Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. I'm so happy everybody has a seat. Finally, I was told over 1,000 people. It looks more like 300. Welcome all of you to TTI's 2016 Annual Results Announcement. I'm very happy to report that TTI delivered another year of record profit, revenue, and gross margin. We had solid and stable growth all across the region, including Europe, Asia, Australasia, U.S., Central America, and wherever we have focused over the last three years, we recorded great success. Not only did our profit and our EBIT advanced, in fact, our gross margin, and Joe did a hard job driving that, we are confident that we will continue having a successful future. We'll give you a little bit more. Much is talked on the street about border tax, this tax, that tax.
We are very prepared, we never mentioned in any of our analyst meetings, people don't know that close to one-quarter of our activities are in the United States. We have production in China. We don't have production in Mexico. We have production in the United States. We are very prepared. When we look back five or six, seven years ago, today, we produce twice the amount of power tools in volume and money, we are having only 50% of our workforce in China. That means we doubled the efficiency on productivity, and I think no one in our industry is as well prepared as we are. Whatever may come in the United States, we are not politicians, but we are very prepared to deliver you a solid future over the next years to come. Joe or Frank, who will take it over.
Frank.
Frank, please go through the details.
Yep.
We hope we can give you a pleasant surprise this morning and a great presentation. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I'll give a brief overview on our financial performance, then I'll give the floor to Joe, who you are looking forward to. As Chairman highlighted, 2016 was another record year for us on revenue, gross margin, EBIT, and net profit. Our revenue increased by 8.8% to close to $5.5 billion. Excluding the negative effect on currency translations to the top line, our revenue actually grew by approximately 9.8%. This growth further demonstrates the strength of our core strategy, a continuous flow of new innovative products and technology, strategic investments in growing our business, and very focused in improving our operations, productivity, efficiencies, and quality. Milwaukee continued to deliver another over 21% growth on a global basis is one perfect example of the success of our strategy. Gross profits increased by 10.4% to $1.98 billion with our gross margin-
Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. I'm so happy everybody has a seat. Finally, I was told over 1,000 people. It looks more like 300. Welcome all of you to TTI's 2016 Annual Results Announcement. I'm very happy to report that TTI delivered another year of record profit, revenue, and gross margin. We had solid and stable growth all across the region, including Europe, Asia, Australasia, U.S., Central America, and wherever we have focused over the last three years, we recorded great success. Not only did our profit and our EBIT adapt, in fact, our gross margin, and Joe did a hard job driving that, and we are confident that we will continue having a successful future. We'll give you a little bit more. Much is talked on the street about border tax, this tax, that tax.
We are very prepared, and we never mentioned in any of our analyst meetings, people don't know that close to one-quarter of our activities are in the United States. We have production in China. We don't have production in Mexico. We have production in the United States. We are very prepared. When we look back five or six, seven years ago, today, we produce twice the amount of power tools in volume and money, and we are having only 50% of our workforce in China. That means we doubled the efficiency on productivity, and I think no one in our industry is as well prepared as we are. Whatever may come in the United States, we are not politicians, but we are very prepared to deliver you a solid future over the next years to come. Joe or Frank, who will take it over.
Frank.
Frank, please go through the details.
Yep.
We hope we can give you a pleasant surprise this morning and a great presentation. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I'll give a brief overview on our financial performance, and then I'll give the floor to Joe, who you are looking forward to. As Chairman highlighted, 2016 was another record year for us on revenue, gross margin, EBIT, and net profit. Our revenue increased by 8.8% to close to $5.5 billion. Excluding the negative effect on currency translations to the top line, our revenue actually grew by approximately 9.8%. This growth further demonstrates the strength of our core strategy, a continuous flow of new innovative products and technology, strategic investments in growing our business, and very focused in improving our operations, productivity, efficiencies, and quality. Milwaukee continued to deliver another over 21% growth on a global basis, is one perfect example of the success of our strategy.
Gross profits increased by 10.4% to $1.98 billion, with our gross margins improved for the eighth consecutive year from 35.7% to 36.2%, a further 50 basis point increase. EBIT increased by 12.6% to $450 million, with margin improvements of 30 basis points. This strong performance is a result of new products and favorable mix, operating leverage from global procurement programs, lean manufacturing, and automations. Net profits increased for the ninth consecutive year to $409 million, an increase of 15.4%. Net profit margin also improved by 50 basis points to 7.5%. Earnings per share increased by 15.2% as compared to 2015, to $0.223 per share. The board recommended a final dividend of HKD 0.30 per share, an increase of 29% over last year.
