Ladies and gentlemen, good morning. Thank you for attending TTI annual result announcement for the year 2018. I'm happy to report that TTI delivered another year of record revenue, profit, gross margin. We had solid revenue growth in the power equipment. Of course, very good news, our floor care has turned around, and we have substantial improvement in margin and in revenue. I think our momentum will continue. I don't want to go in details in gross margins and improvements and so on. That will be explained by Frank, our CFO, and Joe. What George said this morning on TV, we are not there yet. The best is yet to come.
I will explain a little bit more once we are finished with our presentation. Once more, thank you very much for coming, and you will enjoy the presentation. We have really exciting or good news. Stefan, we did one thing right. We hired the best management there is on this planet, which TTI did. Not cheap. I think we have good results, and this is what you-
Well, that's for TGCA name, Mr. Chairman.
Yes, yes, correct. Frank, you're an exception. You're on that page.
Do I get a raise or what?
We consider that, Frank. Thank you. Thank you, Leo. So many wonderful faces here from before, and I'm really excited and happy you all can come. It's an honor for me and for the whole management and the board and a lot of board members here. They're all attending. They like the presentation that George had yesterday. They like to hear it once more. They are coming tonight.
You all couldn't sleep, you got so excited. Shall we start? Frank, will you start the presentation?
Yes, sir.
Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Last year, 2018, we delivered an organic sales increase of $957 million. It is all organic. A 15.8% growth to a total revenue of $7 billion, the ninth consecutive year of record revenue. This record sales was mainly driven by our ongoing strategic commitments and dedicated focus in the development of innovative cordless products together with strong category channels and geographic expansion. Milwaukee continued to lead the sales growth momentum, delivering an over 28% increase globally, followed by the stellar performance of RYOBI ONE+ cordless systems. Floor care and appliances, as Chairman pointed out, also contributed to the revenue growth with well-received cordless vacuums and carpet washing products. The new products are at the back. Gross profit increased by $388 million to $2.6 billion, with margin further expanded by 50 basis points to 37.2%, the 10th consecutive year of gross margin improvements.
The increase was mainly driven by our very consistent and focused strategy of introduction of new innovative products, category expansion, mix improvements, productivity gains, and very effective supply chain management offsetting any commodity inflation. You might have heard us describing this proven strategy over the past years, and for sure, you can expect us to continue to execute this strategy going forward. We therefore are very confident that our gross profit margin and gross profit will continue to improve. EBIT increased by 17% to $607 million, with margin increased from 8.6% to 8.7%. Consistent with our proven strategy, we will continue to further invest in strategic SG&A to maintain the sales growth momentum and further margin expansion, while leveraging non-strategic SG&A spend on our sales growth. Net profit increased by 17.4% to $552 million with margin increased by 10 basis points to 7.9%.
Earnings per share increased by 17.5% to $0.3016 per share. The board recommended a final dividend of HKD 0.50 per share, representing an increase of 26% over last year's final dividend. Together with the HKD 0.38 interim dividend paid, subject to the shareholders' approval to the final dividend, total dividend for the year will be HKD 0.88. An increase of 30.4% over 2017, with a payout ratio of 37.5% as compared to 35.2% in 2017. The seventh consecutive year of payout ratio increase. It has always been our target that EBIT and net profit improvements must outperform sales growth. We have managed to deliver that with an eight years CAGR of 10% sales growth, while our EBIT delivered a CAGR of 16% increase over the same eight years period from 2011.
Power equipment division accounted for 85.6% of the group's total revenue, delivered a 17% sales growth over 2017. As mentioned at the beginning, the growth was mainly driven by the outstanding performance of Milwaukee globally, delivering an increase of 28.2% and a five-year CAGR of 23%. Milwaukee ONE+ cordless systems also outperformed the industrial growth average and delivered a double-digit growth. EBIT margin of this division remained comparable to that of 2017 at 10% as we continue to invest in strategic SG&A to capture further revenue growth momentum and margin enhancing opportunities, together with the introduction of margin-accretive new products. We are confident that this division will further improve in both sales and margins going forward. Floor Care and Appliances division accounting for 14.4% of the group's revenue, with an increase of 9.3% over 2017, and margin further improved by 10 basis points.
