter? Well, one, it is a blue ocean. It is hard for competitors to reach into that age group that early. Other devices aren't as built for the toddler's room and only become relevant at age four or even at six plus. Moreover, this early entry precisely means high longevity. Boxes activated in 2016 can still be active today, and a significant share of them actually are. Last, it leaves us with the potential to extend on both ends, right? My First Tonies, Toniebox 2, which is 1+ certified, moved us even younger than before. Clever Tonies or Tonieplay, they keep families longer.
While there's still room to grow, it's a reality today that we already entered the room years before competition arrives. This early capture compounds into real lifetime value. Now, let me connect the cohort economics with the longevity of that ecosystem, and I'll translate it into financial terms. Each bar here is one year's cohort and the revenue that cohort generates over its life. I'll give you two examples. I'll talk to two examples. Take 2020. The families who joined six years ago are still generating revenue today. They've delivered much of their value, of course, already, but they haven't stopped. Not least, of course, because new formats and content keep them engaged throughout. Now take 2025, for example, a far larger cohort with almost all of its economic value still ahead of it.
The bars get thicker every year because each cohort is bigger and more valuable than the last. The revenue still to come from cohorts we have already acquired is more than EUR 1 billion. Now factor in the cohorts we will have acquired by end of this year. You're looking at approximately EUR 1.5 billion in revenue that we predict based on reliable cohort behavior. That is the essence of cohort-based economics. It is, some may even say, a quasi-banked business. I've shown you how the ecosystem economics work. Next part, let's look at the track record. Tobias already alluded to it. In net revenue terms, we've always delivered on what we promised. As we've grown from EUR 188 million- EUR 630 million in net revenue, every single year, we met or beat our guidance. We did that despite some significant headwinds.
Of course, we guide on profitability as well, and we've always delivered on both of them year-over-year. That deliver is impressive on its own. It's even more impressive against the backdrop. You've heard me talk last year about tariffs and component cost this year. Such headwinds didn't just arrive recently. For the last five and more years, we've had our fair share every single year. You see that little character at the top? That's a creative-Tonies vampire. We put him on our internal slides whenever there's something scary on the horizon. We all know we continuously delivered. The resilience of the business model is what delivered. Still, our little guy here has had more than a busy few years. 2021, COVID and global supply chain disruption. 2022, the war in Ukraine, inflation, consumer sentiment crisis. 2023, the Middle East crisis, raw material price hikes.
2024, inflation, consumer caution again. 2025, tariffs, FX headwinds, still cautious consumers. Through every year of it, the model held, reliable, growing, and more profitable. You all know what 2025 looked like. An extensive new tariff regime on top of everything else. Still, we delivered. Let me show you the toolkit behind that resilience. At the top, the installed base flywheel. Our large fan base kept purchasing subscription-like right through it. Supply chain, a flexible setup with fast ramp-up of our Vietnam capacity to diversify box supply. Incredible agility shown by our teams. Next, pricing, a measured, well-communicated response which limited impact on volumes. This is the commercial firepower we have earned as a business. Lastly, design to value. Continuous improvement across our cost base to counterbalance the pressure. The result in a year like that, net revenue up 36% at constant currency.
Adjusted EBITDA up 50% year-on-year. One new flagship platform launched successfully. Three new above-the-box formats prepared, two of which landed successfully in 2025 with Tonieplay and My First Tonies and Cuddle Tonies, which we launched in 2026. Really remarkable. That brings me to the third and final part, what to expect. What are we aiming for? Right? What you were probably all staying for even after lunch. Let's unpack it. We already shared the ambition earlier today. 2025, we did EUR 630 million in net revenue at 8.6% adjusted EBITDA margin. By 2030, we target more than EUR 1.4 billion, just to repeat, at a midterm margin of 16%-18%. That is more than doubling revenue over 2.2x , and it's expanding margin by more than 1.9x versus 2025. I'll let you do the math of multiplying these effects through. What's driving this?
Let's start with the top line. By 2030, as I said, we target the EUR 1.4 billion. 17% compound annual growth rate from here. It has three building blocks. First, the existing business. Most of the growth comes from the core. Existing products in existing markets, growing the install base, driving the flywheel. While product innovation and new launches are exciting and provide us with additional potential, it's comforting to know that much of what we aim for is actually coming from the predictable engine we already have today. Second, new devices and attach innovation drive additional growth. Toniebox Lite is just another step in this sense. Third, new market launches. They contribute meaningfully. You've heard Christoph say today, we'll add two next year. They will take time to ramp, time to build the flywheel, and we have planned for that.
