Morning, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for all attending. I just looked, the stock TTI is not doing too bad. Anyhow, I would like to welcome all of you to TTI's Group first half results announcements. The group had a very strong first half, delivering another period of record revenue, profit and gross margin. Our goal is to focus our priority on segments which deliver the highest return for our stakeholders. We have delivered nine consecutive periods, which is four and a half years, record profit and record returns. Our gross margin improvement continued, our performance is growing stronger by the year. Our new product development is as strong as ever, I'm extremely excited about the future over the next few years as far as I can see right now.
I will now pass the floor over to Mr. Joe Galli. Our Group CEO, and Frank Chan, our CFO, who will share the results in more details with you. Thank you very much.
Thank you. Frank, you'll start, please.
Yes. Thank you, Chairman. I'll first give an overview of our financial performance first, Joe will be presenting, which you guys are all waiting for. Again, as Chairman highlighted.
Yep.
Another set of record first half results for 2017. Our sales increased by 7.3% or 8.1% after eliminating the negative currency translation effects to $2.9 billion. This growth further demonstrated the success of our core strategy, continuous introduction of innovative products, successful geographic penetration, and market share gain through our technology leadership cordless products. Milwaukee continued to lead the growth momentum, delivering another over 20% growth on a global basis, and our RYOBI ONE+ also delivered double-digit growth. Gross profits, again, as Chairman said, increased by 9% from $969 million to $1.1 billion, with gross margin improved by 50 basis points to 36.6%. Our ninth consecutive period of increase. The increase is mainly due to new products, favorable mix, where we focused in improving productivity, efficiencies, and quality together with our ability to leverage our volume of business. EBIT increased by 15.4% to $233 million.
We have a 60 basis points margin improvements to 8.1% as we've been able to leverage our revenue and gross profit increase. Net profit increased by 15.5% to $204 million and a 50 basis points improvements in margins. Earnings per share increased by 15.3% to $0.112 per share. The board declared an interim dividend of HKD 0.2775 per share, an increase of 38.8% over last year, representing a payout ratio of 32% as compared to last year's 26.6%. Power equipment division accounting for 85.6% of the group's business, led by both Milwaukee and RYOBI's momentum, increased by 11.9% or 12.5% after currency. Operating profits of this division increased by 25.4% with 100 basis points margin improvements to 9.4%.
Our floor care business, representing only 14.4% of group's revenue, despite revenue went down by 12.1% after currency and breakeven in the first half, is transforming into a global cordless leader. Our cordless sales were actually up in the first half. With the global market experiencing dramatic growth in cordless, we expect our floor care business will revitalize and be back on both revenue growth and profit improvements trend in 2018 and beyond. From a geographic perspective, North America, representing over 76% of the group's revenue, delivered an 8.8% growth, with power equipment business continue to deliver double-digit growth. Europe, with the current challenging currency headwind, was down 4.1%, but was actually up 0.8% if we excluded the translation effect. I would like to highlight that our European power equipment business actually also delivered another very impressive growth of 13.8% after currency.
Rest of the world, with sales momentum in Australia and South Korea continued to be strong, was up 19% or 16.5% after currency. As unlike sterling and euro, the Aussie dollar was stronger first half this year as compared to the same period last year. However, we believe that 16.5% is still a very spectacular growth. SG&A, as a percentage of sales, remained the same as that of last year at 28.7%. Our expense was 10 basis points higher than last year at 2.7%, but the increase been compensated by the equivalent 10 basis points decrease in our administrative expenses, leveraging on the increase in volume.
This SG&A percentage is projected to improve in the second half as certain expenses being spent in the first half with our financial benefits in the second half, volume of business normally is higher in the second half, thus creating additional leverage on the SG&A spend. Net finance costs increased remain low at 0.3% of revenue. Again, improvements projected despite higher LIBOR rates during 2017 as compared to 2016. The effective tax rate at 8.5%, same as that of last year. We still maintain that the effective tax rate at high single-digit percentage is very sustainable going forward. Balance sheet remains strong and healthy. We've showed this equity increased it by 13.4% to now over $2.5 billion. Net current assets increased it by 32.3% to $1.3 billion. Gearing remained low at 8.8% as compared to 16% same period last year.