Together with the HKD 0.20 interim dividend declared, total dividend for 2016 amount to HKD 0.50 per share, representing a payout ratio of close to 29%. Power Equipment Division, representing approximately 82% of the group's revenue, led by Milwaukee's strong momentum and Ryobi's outstanding double-digit growth, delivered a 20.6% increase, or 13.3% excluding currency effect. It's worth pointing out that our European power tool business, despite the challenging economic environment and the currency headwinds, delivered a growth of 9.1%, or 11.4% excluding FX effects. Operating profits of this segment also increased by 13.4% to $430 million, with a 20 basis points margin improvements. There's been reports saying that our margins slowed down due to higher costs. As a matter of fact, we did not.
Compared to first half, our power tool sales in the second half increased by 2.8%, but our operating profits increased by 32.8%, delivering another 10.8% operating margins. With the new products and channel expansions Joe will be talking to you about later, we are very confident that the margins will continue to expand. Floor Care and Appliance Division's revenue, representing 18% of the group's revenue, was 5.3% lower than that of 2015. Currency translations, GBP in the second half of the year in particular, had a negative effect on our European business. Our North America business, however, delivered encouraging growth in the second half of 2016. Operating profits was at $20 million, but with a 10 basis points margin improvements despite the slowdown in sales.
Under our new leadership team on Floor Care, with a very clear strategy, revitalizing and expanding our product portfolio, focused on innovative cordless and professional products with technology-driven solutions. We firmly believe that we will be able to turn this division around in the coming years. Improved by, for the eighth consecutive year from 35.7% to 36.2%, a further 50 basis point increase. EBIT increased by 12.6% to $450 million, with margin improvements of 30 basis points. This strong performance is a result of new products and favorable mix, operating leverage from global procurement programs, lean manufacturing, and automations. Net profits increased for the ninth consecutive year to $409 million, an increase of 15.4%. Net profit margin also improved by 50 basis points to 7.5%. Earnings per share increased by 15.2% as compared to 2015, to $0.223 per share.
The board recommended a final dividend of HKD 0.30 per share, an increase of 29% over last year. Together with the HKD 0.20 interim dividend declared, total dividend for 2016 amount to HKD 0.50 per share, representing a payout ratio of close to 29%. Power Equipment Division, representing approximately 82% of the group's revenue, led by Milwaukee's strong momentum and Ryobi's outstanding double-digit growth, delivered a 20.6% increase, or 13.3% excluding currency effect. It's worth pointing out that Our European Power Tools business, despite the challenging economic environment and the currency headwinds, delivered a growth of 9.1%, or 11.4% excluding FX effects. Operating profits of this segment also increased by 13.4% to $430 million with a 20 basis points margin improvements. There has been reports saying that our margins slowed down due to higher costs. As a matter of fact, we did not.
Compared to first half, our Power Tools sales in the second half increased by 2.8%, but our operating profits increased by 32.8%, delivering another 10.8% operating margins. With the new products and channel expansions Joe will be talking to you about later, we are very confident that the margins will continue to expand. Floor Care and Appliance Division's revenue, representing 18% of the group's revenue, was 5.3% lower than that of 2015. Currency translations, GBP in the second half of the year in particular, had a negative effect on our European business. Our North America business, however, delivered encouraging growth in the second half of 2016. Operating profits was at $20 million, but with a 10 basis points margin improvements despite the slowdown in sales.
Under our new leadership team on floor care, we have a very clear strategy, revitalizing and expanding our product portfolio, focused on innovative cordless and professional products with technology-driven solutions. We firmly believe that we will be able to turn this division around in the coming years. From a geographic perspective, North America, representing approximately 76% of the group's revenue, delivered a 10.3% growth or 10.6% excluding currency effect. With our new products and category expansions, we are confident that this strong growth momentum will continue. Europe, despite the challenging economic condition and currency headwind, continued to grow by 3.3%, or 7.1% if we take out the FX effect. Rest of the world, led by Australia and South Korea, delivered a 6.2% revenue increase, or 7.9% excluding currency. Total SG&A increased by 9.8%, representing 28.1% of the group's revenue.
The spend in the second half of 2016, however, was only 27.6% of revenue as compared to 28.7% in the first half of the year. The year-over-year increase was due to the strategic spend on further growth opportunities we've identified. As highlighted, a continuous flow of new innovative products is of critical importance. In 2016, R&D spend was at 2.7% of sales as compared to 2.5% last year. The increase was mainly due to the opportunities we've identified and our strategy to launch new products as soon as practicable. We have, however, managed to leverage our revenue growth with administrative expenses. Admin expenses only increased by 3.6% on a sales growth of 8.8%. Net finance costs reduced by 21.1% to $10 million. The reduction was mainly due to the further improvements in the group's liquidity and very effective funding costs, leveraging on our strong balance sheet.