Now let's turn to the bottom line. Our ambition is to bring adjusted EBITDA to around 16%-18% midterm, a clear step up where we are today. I'll come to the contributing factors to that step up next. Gross margin will remain a key lever for future EBITDA improvement. There's mainly three drivers behind it. First, the product mix. This is the flywheel again. As the installed base grows and attach grows faster still. How? 20 Tonies for one box on average, margin improves naturally. Second, structural cost improvements. Major efficiency program across products design to value supply chain design and more. Third, our commercial and production levers. A stable response set up with sourcing flexibility proven highly effective last year. Let's pause.
It's noteworthy that we expand gross margin and with awareness of how external factors, component cost, inflation, tariffs, and more have been working against us the past years. As we bring it together, how do we get from here to there on EBITDA? The first building block, around half of the EBITDA margin step up will come from gross margin improvement, what I just explained on the previous slide. Contributing to this are, again, the natural product mix improvement and further product innovation. In the second building block, roughly the other half is coming from operating leverage. What do we mean by operating leverage? Structural improvements to the underlying business. As we scale effects. We become more efficient on many fronts. Our brand works harder for us. The third also important building block, while we drive for efficiency, we also retain our focus on growth.
This EBITDA ambition also ensures the funding of the initiatives we've shared with you today. Let me move to a slightly different topic. I want to point out the CapEx-light nature of our business. Tonies is, and we aim that to continue, a CapEx-light business by design. We have no owned manufacturing. The production backbone sits to a large degree with our suppliers. We have no owned distribution. We go through 3PLs and third-party retail. No warehouse fleet, no store network, and our hardware is durable and long cycle. Generational updates are infrequent, so the tooling and the R&D investment stays relatively low. What do we do with all this success? How do we allocate capital, I think will be one of your questions. For now, the best home for our capital is the growth in front of us. Guided first and foremost by reinvestment into the core.
This means organic growth and ecosystem scaling. Reinvest to expand internationally and to fund that high margin innovation that grows lifetime value. Moreover, there's a second important aspect to this. It's balance sheet resilience. Keep leverage low, use our cash to self-fund the growth, maintain flexibility. There will be, of course, opportunities once the ecosystem sustainably generates more and more cash to allocate. We'll pursue these opportunities like always with a clear vision and discipline, for now, we don't have plans to share buybacks or dividends or the likes. Before I close, a few things that you should know about this plan. On product, every planned innovation from box to attach is reflected in the ambition we stated. On internationalization, the planned velocity of new market launches through 2030 is reflected too.
On efficiencies, we've reflected our full efforts to manage the bottom line, from cost of goods sold to operating leverage with no dedicated AI efficiency gains yet priced in. We might wonder some further upside, you might be thinking about. Inorganic growth, faster rollout, unconfirmed launches is explicitly not yet in these numbers. Let me bring it all together with what gives me confidence in this plan. First, our subscription-like economics that I've shown you. They give us predictability. With around EUR 1.5 billion of future revenue still outstanding just from already existing cohorts and those we will acquire until the end of this year. Second, the margin expansion is structural. The operating leverage is only one aspect. A large part of it is almost inevitable as the install base scales. Third, we have a proven playbook, tested, repeatable, adaptable business levers that drive that resilience.
Lastly, capital discipline and strong profitability levers fund the next phase. This plan isn't based on needing capital raises or changing capital structure. The model funds itself. Of course, looking at the stellar team today on stage, we have another reason that this ambition is more than realistic to achieve. With this, thank you. I look forward to your questions. Before I go there, Tobias for some closing remarks.
Thank you, Hansjoerg. Thank you, Ginny. Thank you, Christoph. Let's wrap this up. These are the things we would like you to take home from this very first Capital Market Day here in London. You heard us talking about three things repeatedly over the last couple hours. Number one: build an ecosystem that compounds value. Right? We had introduced you to Toniebox Lite. Ginny spoke about our content portfolio and everything that actually surrounds that. Very important first point of our strategy. Win internationally, U.S. first. I think Christoph made it really, really clear how we got there in North America and what are some of the unique strengths that only we have that we can now apply as we continue to further internationalize our business, how that, I say it again, this word, compounds over time.