As working capital requirement is normally higher at interim in preparation for the peak shipment periods in the second half of the year. Gearing was higher than the 5.2% reported at 2016 year end. However, we also project that the gearing will further improve by end of 2017. Working capital as a percentage of sales was slightly higher than same period last year at 19.1%, but still within our target level of not higher than 20%. Inventory days been three days lower than last year at 88 days. The level is still slightly on the high side, but it is our strategic decision, to support our growth momentum, Milwaukee in particular, and to maintain our high service level to customers. Receivable days been five days higher and mainly due to the timing of shipments. Concerning the credit strength and quality of our customers, we have no concern with these receivables.
Payable days been comparable to last period and will remain at current level to help financing our inventory carrying. CapEx been lower than that of last year, mainly due to timing of the spend. Our strategy is to match our operating CapEx to depreciation charges, as effectively it will be self-financing. We maintain that the current year's CapEx will be between $220 million-$240 million. Approximately 75% of the CapEx be spent on operations, improving efficiencies and the like, 25% on infrastructures. As we've been building a new R&D center in Milwaukee and expanding our operations in South Carolina. As compared to same period last year, our total net debt reduced it by 37% to $224 million. Currently, approximately 52% of our debts are deal with over 12 months and 48% short-term, which are mainly trade financing.
Compared to that of last year, which were all floating rate debts, 90% of our debts in the current period under review were floating rate and 10% in fixed rates. We will continue to manage our debt portfolio and capitalize on our balance sheet strength for the best effective borrowing cost and the most optimal structure for our long-term growth. Having said that, I'll pass the floor to Joe.
Thank you, Frank. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us. As Frank pointed out, it is a pleasure to share with you record-breaking results once again for TTI's first half. Sales in local currency actually were up over 8% for the first six months. That reflects our ongoing guidance of growing strong single digit paced by Milwaukee growth engine that was up again over 20%. Our power tool equipment segment demonstrated outstanding momentum and growth in the first half, up 12.5%. I will share more detail with you in a moment about that because there are some fantastic highlights that are made up that extraordinary level of growth. Floor care down 12. That number obfuscates a bit the momentum and the progress we are making in floor care. First of all, we exited our shredder business, which we were in last year.
That was a significant business that we dropped completely. Secondly, the floor care cordless stick vac market, stick vac business for TTI in a number of different brands, was actually up over 50% in the first half. Our cordless floor care focus area is growing like crazy. Of course, the corded, the traditional legacy business, which was a big part of our floor care business in the past, is down sharply and will continue to decline. The good news is that our cordless growth will overwhelm that, and we have a bright future in our floor care business as you will see in the coming years. We were very excited about our first half performance in gross margin. We were up another 50 bps this year. That continues an extraordinary trend, really a record-breaking trend. Our EBIT up 15% on sales growth of 7.3 and after currency shows outstanding leverage.
We actually maintained, Frank, SG&A at a flat level, although we are investing like crazy in R&D and new product, which you will see in a moment. We still were able to generate excellent leverage and EBIT growth of up over 15% is something we were excited about. Gross margin, as I pointed out, was up 50 basis points over last year first half. This is encouraging. When you look back for a moment at what we have been sharing with you for the past nine years, we actually have increased our gross margin as a percent of sales nine consecutive years from the 31.5 starting point in 2008 to this year's 36.5. I am sorry, 36.6. This is a track record we are proud of, and I can assure you that that trend will continue over the next five years.
We have so much high margin, accretive new product on the way that we believe we can continue to drive gross margin to higher and higher levels, which will generate increased EBIT percentages as we go forward. One of the basic productivity measurements we always use is sales growth versus headcount growth. Once again, we grew sales eight and change, and headcount grew 2.7%. With all the investments we are making in geographic expansion around the globe, with all the money and all the heads we are pouring into R&D and product management, to generate this kind of productivity and leverage in headcount is encouraging, and I am very pleased with our team's discipline performance here in terms of controlling expense. We were able to grow our power equipment business in all regions.
Actually, when North America has the slowest level of growth, you know that our geographic expansion efforts are gaining great traction. I was really excited about how our European team performed in the first half. Of course, ROW means Australia, New Zealand, and Korea, and those numbers are exciting as well. When you shift gears and look at only Milwaukee was once again up over 20% in their first half of 2017. 20% is an exciting number on a small base. But when you have a significant base, which frankly now do in Milwaukee, 20% is not so easy to generate. Yet we're committed to a 20% growth level on Milwaukee this year, the next five years.
