Good afternoon from Helsinki and welcome to Nokian Tyres Capital Markets Day 2026. It is great to see so many of you here in Helsinki, and I would also like to warmly welcome everyone joining us online. I am Annukka Angeria from Nokian Tyres Investor Relations and will be hosting you today. As many of you know, Nokian Tyres has navigated significant turbulence over the recent years. Today we look forward: where are we now? And even more importantly, where we are heading next? We want to provide you clarity, predictability, and to show how Nokian Tyres is positioned for sustainable, value-driven growth. Looking at today's program, our first speaker will be Nokian Tyres President and CEO Paolo Pompei, who will discuss Nokian Tyres' updated strategy and the financial targets. He will be followed by our Interim CFO Jari Huuhtanen, who will focus on the financials.
After their presentations, we will have a 10-minute break. In the second session of today, we will focus on Nokian Tyres' passenger car tires business, and we will have three speakers: Tron Gulbrandsen on the Nordics, Tommi Alhola on Central Europe, and Chris Ostrander on North America. Following their presentations, we will have a Q&A session with all the speakers. Let me remind already at this point that those here in Helsinki can simply raise their hand for any questions during the Q&A session, and we will bring you a microphone. Those online can submit their questions throughout the whole event.
Before we start, I would also like to mention that there will be a lot of content and details in our presentations, but all the presentation material will be available on our website as well as the recording of this event so that you can revisit the material later. With that, let's officially kick off the event. We will start with a short video, and then, Paolo, the floor is yours.
Nokian Tyres is the forerunner of tire innovation. Born in Finland, where the weather doesn't follow rules, for over a century we've learned that the road never asks for permission to change. It can turn in an instant: from clear to capricious, from steady to unstable. And that's exactly why we're here. Because safety isn't only about stopping in time. It's about moving with confidence. In rain. In snow. In heat. On highways, back roads, and everything in between. Safety is built in extreme conditions, shaped by deep customer insight, and perfected through technical mastery. So everyday driving feels steady and reliable behind every steering wheel. That's what we create: not just tires, but control when it all feels uncertain. Nokian Tyres, we make the unpredictable predictable.
Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to our Capital Markets Day. Thank you for joining us here in Helsinki. Thank you for those who are following us online. I would like today to start with the theme of our Capital Markets Day. Clearly, we are extremely excited to be here together with you after the last Capital Markets Day that was held in 2023 here in Helsinki. The theme of this Capital Markets Day is reflecting our day-by-day job. The theme of our Capital Markets Day is reflecting what we do every day. We are a Finnish company with a strong heritage that is managing day-by-day extreme weather conditions. This is what we do. We try to make sure that our customers, our drivers, feel safe when they are driving in extreme weather conditions. For us, it's really about making unpredictable weather a predictable journey for our own customers.
However, the theme of our convention, I like to believe, that is not only reflecting our day-to-day mission, but it's also reflecting our recent history. We made an unpredictable event, like a war, a predictable journey. This is really what we are going to tell you about today. We are going to really describe our journey, our future journey. We were able, actually, to transform a problem in a great opportunity to become even stronger for the future. This was possible because Nokian Tyres is not about one asset. Nokian Tyres is not about one factory. A factory is one of the assets, or many assets, of a company. We have 128 years of history. We have a long experience in the rubber industry. We are probably one of the oldest tire companies existing in the world. We have extremely good products. We have strong innovation capabilities.
We have been always setting a new level when we talk about competition in terms of product performance, developing products in the last 90 years, at least. We have been extremely strong in reinventing the tire business in anything we do day by day. The strength of the company, the asset of the company, was not really a factory, but was really our innovation capability, our know-how, and our people, and our team, and our heritage. This is why we believe that we were able to transform an unpredictable event in an even more predictable and safer journey for the future. Let's go to, really, the agenda of today. Let's start, first of all, to highlight the key messages that we would like to transmit during the Capital Markets Day today. First of all, we are operating in a niche segment.
We are a company who doesn't play everywhere. It's operating only in a niche segment. And it's a premium niche segment where we can hold a strong pricing power. We have an extremely strong and robust product pipeline that will give us the possibility to grow and to be successful in the next years. That is also another important point that I would like really you to understand in detail. We have a lot of possibility to improve our profitability in our own actions. So we are less dependent, in some way, on the market development. We have, finally, after strong investments, high investments, a very nice and scalable and efficient and modern platform that we can leverage for the future. And, of course, our EBITDA, if you look at the statistics, is getting back to the level where it was before our crisis: delivering cash and higher dividends.
But let's, for a moment, go back to who we are today. Nokian Tyres, we have been publishing yesterday our financial results for 2025. You see, we were reaching almost EUR 1.38 billion. We have now more or less 4,000 people today, four factories around the world, but located in three different geographies: Nordics, Central Europe, meaning Romania, as well as now in North America. We operate and we support our sales through 519 service centers called Vianor. And then, of course, we sell products in 47 countries. We have been always investing a lot in R&D. R&D is one of our main and strongest assets, more than 3% of our revenues. And, of course, we are an industry leader when we talk about CO2 reduction. You will see today we'll talk a lot about our geographies and how we are growing in different geographies.
Still today, more than 50% of our revenues are coming from the Nordics, while 25% are coming from Central and Southern Europe, and 22% from North America. Passenger car tyres represent more than 60% of our sales, with Vianor representing 26% of our sales and EBITDA 17% of our sales. But this is more important. This is really what I would like to deliver as a first message. If you look at our historical sales, if we start to exclude the Russian market, that was representing more than EUR 300 million, almost EUR 350 million in 2022, we are now back in our journey to the level where we were before, with sales that are very close to EUR 1.4 billion as it was in 2022. Clearly growing in the Nordics, growing in North America, and recovering fast in Central and Southern Europe. Yesterday we published our recent journey.
2025 was really a strong year of transition where we saw, finally, the possibility to, again, go back to become profitable and to improve our financial performance. We were growing in terms of operating profit, in terms of segment operating profit, by 28%. We were growing in terms of operating profit, moving basically from break-even to almost EUR 36 million. But even more important, we were able to increase our pricing mix by almost EUR 60 million. And we were able to improve our cash by EUR 200 million, of course investing less, but also improving in our working capital, in particular in managing inventories, payables, and receivables. And I think this was a good improvement that is showing our new trend that, of course, is aiming to drive us in reaching our financial targets. But let's talk about the market, because the market is very important.
I mean, Nokian Tyres is a company that is mainly working in a niche segment. As you can see, we are a very small player in the global tire industry. We don't want to be everywhere. We are not aiming to be a market leader in any segment of the tire industry. We want to play only in the premium segment when we talk about winter tire, all-weather and all-season, and some selected summer tire business, but mainly winter tire, all-season, and all-weather in a big market. This is really very important when you analyze our profitability. We play in niches where we can provide added value, where, really, we can be different and we can hold a strong pricing power.
When you look at the market, you know very well you've been probably watching many Capital Markets Days, and those trends are obviously common to many tire companies. But when we look about tires, I think looking at the technology changes, electrification in particular when we talk about Europe in particular, but also Asia, I would say, digitalization, AI, the vehicle the market is growing in terms of number of vehicles. And we know that very well. There are more and more vehicles registered every year and more and more vehicles that are getting older, meaning more replacement market. We will see something in a minute. The mix is changing: more bigger vehicles than smaller ones. And sustainability is becoming an important item of the agenda. And it is an important item for Nokian Tyres. We know about the challenges of retaining good people, finding good people.
We know about the challenges of, actually, the opportunity to talk with educated consumers more and more. And, of course, recently, in particular, we can say that we know very well what geopolitical risk means. And now any company should be able to define a clear strategy to fight against geopolitical risk. But today I would like to talk about only a few of them, just to give you an opportunity to understand where we see strong opportunities. Our job day by day is really to identify opportunities in market changes and try to be a winning company within those opportunities. I would like to start with electrification. We can argue if those statistics about 2030, almost 30% of the new vehicles will be electric, if it's correct or not. Maybe it will be a little bit lower. Or maybe it will be higher. We don't know.
I mean, obviously, this is a trend that we will not stop. But for us, the electrification is a great opportunity to sell value. Because those cars, those vehicles, are requesting better performing tires. The transmission of the power on the ground is by far more challenging for an electric vehicle than an engine-combustion vehicle. And, of course, those cars are fitting bigger wheels. For us, it means bigger tires where, really, the price premium is coming from. I like this slide as well that is describing a little bit the automotive market. You will see that in terms of new registration, both Europe and North America. Europe is the green line. North America is the white line. You will see that we are pretty stable. So the market, in terms of new registration through the years, is not really growing.
But what is growing is the age of those vehicles that is above 12 years now. Again, it means more replacement tires in the market. And for companies mainly focused on the replacement market, that is a great opportunity. But you will see on the bottom, again, green and white, that the bigger vehicles are growing. Once again, for us, it's an opportunity because we are focusing on the mixed development since many, many years. And this will be an opportunity for us, again, to hold better pricing and better margins. Mobility. We are all leasing cars. I mean, leasing now and/or renting cars. I find, for instance, extremely I come from a city that is extremely crowded. And I found it extremely useful to rent cars, or that are shared cars, as you know.
Like, for instance, we have many, many companies who are doing this kind of business model today. This is important for us because we are able to talk to an educated buyer who values safety and who values the total value of ownership of the tire, meaning that he's not looking at the price as such. He's looking at how long I can have that tire fitted on that car. And this is very important because he understands the premium tire business better than any other consumer. Finally, sustainability. We say it in many, in many investor calls. Sustainability should not be paid by the consumer. In particular, in markets like Central Europe or in markets like North America, the consumer will not pay EUR 1 more for sustainability. We need to take it as a fact.
The consumer will prefer the company who is able to provide more sustainable solutions at the same cost. This is where Nokian Tyres is an excellent player. It has been always in the front line when we talk about renewable and recyclable material, when we talk about CO2 emission. We are the only company who has a factory who has zero CO2 emission. Then, of course, when we talk about managing the full supply chain in a responsible way. For us, those are representing great opportunities to support our future sales. We live in a market that is expanding. We live in a market that is growing in terms of premium segment as well. We live in a market that is shifting from small tire to bigger tire where we can differentiate with better performance.
This is leading me to talk and to anticipate our strategic journey from now to a horizon that, at the moment, we define up to 2029. Annukka has described very well. We come from a very transformation period where, obviously, we have to reset the company footprint and to build a sort of new Nokian Tyres platform, not new Nokian Tyres as a company, but as a platform, to a sustainable, value-driven growth. This is really what we are trying to build. If you look at our journey in 2025, we were focusing on sustainable, value-driven growth. We didn't really care about how much market share we were going to gain. We were really caring about building a sustainable, value-driven growth through great products, good pricing, and good positioning. So we are, in some way, refocusing. We are not inventing the wheel again.