The improvements mainly from the double-digit growth of cordless products and carpet washers, both our target strategic growth drivers going forward. With the introduction of the new cordless systems, which Joe will talk about a little bit more later, we believe this significant portfolio transition to cordless, together with our focus in carpet washers, this division will continue to deliver sales growth and margin improvements. From a geographic perspective, all our regions delivered double-digit growth. North America remained to be our major market, accounting for 76.3% of the group's revenue, followed by Europe 15.2%, and rest of the world 8.8%, consistent mainly of Australia, New Zealand, and South Korea. As mentioned, we continue to invest in SG&A to grow the business and profitability. In 2018, SG&A was 28.7% of sales as compared to 28.2% in 2017.
We increased our spend in introducing and promoting new products launched and to be launched, and further step up our R&D spend by 20 basis points to 2.9% of revenue as compared to 2.7% last year in 2017. We consider these investments play a very important role to the future growth of our business. We have, however, managed to level down our non-strategic SG&A spend with administrative expenses increased by 13.5% on revenue growth of 15.8%. Despite higher interest environment in 2018, we've managed to capitalize on our strong cash flow and balance sheet. Together with very diligent financial execution, we delivered a very efficient and effective finance cost. Our net finance cost was 6.2% lower than that of 2017 on a 15.8% increase in revenue. Net finance cost now only represent 0.18% of our total sales only. Effective tax rate remained comparable to that of 2017 at 7.1%.
Through various effective and prudent tax plan leveraging on our global sales operations, we remained confident this high single-digit effective tax rate is very sustainable going forward. Our balance sheet further strengthened and in a very healthy position. Shareholders' equity was at $3.06 billion, an increase of 11.5% or $317 million as compared to 2017. As of December 31st, 2018, we continued to be in a net cash position. With the operating cash flow and capital expenditure projected in 2019, we remain confident that this net cash position is very sustainable. Working capital has always been our major focus. Working capital as a percentage to sales was at 13.3% as compared to 16.5% in 2017. We have explained it in previous various presentations that we strategically maintained a slightly higher level of inventory to support our tremendous growth momentum.
Even though inventory was at 92 days, four days higher than that of 2017, we are very comfortable with the quality of our inventory build and do not envisage any issues carrying this slightly higher level. More important is that this additional inventory days basically been financed by the five payable days increase, which our global procurement team managed to deliver, capitalizing on the volume and order visibility. Receivable days was at 57 days. We projected that the receivable days will be maintained at around high 50 to low 60 days level. With the quality of our customers, we have no concerns for the credits that we offered. CapEx was at $259 million, as we continue to invest in capacity expansion, R&D in particular, and operation efficiencies.
We maintained a higher cash level and at the same time, slightly higher debts, mainly due to the execution of our very prudent risk-free financial plans and structure to maximize our finance cost efficiencies. Currently, 56% of our debts are long-term and 89% are floating rate. We will constantly be reviewing our debt portfolio and structure to maximize our operational and balance sheet strength to further improvements and for the continuous growth ahead of us. With that said, I would like to pass the floor to Joe.
Thank you, Frank. I would like to try and help you understand two misperceptions that are restricting the stock price of this company. First of all, you notice we grew 15.8%. That is dramatically better than the market. The misperceptions are that, number one, people think that we're a housing stock. Every time the housing cycle changes, people think it's going to affect our company. I'm going to show you today, once again, we are not a housing stock. That issue is propagated by our competitors, who, when they have bad results, they blame housing or they'll blame some other issue. The second point is people tend to link our prospects with our competitors. You see, we are taking share from our competitors. Of course, their results are bad. Of course, they're going to blame housing because we're killing them in the marketplace.