I don't think we've even scratched the surface yet in terms of the long-term potential of this vast cordless industrial market that we are developing and controlling with our technology and our new product. The geographic performance of Milwaukee is also a highlight. Again, North America up almost 20%. I was really proud of our European team. The European theater is a tough environment. Yet throughout Western Europe, actually Eastern Europe, including Poland and Hungary, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia, Bulgaria, Romania, et cetera, these Eastern European countries are really selling Milwaukee like crazy. Once again, Rest of World means Australia, New Zealand, and Korea, where we are growing at rates that are unprecedented. It's very exciting where this is all going to lead. In the first half, our largest competitor actually reported impressive results.
In fact, our largest competitor announced that their organic growth for the first six months of 2017 for their tool and storage business, which is comparable to our power equipment business, they were up 7.1% in the first half. We were impressed with that. That shows good performance. Certainly, our competitor trumpeted that as an outstanding performance, except that we were up 12.5%. Milwaukee is up 20.1%, but if you take Milwaukee out, our DIY brand was up 10.4%. That's organic growth. Even the AEG brand was up almost 10%. While our competitor is doing well, you can see that there's nobody taking any market share from TTI, and I can tell you that there'll be nothing but a continuation of this kind of trend over the next five years with the new product flow that we have on the way.
There's one other interesting thing. A lot of investors have asked me about a new FlexVolt technology launched by our largest competitor. I've been answering these questions for nine months. It's interesting. Since our competitor launched this FlexVolt cordless system, our growth rates in Milwaukee cordless and RYOBI cordless have increased. While our competitors are doing great with their program, I'm sure we're doing even better than we were before they launched. I think it's obvious that there's going to be no slowdown in Milwaukee or RYOBI cordless growth based on competitive actions. This is an example of our strategy at TTI. We don't worry about what our competition is doing. We don't worry about macroeconomic issues beyond our control or political issues that are brewing in various parts of the world. What we worry about is things we can control.
New product development, hiring outstanding people, motivating our team, having a disciplined strategy that we focus on relentlessly. A geographic expansion program that's not based on headlines and geographic regions, but very specific country-specific attacks in markets like in Korea or like in Australia, where we have focused, we have attacked with our strategy, and we have achieved great results. Our competitors are doing a fine job, and we respect them. We don't react to them, and I can assure you that we intend at TTI, of course, to outperform our competitors for many, many years to come. Let me show you why I feel so confident. First of all, the RYOBI brand has become the number one brand in the world for DIY tools. This is an amazing statement. There was a brand called Black & Decker. It's a company I worked at for 19 years.
It was number one in the world for 80 years. For RYOBI to overtake the former leader and to become the number one DIY brand in the world is pretty special. The interesting thing is that not only are we number one, but we are outgrowing any other DIY brand in the world, and it's because of this amazing flow of cordless products. It's really the same strategy, RYOBI and Milwaukee. RYOBI ONE+ is now the number one DIY brand of cordless tools in the world. Although we have over 100 RYOBI ONE+ tools in the line already, and you can see some on the wall, we are about to launch more in the next six months than any period in our company's history.
We have a new miter saw, RYOBI ONE+, that will, we think, it's the first-ever cordless DIY miter saw that performs like a corded tool. We have a new brushless motor angle grinder, cordless angle grinder with a brushless motor. Same technology as Milwaukee. We were able to adapt it at the right price point to our RYOBI family. With brushless, you get more power, less weight. This thing will actually outperform a corded version of the same tool. Same with the brushless motor RYOBI ONE+ circ saw. This is a cordless circular saw that's lighter than corded and will actually cut faster and more accurately than the corded DIY saws that we compete with. We have the metal shears, brand-new category. We have the pin nailer, brand-new category. We have our second drain cleaning product.
This drain cleaning is a technology that we have pioneered in Milwaukee. The RYOBI team, not to be outdone, wanted to also have a DIY version of drain cleaning. The first one we launched last year sold so well that now we have a step-up drain cleaner in our DIY line. This is a RYOBI cordless bolt cutter. Yes, a bolt cutter. Instead of using a manual bolt cutter, you can now buy one of these devices. You can cut chain, you can cut rebar. For the burglar, it's a perfect choice. We don't have a lot of control over these things. Right, Horst? Anyhow, we just make the products. Okay. This is a fascinating product. This is a cooling cooler.