We are refocusing on what made this company great and what really matters for us. This is really winter tyre. We want to keep our leading position in the winter tyre business. We want to grow above market level when we talk about all-season and all-weather. All-season and all-weather are two segments that are closer to winter tyre than summer. You don't fit an all-season tyre to face hot summer conditions. You fit an all-season tyre to manage snow many times or heavy rain. And then, of course, we are already a strong leader in the forestry industry. We want to grow above market level in forestry as well as agricultural tyres. Vianor will represent a strong and important channel for our sales in Europe.
Then, of course, we will leverage, as we do today, the classic B2C and B2C and B2B channels as a key enabler of our own business. But let me give you more information about our journey in the way that you will be able also to understand better our margin growth. First of all, let's talk about winter and all-season. You will see that the pricing and the price position that we have when we talk about winter and when we talk about all-season is by far higher than the price positioning of the summer tire business. This is very important. We have still the possibility to upgrade our pricing in the all-season and all-weather business as well. But summer, as you know very well, is, especially in Central Europe, still the majority of the market.
So obviously, we want to play in those niches where we can differentiate in terms of pricing. We are also presenting you our future journeys where you will see the winter tire business will always represent more than 50% of our own sales. The all-season and all-weather business will be the dominant part of our growth. So this is really very important because this is where we are focusing our innovation and our R&D capabilities and, of course, our go-to-market day-by-day approach. The winter tire business is growing. I received a lot of questions about, is the winter tire business growing or not? Well, it's growing. It's growing slowly, 2% year-over-year. But it's growing fast. This is driven by many things, regulations, first of all.
Obviously, regulations are supporting the fitment of winter tires in many, many countries in the world now because, obviously, those are safer. But also extreme weather conditions. I'm glad we have the Capital Markets Day today, middle of the winter. You see outside, it's nearly hell in Helsinki. It's snowing again, heavily. The temperature has gone down. So winter is there. Winter, it's very important to make sure that we feel safer while we are driving day by day in these winter conditions. Then, of course, winter, for us, represents really the front line of the innovation. I mean, we always say that if you are able to perform in the winter tire business, then, of course, you are able to perform anywhere else. But the all-season and the all-weather business, just to be clear, all-weather is the all-season business in North America.
So in North America, historically, Nokian Tyres was actually one of the first companies to introduce the all-weather segment in North America. So when I talk about all-season and all-weather, I talk about Europe and North America. You see that it has been growing two-digit year-over-year since 2019. And this is really where we are, at the moment, enjoying a faster growth, obviously, also because this is a great opportunity for a company with a strong experience, know-how, and heritage in the winter tire condition or in extreme weather conditions. The heavy tire business is presenting more or less, sorry, we talk about mix first. The mix is presenting huge opportunities for us. As you can see, whenever we sell tire above 18 inches, we obviously make margins that are by far more attractive than when we sell smaller rim sizes.
You can see from this slide on the left or right, extreme right, you will see that our development plan for the next few years and our sales plan is focused really on developing product and tire and rim sizes that are obviously above 18 inches. I will give you more information in a few minutes. When we talk about heavy tire, you will see more or less the same trend. Clearly, the gross margins we make when we sell forestry or agricultural tires are by far higher than the margins we make when we sell everything else, like, for instance, truck tires. And, of course, our growth is planned to be pretty strong in the agricultural segment, less strong in the forestry tire business because we are already a strong player, meaning that we will follow the market trend more than beating the market.
In the agricultural tire business, of course, we have the greatest opportunity to grow even further. That is really an important message that I would like to address today. We have an extremely strong development plan. EUR 1.5 billion revenues will be generated between 2026-2030 from new products. When you look on the left on the passenger car tires, more than 90% of this new product will come from winter, all-season, all-weather tires. When we talk about agricultural tires, 75% of the new product will come from agricultural and forestry tires. This, I think, slide is very powerful in describing the potential opportunity we have to grow revenues through innovation and new products.
Of course, we are extremely proud to see that, day by day, more and more independent tests are supporting our premium positioning, indicating Nokian Tyres as a leader in the premium market in terms of performance. This is happening for winter tire. This is happening for all-season and all-weather too. And we are also extremely proud to be rewarded for our solutions, in this case, for our digital capabilities. We were rewarded in the Agritechnica for the Intuitu, that is basically a smart tire that is connected with the end user, giving important information like pressure of the tires or temperature, all important information that are driving or that are giving the possibility to the driver to become more productive and more efficient while driving an agricultural tractor or a heavy vehicle machine. But it's not only about past. It's also about future.
I would like to anticipate our future with a very, very short video. This was our brand ambassador, as you know, Kimi Räikkönen, that is cooperating with us. I think, in a few days, you will see something that is completely new, disruptive in the industry. We will set, again, a new level in the competition because we have a new disruptive technology to introduce in Ivalo in March. It is going to be released in the market. This technology is about winter tire. This technology is about winter tire for, obviously, the Nordic market but also Central Europe as well as North America. Please be connected with us. We will tell you more as soon as at the beginning of March.
We are extremely excited and proud because, again, I repeat, I think we will set, really, a new level when we talk about winter tire business. You have seen as well that it's very important to generate consumer demand. To generate consumer demand is not enough to work on social media. You need to be visible and loud. We are investing significantly. We will keep investing significantly in our branding, in our name. We have signed an important partnership, in this case, for instance, with the IIHF Federation. We will do a very important product launch now in Ivalo, starting in March, presenting different products, in particular two flagships in the winter tire business. We will, obviously, keep working together with our brand ambassador, that is Kimi Räikkönen, that is well reflecting our values and our ambition to become a leader in the segments where we operate.
Vianor, it's an extremely important vehicle for us to support our brand, our sales, and our premium positioning in the market. We will keep rebuilding because we had quite a significant presence. We'll keep rebuilding our Vianor network. We have, today, more than 500 service center partners or own equity distributed between Nordics and Central Europe. This is really, as I said, an important tool for us to promote Nokian Tyres in the market, to give service to leasing companies, to rental companies, and at the same time, obviously, to hold a premium positioning. Obviously, now, after great investments, we have a platform, extremely modern and efficient platform, that will give us the possibility to support our growth. We are not planning, in the strategic period, to invest more. We have enough capacity to support our growth.
We have great facility to support our improvement in terms of efficiency and productivity because we have now in place extremely automatic and efficient technologies that will give us the possibility to be cost-efficient for the future. You know, this manufacturing footprint is also important from the geopolitical point of view. We have now finally a local-to-local business model, which we didn't have before. This is what I mean when I say we transform a problem in an opportunity to become even safer and stronger in the future. Now we have a dedicated factory for the North American market. We don't care about import duties anymore. We have a dedicated factory for Central Europe who can support Central Europe day by day.
We have, of course, our historical strong platform in the Nordics that is supporting both the passenger car tire as well as the heavy tire business. So we reduce the uncertainty. We reduce the risk related to supply chain. We reduce the risk from currency fluctuations. Now we produce in dollars and we sell in dollars. So the depreciation of the dollar, for instance, against the euro, is not representing a big risk for us anymore. And, of course, never forgetting the lower environmental impact, having goods that are traveling less around the world. This is also a strong competitive advantage. And step by step, we will have also a strong opportunity to be more efficient in terms of cost. Clearly, the more we are saturating our facility, the more our cost will be going down.
But also, we have plenty to do now, having a new platform to improve, optimizing our efficiency through lower waste to higher productivity in particular. I move to the updated financial targets. You have probably been able to see those in the press release of yesterday. You will see that the updated financial targets are not too far or are not so different than the one we published in 2023. Clearly, there is one message in those financial targets. The message is revenues can be EUR 1.8 billion, can be EUR 2 billion. We don't know yet because we are not going to run behind sales as such. We are going to value profitable growth. Our margin will be, in terms of EBITDA, above 24%, our margin in terms of EBIT, segment operating profit.
I want to anticipate, obviously, segment operating profit and EBIT will be actually close because, obviously, this is we are not planning any exclusions in 2029. But our margins will go back, in terms of EBITDA, to the level where they were before the crisis we had with the exit from Russia. And, of course, our segment operating profit will be higher than 15, below the level before the crisis in Russia but simply related to the fact that we have higher depreciation and higher financial costs. The capital structure, we will have a ratio between net debt and segment EBITDA that will be lower than two. But I would like to give you also additional information. Our progress will come, that is, more than EUR 200 million EBITDA will come not only from, obviously, our growth and our better prices. It will come half of it.
It will come from our own actions, from something that we can control. And this is really very important. So EUR 100 million-EUR 120 million, more or less, will come from improving our position, in particular in the new market through partnership. But it will come from consistent price positioning and price realization. But anything else, when we talk about operations, when we talk about tire design, raw material in terms of procurement but also in terms of development and application or utilization of different raw materials, and our fixed cost in terms of anything we pay day by day to run our own business, well, this box will represent the additional EUR 100 million-EUR 110 million that are needed to get to our financial target. So half of the improvement will come, really, from something that we can control. And we can control 100%. The profitability will improve.
You will see in this slide that our segment operating profit above 15% is the final target. We closed 2025 at 6.6%, as you know very well. We gave a guidance yesterday to land 2026 between 8%-10%. You see that we are already above target when we talk about passenger car tire Nordics together with Vianor, just to prove how Vianor is important to keep our strong pricing power in the market. We are already at target level when we talk about Central Europe. So the growth in Central Europe can only provide additional margin. We are below target level in heavy tire, as you know. We are below target level when we talk about North America.
But I'm glad to be here with the leader of the passenger car tire business of Nordics, Central Europe, as well as North America, to show how this journey will improve the profitability of all the business we have around the world. So this is very important. This will up through pricing. This will up through will happen through new products, obviously, volume as well, but also through operational improvements. We are confirming our what we call non-financial targets, in particular when we talk about, renewable, recyclable material, for instance. We are, in this dimension, I would say the number one in the tire industry. We are setting a target that is extremely ambitious to get 50% renewable and recyclable material by 2030, while you will see the average of the market is 10 years late. Last year, we were at 28%.