Please stare at that 15.8. That is well above market. We used to be classified, Horst, as an industrial company. We are now a technology company that happens to make labor-saving devices called floor care and lawn mowers and power tools. Anyhow, hopefully today's results and our strategy will clear this up a bit. Yes, we were up 17, Frank, on the flagship power equipment business, and floor care is finally showing the benefit of a painstakingly thought-through turnaround plan, which I'll show you some details today. We had a outstanding gross margin performance last year, 50 basis point improvement of gross margin. I'm equally proud that we were disciplined enough to invest in strategic, Frank, SG&A.
We added 20 bips of investment in R&D last year, which you're going to see the benefit of in the next five years, and you're not going to believe the product flow and the new business flow that we will show you in this company. The organic growth we can achieve in the next five years is going to be very exciting and very good for investors. Of course, profit was up 17.4% on 15.8% sales growth, so we got leverage. Make no mistake, we are investing, and it's conscientious investment in SG&A. We're investing in new product development, and we're building out a geographic expansion program, attacking new countries that we've never been in before, that will allow us to harvest the benefit of all these new products in even more marketing companies throughout the world. This chart is a thing of beauty.
We should frame it, Frank, and put it on the wall in the office. Take the art down. 10 years in a row. What's most important about this chart is that we're not finished yet. Our guidance is that we will continue to improve our gross margin as a percentage of sales, roughly 50 bips a year over the next three years. That's pretty strong guidance. Yes, we face the same commodity inflation, Horst, as our competitors. No, we don't use commodities as an excuse. We find ways, working with our distribution partners, working with Home Depot, we find ways to become more efficient as a supplier so that we can offset the issue of commodity inflation and still deliver gross margin improvement. I'm extremely proud of what our team achieved, Frank, in working capital.
Can you imagine growing 15.8% and having working capital still produce $65 million of cash flow? Where have you ever seen a company growing as fast as we are, that's so efficient in working capital management that working capital becomes a source of cash? Our customers, Home Depot is our largest customer, and we have other really key customers around the world, and they expect us to deliver product when they need it. That's why we put, Frank, more inventory in this year as a conscientious decision to be ready for improved sales. It worked out great. We funded all that inventory investment by being relentlessly disciplined in receivables and doing a better job managing our suppliers with payables. Why did our receivables go down 10 days a year, which is extraordinary? It's because we don't take chances.
We don't sell customers in high-risk countries when there's a risk that they may not pay their bills. Sometimes we don't get credit for the things that we don't do at TTI. We didn't rush into Turkey or Argentina. Our competitors are saying that their receivables are issues because they went into these high-risk countries. We are very thoughtful with our geographic expansion programs, and we don't take bad debt risks, Frank. Because of that, working capital was actually a source of cash at a time when we grew 15.8%. The basic productivity measure of any company is sales outgrow headcount. Once again, Frank, sales outgrow headcount. This trend, we believe, will continue as well. One of the things that is a real differentiator for the company, and this has become an unassailable competitive advantage for TTI.
We've been investing in campus recruiting, in hiring in our leadership development program, in hiring blue-chip, high-potential college graduates from over 75 campuses around the world. This investment has been going on year after year. In fact, in 2019, we're going to hire over 780 college graduates. These are handpicked superstars off campuses that will populate our sales and marketing and engineering and logistics and finance organizations throughout the company. This pool of talent will give us the ability to continue to grow because we'll have people that can manage the ever-growing enterprise we're creating here at TTI. The campus recruiting program is special because most companies struggle with this, because the payback here is not instant.
It takes three or four years for a college grad to actually produce a good return on investment. The first thing new CEOs do is they come into companies and they whack the campus recruiting because it's easy to cut, and you don't feel the pain for about three or four years. Anyhow, we are very committed to this program. We now have over 12 vice president-level executives in the company that started as a college graduate in our LDP program, and that number's going to go up a lot over the next five years. Let's look at some of the new product launches today, and then I'm anxious to get to Q&A to help clear up some of the misperceptions about the company. First of all, as we have promised, we now have a plan in floor care to win. Our floor care business has struggled.