In warm climates, we have a RYOBI cooler that you pack it with ice, your favorite beverage, and when you fire this up, it actually is an air conditioner for the job site. Believe me, the contractor loves to stand in front of the cooler, not just drink the beverage now, but also enjoy the cool breeze that comes from this unique cordless device. One of the things that people miss with the RYOBI program is that we have the only overarching platform of cordless to serve the global DIY market. Not only do we have all those fabulous power tools you see on the wall, but we also have outdoor power equipment that works off the same 18-volt battery as our power tools and gives us a unique way to bring people into our system.
When you walk into a Home Depot, whether you buy a drill or a string trimmer or a chainsaw, doesn't matter, we serve that DIYer with the same RYOBI ONE+ battery. This is one of the reasons why we have been so wildly successful with this program. In the outdoor business alone, we're rolling out these six new products for the second half of this year and for 2018, which will give us 30 different outdoor products in the ONE+ system. 30 outdoor products in the ONE+ system, which now gives us over 130 total RYOBI products that all work off that same battery, the same battery that we had 15 years ago when we launched ONE+, which gives us a backward-compatible system that is unique around the world and is gaining traction like crazy. In addition, we have pioneered high-performance cordless outdoor products.
In some applications, if you have a large yard, let's say in Australia or Canada or U.S., you might require more runtime and more power. That's why we developed the 40-volt platform of RYOBI outdoor. This platform has taken off so well that we're actually going to launch all these new products next year to feed that 40-volt platform, which will give us like 30 products in the 40-volt system just for outdoor. One of the most exciting developments at TTI over the last six months has been the category of cordless mowing. Not only have we pioneered the first-ever DIY level value-priced cordless riding mower. This is $2,499. We sold completely out last year. We intend to grow our sales.
We'll probably triple our sales on this device next year, we're just getting started with adapting our unique technology to applications like this riding mower. This is exciting. This is a flagship of the RYOBI brand. However, maybe the most exciting development over the first six months this year is the unbelievable stampede that's going on from petrol mowers, which have been around for a long time, to the RYOBI cordless mower system. If you think about it, as exciting as cordless is in power tools, when you switch somebody from a cord- to cordless. There's even a more obvious benefit to switching from petrol outdoor products led by a mower to a cordless product. For example, a petrol mower has a pull cord you have to pull. This is a challenging, frustrating process just to start the product.
You have the issue of the fumes, because this is a petrol-burning engine, the fumes, of course, are not great for the environment or great for the user. Of course, cordless, there are no fumes. You have heat. This gets very hot. There's no heat in cordless. You have the noise. Our cordless mowers are a third the sound, the decibel level that you have in petrol. You have the annual trip to the lawnmower shop to have these tuned up, replace the spark plugs, clean the carburetor. You'll have none of that with cordless. Don't forget, the petrol is supplied by people like Exxon. We don't get any of that revenue. On a cordless mower, we sell the battery. The aftermarket we have for the power source is a revenue stream that most investors haven't even thought about.
We were able to sell four times more mowers than our original forecast last year, or I should say the first half of this year. Four times more. You say, "Well, wait a minute, maybe the base was small." The base was not too small. Wait till you see what the base is next year. This may well be the fastest-growing new business area in all of TTI over the next five years because the market for global petrol mowers is vast, our competitors have not focused on this category the way we have. I think you'll see exciting things in the future here. We also were able to develop a very exciting floor care product in our RYOBI line. Floor care at TTI is not just Hoover and Vax, but we also, in Milwaukee and RYOBI, also will sell floor care products.
This is a good example. This is a cordless pull vac in the RYOBI system that's going to be sold globally and will be a very significant contributor to the power tool business, although it really is floor care. That's one reason why we're excited about floor care, because the technology works in a lot of places. Here's another example. This is a cordless wet/dry vac, fired off the 18-volt ONE+ battery system. This is more powerful. It has better suction than a corded wet/dry vac, it's cordless. There's no cord, there's no electrocution risk. There's an unbelievable convenience benefit here with cordless. Okay. Let's shift gears and talk about Milwaukee. You see from the three-dimensional display in our triumphant arch over here that we're very excited about the momentum in Milwaukee. Yeah, we grew 20% again in the first half.