Australia was a great example of us applying all the learnings of all the previous market launches, you could see the effect there. Extend our story of reliable, profitable growth. Hansjoerg took you deeper into our numbers. We have revealed our midterm ambition of EUR 1.4 billion in revenues by 2030, also, obviously, the 16%-18% adjusted EBITDA margin that goes with that. This is all built on our subscription-like cohort that, again, compound. Think of the quasi-bank business that we have shown to you. The last thought I want to make sure you take home is, yes, this is hopefully very clearly showing you we are not your average toy. We are much, much more than that. There's so much more for us to obviously go after. Allow me a fourth point that is not on the screen.
What makes me extremely confident about us delivering all this is our fantastic team that we have here at Tonies. Over 600 very motivated people that show up every single day to make this happen in Germany, in the U.K., in France, in North America, in Australia, probably in a few more countries down the road. Thank you very much for joining us here in London at the Science Museum. Thank you very much everyone on the screen. I know there's been a lot of you, thank you for your patience as we went through the day. We are opening up for Q&A now, I would like to ask, first of all, Moritz, our head of IR, back on stage, then also my colleagues, Ginny, Christoph, and Hansjoerg.
We open up for questions, hopefully we'll have then time for an informal chat after. Thank you very much. We have two wonderful colleagues here, left and right, with microphones in their hands. Please raise your hand then either Ginny or Josefina will bring you a microphone we try to actually capture the priority of the hands going up. I think you've been first. Can you maybe quickly introduce yourself then ask the question?
My name is Mohsin. I'm from Edale Capital. In the release this morning, you disclosed that your penetration in Germany was at 58%, which is really, really high. My question is, number one, are you surprised at how high that penetration number is? Number one. Number two, can it go higher? Number three, how replicable is that 58% across your other key geographies?
Fantastic question. Thank you very much. No, I'm not surprised. Obviously, I've seen this number growing over the last couple years. I actually, I'm just convinced that this number is something that we can, to a degree, also take as a target for other markets. Probably not at the exact same height. If you look at the U.S. business, I would always say this is a great aspiration, but the North American market works differently. It has different listening behaviors. It has also different media consumption behaviors. It's a lot more diverse market, but it's clear, hopefully by today, that the 12% that we have in North America is really, as Christoph had also said, just the beginning. Right? Let's also say, Germany is our home market. Home markets behave slightly different.
It's also our hero market, we'll take what we have in Germany, all the learnings, and apply it in other markets. The really important fact that makes us all very proud about our core market, DACH, is the growth we see in this established market. The 26% year-over-year growth in Q1 of 2026. This is probably what I would like you to take away. Maybe one from this side. Gerhard?
Yeah. Hello. Gerhard from Berenberg. You said that the partnership with Bluey and Pokémon was exclusive, I don't think that was the case historically, where Disney would go along several platforms. Can you tell us how this came about, how defensible this is, and why they have chosen to be exclusive with you?
Ginny, you want to take that?
Absolutely. For both partnerships, two factors to think about. Obviously, when they look at this space, they see Tonies as a leader. While others are asking, they are not responding. The second piece is, as we shared, all the content we create is exclusive to that platform. While there will be Pokémon on different platforms like Audible or experiences like this is what we will own with families. Those two pieces are becoming more and more critical to our partners in who they select and how they want to establish these relationships long term.
Okay. Yep.
Hello, my name is Russell Pointon from Edison. Two questions. First of all is on the product. I would just be interested to find out what was the most important feature that surprised you on the launch of the Toniebox 2. The second question, on the presentation on the U.S., you talked about the population size and the relative lifetime spend as 1.5x. Could you just talk about the factors that build into that 1.5x? Is it just a reflection of relative wealth, that type of thing? Perhaps link that into how you think about future markets. I assume you are going to go for the markets where the spend per customer is probably likely to be higher.
Yeah. Great. I would suggest I take the first one, you take the second one.
Sure.