The competitive set in floor care is formidable. We respect the competitors here a lot, and we have just launched something that is a true breakthrough we call ONEPWR. Finally, we have a cordless floor care system that's led by the core product, the Polivac, which is now the most popular type of upright vacuum cleaner in the world. This system has an interchangeable battery. The same battery that powers the Polivac will also now power a series of other products, whether they're blowers or wet/dry vacs, torch, spot removers, et cetera. By coming up with a detachable battery system, we create tremendous value proposition for the user because if you buy your vacuum cleaner now, with a charger and two batteries, then you can buy these other products without the battery and charger. You pay literally half price for these fantastic products.
The same battery used in all the different products. Remember, we're the global leader in cordless technology, lithium technology. The efficiencies, Frank, we have in purchasing and manufacturing and power tools, of course, cascades into our floor care system now. I can tell you the momentum that we have with our retail partners in this ONEPWR launch is really exciting. Yes, floor care will improve. It won't happen overnight, but over the next three years, you'll see floor care become a contributor to the company, Stefan, improvements in EBIT as opposed to an excuse. We also have been tremendously successful with our new generation carpet washing, our PowerDash, which is a lightweight product in the SmartWash system. These products have taken off like wildfire and gives us true optimism as we look forward in our floor care business.
Floor care is not perfect yet, but we now have a way to win, and we're excited about it, and you will see the results here over the next three years. Let's shift gears to power tools. Frank mentioned our global leadership position in RYOBI ONE+. RYOBI ONE+ is unique. This is the world's largest cordless DIY system, and we have the only overarching platform in batteries that goes from power tools to outdoor. The same batteries can work whether you're working in the yard or around the house. We have the broadest line of high-performance DIY cordless products in the world. We're about to roll out another 15 ONE+ products in our power tool division alone. Let me show you an ad we're going to run. This is a U.S. ad this spring, and when we have a massive promotion around the RYOBI ONE+ system.
Let's see, Frank. Okay, here we go.
RYOBI ONE+ is now the world's largest 18-volt system. It's because we keep making new, innovative tools that help you get more done, faster and easier. Now, with brushless technology, our tools work harder than ever before. We're putting all that power in your hands so you can complete that dream project without having to plug in or fill up. We never have or never will change our battery compatibility, so there's no tools left behind. That's why our new high-performance lithium-ion batteries will improve the performance of all our 18-volt tools, even if they're 20 years old. RYOBI ONE+, now the world's largest.
What you have with this ONE+ system is a platform that has become, seriously, number one in the world in consumer DIY power tools. The number two competitor is Really, there's a tie with five different companies for number two. We're so far ahead in this space, I don't think people realize the strength in the position that we control today. In outdoor, we also have a great story. We are pioneering a global shift, a revolution from petrol-powered lawn care to cordless. Lawn mowers have historically been gas or petrol-powered, and we have developed over 20 different lawn mowers that are powered by a lithium battery. Can you imagine the benefit to the environment, when you go from gas to using a lithium-powered outdoor product? You can see some of the products here today. We grew last year 17% in outdoor.
You have to remember, last year, one competitor after another announced how terrible the weather was in Europe and in the U.S., and how the weather conditions hurt the numbers. We're in the same 50 states, in the same countries, and we're up 17%. What that tells you is this business is not linked to housing starts. We are not associated with our competitors. It doesn't matter whether the market grows or shrinks. We're changing people from gas to lithium. We control our destiny. The global market for mowers is roughly $9 billion. The market that's cordless is less than 2% today. Believe me, we're going to change that, and we will be on the vanguard of that revolution here when it comes to outdoor. This is another area where we're really just getting started.