I think, though, that investors continue to underestimate the long-term potential of Milwaukee. We have just begun here. We're just getting started in converting the global industrial tool market to cordless. We're leading the charge. Our competitors are also doing a good job. Rising tides will lift all boats. I can assure you that we are committed to being the global leader in industrial cordless. Milwaukee will be number one as we implement our strategy. We have so much new product on the way that I can't begin to get through it today, although I'll try to give you some highlights of what we're launching just in the next six months. Okay. First of all, we have two platforms in Milwaukee. We have 18 volt, and we have subcompact 12 volt. The most important launch-- I've been in the power tool business since 1980. I know.
I started when I was 16. I know all that. Anyhow, the most important launch in the history of our industry is Milwaukee FUEL. The reason is, this is a revolutionary platform with a unique battery, unique motor, and unique onboard electronics. The electronics are the key to everything in cordless. We're so far ahead here that we believe we're still three years ahead of our competitors in terms of Milwaukee FUEL. The Milwaukee FUEL range will expand a lot. This year, in the next six months, we will roll out a whole new family of impact wrenches. These are heavy-duty, heavy-torque wrenches for driving lag bolts for infrastructure, bridge construction, tunnels, et cetera. There's also a version for the automotive market.
Every auto dealership in the world, every auto repair shop in the world will shift from pneumatic to cordless, in our opinion, in some degree. We will lead the charge. This is our family of impact wrenches. That's only impact wrenches. No one in the world is anywhere near this kind of range of cordless impact drivers, and that's one of many, many categories. In addition, we have a brand-new 7.25 dual bevel miter saw. Last, let's see, in March, we shared with you our new 10-inch miter saw, full size. To be honest, cordless means lighter, more compact, easier to carry, easier to use. This 7.25 miter saw does 75% of the cuts you do with a full size miter, yet it weighs a lot less. The blade costs a third as much to replace, and it works great on one battery.
In addition, we have a new hacksaw, a new full-size hacksaw utilizing FUEL technology. This is another breakthrough. This is a breakthrough product. It's called a mud mixer. Okay, what is a mud mixer? American slang for a device that mixes concrete paint, epoxy, various compounds you use on a job site, and you do it in new construction. What's the common theme of new construction? There's no power. The electricity's not on yet. In order to operate one of these things, corded is a real nuisance because you need a generator and long extension cords. That's over now with the Milwaukee cordless mud mixer. We have the same torque, the same power, and torque with our cordless as traditional mud mixers had with a cord. Again, we have a new line. This is a first ever cordless heat gun. This is a heat gun.
It uses no butane, no dangerous gas cartridges. It's strictly the lithium technology we've created. It's like a normal AC heat gun, there's tons of applications for heat guns on job sites in automotive. The full-size 18-volt line of Milwaukee cordless is the broadest in the world. It's growing like crazy. That picture is going to be hard to show you in a couple of years because we won't be able to fit, frankly, the tools on the slide. Maybe we'll use a couple slides.
We expand the screen.
We expand the screen. 12-volt subcompact. We have pioneered finally full power 12-volt ratchets for use in the automotive industry and other mechanic hand tool applications. We're converting people here from traditional mechanics hand tools, sockets and wrenches, to a cordless ratchet. Today, in automotive channels, people either use hand tools or they use pneumatic, which is loud, expensive, noisy, needs maintenance, et cetera. Ours is quiet and actually has more torque than pneumatic. This is a stapler, brand-new cordless stapler for installation of carpet or insulation or other fabrics that you attach to wood. Here's a new soldering iron. A soldering iron. It heats up enough with our 12-volt battery to replace corded soldering irons. A brand-new technology. It's interesting, our competitors talk about changing the market in cordless and leadership cordless, and yet the fastest-growing market for cordless is subcompact.
The whole idea of cordless, just like your iPhone, is smaller than a payphone or a landline. The whole idea of cordless is smaller, lighter, more compact, more convenient, less unwieldy, right? That's what subcompact gives us. We have the broadest line. We have over 80 subcompact tools now. No one in our industry is even close to being this committed to the fastest-growing segment of cordless, which is called subcompact. This keeps going. Let's talk about some brand-new businesses that TTI is going to enter with our Milwaukee leadership industrial brand. This is the drain cleaning market. I mentioned in RYOBI we have DIY drain cleaners, but for the plumber, for the commercial plumber or for the residential plumber, clogged drains are a nasty business, right?