In terms of CO2 emission, well, I think with the new factory in Oradea, we are setting, really, a new level. And we were extremely strong and efficient to reach already 38% in 2025 when we are supposed to be at a reduction of 42%. Baseline is 2022, obviously. So we are already close to the target of 2030. And then, of course, we can improve in terms of safety. We improved significantly last year from 4.6% to 3.7% when we talk about LTIF. But, of course, we have new facilities. Our target is to get to 1.5% to create a safe environment for our own employees. Not forgetting, then, the sustainability and the meaning working with our supplier in a sustainable way, as well as, obviously, the continuous improvement necessary to have to engage and to keep motivated people who value, equal opportunities within the company.
So summarizing, we believe that Nokian Tyres is an attractive long-term investment. I think the journey in 2025 is now proving that we are back. We are back strongly. We are in a good position to succeed. Focus: winter tire, all-season, all-weather, agricultural and forestry tires. Three different challenges in the Nordics are about defending our premium position. In Central Europe, it's about rebuilding. In North America, it's about building. I'm glad that my colleagues will be now able to describe this journey that is different for all of them. We will win through premium positioning and mixed announcement. We will win through Vianor, in particular, and then, of course, traditional channels like B2B, B2C. We will win through strong product and innovation. EUR 1.5 billion is the pipeline of the new product coming from 2026 to 2029.
Consumer focus, branding, a lot of branding, a lot of activities, increasing the brand awareness of our consumers, operational excellence, a very solid local-to-local business model. Last but not least at all, an extremely experienced team, people who know exactly how to be successful in the segments where we want to be and people who know better than anybody else how to achieve the financial targets that we have. Of course, the financial targets are the one that you see in the slide there. But I would like to conclude this presentation with also our brand ambassador that will tell us how we are going to reach our financial target. He has contributed as well to build our own strategy.
You are good. Now you have to be great. If they pass you, you pass them three times. You and I, we don't bite the dust.
We chew it up and then we spit it out. Forget the noise. You know what to do. Ready? OK, let's hit the road.
If you can leave me the microphone for a moment. Of course, it's a more pragmatic way to be successful. But I'm sure it's going to be a very great journey. And we are really confident that this is going to be a successful journey for all Nokian Tyres teams. Having said that, I would like to call on stage my colleague Jari, who will talk more deeply about the financial targets. Thank you very much for your attention.
Thank you, Paolo. Good afternoon and welcome to Capital Markets Day. My name is Jari Huuhtanen. I'm heading finance in Nokian Tyres as an Interim CFO.
In next about 10 minutes, I will shortly go through how Nokian Tyres is driving a solid financial progress in the coming years. Especially what are our key drivers for the profitable growth. Paolo already confirmed our updated financial targets by 2029. Personally, I want to highlight again this profitability part: segments EBITDA higher than 24% and segments operating profit higher than 15%. Why also EBITDA is important: our depreciations comparing to net sales are relatively high at the moment, mainly due to high investments to our factories in Dayton and Oradea. Capital structure, net debt to segments EBITDA, target is below 2x. We can confirm also the dividend policy, which is unchanged. Nokian Tyres will pay dividend at least 50% of its net earnings. Here we can see the same financial targets from the historical point of view.
We can proudly say that 2025 was a turnaround in many ways. There is solid progress ongoing towards our financial targets. By 2029, we are returning back about to the same net sales, same EBITDA levels where Nokian Tyres was earlier before the crisis. Also, net debt to segments EBITDA, we have now reached the peak. The peak was in 2024. Also that ratio is steadily coming down. For us, this might be one of the most important slides. This is our way to segments EBITDA higher than 24%. This frames what Paolo was describing earlier in his presentation about those ongoing commercial and operational initiatives to improve our profitability. This is a relative indication of those same actions. EBITDA improvement is a combination of volume growth and various different profitability actions. We will grow in volumes.
Especially, we want to grow in volumes in North America and Central Europe. However, when we are growing volume-wise, we want that every tire what we are selling are, on average, more profitable than today. This will happen in two ways. We want to increase our high-value sales mix and also increase our premium price positioning. At the same time, we want to manage our operational costs so that tire costs will be lower than what they are today. In order to support volume growth and profitability, we want to allocate some money back. We want to allocate money to our stronger brand, to our product development, and also to our improved sales capabilities. Our investment phase, it is now completed. The CapEx is normalizing. In the past five years, the company has invested about EUR 1 billion.
Of course, the biggest one are the factories in Dayton, Tennessee and Oradea. Our next year's CapEx level is aligned with the depreciations. In practice, that means that our annual average CapEx level will be about EUR 150 million. Improving EBITDA will also provide a good basis for the cash flow. Our free cash flow is getting stronger. And what is also important, our cash flow will be more predictable. We will continue to optimize the working capital. Especially, our new local-to-local business model will give us more opportunities to manage our working capital in an efficient way. And if you look at our 2025 cash flow, you can see already there some good development. CapEx, I already mentioned, CapEx is normalizing. And then, on top of that, some financial expenses and taxes as well. Our capital structure is stable.
Now, after the investment phase, our interest-bearing debt is about EUR 800 million. We want to leverage our stronger cash flow and our stronger balance sheet. The debt level will go down to the level which is aligned with the target of net debt to segments EBITDA lower than 2x. Our debt portfolio is balanced. All the needed main backup facilities are in place. For us, it's more to extend to maturity. Later, we have also more opportunity to balance between different financing sources. In this strategy period, Nokian Tyres will allocate its capital primarily to our own profitable organic growth. We want to invest to our stronger brand, our R&D, and our sales capabilities. And capital investments supporting our efficiency improvements, digitalization, and factory maintenance. At the same time, we want to provide an attractive shareholder return with growing dividends, according to our dividend policy.
As a summary, this was shortly how Nokian Tyres is driving a solid financial progress in the coming years. We want to focus on profitability, profitable growth, cash flow, and growing dividends. I want to thank you and hand over back to you, Annukka.
Thank you, Paolo and Jari. Next, we will have a short 10-minute break, after which we will focus on Nokian Tyres' passenger car tyres business. But now, short break, and we will be back shortly. Welcome back. In this second session of today, we will take a deep dive into Nokian Tyres' passenger car tyres business. We will start with the Nordics, followed by Central Europe and North America. Tron , please go ahead.
Thank you, Annukka. My name is Tron Gulbrandsen. I'm heading the passenger car tyres in the Nordics.
I will, for the next 10 minutes, talk to you about the concept of strengthening our already number one position in the Nordics within the passenger car tires. We kick it off, we started off with the Nordics in a nutshell. Within the premium sector, we are the market leader, which is obviously, this is our home market. And we have a solid ground for basically all our product categories. But especially within the winter tires, we are declared number one and the winter tire expert in the market. And that's where we want to be as well. We have 174 Vianor service centers, which brings volumes and products to the market and also enables a premium positioning in the market, which is very, very important for us. Some bullet points at the right-hand side of the slide there.
We bring a pretty stable and predictable volume in sales. Since the turbulence after the Russia exit, we have been climbing back and picking up market shares. We are pretty predictable in terms of sales and volumes. We see a future potential both in gaining more market shares and growing in that aspect, but also when we look at the larger rim sizes and the development that is going on in the market. I will get a little bit back to that on the next slide as well. We have been bringing high profitability to this company for years. We will continue to do so as well for the next period. We do 53% of the group net sales from the area of the Nordics. Talking shortly about the market, the Nordics is a quite solid and a quite stable market. It's about 17 million tires.
The growth in the market in terms of pieces, the market is quite flat. So we are looking at an estimation of the growth from 0.5%-1% as a CAGR. So that's not where they're like the real beefies. There is potential to do higher shares within that market as well. And if you look at our seasonal mix, the majority of what we are selling is winter tires. So about 75% winter tires and about 25% summer tires. And we expect that share to be quite consistent for the coming years as well. And one of the obvious reasons for that is, of course, that we are stronger within the winter tire segment and also because we have a fairly high share of new complete winter wheels that are going to new car sales as well. So therefore, also the higher share in the winter tires.
The very interesting part here is, of course, the growth in the larger rim size development. If you look at some historical figures back to 2021 up to 2025, we have been growing with 14 points from 18-inch and bigger from the shares. That development will continue. We have carefully estimated that to grow in another 10 percentage points for the coming period. I think that it's quite carefully done. This is not something that we hope will happen because we know that this will happen. Because we know that what cars have been sold for the last years, we know what cars that are being sold this year. We see that all the new cars that are put on their own almost have 17, 18, 19 inches on their new car.
So we will also sell a big share to the new cars being put on the market. And those cars will also give an increased replacement market in the bigger rim sizes. So this market will grow in the coming years. Our main focus is, of course, winter tires. And as I said here, we like our portion of the large rim sizes and the development that is ongoing there. And then we want to position our products as premium in the market. That's what we want to target. Sorry. One of the big reasons, main reason why we have this position as we do and that we've had success in the Nordics is because of the great products that we offer to the market. I think our products with the innovation, it drives the premium sales mix.
When the premium sales mix is driving, then the margins also are driving. We have a pretty attractive product portfolio as it is today, with, of course, winter as the flagship in what we do. We have a long, as Paolo also mentioned, we have a long experience in this market, more than 90 years of winter tire experience. We have highly skilled people in-house. We have a very, very competent R&D team, which makes the unpredictable predictable, but they also make the impossible possible. I think Paolo gave you a teaser of what is coming up. Keep your eyes and ears open in the beginning of March. We will, in the coming period, we will renew our product portfolio 100%. We will renew everything.
We will, of course, have focus on the larger rim sizes, as I said, to capture that part of the market. I have been working in Nokian Tyres since 2006. I have to say that every time we launch a new product, especially the winter tire product, and we bring that to the market, it sets a new standard in the market. We are able to launch a new product with new innovation that kind of becomes the new benchmark and drives the whole market, I would say. Really, really excited about not only the coming month, but also the coming years in terms of new products that we are putting on the market. Also, Paolo was mentioning the test wins, which is, of course, important in this market. It's important for the manufacturers. It is important for the dealers.
And it's important for the end consumers as well. For the last years, and I'm sure that we will continue to do so, we've had very, very nice results in magazine tests, in a broad amount of the magazine tests, and also year- by- year showing consistency. And it gives a pull effect from the market. It keeps our dealers happy. And I think on the consumer side, it creates loyal consumers. And it really gives strength to the brand. And surveys that we do show that we are seen as the winter tire expert number one in all three key countries. And also that we have the brand awareness number one in all three countries as well. And that's exactly the position that we want to have. We have that today. And we want to continue to have that.