We actually have competitors that are investing in gas-powered lawnmower companies as we speak. That would be like buying a payphone company to prop up your sales and earnings in the short term. We don't do payphones. We're doing smartphone. That's how you have to look at TTI. We're a technology company focused on the future. It's one reason why our results continue to be so strong. This is the outdoor family. This is just outdoor, just lithium-powered products. That slide is going to get busier and busier the next three years because we have dozens of really interesting outdoor products with the same battery systems that you see today. The highlight of the year, of course, was the 28.2% growth in Milwaukee. Now, think about that for a second. We're supposed to be in an industrial sector that grows GNP.
We're up 28%. This is unheard of. We outgrow the market like four times. The thing that you have to realize is we still are just getting started here. This is not an endpoint. What we've done is build out a foundation of strength and momentum, and I can assure you that that kind of growth rate is just a signal of our potential. We actually have, Frank, the boldness to be able to guide, that we're going to grow Milwaukee. Over the next three years, I feel very strongly we will grow this business 20% a year. Look, history is the best indicator of the future. Five-year CAGR of 23%. Yes, Milwaukee base is getting a lot larger. Yes, the amount of new product coming will blow your mind. Yes, we believe we can grow 20% a year.
The gross margin, of course, on Milwaukee is highly accretive. When you wonder how our gross margin keeps going up, obviously, if Milwaukee outgrows everything in the company, the gross margin is going to keep going up as well. Yes, we invested heavily in R&D, Frank, to drive our Milwaukee product development system. Eventually, that SG&A will leverage down. We all know that. Right now, we're in a land grab. We are literally in an environment where there's so much opportunity. We think there's an opportunity with our competitive set. We think there's massive opportunity for us to expand geographically, and we are going to seize that opportunity here and continue to invest. If you look at our regional performance, this is a very exciting chart. Of course, we were up in North America. That's our home market. 27.9%. Look at Europe.
How many articles have you read that say Europe is slowing down? How many of our competitors complain that Europe is a tough market? We grew 33.8% in Europe. Whether it's Brexit issues or people talk about Italy being struggling, somehow our team found a way to grow 33.8% in Europe. I can tell you that the next three years, our European theater of operations will be one of the most exciting growth areas in the company, whatever the economy does in Europe, because we're changing people from traditional power source to cordless. As we focus on just cordless for a moment, let's remember back. Over the last four years, there's been a lot of noise, competitive noise in the cordless market. There are some people, some analysts thought we would be affected by some competitive introductions.
The fact is, our main line of cordless, our high technology FUEL system, which is brushless motors and advanced onboard software technology, we grew 45% last year. That's three times the rate of our competitors' recent introductions in the cordless space. 45% growth in cordless. I believe that that's a number that indicates the potential here, not an endpoint. You will see us continue to outgrow the market at a big rate because of our strategy here, which is quite different. Here's why you need to stop worrying about the housing cycle, please, and stop reading our competitors' press releases. We are transforming the global market for power tools and equipment from traditional power source to revolutionary lithium-powered cordless.
Whether it's a corded power tool, a pneumatic tool, a hydraulic tool, a gas or petrol power tool, or importantly, even a manual device, we're transforming all those traditional World War II era power sources, seriously, to lithium-ion cordless. We have the broadest line of professional cordless in the world today. That line's going to expand like crazy over the next three years. Everything we launch will be high technology, will outperform the market, and will give us more opportunity to continue this revolution. Let me give you a couple examples. This lovely device is called a pipe threader, and it's a little bit heavy. This is the first pipe threader ever developed that's cordless. We're entering a market. This device, you put on a pipe, and you thread it so that you can attach a fixture.
All the pipe threaders in the world today are corded. This one is cordless, first time ever. Not only is it more convenient, but this cordless pipe threader is faster than a corded unit. Can you imagine? The cordless pipe threader is faster than corded because of the AI we built in, because of the software technology. It's also safer because we have a clutch, and if this gets locked up, instead of throwing you across the room, this thing shuts off, and it actually becomes a safety advantage. Many contractors will insist on switching because of the safety element. Now, that's an example. We have literally hundreds of products like this we're developing to change people from old-fashioned World War II power source to cordless. Okay, here's another example. This is the first in the world ever one-inch impact wrench. I love this product.