We are going to give the plumber a safe, as in you don't get electrocuted, a safe and fast way to deal with these unpleasant challenges that come up in various times in restrooms around the world. This is an AirSnake . Instead of firing a cable through the drain to unclog it, this actually builds up enough pressure to shoot air, blast air through the drains and unclog them without the unpleasantness of having to feed a cable through the system. There are times when you need a cable, we will have the first-ever cordless cable drive drain cleaners. This drain snake is cordless, it will outperform a corded version of that drain cleaner. Here's something called SWITCH PACK. This is really cool.
If you need 50 feet of cable to clean a drain, you can attach one drum to this SWITCH PACK, you can perform the application. If you need 150 feet, you can plug three of those drums together, you get a 150-foot cable fired from a cordless delivery vehicle, first ever. You can now deal with drains that are longer than you can imagine. This is the full family of drain cleaning products in Milwaukee. This is a category we've never been in. We're famous with plumbers. This is one of the key applications of any plumber, and we've gone from never being in this to being the global leader in the cordless versions of drain cleaning. The new businesses keep going. Okay, another new business that we've shared with you is lighting. Lighting has become an immense opportunity for Milwaukee cordless. Why?
Think about any construction site ever. A construction site needs light, whether you're working in the evening or whether you're in a building that doesn't have light power yet. Cordless lighting is a vast opportunity. We're going to bring some more products to the market here. Here's a good example. We call this a RADIUS light. You fire it up, it gets very bright on a job site. That's working off our batteries. But this particular light also can be activated from your iPhone. This is our ONE-KEY system. From 200 feet away, you can turn on 10 of those with the iPhone. If you're the foreman at a job site, you can control when the lights go on and off. In addition, that particular light also charges your batteries.
You can utilize the light, and you can actually plug it in and put two batteries in and charge them so you can use them in your power tool. We think many users will also enjoy that application. Here's another cool light. This is an under hood light for the automotive aftermarket. If you're repairing your car, let's face it, if you're in a garage, even if the garage is well lit, under the hood is not well lit. Now we provide the user with a cordless way to work under the hood of a vehicle and repair the car. Here's a shot of the current lighting line. This will be our lighting program by the fourth quarter of 2017. Once again, that slide's going to change a lot over the next three years. We have so many lighting ideas, it'll blow your mind.
Remember, selling lights, this is like selling a power tool without a motor, which means the gross margin here is highly accretive. It means that the same battery operates in these lights, we see it as a very exciting new business area that we've never been in before. Okay, another new area is personal lighting. We've had so many requests from end users for convenient lighting that, say, a coal miner would use or a contractor would use, or even DIYers, et cetera. There's thousands of applications for what we call personal lighting. We intend to have the Milwaukee brand become a leader in this space, this is what we're launching in just our opening salvo. This is just our first step here. It's quite exciting. Okay, let's shift gears. Of course, power tool accessories matters a lot to us.
We have engineered a line of what we call carbide-tipped TORCH blades. TORCH is our sub-brand. The TORCH blade, with its unique carbide tooth technology, will outcut existing reciprocating saw blades and TORCH to cut metal. We also have a version of these blades we call AXE, of course, to cut wood. In both cases, we outperform anything in the market, the sales of these high-priced, high-end blades are running right now about double what we forecast, and the margins are excellent. We're very excited about our power tool accessory business. This is a good example of that. Brand new business for TTI. This is something we've never been in. It's called storage. We have competitors that classify storage as something so important they actually name the whole business segment storage. We intend to participate aggressively in the storage arena.
This system is called PACKOUT. We rolled this out last month. This PACKOUT is a revolutionary interlocking system that's indestructible. I recognize I only weigh 80 kilos, but it's indestructible. It's convenient because you can interlock hundreds of different storage devices eventually into the system, and you'll be able to plug in radios and lights and fans and all sorts of things. We think we're going to sell so many tools to our users that they're going to want to store our tools and our storage solutions. This is a good example of that. Do not underestimate the long-term impact of storage. Every single user we sell to has to store their tools. They either store them permanently in a garage or workshop, or remotely in job sites or in vans, they need wheeled storage solutions, much like your wheeled luggage through the airport.