Bringing new products to the market, they also need to have a channel to go through, basically. We have very strong sales channels today, which is supporting our premium growth. We have been having a solid position in this market for quite a while. We want to be an attractive partner in the market for our customers and our partners. We want to bring them a good earning potential on our products. We want to place our product as a premium brand and premium product. We think that we will create a pull effect that our dealers will get the benefits from. I think also today, if you want to run a tire dealer chain in the Nordics, positioning yourself premium, you somehow need to find a place to have Nokian Tyres in your product portfolio somewhere.
And then we want to be a reliable and trustworthy partner, of course. Delivering tires when the customer needs them, trying to be predictable, having tires in stock during season, and so and so. And today, we have a strong presence in all, basically in all the sales channels. If you look at car dealer business, where we sell, have a fairly high share of the complete winter wheels that goes with the new cars. So there, we are in a good position. We are selling to traditional tire dealers, wholesalers, and then, of course, Vianor with a key role securing our premium position and then bringing products to the market, basically. On top of that, we are having efficient operation, which drives a consistent performance. And we have a Nordic footprint. We have the factory in Nokia, which has, of course, it's close to the market.
It has a huge know-how, short distance to all the key countries, and so and so. We have efficient operations. As I started with, we are pretty predictable in the sales and the volumes and what we forecast to happen and everything. That makes us, it makes it easier for the production to run the production efficiently when they get good forecasts on what to produce and everything. So that combination is quite good. Then we have a very, very efficient supply chain optimized for seasonal Nordic business. What do I mean with that? I mean that we know approximately how big the pre-sales will be. We know when it will be delivered. We know what kind of inventories we need to have for the seasonal business when the replenishment is coming. We have central warehouses.
We have local warehouses in all key markets supporting the business. Then to wrap this up, Paolo said, "Nordic, defend." I will say Nordic, strengthening our number one position in the premium sector. That is the target. We want to be in the premium winter as the main focus. We want to have our share of the bigger rim size development that is going on. We want to have the innovational leadership when it comes to the new product. We see that when we get new products on the market, we have constantly a competitive advantage. And as I said earlier, it kind of drives the whole business when we put new products to the market. And then we need to have a superior go-to-market execution, of course, meaning that we, with our partners, we see the demand. We have quite good visibility.
Then we need to be a reliable partner supplying what is needed in the market, basically. I think those things stated here, when you combine those together, it's a very powerful package. It's a very solid strategy. I would say it's quite unique. It's quite hard to copy as well. So those will be my ending words. I will say thank you for your attention. Then I will invite my colleague, Tommi Alhola, from Central Europe, to the stage.
Thank you very much. Good afternoon also from my behalf. My name is Tommi Alhola. I've been leading the Central and Southern European Passenger Car Tire Region since the summer of 2022. Now, the term Central Europe refers to markets from Denmark, south to the Mediterranean countries, and then from Portugal and France all the way east to Ukraine.
Now, I want to start by looking at our net sales journey for the last five years. If you look at the graph in the middle, you can see that our net sales were heavily impacted in years 2022 and 2023 due to the sale of our Russian factory. In fact, as a company, we lost a major part of our production capacity in a relatively short period of time. Unfortunately, the Central European market was impacted the most. Since then, we have effectively increased our capacity and supply and have returned to many of those markets that we had to withdraw from due to the lack of supply. Now, today, we have sales in over 22 countries representing already 25% of the group sales.
For the important branded retail reach, we work together with close to 200 Vianor partner stores and also 900 Nokian Authorized Dealer locations, which form an important part of our sellout reach to the Central European consumers. Now, I would like to mention that Nokian Tyres is not the owner of these points of sale, but we work in a contractual collaboration with third parties. Now, we are back on profitable growth. We have quite a strong customer base. This market offers great growth potential for the company. We are set to deliver higher margins with increasing price positioning and increasing larger rim sizes as well as we go forward. Now, this market opportunity is quite sizable for us. In total, the market is about 350 million pieces as a replacement tire market for passenger car tires.
If you look into the left-hand side of this slide, you can see that the winter segment of this market has had a CAGR of 3% between years 2021 and 2025. Now, that's not the fastest growing segment, however. The second segment to highlight is the all-season. This has grown with an impressive 11% between years, in CAGR-wise, between the years 2021 and 2025. Now, this segment offers quite a lot of convenience for the consumers. Also, this trend has been supported by some relatively mild winters recently, but also tougher economic times. Now, if you look at us today in 2025, you can see that the winter share of the business is the largest. This is what we are most well known for as a company. And after all, we invented the world's first winter tires some 90 years ago.
Looking into the year 2029, we project a 12% CAGR for the winter business. And this is largely and highly supported by the new innovations that are coming up in the pipeline. But even faster than that, when looking at the all-season segment, we project a +13% CAGR. And you can see this, Paolo was referencing this a bit, that this all-season segment can be seen as a natural extension to the winter business. We approach this more from the winter point of view, maybe some competition from the summer point of view. But with our tires, you can truly drive in any weather 365 days a year. And then looking into 2029, the all-season and winter combined are expected to represent some 83% of our total. Now, we do intend to grow in summer. But we do that more selectively in a definitely profitable way.
This is our fast-developing product portfolio for the Central European market. As you can see, we offer tires for passenger car tires, SUVs, and delivery vans. For all these three, we offer winter tires, all-season tires, and summer tires. The current size portfolio this represents covers 90% of the total volume sold today in the Central European market. Like Paolo said, the R&D is really at the heart of this company. We are quite proud of the work that has been carried out by the company in the decades already. We work hard in making these tires the safest tires for any Central European weather condition. They help us to turn the unpredictable to predictable as well. The latest additions for the portfolio, you can see they are marked with these green labels.
If I want to make, if I would like to make one highlight from this portfolio for you today, I would pick the Seasonproof 2, our new all-season flagship tire. Now, we had the commercial start with this tire in the summer of 2025. And I'm happy to share with you that this tire has the perfect test win track record against any premium competitor. And I'm not sure if you know this, for example, but we use aramid fibers on the side walls, sides of the tire. So aramid is a fiber used in the bulletproof vest to stop the bullet. So we take these fibers and we put it on the side wall of the tire to make it extremely durable for everyday use. So for me, for example, for we, these types of innovations provide value to the consumer on an everyday basis.
Now, let's run a short video on this product, please. Now, this product has been extremely well received by the customers and consumers alike. Now, the Central European tire market is changing. And one of the drivers behind the change are the increasing number of electric vehicles. These vehicles require larger tire sizes. And if we look at the past five years, for example, and approach this from the rim size point of view, you can see the smaller rim sizes fitting smaller vehicles, you know, between 14 to 17-inch rim size tires have actually declined in their share. But when you look at the larger tires with the rim sizes of 18-inch or larger, the CAGR has been over 8%. And this trend is expected to continue.
Now, if you look into our plan up to 2029, we project for the 18-inch and larger tire segment, the CAGR, of 24%. These tires will provide increasing commercial value for us. Starting this spring, we will launch tens of new large rim sizes to the market covering the winter, all-season, and summer segments. These are enabled by our new production platform. This is highly important for the future of the business in Central Europe. Now, it says on the slide that we have increased our market share in recent years. We have continued to do so. Now, a few words about our go-to-market. Now, looking firstly into the distribution, now we continue to grow with local market-leading distributors. Now, many of them nowadays already have retail stores of their own. This is what the term "hybrid" here refers to.
But in addition to these types of customers, we also work with the pan-European distributors to make sure that our reach covers all corners of Europe. Now, in this strategy period, we increasingly shift our focus towards retail. We continue to grow with large retail chains like Point S, for example. But in addition to this, we will expand our local business with new premium chains in the key countries. And when it comes to the point of sale, we expand our branded retail reach, for example, in markets like Germany, with a significant number of new Nokian Authorized Dealer locations. Digitalization is highly important. And we focus on digital Nokian Tyres Authorized Dealers, especially for brand building in countries, for example, like France. Now, our plan is based on four pillars. The first one can be summarized as a value-driven mix.
We'll introduce new models into the market with innovations. But the sizes also grow towards the larger rim size. The premium positioning, now we keep optimizing the pricing in connection with the innovations that we bring to the market. This is a very important part of the plan. A stronger brand. Now, we've laid out the foundation to build and increase our brand awareness and preference across Central Europe. Now, Kimi, as the new brand ambassador, is a very well-known person across Central Europe. That will be a great addition to the arsenal. But also, we keep improving our performance in social media and invest more into digital marketing. One of the examples of the digital marketing is our advertising that we do in the renowned online streaming services like Netflix and Amazon Prime Video. And last but not least, the local production.
This enables highly cost-effective direct deliveries for us. It's a very important part of the local-to-local business model, as Paolo explained earlier. Now, if I were to summarize this short presentation for you with five points, these points would be that we accelerate the already profitable growth. We focus on winter and all-season. The mix evolves towards larger rim sizes. We work hard to improve the brand awareness and preference during the coming times. The local-to-local business model, having a state-of-the-art modern production facility inside the EU, close to our customers, will enable a very good competitive advantage going forward. With this being said, I would like to thank you for your attention. And invite to the stage my colleague Chris, who will talk more about the North America business. Thank you.
Okay, good afternoon, everyone. I'm told by my colleagues that we may need an interpreter for me because my English is not, the accent is not like my colleagues over here. So I apologize about that. Now, just a quick introduction. My name is Chris Ostrander. I've been with Nokian Tyres in the operations, running the North American business since September of 2025. And prior to that, I was actually a board member here for Nokian from 2021 through 2025, most recently as the chairman of the newly formed Investment Committee. So looking forward to continuing to drive what we've come here to do with it, which is deliver the growth and the results that Paolo was talking about at the beginning. The couple of things that we'll talk about today for North America is diversification, especially in the U.S.
market, what we need to do there to grow in the U.S. market, and then outgrowing in the premium segments in both Canada and the U.S. So if you look at this graph, this is a quick overview of the distribution of sales for North America. As you can see, 2022 was the peak of our sales in the Canadian and the U.S. market, primarily driven by Canada. 2023, it was a year where the disruption started to occur with the Russian support and not having the product support coming into the U.S. market at that point. But you can see that we've gradually started to rebound the sales. And in 2025, you'll have had a pretty solid year in terms of the growth of the market. So the North American market today makes up about 22% of our overall group sales.
This is primarily driven by, from a unit sales standpoint, primarily driven by winter in the Canadian market and our Northeast business and our all-weather tire sales as well, which make up about 63% of our total unit sales for the North American market. That is really anchored, again, by our positioning in the winter tire sales, primarily in Canada and the Northeast part of the United States. In addition to that, over the years, we've started to really start to see some growth in both the Canadian market, the Northeast market, and now more so in the Snowbelt area with the number of retail stores that we have a point of sale. I'll talk about more here in a little bit as to what that means and how important that is to our brand.