The feature that surprised us, to use your word surprise, maybe it is not the right word, on Toniebox 2, obviously, you heard me saying this a couple times. We had and still have, obviously, Toniebox 1. It is still used in millions of households. It is a wonderful product. It works every single day. Every stat you see, it is mostly driven, obviously, from Toniebox 1. We always said the time we are going to launch a new box would be a time when we think we have a real innovation. Not just round shapes or something like that. Really, we wanted to bring something new. That was the time. The time was there last year when we felt everything is ready for Tonieplay. Interactive audio gaming. Another category we created.
Surprise or not, whatever word you want to take, the way Tonieplay is now landing in households is really amazing, and we like that. It is the games that we have, the quality of the games, the level of interaction, the adoption of this relatively young category is really, really good. That is, by the way, something that only works on Toniebox 2. Chris, if you want to talk about-
Yeah, I appreciate it, Russell. You picked on those numbers. First to the one and a half times, that includes toy, entertainment, and educational product. That is the intersection that we consider ourself. I think the different spending habits, of course, not just only geographically, but also socioeconomic in every market. At the end of the day, when you say how it influences future selection, as I said, we optimize for reach, where are the next million users, and then we balance this with ROI, what is for us the most effective way to ultimately reach them. I think with that, there are plenty of pockets around the world in different formats that we can reach.
Great. Thank you. Thank you, Russell.
Hello. I'm Jeff from First Generation. This question's for Ginny. I thought the super fan engagement metrics were really interesting. I'm curious if you've learned anything around the inputs that are controllable by Tonies that can result in a greater number of super fans.
I'm also interested as to whether you know what the daily activations are for the product as a percentage of total activations. Just how much is an actual daily habit for the installed base?
Happy to answer those. I don't have the daily activation. I'll get back to you on that. For the super fans, what we've seen is some of those triggers. Obviously, we shared the Sleep Tonies statistic with you, which obviously enables that deeper engagement. We also see a lot in terms of how quickly they acquire Tonies in the first year as really being a signal in how they will deepen their relationship. The last is the content diversity. It's very easy, I think, if you don't have a little listener in your life to think, "Oh, a figurine's a figurine." No, it is not. You really have to represent the right characters, the right stories, the right environments, and that is also a key signal we see.
Saw Christian here.
Hi. Christian from New Ways. I have a question. On the figurines that you sell per Toniebox after four and a half years, all this data is based on TB1. Would you expect this to be any different with TB2?
I think it's another one for you. I'm sorry to put you on the spot.
No, I'm happy to, but everyone feel free to join in. We see no signals of why that would change. If anything, there is more growth opportunity.
Would figure-
With TB2. Yes.
...be higher.
Obviously we've talked about Tonieplay, the excitement in that whole different category, which again, is accretive. It's not replacing the figurines. It's another way, another time of day, another occasion to interact with your Toniebox. We see exciting future there.
Yeah.
If I may ask another one on the U.S. Basically, it seems like all the building blocks are already in place, right? You're at all the relevant retailers, your brand recognition is really strong. Do you have to do much more to get to the number one and maybe double sales, or is it basically you just have to wait and wait for the cohorts actually to convert into Tonies figurine sales?
Christoph?
It's great. In the U.S., we basically just roll out of bed, the rest happens by itself. I think your observation is pretty good in the sense of, as I mentioned, the pump is primed, the distribution channel is there. The numbers we also post are significant in that sense. The native install base, that model that I shared with you of also how much basically every retailer has almost hooked themselves in. I think a retailer would have a really hard problem right now to take Tonies off or reduce because their own install base would be like, "Hey, we're the Tonies." Hey, it's also, as I said earlier, one of the most competitive markets. It's one where you compete for mind share with parents like in no other. We want to defend it, and our work is not done. Is that up?
Yep.
Good.
In the back.
Hi, it's Peter from Pictet. Could you guys talk a little bit about the roadmap for sports and what to think about that? It seems like a very big area that there's a lot to do, I'd love to understand a little bit how you're tackling such a big opportunity.
Yeah. I love to talk about sports all the time. She also says, "Come on, tame yourself." You probably take that before I get too excited, because I am super excited about sports.