This, to me, this is a very sexy product, this impact wrench. What you have is a large size anvil to drive sockets for bridge building and shipbuilding and these large mechanical fasteners. Historically, you would use a device that weighs three times as much as a cordless unit. It's tethered. It's either pneumatic, so it's got a hose, or it's corded. If it's corded, it runs off a generator, which burns diesel fuel and has all sorts of hazardous elements. Anyhow, this is the first in the world. Let me tell you what this is not. This is not, where's Leon? This is not a RESCON product. You will not find this around the house. This is bridge-building, shipbuilding, etcetera.
What we're trying to show is that our served market has very little to do with RESCON and housing, and a lot to do with the rest of the world, and that's why we have so much potential. Today, here's another cool impact driver. This impact driver was designed for the power utility industry. I'm going to talk about that in a second. You'll notice when you work on a power line, you have to wear a glove that's insulated, otherwise the electrocution risk is bad. You insulate yourself, but that glove is huge. On this particular impact driver, we extended the handle, so you can actually use it with a glove to keep you from getting electrocuted. Now it seems like a simple thing, right? First ever in the world.
We have many of these kind of innovations that will help propagate this revolution to cordless. We now have the broadest line of impact drivers in the world today. These are not RESCON products. These are all industrial construction, maintenance, infrastructure projects. The leadership position here gives us a great entry point into these different verticals, again, that are not RESCON. Here's another example. We just developed an angle grinder with an electric brake, cordless. You turn it off, it stops in three seconds, which is a major safety feature. That now gives us the broadest line of cordless angle grinders that have these special features. Again, these are not RESCON products, but allows us to grow in the infrastructure space. Okay, here's another cool product. This is called SWITCH TANK.
Here's a cordless sprayer, and you can switch from a pesticide, to water, to a detergent, to concrete sealant, and we sell different tanks that work off the same platform. For an end user in a commercial job site, this is a big breakthrough. Again, of course, it's cordless with the same battery. Here's an extension of our Milwaukee outdoor products. We call this a chainsaw on a stick. It's a pole saw, and it's part of a broad line of outdoor products that has allowed us with Milwaukee to use the same battery and serve the landscaper in the professional marketplace outside of the workshop. Of course, we have pioneered the concept of lithium-powered cordless lighting. Lighting on job sites historically was powered by noisy generators that burned petrol. Now, we shift to lithium-powered lighting. There's no electrocution risk.
It's the same battery you buy for your power tools. This is a category that's taken off like wildfire for us, and it has immense long-term potential. Today we have the broadest line of cordless professional tools available, and this line has expanded so much that a very exciting phenomenon has happened. Historically, a tradesman, a core tradesman, plumber, electrician, carpenter, contractor, data comm installer, a core tradesman would have, back in 2008, maybe four tools, cordless tools, three batteries. Because this technology has expanded, think of this as apps for the iPhone. The technology's expanded, we think last year that the average core tradesman went to 39 tools and over 30 batteries. When you're wondering how we're going to keep growing, let me tell you, in five years from now, that chart is going to continue to go up and up and up.
As we come up with more cordless applications, and we liberate people from pneumatic and hydraulic and petrol, et cetera, there'll be reasons for people to accumulate even more tools per tradesman. Of course, that creates an opportunity for storage. Where are you going to put all those tools? Of course, we have the answer, PACKOUT, which is the world's fastest-growing power tool storage system. This is a system we've created, invented. It's interlocking, it's got really cool features, and selling like crazy. If you wonder, okay, how's TTI going to keep growing? Just think of the phenomenon that every user we have is accumulating more tools per year that are cordless. They're going to need more batteries, and battery is a consumable. It wears out, and you have to buy additional batteries, and you have to store the thing.