So if you look at it from a little bit of a history for the North American business, and it's not a long history here from the current state, but prior to 2020, we were a 100% import business for the most part. Everything came from Finland and Russia. In 2020, we started to build the factory. Unfortunately, during 2020, we had a little thing called COVID. And while we were building the plant and constructing the plant and getting the equipment and stuff in there, we weren't able to get the manufacturing engineers from Finland over here to the U.S. to support the ramp-up. We weren't able to get our suppliers into the U.S. to support that ramp-up. So unfortunately, we had a little bit of a hiccup there in terms of the timing of how quickly we were able to ramp up the plant.
And then we started getting the plant ramped up. And then 2022 hit with Russia's invasion of Ukraine. So that put another damper on the ramp-up of the Dayton plant because we had to absorb a lot of the products that were being made for the North American market that were being made in Russia were then moved over to the Dayton plant. And we had to retool the plant. So certainly, that whole 2020 to 2023 time frame was a transition for that plant to trying to build it up and then manufacturing products that we hadn't planned on manufacturing. So moving the clock forward into 2024, we've started to see some stabilization in the manufacturing side of the business.
We added a finished goods warehouse that was not originally in the plan in order to really streamline our logistics so that finished goods warehouse is actually on site in our Dayton, Tennessee plant, which holds over 300,000 tires. What that allows us to do is service customers directly from our plant, which reduces our costs, reduces the logistics costs to our customers, and gives us better availability for the clients rather than sending it out to our satellite warehouses. In 2025, you've heard the importance of the R&D side within Nokian Tyres. We're no different. We started localizing our R&D team in the U.S. and Canada in 2025 in order to make sure that we had the focus on the attributes necessary to be successful in the North American market as we launch new products going forward, which we'll talk about here in a little bit.
And then in addition to that, in 2025, we brought on a national distributor. We've historically in the U.S. primarily worked through some key clients in the Northeast and some distributor retailers. But we don't have a very good footprint in the U.S. The national distribution enables that footprint. And I'll talk more about that here in a little bit as well. So ultimately, where we are now in North America from a production standpoint and servicing our clients in the U.S. especially, 85% of our product that is sold in the U.S. is now manufactured in our Dayton facility. So it's quite different than what we were just a few years ago as we were going through the production transition. So the North American market is a very attractive market for Nokian. We have a very small presence, especially in the U.S.
We take a look at the ups and downs of the market. It's relatively stable. Our expectations are that it's going to continue to grow at about a 1% CAGR. But what's especially attractive to the Nokian Tyres business is if you take a look at the left side of this graph, the segments that we want to grow in are the segments that are outgrowing the end markets. And so North America is a very light truck-centric market in Canada and the U.S. So light truck is growing at a 4% CAGR. And the all-weather, which is the European all-season product, is also growing at a 4% CAGR during that time. And that's expected to continue through the timing through 2029.
And then the other area that's outgrowing the end markets is the 18-inch and above, similar to my colleagues talking about the premium value and the additional profitability that we get out of the 18-inch. We also see that outgrowing. So why that's important, if you look at the right side of the graph, we expect to improve our positioning on the 18-inch and above by three percentage points during that time. We actually have a pretty high percentage currently in the 18-inch and above, largely by the type of tires and the light truck. But we are going to continue to improve upon that.
But the really exciting part for me, as I've moved into this role and starting to take a look at our product portfolio and what we need specifically for the North American market, from 2025 to 2029, we project that over 85% of our product is going to be new to the market and launched within the portfolio of our unit sales within three years. So everything in 2029, 85% of our product is going to be new to the market by 2029. So that is really going to change the game here because now we're making products with specific attributes for the North American market. It's really going to help us improve our brand presence. It's going to help us improve our credibility and, really importantly, our reliability because some of the disruptions that we saw, especially from the Russian disruptions back in 2023.
So our three primary growth areas in North America, this company is built off the Snowbelt. And we've been in Canada and the Northeast for a very, very long time. We're going to continue to do that. But we're also going to continue to gain share in those critical markets with Canada and the Northeast. And we're also going to use our winter tire and our all-weather technology to pull through our all-season and light truck products and to continue to gain share with those strategic accounts that we've got and we've had for so long. In addition to that, there's some areas that were underpenetrated, like in Ontario, that we're working with our key client in Canada to gain share in Ontario and also into the Atlantic Canada area. And then the other area in the U.S.
that we're relatively new to the market in terms of the Snowbelt is in the upper Midwest, which we don't have a whole lot of market share. So we're putting a lot of emphasis on the growth in the northern part of the United States. The second part is our distribution in the U.S. So as I mentioned earlier, we don't have the greatest distribution network. We've targeted customers in the past. We've had really good clients. We have some super clients, long-term clients. But we don't have the brand presence in the U.S. to really grow the business. So what we recently did was sign a national distributor, which gives us nationwide access to distribution, over 100 warehouses now throughout the U.S., and over 300 salespeople that are actively outselling the Nokian Tyres brand.
That then enables us to be able to support the national retail customers much better, again, from a consumer standpoint, helping our brand presence. Then also on the regional retail as well, which there are quite a few of those that I'll talk about here in a little bit. All of this is going to be supported by the right side of the graph in that premium all-season growth, which is majority of our growth is going to come from what's being made in Dayton. Majority of our profit's going to be made from the products that we've historically made with our all-weather and our winter products and the greater than 18-inch. So a great example of this from a product development standpoint and the need for us to have local R&D in the United States and Canada is the Encompass AW02.
And this is a product that is a proprietary product. So it was actually designed and exclusively developed for the largest retailer in the U.S. And that product has taken off in 2025. And it's done a very good job of getting us that brand recognition at the consumer level with the number of retail stores that we now have visibility of our brand out there in the U.S. market. So this is a really key part of our strategy, especially in the U.S. market, is working with retailers on being able to get our brand front and center within their retail screens. And so we got a lot of work to do there. But certainly, this is a great start and gives us a lot of credibility moving forward. And all of this, in order for us to do this, is underpinned by one thing.
That is our brand and our brand awareness. So our current brand right now, I would say, is not predictable. The Nokian Tyres business, especially in the U.S., the Nokian Tyres brand, is not a predictable brand. If you ask a consumer what Nokian Tyres is, most consumers will not know what it is. So my goal here and the U.S. goal is to become predictable. We have to be able to get the brand presence out there to become a predictable brand that people know when they walk in the store and you have a retail person trying to sell you a Nokian Tyres, you must have heard that brand before. So how are we going to do that?
First of all, we're going to leverage some of the global partnerships that we talked about earlier with the IIHF, the hockey partnership that we've got, also Kimi Räikkönen from a brand ambassador standpoint. We also have local activation with Alterra through all the ski resorts throughout the United States and Canada and many other things with regards to digital and some other stuff. But the ultimate goal here is to drive premium drivers, premium consumers to our brand in order to ensure that we're not only focusing in on the winter and all-weather but also pulling in a light truck and all-season. And then ultimately, the way that we're going to do that is through the retail side. And the retail piece of this is an absolutely critical part of our strategy in that we have got to help our retailers advertise our product, run events with our product.
And then ultimately, we have to have our employees, their employees, trained to know the value proposition that Nokian Tyres brings to the table. So if you look at how that all plays out and you go from left to right, establishing the national distribution was absolutely critical. So we've done that in late 2025. We're just now starting to ramp that up here in 2026 and starting to see some of the benefits of having a national distribution. So this does give us a nationwide presence. And more importantly, from the distributor standpoint, we have a loyalty program called the Pioneer Dealer Program, of which from a wholesale standpoint, our wholesaler owns these retailers, the small retailers throughout the country. And so our national retailer has signed over 40% more Pioneer Dealers since we've started the program back in October.
So we're starting to see the ramp-up of the loyalty program at the small dealers. Then you move to the center part of this graph. And this is where the really exciting part becomes because now the majority of the retail points of sale are located within these national retailers and the regional retailers outside of the independent channel. So where you get your brand presence and where you get your brand recognition is more so from the regional and the nationals. But obviously, the independent channel is extremely important as well. So what this does by having a national distribution for us is now these retailers have access to our brand without having to carry any inventory. And that has historically been an issue because we have such a low brand presence in the United States.
But now they're able to go to our distributor screen and see what our distributor has in their inventory and be able to get that product within a day or at most two days, access to that product. So now these thousands and thousands of retailers have access to our product that they did not have before because of the minimum order quantities that are required to make it an efficient transaction with the retail. So what we've done over the last couple of years is actually really impressive. We've doubled our retail presence since 2023. But as you can see here, and we're well down this path already, we are expecting to triple even what we've done in 2025 with the number of retail points of sale going forward here through the 2029 period.
So in summary, the North American business, historically driven off the Snowbelt with Canada and Northeast United States, we've got to really accelerate the profitable growth in the United States portion of the business. And the way that we're going to do that, just in summary of some of the things I talked about, we are going to focus on the premium products of winter, all-weather, light truck, and the 18-inch and above. This new product development cycle and how quickly we can get those new products to market with the attributes that we need in North America, absolutely essential to our ability to succeed here. The brand presence is we have got the things that I've talked about but so many other things that we've got to work upon and put the strategy together with how we're going to get our brand more recognized in the U.S. market, especially.
We have a competitive advantage to reduce volatility now compared to some of our competitors that are manufacturing overseas or in Mexico. We have a local production facility here in Tennessee that gives us a competitive advantage versus some of the others that are out there. So I'd say as we look at this, I'm personally, coming from the board into an operations role, I'm super excited about the North American business and where we're going to take this thing. I see a lot of opportunity here. We've got a lot of work to do. I'll be really honest about that. But I think all the tools are there to get us where we're trying to go to focus on the profitable growth.
So just a quick closing, we've had some disruptions in this business, some false starts that kind of hurt our credibility back in 2023 and 2024 as we started to build this business. And we had some pretty good momentum that kind of got cut out at the knees with what happened. But that's all behind us now. We are focused on one thing and one thing only. And that is delivering the results that Paolo and Jari indicated at the beginning of this session. So with that, I want to thank you for the time. And I'm going to bring Annukka back up to the stage.
Thank you to all our presenters. Next, we will move on to Q&A session. Those here in Helsinki, please raise your hand for any question. And we will bring your microphone. And those online can submit their questions at any time.
We can start here from the audience. Please, Akshat.