Hopefully you've seen in the portfolio today, there is sports content in our Pocket Tonies, which we know consumers love. We also have a Tonieplay sports game out in Germany right now where you can battle, bring that competitive energy you may have to Tonieplay. With those initial experiences, again, we are testing new formats in different ways. That also, with our growth, has triggered a lot of conversations from different leagues, whether in the U.S. or in Germany or across Europe, who obviously see this fandom as something that is very important to the family. A lot of the sports companies are focusing on building their brands at their earliest years. There's tremendous synergies. Nothing we will announce today, but we're very excited at the roadmap of different kind of experiences we could create together.
Thank you.
Hi, Stuart Brown, Private Investor. My one-year-old son is delighted about the news of Bluey coming to Toniebox. He would like to know when that will start shipping in the U.K. Also, Bluey, you've gone with the figurines as a three-pack, I believe, retailing at, the pricing I've seen, $70 in the U.S. What does that say about the pricing power and Bluey the character that you've gone with a three-figurine pack at a higher price point than is traditionally the case for the average figurine?
Yeah. Fandom. Look, we realized when we worked also with our retail partners and all this, that the individual figurine is EUR 20. We retail it at three times, EUR 60. Ultimately that was almost a void that there's a higher price point giftable item. Actually, and we've started to build this more and more, because right now, as a gift giver, you give the EUR 100 or above EUR 100, and then you are left with EUR 20 item. We wanted and we felt Bluey is also, if there's an IP, then that's a great one to introduce that. Commercial aspect, there's also planning aspects to that, but we're very excited about it.
Delivery?
Sorry?
Delivery date for his son. He cannot come home without.
Lucia, you can help us out.
Yeah.
Lucia?
Delivery date. For the U.K., we're going to start in mid-August to have a pre-order .
For those who couldn't hear, Lucia, by the way, our General Manager for the U.K. here at Tonies. Mid-August for a pre-order date, right?
The U.S.?
The U.S.
The U.S. has now also to build, strengthen our relationship, we have a first to market experience with Target on July 19th, starting there, then the other retailers will join after a little bit.
In pre-order.
Pre-order is on right now. Yes, you can go on Tonies.com and also at Target and pre-order right now. They are selling.
Hi there, Trevor Fitzgerald from Mirabaud Asset Management. Just a follow-up question, a bit of housekeeping about the lifetime value of the cohorts. You've got a number there of EUR 1 billion -EUR 1.5 billion, but that's a pretty wide range for something you've got a very good idea of. Why so wide a range, and when it comes to lifetime value, what's your definition of that lifetime? Remember, that 4.5 years before.
Hansjoerg.
I'll give it a shot. The reason why there is a range, EUR 1 billion-EUR 1.5 billion, is because the EUR 1 billion is associated with the cohorts that we have already acquired. Whereas the EUR 1.5 billion is associated with the additional cohort that we expect to acquire throughout this year. That the main difference that describes the ends of both ranges.
There was a second part of it, or?
Sorry.
The years.
The lifetime value before we had 4.5 years, or there was a time, because obviously a lifetime is a long time.
Yeah. We usually express, this is in simplified terms to make this easy to communicate and understand, 20 Tonies per box through a four and a half year period. Of course, that's more than 20 if the lifetime is longer, but that's the easiest and I think most adequate number to compute or model with.
Thank you for the question. More questions from the room? Over there, now the hand goes up. Maybe we go over here real quick for you, Ramon. Microphone's coming.
Ramon Huber from Limmat Capital in Zurich. I have a question for all of you. You have to be ready, and I'm going to see who is raising the first hand. Who will still work at Tonies in 2030? I think Tobias was the first.
I also extended my contract the first.
I know.
That's a nice one.
What a great question.
Yes.
Good afternoon. It's Thomas from Premier Miton. Given you're officially in 10 countries, but unofficially in 100, you obviously tolerate a bit of a gray market. I just wonder how you feel about the gray market in general, in particular as you launch the new box, and given its selective launch, there's a risk of it-
Yeah.
...transmitted across borders maybe more than you're currently comfortable with your existing portfolio. Thank you.
Thank you. Not worried at all. I honestly say this. We've received this question before. We looked at the data ourselves. Let me give you some real interesting perspective. When we look at, you call it gray market, say second-hand market, right? There's an interesting data point here. If you buy your box, and usually that second-hand market box comes with an assortment of Tonies. There is an interesting thing to watch. Kids' households with a second-hand market box immediately have a higher listening time than someone who probably buys a new box with only one or two figurines. I think by now after this day, you know why. Because they have immediately some more figurines they can actually select from. The probability that they find something that they're really hooked with is higher.