The reaction to this program has been just incredible. Another new area. We promised you, Stephan, what, four years ago, we said we would build a billion-dollar global hand tool business. We've never been in hand tools. Our largest competitor feasts on this category because the margins are inherently higher. There's lower distribution transportation costs. People don't return hand tools, there's zero returns at the retail level. We need to be there. We never said we would go into the hand tool market with me-too commodity, boring, traditional products. Every single hand tool we launch is designed to be innovative leadership, priced at a premium, but it's designed to outperform our competition. This is a great example. We just rolled out 29 new screwdrivers. These have unique ergonomic grips, they have better business end tips, and all sorts of other features.
You can't believe you could reinvent the screwdriver, we did. I'm very proud of our team and this program we believe is going to sell like crazy. Another example, tape measures. We've been in this category now three years. We're going to roll out 16 new tape measures in the next six months alone. 16 new tape measures. We have features here and durability that are unsurpassed in the hand tool industry. This is a picture of our hand tool range as of October, David, of 2017. Four years ago, that picture had nothing on it. Take a good hard look at that, because although there's a lot of stuff on it, believe me, a year from now, it'll be a very crowded slide. Frank will need two slides again-
Yeah
for the hand tools. Okay. Let me make another comment about the floor care space. Floor care is obviously an area going through transition. Are we pleased with the revenue results and profit results of floor care? Of course not in the first half. There's no alarm here. We are participating in it, and we intend actually to drive the stampede, the revolution from corded to cordless. You have to remember when you look at our results, floor care is not just Hoover and Vax and Oreck. Floor care and Dirt Devil. Floor care is also Milwaukee and RYOBI. In fact, these floor care products used to clean the floor surfaces of job sites or DIY areas or even around the home. These floor care products, in every single case, are mass successes in our cordless family.
We have so many people in our cordless systems in both RYOBI and Milwaukee, that we have a pre-sold line of floor care. Anytime we roll anything out in these two battery platforms, there's legions of loyal users that will buy our floor care because they have the battery. That means, yes, they won't buy Dyson or they won't buy Shark or whatever the other competitors are. In many cases, they will go right to the power tool brand, which are no longer power tool only brands. These are broad power equipment brands, including cleaning devices for floors. In addition to that, we are, of course, highly focused on revitalizing our floor care brands. Hoover is a global leader in floor care. We all know that.
The brand has so much more potential than the current sales level that we have a lot to look forward to here as we roll out our new Hoover products. This is a great example. This is a cordless pull vac or stick vac in the REACT family, which means that shoe will adjust by using its sensors, and this is the only product in the world that will do this. It will adjust based on the surface of the floor, thick carpet, thin carpet, vinyl, hard surfaces, hardwood floors, et cetera. This rolls out next month. We're excited about it. It's a premium product. It's cordless and it's gorgeous. In the U.K., we use the same pole vac technology in our Vax brand. We've already rolled some of these Vax cordless sticks out.
As I said, our cordless pole vac or stick vac market in the first half was up over 50%. It's not like we're struggling here in floor care with cordless. We just have to go through the transition. We're very confident as we go forward that we will successfully implement this transition. In summary, if you think about what we've just shared with you, yes, the results are great for the first half, but there's no anomaly there. We have built a new product machine at TTI focused on global leadership in cordless that will yield, we believe, year after year after year of outstanding sales growth and financial results. I think you're seeing that trend consistently from us, and I have never felt more confident about the company's momentum or its future. With all that, Mr. Chairman, I turn it back over to you.
Thank you, Joe. Well, I feel very strongly that the exceptional performance delivered in the first half will continue into second half. A very interesting question. I don't think any one of you would like to make a $1.9 billion or $2 billion acquisition, with $90 million in EBIT, paying 30 times. I think we are a great company to grow organically without paying this horrendous amount of money. Joe, what do you think?
I think you're exactly right, Horst.
I see some faces wondering. Let me clarify that we have a bold plan in place for our floor care business. When you see where the performance not going that way for floor care, we added floor care to our Milwaukee brand. We add floor care to our RYOBI brand. We don't split that up. What you see is Vax, Dirt Devil, Oreck, Hoover, and we have a plan in place, and a very bold plan. I tell you, 2018 will be a surprise for you. I discussed with you over the last few days, and Stephan and our management. The name Hoover is iconic and very strong, and we have ideas to create a Hoover lifestyle-
We do
product. We will surprise you. Please don't worry. We are on track. I will lose as much as you if we don't deliver. Personally. We remain passionately committed on executing our goals and our promises we made to you on our presentation. I really would like to thank you for your ongoing support. Please trust us we will deliver, not disappoint you. Thank you very much for attending.