Thank you so much for the presentation. I have three questions, please. We've heard a lot about high-value mix and mix enhancement. Could you just give us more details or specifics around what portion of your revenues today or in 2025 were from more than 18-inch tires? Where do you want to get to? Or if it's simpler in top-line growth assumptions, how much does that add to your revenue growth CAGR per year in the passenger car business? Just trying to understand the high-value mix opportunity because specifically in Europe, you're given very big numbers like 24% growth. So just putting that into context, please. That's the first question.
Right. If you don't mind if I stand up. Yeah, obviously, we don't disclose the number as such, obviously, for competition reasons. But we have. Let me put it in this way. We have plenty of opportunity of growth in that area. Clearly, it has been our focus for many years. But we are simply accelerating this focus because we have an opportunity, obviously, to now cover the full range. And I would say that the whole market has been also accelerating significantly with new electric vehicles, with the increase of SUV vehicles. So what we will start to do for sure from quarter one, we will start to, as many other competitors are doing already, we will start to show our growth versus the market growth, to show how we will be able to accelerate the growth. But of course, we are not releasing the absolute value today.
Thank you for that. The second question is the chart that you showed in terms of profit improvement potential over the medium term and the EUR 200 million opportunity. Could you just help us understand how much of that is volumes, how much of that is cost action specifically, and if there's an element of cost efficiency and improvement that is also linked to volumes? Just trying to understand what exactly is self-help that is in your hands versus how much is volume-dependent within that EUR 200 million opportunity.
That's a good question. The slide was more or less highlighting that there are more than EUR 200 million EBITDA improvements. And we say that half of those EUR 200 million are coming from operational efficiency and cost improvements. When we talk about cost improvement, of course, out of these EUR 100 million, I would say that the majority, 80% of these EUR 100 million, are coming really from improvements that are related to efficiency gain, to better negotiation with supplier, to resourcing, to the improvement in the product specifications. So there is plenty already going on. Actually, we had a lot of actions already going on in 2025 that will carry over in 2026 that are supporting, I would say, at least 80% of those improvements. Then there is the volume part. The volume part is strictly related to the growth that you see in our strategy plan.
And this is, I would say, affecting the remaining EUR 100 million-EUR 120 million that we were describing before. Out of these EUR 100 million-EUR 120 million, an important part is pricing. So again, the volume part, it's significant, obviously. But of course, I would say that more than 50% of what we will gain is also coming from something we control directly. And this is what is making us extremely confident about the future journey because we need to look at the market opportunity. We need to look at growth as an opportunity. But of course, we have plenty to do now with the new manufacturing footprint, with our new setup, to gain through those kind of activities.
Thank you. The last question is on Central Europe. All the presentations that we saw on the region, Central Europe probably is one of the regions where your revenues and volumes are lower versus 2021 and 2022. You clearly lost market share or ceded market share when you were in years of supply deficit. Can you talk to us about how do you plan to get those volumes and sales back? Is it as simple as putting that product in the market? There is a market ready to accept that product? Or do you think that would be more challenging in terms of regaining that market share in Europe?
Nothing is simple. This is why I ask Tommi to reply to this question.
Thank you for the question. Yes, it's definitely.
Not simple. So the harsh reality is that when we were supply-constrained, many of our customers took in a competitor product to their portfolio because they wanted to continue as part of their business. However, I have to say that since then, we have regained a lot of the business that we had at the time of 2021, for example. There's still a lot of work to be done. Pricing, yes, every day is an important day from the price fight point of view. But we are hard at work. And I see positive progress that we progressed toward that level. But I have to also say that the future is different compared to the past in many ways. The portfolio is different. But also the customer base is a little different.
We took our time to analyze the customers when we were supply-constrained to find the companies with win-win strategies. What is their approach to online? What is their approach to sustainability? And find the companies that we are aligned for the future. And these are the companies that we currently go forward to. Thank you.
Yes. Artem Beletski from SEB. Two questions from my side. So the first one is maybe a bit longer relating to price mix evolution and what type of growth you anticipate on that front. So what comes to pricing, have you done those repricing actions, what you have been implementing in 2025? Could there be some further potential? And then in terms of mix, so there are many things happening. You're talking about trim sizes, electrification, and also what comes to some all-season and winter tire mix. So that will be shifting. What is the net impact on mix front? So how do you see that evolution by 2029?
Thank you. This is also a good question. As you said before, more than EUR 100 million, we are expecting to gain through growth, pricing, and mix. We have done a great job, I would say, as we remember, EUR 60 million gain in 2025 in thermal pricing. And of course, we will see this effect carry over in 2026 because the price increase started late in 2025, I would say, May, June of 2025. So we will see a good contribution. As we said, we have premium positioning when we talk about winter tire. We still have some improvement to be made when we talk about all-season. And then, of course, there is the mix part that is a significant part of our improvement. So we are extremely confident that an important part of our journey will be supported by this repositioning.
It will be supported by the journey that we started in 2025 that gave a significant boost to our profitability, as you know, since we were repositioning the company in the market.
Great. And then I had a second question relating to heavy tires. And I guess, Paolo, you are the right person to answer.
I know something about it. Yeah.
Yes.
Could you maybe talk a bit about your thoughts around heavy tire strategy? So is it value-driven strategies in passenger car tires business? And what is the volume potential from a capacity perspective on that front?
Good questions. It is a value-driven strategy as well. We are focusing, actually, in a niche, forestry business. And today is really a selected part of the agricultural tire business. And then, of course, we have the truck tires mainly for the Nordic markets today but also a bit extended in the rest of Europe and very small in North America. The main focus, as I said, is forestry and agriculture. Today, we have a platform that is extremely competitive when we talk about forestry business because the majority of the OEM that are representing a big part of our more than 50% of our revenues are located in the Nordic markets.
So we are very close to our customers. We understand the customer needs when we talk about forestry. And I would say when you talk about the technology cut-to-length, basically, 80% of the producers, like Komatsu, John Deere, Ponsse, are located in the Nordic markets between Finland and Sweden. So we have a perfect platform there. We can improve our platform when we talk about agricultural tires. We have been investing, I would say, in growth in terms of capacity in the last few years that we are actually taking in production at the moment, in particular in radial tire capacity in Finland. So we have space, I would say, quite some space, obviously, to grow sales and capacity in the agricultural business.
You have seen from our slide; this is really where we are expecting the highest CAGR for the next few years, 9% year-on-year, because there we have built additional capacity. We have developed new, extremely competitive products. We have now a better platform and a better efficiency in our factory in Nokia at the moment. Then, of course, we will keep growing. The Central European market is our focus at the moment. So obviously, I will not exclude that we can also do more. But at the moment, we are well set, at least for the next couple of years.
Great. Thank you.
Thank you.
Jukka Moisio, we have received a heavy tires-related question from the online audience. Are you investing in the growing defense sector with heavy tires?
That's a good question. As you know, there are a lot of discussions in Europe about the defense sector as such. We made very clear that for us, this segment can be attractive and interesting, of course, if we are able to reach economies of scale. Supporting one individual country, it's not providing those economies of scale. Today, we are already supporting the Finnish authorities with some military tires. But of course, we will need larger economies of scale in order to be able to invest more. So at the moment, we don't have a clear plan to disclose.
All right. Thank you for taking my questions. First one, real quick, on the U.S. footprint. Some of your competitors or larger peers would say that it's difficult finding the appropriate labor in the United States. There's particular cost disadvantages to producing in the United States versus, say, Mexico or elsewhere. I know this is probably not relevant to the story at the moment. How do you think about sort of the labor availability in the U.S. and cost? Then second question on Central Europe. I think you showed that the standard market, 17 inches and below, has been declining. Yet you predict quite strong growth in the 17-inch and below segment. I guess, is that because you're off of a low base? I mean, why even target such strong growth in that particular market when the overall market's declining?
Just a little bit of discussion on that would be helpful. Thank you.
I start from the first one. Then eventually, Tommi, you can complete the second one. And eventually, Chris can complement what I say. Since, I would say, COVID time, in North America, the labor market has been challenging, as you know very well. Immediately after COVID, the market was going up again. And there was a shortage of labor, more than shortage, I would say, a lot of turnover, people moving for higher salaries. I have to say that in the last 12-18 months, we have been stabilizing a lot our workforce. So the market has been stabilizing. Now, the inflation is getting under control. So we are quite pleased about the stability that we are gradually reaching also in North America. That was an important problem, I would say, immediately after COVID when we started the production at that time.
One thing I want to highlight is that automation means, obviously, less dependency from labor as well. So what I mean is that we built a platform that today has a level of automation that is by far higher than what it used to be. And I would say we have probably the latest technologies available in the market that is giving us the possibility to be less dependent on labor as such. Of course, people are extremely important. Specific skills are required. And we will keep retaining those skills. But of course, I would say the situation is stabilizing and normalizing. I don't know, Chris, if you want to comment. I mean, you live in that market, so.
I would just add a couple of things. When the decision was made to, and this is before our time, obviously. But when the decision was made to go to Tennessee with the plant, there was an analysis done on the labor market there. Tennessee is a very good labor market for our type of manufacturing. The state of Tennessee, the local economic development, workforce development has done a great job working with our manufacturing team and ensuring that we've got the right type of people to support that. So we've gotten great support from the local representatives in the state of Tennessee in terms of the incentives in order to build the plant and so forth.
I think as we look forward here, I think where we're located is a pretty strong location in terms of the amount of turnover that we're seeing, the amount of resources capable of supporting our plant. I don't really see that as an issue for ramping up the facility.
The second question was about the mix in Europe. Obviously, as we say that the mix is improving, this is very good for people who want to deliver products and solutions that are performing in line with the growth of the mix. So this is really important for us that we are able to deliver tires that are able to cope with the new requirement, in particular coming from the electric vehicle or from SUV vehicles. So this is why we are focusing strongly in this area because I would say that the rest of the market remains a sort of commodity market step by step and will maybe be covered by other people, Asian competitors more in general. I mean, so this is really what is happening in Central Europe at the moment. So I don't know, Tommi, if you want to complement what I said.
The factory we had in Vsevolozhsk was very large and very effective. But the production platform inside it was very good in making perhaps a bit smaller-sized tires. Now, the new factory built in Oradea is built for the future. In order to be competitive amongst the premium competitors in the tire space, you need a wide selection of different sizes. And this facility is now built for that purpose. And we use this brand new production platform to introduce new sizes for those pockets that are highly important for the future that provide the commercial value to us. Thank you. And some of them do reside on the 17-inch sector. So we won't go fully into the large end. But on the high end, a lot of value exists. Thank you.