There's a lot of growth drivers that we have in front of us here. Let me just to finish my remarks before we open up for Q&A. Let me give an example again to help you understand why we're different than our competitors and why we're not focused on home building and RESCON. We have core trades at Milwaukee. These are all non-residential construction. One of the most exciting is the power utility market. If you think about around the world, power utilities, the utility companies represent a huge end user market. This is a market that, utility companies tend to be monopolies, they make a lot of money. They have a lot of money to invest in safety and productivity, and we find this space loaded with innovation potential. Let me give you an example. This lovely device is an overhead cable cutter.
This is not the little wires around the house. This is to cut cable that can be two inches thick, and it's cordless. Historically, you would need a pneumatic cable cutter to do the same application. It would cost three times as much, makes all kind of noise, is inherently unsafe, and we solved that and liberate this user with these cordless cable cutters. We have actually developed an awesome range of power utility products. This entire fleet of products is targeting the power utility companies that have to fix the power lines and install this equipment to support infrastructure around the world today. We have come up with a really cool marketing strategy. We have actually these trucks, these cherry pickers, bucket trucks that we use. We call on the end user, this power utility user, and we demonstrate our products.
We have a truck that makes them feel at home. When there are storms, we actually send these trucks into the storm zones to help these power utility people repair things. We show them how, in the most dire conditions, how cordless is much faster and safer than the way they've been doing it historically. Let me just take you around the world and tell you how this is going, just to give an example of one area of focus that's non-RESCON . This is a power utility company in Florida that switched all to Milwaukee. Here's one in Pennsylvania, U.S., all Milwaukee. Here's another one, this one in Canada, Ontario. You see the happy end users who were liberated and made the switch. Here we have Mexico City, more happy users. Let's see. Tasmania.
Believe it or not, the Tasmanian users were old-fashioned, and now we've liberated them to something more appropriate. Here's Perth, Australia. Here's a massive infrastructure company, a power utility company in Denmark, switched 100% to Milwaukee. Even in China, we are now starting to penetrate mainland China with very exciting success stories in power utility. Just to summarize, before we open up for questions, TTI is a different company than our traditional peer group. We respect our competitors. We learn from them, but we're nothing like them. Our strategy is we are a technology company. We're obsessed with cordless. We hire different kinds of engineers. We're focused on software development engineers and AI in our tools. We are moving away from abandoning traditional power source like petrol and AC. We are not focused at all on res con. We're focused on the infrastructure markets around the world.
We're focused on liberating people from gas to cordless in the outdoor arena and even in DIY tools. I think that you'll see the results today will give you an indication of the potential we have going forward. We intend to continue to grow this company at a much faster rate than competitors, we'll continue to grow the profits while we invest like crazy in our future, and I think that's going to put us in a very exciting position. Mr. Chairman, I turn it back over to you.
Yeah. Thank you, Joe. One question I want to answer. Vietnam was not our main focus. It was a wake-up call for us. We found out that we cannot do without China. We added a lot of automation. We're helping with twice the output, less people than we had five years ago. We had products which are cheaper in Vietnam to make for the future, which will improve our product margin. Of course, the tariffs helped us to think about it and put more focus on it. What we have discovered, Joe, is that we will continue to do certain products in Vietnam, not only for the U.S. of tariffs, also, we will ship to Europe and other parts of the world. In a way, it was good for us.
the U.S., we have six manufacturing plant, assembly plants.
Right
assembly plant, which do a fantastic job, the bulk, the shipping, the cost involved. As Joe said, we are not afraid or concerned about any tariffs. We have managed so far, and we will be okay. One more things I want to say, I want to thank all of you, to say that we are very proud to announce that TTI has been included in the Hang Seng Index, the constituent stock among the first 50. That was also because with your help, your confidence, supporting TTI, buying our stocks, and I really would like to thank you for that. The year 2019, we will give you another very pleasant surprise. We are three months into the year.
We have some visibility. I think we'll have even a better year next year when we meet again for autumn. Thank you very much. Frank, anything you
No, Mr. Chairman.
Okay, Frank. Thank you, everybody, for attending, and hope to see you again in August, Frank?
August.
August.
August. With maybe even better news. Thank you.