Secondly, I think we've also referred this a couple of times throughout the day, we have this built-in newness, freshness. I think you would also express this so nicely. The ecosystem feels new almost every day because every day there is something new coming. I can tell you when there is the new Moana movie coming to the box offices, whether you have actually a second-market or first-market box, that kid wants to listen to that Tonies the moment the movie releases in the cinema. The buying pattern of Tonies is similar. We actually look at a secondary market box as something that completely works in our favor. This is why I'm also not at all worried about this box having any cannibalization effect on this box or any other box or market. Loved the question. Thank you. Gerhard.
The gross profit margin is one of your key levers for the margin improvement. Just a question about the memory prices currently. I think they're hitting Nintendo quite hard. How are you looking into memory prices this year, next year, and how can you deal with that?
Yeah. Maybe let me start off with this year, the memory price dynamic is included in our guidance and our ambition, that 2030 or midterm target that we expressed is based off of today's market prices. Basically priced in. Of course, as I've already alluded to in the earnings calls, we have a toolkit of maneuverability. We have experience, knowledge, and production capacity for different technologies in terms of memory chips, and we can switch depending on which market prices break out or not. That's the first. We have, of course, our long lead inventory buys and our existing inventory. Last resort, as always, we have the pricing power that we demonstrated should we need it.
Mohsin?
Thanks. Can you guys just flesh out a little bit, the reason why you guys have a very wide moat around your business? What's going to stop any other competitor from stealing some of the growth that you guys have lined up nicely in front of you from a market standpoint? How is it that you're going to retain your market share and protect yourselves against any potential threats and competitors?
Yeah. I think, I hope you have actually seen it at some point throughout the day. We have various ways how we look at our competitive moats. The number one moat is the 12 million boxes and the ever-accelerating flywheel in obviously boxes getting into households. Let me be very clear. The 12 million boxes that we have in households today, it's actually over 12 million as we speak, it's something that we have built over the lifetime of 10 years. When Patric and the team started in 2016, obviously, that was the first commercial moment for us, in the fourth quarter of 2016. Look, we are showing this in many of the interactions with you. Every fourth quarter, we are actually making a significant jump in box activations because fourth quarter for us is box quarter.
This is because, obviously, Christmas and Black Friday, Cyber Monday, all these events that we have, and you cannot compress this. It's hard to compress this. We are going to continue, obviously, growing, and we're looking back at 10 years of execution of that growth, number one. Number two, the content library. I think by now it's clear we are creating amazing content, unique content. We talked about some exclusivity that we have on some of the leading IPs in the world. Number three, our international expansion strategy. There is no global competitor, period. There is no company that is in all the markets that we are in, and we are planning to literally release the brake and grow significantly faster in more markets. Let me actually finish with one thought.
You saw the number as well today, 570 million households in our age range, as households with kids in our age range. That is a number we are really going after. Competition might be interesting for some of you, and it is to a degree also for us, but we look really forward, and we see this huge opportunity, this blue ocean, to actually use your word, that we still can go after. I'm extremely confident about the growth strategy and the moats that we have built.
Last question.
Yes, maybe one more question from you.
Hi, Stuart Brown again. At what point does a Hasbro or a Mattel, particularly given some of you and your colleagues' recent career experience, at what point do those companies decide to stop licensing out and just decide to take the company themselves?
Take the company?
Take the-
Take Tonies. Yeah.
Oh.
As in buy you out.
First of all, I can't comment on Hasbro's strategy. I'm pretty sure Ginny wouldn't either. You would need to look and talk to them about it. I want to make one thing very clear. I really mean it. I say this for all four of us here on the stage. Look, when I say we are building a global icon, we have a generational opportunity to build a global icon. I'm not actually looking at someone taking us out, to use your words, in the next one or two years. We have an opportunity here at Tonies to actually create something generationally. We are here on stage for the years to come to actually take that opportunity. Thank you. Thank you very much for the great questions. Thank you for coming. For those in the room, please mingle with us now and over a coffee.
We have this beautiful, as we call it, immersion room over there where you can actually just get a feeling of how Tonies really work in our day-to-day lives with our customers. Thanks again. Thanks, everyone on the screens. It was great. Talk to you soon.