Thank you. Let's take the next question from the online audience. Tron, I think this goes to you. How weather-sensitive is your Nordic business considering you are heavily winter-focused considering your heavily winter-focused product mix?
Once more. I didn't hear you say it.
How weather-sensitive is your Nordic business considering your heavily winter-focused product mix?
Well, as I showed earlier, we have about 75% winter tires. We, of course, need winter to sell winter tires. But this discussion has been. I think I've heard this discussion for years. Winter is getting shorter. When is the winter coming and everything? Still, we continue to sell winter tires. We will do that for many, many years to come. Just look outside today, I think. If the winter comes in October, which it does every now and then, then everyone gets silenced. But if it doesn't start snowing until December, then everyone screams in October and November. Then silence comes in December. The sales start. So as long as there will be winter, we will be selling the winter tires, basically. Very short.
Thank you. Chris, I think this goes to you. What concrete actions are you taking to strengthen brand awareness and consumer pull, especially in the U.S., given your relatively small market presence?
Yeah. I think I talked a little bit about this during the presentation. But leveraging what we've done on a global standpoint with the IIHF and Kimi. And then we just recently signed with the ski resorts in the U.S. and Canada with Alterra to get the brand presence and really drive the premium drivers towards our brand. But I think the most significant thing is really getting the brand presence at the retail level. And the more we can get it distributed at the consumer level for us to have brand visibility, the better off we're going to be. And the acceleration of the brand will take off. But we're not going to stop there. I think Tommi indicated earlier about some of the digital advertising and the social media. We're doing exactly the same things.
The marketing team. I have a group of marketing folks, about eight people in our team, that pretty much do all of this in-house. We do a little bit of agency work. But for the most part, we handle a lot of this stuff with the events management, the customer support, the customer events. We do a lot of that in-house. And then we're actually doing some research right now on content generation and working with a platform that gives us access to content generators. And the content generators are the ones that they can really exponentially get your brand name out there to the consumers. So that is a work in progress. It's also very AI-driven. And so it's something I think is really exciting to me, a little bit premature to get too excited about it. But I'm pretty excited about it.
I think the potential there is really incredible, especially when we're coming from a near-nothing in terms of brand awareness in the United States. On the Canada side, our customers and also in the Northeast, our customers are so fantastic because they own the brand. And so we work with them on brand presence. We do a lot of training at the dealerships. But the one great thing about the Canadian and the Northeast customers that we need to replicate in the US is getting our customers to own the brand and want to sell the Nokian tire brand like they've done in those segments of the market. Thank you.
Thank you.
Sorry, just another follow-up here. I feel like I'm just going to give you guys a chance to address this because I'm sure it's a question I've received often. We're obviously seeing more and more Chinese players come into the European market, right? And oftentimes, I get asked a question, will we see Chinese tire manufacturers start to impact, whether it's the premium segment or the winter tire segment, perhaps? I have my own answer to this question. But I want to give you the opportunity to answer about the Chinese competitive risk.
Yeah, that is a good question. I mean, Chinese tire players exist since many, many years. The name of the game for us is really about anytime setting the new limits. I think, in general, this is really where we can win this competition all the time. It's through innovation, new products, innovation, new product, and setting the new limits. When I say that in few weeks, we will set a new limit when we talk about winter tire, I'm really serious about that. I think that is something that it will be very difficult to replicate from those guys. I think we need to accept this kind of competition. We like this kind of competition.
We like to make sure that we can always add added value to whatever we deliver in the market, setting a new limit and creating a sort of new market segments to leverage for the future. So I think this competition has been growing since many, many years. But they've been covering a part of the market that is not really impacting our own strategy. So we feel pretty comfortable that differentiation and selling added value will be our way to win.
If you can stay still a while. What does it mean to achieve a leading position in winter tires? And what do you need to do to get there?
I think we have already quite a strong leading position when we talk about branding, technology, innovation. We have a strong position in the Nordics. Tron, as I highlighted, we have a strong position in Canada. We obviously have potential of growth, as we say today, in Central Europe. It's more about regaining a strong position we had in the past and, of course, in the United States, in particular in the northern part actually, in the northern part of the United States. So we start from already a strong base. But obviously, as I said, there is plenty of opportunities to reinforce our position in the Nordics, to grow in Central Europe, and, of course, to grow even more in North America. I think we have great products. We have unique production facilities. So we are not really concerned about growing in the winter tire segment.
And also, as I said, next week, we will actually, in two weeks' time, we will set a new standard in the winter tire industry. And we are really confident this will push and will support our growth and our sales for the near future.
Thank you. We have a question.
Do I sit or do I stand up?
A couple of questions. Thank you for the follow-up. The first one is on your investment profile. You've talked about going back to depreciation levels for the next few years. And you say that you have enough capacity. Could you just help us in terms of all the plant and machinery that you have purchased or put up in Romania? What does that mean for theoretical capacity up until 2029 in Romania? That's the first question. And the second one is actually on your downstream strategy and Vianor. So you've talked a lot about point of sales, increasing marketing campaigns, and basically targeting growth. What does that mean in terms of your own controlled Vianor channel? Could you talk about your strategy separately in Nordics, North America, in Central Europe? Do you want to invest more? Do you think you can free some capital in the Nordics region?
How do you think about downstream strategy, please?
Great. OK. Let's start from the first question. It was about Oradea. Oradea is well set to cover the strategic plan period. As we say that since we started the project in Oradea, we have 6 million pieces capacity. We will have 6 million pieces of capacity built. And as we made public last year in 2025, we reached 1 million pieces. So we are talking about a potential growth of 5 million pieces. And it's enough to cover our strategic plan period. And we'll keep Tommi and the team pretty busy in the next four years. The good thing of that factory is that they're probably one of the most automated factories existing in the world at the moment. And we have the possibility to produce a wide range of tires in terms of rim sizes.
So I think that factory will see just a follow-up optimization in the next few years. So it will not require additional CapEx. And this is why we are pretty excited because, obviously, we have a full capacity to be utilized to support our growth in the Central and South European market. The second question was about Vianor. Yes, the second question about Vianor. Well, Vianor is today well distributed in the Nordics. Of course, we will keep growing in the Nordics. I mean, we are still evaluating the possibility to reinforce our position, in particular, for instance, in countries like Sweden that are big markets. And our presence can be expanded even more. But we'll be expanded also in Europe.
Of course, we prefer to have a partnership, sort of franchising, with our own dealer because this is less capital-intensive and is giving us the possibility, obviously, to gain loyalty but at the same time to leave the CapEx side to our own partners. But we will not exclude also small bolt-on acquisition wherever we don't see the opportunity to grow because we don't find the right partner. And then we want to cover a specific area. We didn't actually present it today because this strategic plan is what we are building now at the moment, how we can regain and rebuild our existing network. We had, as you remember, a wider network in the past. But for sure, we will have some dedicated time later on to show how this expansion of Vianor will be developed in Europe.
In North America, we are not at the moment at all considering the expansion of Vianor. It's a completely different market in terms of distribution. It's a completely different market in terms of go-to-market when we talk about consumer. So at the moment, it's not in the agenda at all.
About pricing. Could you comment on your embedded price assumption in the targets? Do you assume to see positive net pricing also versus the market overall? And how does that tie into the volume expectation?
Obviously, for competition rule reasons, we cannot really comment about pricing as such. What we can say, as I said, is that we did a big effort in 2025. We carry on this effort in 2026. We have a lot of new products. As I said, we have EUR 1.5 billion coming from new products. Those new products, obviously, will be positioned better than the previous products that we have. There is, obviously, plenty of potential opportunity for us to upgrade our position from the level where we are today, as I said, leveraging the new product pipeline that is upcoming. Of course, it is part of our strategy. It's an important part of our strategy. Of course, we cannot disclose more about pricing for the future.
Thank you. Then next, go to Tommi on Central Europe. What is your strategy to grow in all-season segment in Central Europe? And what is your competitive advantage in this segment?
OK. As said in the presentation, this segment is growing and has grown fast in the Central European region. It is becoming very attractive for all the tire manufacturers, not just for us. But our advantage lies in the R&D, in my opinion. The heritage in winter and the experience on those most demanding weather conditions is what sets us apart in this all-season segment. So with our tires, you can truly drive in any weather condition that the Central European market may have. And that, in my view, is the number one competitive advantage when it comes to the product itself. Thank you.
Rauli, please go ahead.
Rauli from Inderes. One question on the larger rim sizes. You put a lot of focus on getting more value and, I guess, higher margin through the larger rims. So I was wondering that when the whole market moves to the larger rims, do you see an impact of kind of when the larger rims come more mainstream, the competition increases, and the profit pool there shrinks over time? Or how do you view the development?
Clearly, as you say, the market is moving in that direction in all the segments. We are specialists in the segment where we can be different, meaning winter tires. So for us, this is winter tire in all season. For us, this is a priority to be in those segments. The large part of the market is in non-summer tire. The good advantage, in my opinion, is that we have the possibility now to accelerate this growth. We had other priorities, as you can imagine, in the last two, three years. And now we are in the position again to accelerate this growth and to be faster than the market in the segment where we play. We will probably be slower if we talk about summer tire. But that's not our problem. But we will be faster when we talk about winter tire in all season.
This is really, when reflecting what I said before, we are refocusing. We are refocusing on where we can make the difference and where it matters for us.
All right. Then if we look a bit back, obviously, you were capacity constrained in 2023 especially and part of 2024. And I would imagine that at that point, you were focusing on the higher margin products. And now you have already achieved and are planning to kind of get a quite big price mix positive impact. So kind of was that not the case that you were selling the best margin products back a few years ago? Or why are you able to now push the price mix further so much?
Well, first of all, we have built additional capacity that can get up to 24 inches, which we didn't have before. That is a big release for us. I mean, today we have built that. That was also a great move. I think we built a flexibility that we didn't have in the past. Unfortunately, we were limited in our flexibility due to the capacity constraint. Now we have built a machine, in particular, I would say, in Oradea but also in North America, that is giving also the possibility to reach 24 inches. And we have machines that are able to produce everything. While before, in the past, the technology was offering the opportunity to focus the machine to specific rim sizes. Now, obviously, we have the opportunity to have machines that are pretty flexible. And they can go from 15 inches to 24 inches.
This is a great advantage for us at the moment.
That's clear. Thanks.
Thank you.
Paolo?
Yes.
Question from the online audience. I think you already covered this partly in your presentation. Would it be possible to provide a split of tires production and tires capacity in Oradea, Dayton, and Nokia as of today and targeted by 2029?
Yeah. It was in our presentation. You have seen that we have more or less, we are at 80% of capacity in North America. So we still have the possibility to improve our position in North America, to utilize plenty of our capacity over there. We are almost, I would say, 90%+ in the Nordics. So, obviously, we have some capacity still to be utilized in the Nordics. And we have plenty of capacity because, as I said before, we produce 1 million pieces in 2025. And we have a capacity for 6 million pieces in Central Europe. So we have plenty of opportunity to utilize our platform in Romania up to the limit in the strategic plan period. I keep I want to highlight always, this is not a capacity game.
I mean, in life, in my country, we used to say, sales is the most difficult job that looks easy. So our game is not really about building capacity. The capacity is a tool to support your growth. Our game is about building brand, building strong demand, making sure that people see in Nokian Tyres a player that can be the number one when we talk about safety on the road. So our game is really focused on building value. The capacity will be built. If we need to double the capacity, if we'll be in the luxury situation that we need to double the capacity, we'll be happy to do it. If the plan in North America is going faster as it is at the moment than what we expect, we will increase capacity in North America. But this is really about a commercial branding value game.
This is really what we are focusing more and more at the moment in order to make sure that we build value for our shareholders. I thank you.
Yeah.
Jussi Koskinen. Nokian Tyres has been a premium brand. But what is your understanding in the future? Will the size of brand premium stay?
Nokian Tyres has been a premium brand. We remain a premium brand for hopefully the next 128 years. Clearly, this is really what it's our job, is to make sure that we deliver premium solutions to customers, that we provide premium value to our users. So I would say that our main, let's say, opportunity at the moment is to build this premium brand value across all the regions in the world. Nokian Tyres is recognized as a strong premium brand in the Nordic part of the world. Of course, this is the main mission also of Tommi and the team to make sure that Nokian Tyres will be also perceived as a strong premium brand in Central Europe and for Chris, in particular, in the United States.
OK.
Question over there.
Hi. It's Tim from Folksam here. Paolo, two questions, please. If I understood correctly, you mentioned that you were interested in working more with fleet customers to work on total cost of ownership. Is that against the main European players or perhaps against a different segment of the market? And secondly, it hasn't come up today. But do you have anything interesting to say about Euro 7?
Okay. Yeah. Good question, both of them. We are, of course we see and we already work today with fleets, with big companies like Ayvens, for instance. And that is we see that an advantage because, as I said before, we have an educated buyer who understands safety, who understands total value of ownership. So it's not a buyer that is thinking only about cost. So it's not a buyer that will take any Asian tire and will say, look, buy this. It's a customer who is able to calculate. And this is the ideal customer for us. It's a customer we can speak with, who understands that the tire may be expensive today but will support a longer life and will support safety. And for those guys, safety is very important.
Having Vianor, it's also one of the opportunities we have because Vianor, when we meet those kinds of customers, we can offer also services. We can offer also the possibility to rely on our own network either through Vianor or either through, for instance, in Europe, through the Nokian Tyres dealership partner. So this is where we see an opportunity in growing leasing and sharing cars business because, for us, this is the ideal person to speak with. When we talk about Euro 7, we are obviously following. We are part of Tire Europe Association. We follow, together with the European authorities, the development of Euro 7. I think it's going to be an opportunity again for us because Euro 7 is setting, in some way, some limits in the quality and in the performance of the product. So we fully support the development of the regulation.
Obviously, this will require for us to make sure that we set specific standards for the industry. We are, for sure, within the standard of the industry. We see Euro 7 as an opportunity for us to, again, create a sort of, I would say, barrier to products that are not performing in line with the regulations.
If you stay there a while. In your new strategy, you want to reduce exposure to geopolitical risks. Does this mean, for example, reducing dependence on China in the supply chain? Or do you have other concrete measures in mind?
Well, when I say that we are reducing the geopolitical risk because before, we had 80% of our production capacity in one country. Of course, we didn't consider that country a risk at that time. But now, we have our production capacity spread across three different regions, obviously, Nordics, Europe, as well as North America. We believe in a local-to-local business model because we believe that anything can change anytime. And this is why we are extremely happy. We consider, actually, the disruption we had a sort of opportunity to build a stronger platform because today, if, for instance, the North America market will become more protective, well, we are in North America. So we are not really sensitive to import duties as we were before. We are in Europe for Europe. We are in the Nordics, very close to our customers in the Nordics.
We have a very small portion. Actually, I can tell you that this will be almost disappearing in the next few months from China. We buy from other countries. We said already that this will represent no more than 10% of our total sales. Obviously, we consider ourselves very little exposed to geopolitical issues of the futures.
Thank you. What is the forward dividend policy and the plan for deleveraging?
Is that for you? I mean, the dividend, you mean? Yeah.
Yeah. You can.
Yeah. You want to answer the dividend. Come on. You answer to the dividend. I can relax now.
Yeah. Of course, what we discussed today, that we have kind of confirmed our earlier dividend policy, that Nokian Tyres will pay at least 50% of the net earnings out. Of course, it's for us difficult to give any numbers, how the dividends will develop in the coming years. But, of course, as we have presented today, our free cash flow is getting stronger. And in that way, of course, we can expect that also we are able to pay higher dividends in the coming years.
Thank you. We still have time for a couple of more questions. Is there anyone in the audience? No? Then we continue with the online questions from the online audience. Paolo, what gives you confidence you can reach your financial targets? And what are the biggest risks that could prevent you from reaching them?
I feel pretty strong about this plan. I feel pretty strong about the financial target that we were presenting today. We have taken into consideration opportunities and risk building this plan. I think, as I said many times today, we have in our hands a lot of actions that will drive our success in the next four years. We are confident that, of course, the extremely good pipeline of new products that we are releasing in the next few years will also provide an important possibility of growth for us. I think the plan is solid. As I said, presenting the financial target, we made very clear, it's very difficult today to say we will land at EUR 1.8 billion or we will land at EUR 2 billion.
But it's much easier for us because actions that we have on our own control to say that the financial targets are pretty solid. So in terms of profitability target, we are able to get there with our own planned actions. Then, of course, you are all experts. If the market and the sales will grow faster, then, of course, it will be even faster and easier for us to reach the financial target. But we have taken into consideration the necessity to build profitable growth and not only to run behind the EUR 2 billion target because we believe that it's now time, really, to reposition the company at the level where it was and where it should be.
It is time to take the final question. This is a bit different. But this goes to you. Here in Finland, ice hockey is a big passion for us. And at the current Milano Cortina Olympics, a Finnish coach is leading the Italian national hockey team.
Good luck.
What do you think he has brought from Finland to Italy and vice versa? Looking at your own experience as an Italian CEO of a global company with the Finnish roots and heritage, what have you brought from Italy to Finland?
Well, I was not prepared for this question. Of course, I know everything about tires because I spent 30 years in the tire business. But I'm not really an expert on ice hockey. Actually, I'm now becoming, step by step, an expert on ice hockey. Since we have our headquarters in Nokia, I'm still debating if I should be a Tappara supporter or an Ilves supporter. But I don't take position because, otherwise, I will upset 50% of our own colleagues. I think I see, in all honesty, Italy the coach of Finland will coach Italy. It will be a tough job for him. It will be easier for me to be in Finland than for him to be in Italy because, obviously, we don't have a heritage in the ice hockey.
It's good that, obviously, we take the best, probably, people to coach our own people in Italy. I think the experience here has been great. This is really a great company, extremely focused on innovation, extremely focused on customers, and added value. So, obviously, as I said, the job for me has been much easier than the job of your Finnish coach in Italy because, obviously, you will need to deal with the lack of experience and something that we, as Italians, need to learn how to play with. But I wish all the best to the Italian team during the World Cup. We had, actually, the opportunity to watch them recently. And I'm sure they can do better. And I'm sure they will deliver better results in the future. Thank you.
Thank you. Thank you for the participation in Q&A. Paolo, would you still like to come with me on dates once more if you?
It's time to wrap up, really.
Wrap up and concluding remarks.
Good. So we can move to the last slide. Yeah. I would like to, first of all, before to start, to thank you for being here today, despite the weather. I mean, you were here together with us. And I would like to thank my colleagues as well for participating and to support this important presentation, important for us as well because we are so proud and confident about this plan that we were really anxious to present it to all of you. I would like to say one thing that probably I didn't say. I like you had five presentations from four different nationalities. This is telling you a lot about the ambition of Nokian Tyres to become a global player. And that is really an important element to highlight today. I would like to recap this presentation exactly from the slide that was concluding my presentation before.
I mean, Nokian Tyres is an attractive investment. I strongly believe in that because we focus on specific niches. Our focus moving forward will be winter tire, all-season, all-weather, and agricultural and forestry tires. We discussed about three different challenges: one, to strengthen our position in the Nordics, regain the position we had in the past in Central Europe, and reinforce it even more. And then, of course, building a stronger presence in the U.S. while reinforcing our presence in North America. This is where we play. This is where we want to be successful and where we will be successful in the next four years. It's a value game. It's very important we understand this. We are aiming to create value through positioning, through mix enhancement, through new product. Vianor will be an important element in our strategy to support our growth in Europe.
And then, of course, I hope you will be pleased to see how busy we are with product innovations, releasing new products, and adding a strong pipeline to our innovation. A lot of focus on consumer. We cannot expect the customer to be aware of how strong Nokian Tyres it is if we are not communicating to them, if we are not able to educate them about the advantages of fitting Nokian Tyres on their vehicles. And then, of course, we have now one state-of-the-art platform. We are really proud of this platform. We need to be extremely good in using this platform from the manufacturing point of view and making sure that we are able to deliver extremely efficient, cost-efficient solutions. Local-to-local business model, very important in today's world. We will reinforce the local-to-local business model in anything we will do tomorrow.
And then, of course, we are speaking on behalf of a great team that is at the moment in the office or in the field supporting us all over the world. This is very important. I mean, we can really leverage people who understand the segments where we are, who understand what it means innovation, and who understand what it means to create value for our own customer. The targets are clear, a little bit flexible, actually flexible when we talk about the sales by 2029, but extremely precise when we talk about profitability because we strongly believe in our profitability journey. And then, of course, debt has been at the peak in 2025. We expect the debt to gradually go down as soon as we are able to generate more cash.
I believe that the latest quarterly release is demonstrating that we are moving in the right direction in generating positive cash flow, also through lower investments, obviously, because now the investment level is getting back to normal. Having said that, I really thank you for being here with us today. We will have probably some time together outside of this room. And also for the people connected online, I thank you very much for your attendance. And hopefully, we will see very soon again. Thank you very much.