Effective tax rate was at 7.1%. We understand that tax rules and rates changes every now and then, we've already proven that we can always fine-tune and amend our structure to optimize our tax plans. We, therefore, continue to maintain that low effective tax rate is still very sustainable going forward. We have a very strong balance sheet. We have showed as equity increased to $2.4 billion. Total net current assets also increased by 22% to $1.13 billion. Gearing ratio was at 5.2% as a result of our very healthy cash flow generated from operations and our very disciplined working capital management and spending. Our gearing is expected to remain low going forward. Free cash flow generation and cash conversion has always been one of our key performance metrics.
In 2016, we increased our free cash flow by $192 million with a net profit conversion of 84.1%, nearly double than that of last year. From a geographic perspective, North America, representing approximately 76% of the group's revenue, delivered a 10.3% growth or 10.6% excluding currency effect. With our new products and category expansions, we are confident that this strong growth momentum will continue. Europe, despite the challenging economic condition and currency headwind, continued to grow by 3.3%, or 7.1% if we take out the FX effect. Rest of the world, led by Australia and South Korea, delivered a 6.2% revenue increase, or 7.9% excluding currency. Total SG&A increased it by 9.8%, representing 28.1% of the group's revenue. The spend in the second half of 2016, however, was only 27.6% of revenue as compared to 28.7% in the first half of the year.
The year-on-year increase was due to the strategic spend on further growth opportunities we have identified. As highlighted, a continuous flow of new innovative products is of critical importance. In 2016, R&D spend was at 22.7% of sales as compared to 2.5% last year. The increase was mainly due to the opportunities we've identified and our strategy to launch new products as soon as practicable. We have, however, managed to leverage our revenue growth with administrative expenses. Admin expenses only increased it by 3.6% on a sales growth of 8.8%. Net finance costs reduced it by 21.1% to $10 million only. The reduction was mainly due to the further improvements in the group's liquidity and very effective funding costs, leveraging on our strong balance sheet. Effective tax rates was at 7.1%.
We understand that tax rules and rates changes every now and then, we've already proven that we can always fine-tune and amend our structure to optimize our tax plans. We therefore continue to maintain that low effective tax rate is still very sustainable going forward. We have a very strong balance sheet. We have shareholder's equity increased it to $2.4 billion. Total net current assets also increased it by 22% to $1.13 billion. Gearing ratio was at 5.2% as a result of our very healthy cash flow generated from operations and our very disciplined working capital management and spending. Our gearing is expected to remain low going forward. Free cash flow generation and cash conversion has always been one of our key performance metrics.
In 2016, we increased our free cash flow by $192 million with a net profit conversion of 84.1%, nearly double than that of last year. The key element to the improvement in free cash flow is our very focused working capital management. Working capital as a percentage to sales was at 16.4% as compared to the 17% reported in 2015. Inventory days was at 86 days, same as that of last year, 2015. Seven days lower than the 93 days reported at interim. We believe the inventory days can be further improved going forward. The slightly higher inventory days been partly financed by the increase in payable days from 84 days to 89 days. Receivable days remained very comparable to that of last year at 62 days. Our receivables are of very high quality, and we do not anticipate any collection issues.
CapEx spend was at $190 million, very much in line with our budget and projections. We project that our 2017 CapEx will be around $240 million. Approximately 80% is spent on operations, improving productivity, efficiencies, and quality, while the balance 20% be spent on infrastructures, expanding our R&D centers, distribution, logistics centers, and production capabilities. Total net debt reduced it by 37.2% to $124 million only. We have maintained a portfolio of approximately 60% debt with fixed maturity, 40% for working capital. 53% of our debts are long-term and 47% short-term. Currently, all our debts are still on floating rates, we've already started studying the best optimal structure for the group, taking into considerations that interest rates may increase going forward or will increase going forward. This concludes my review, and I'll pass the floor to our CEO, Mr. Joe Galli.
Thank you. Thank you for joining, everyone. We're delighted to share with you yet another record-breaking year. Sales are up 9.8% in a marketplace that's not growing anywhere near that. We're clearly outpacing our competitors in every geographic region. Sales of our Power Equipment business were up an amazing 13.3%. This is not just Milwaukee. This is our entire Power Equipment business, our DIY business, our OEM business, our outdoor business. These results reflect just amazing performance in our local operations around the world. Floor Care down 3.3%, that's misleading when you consider that the future of our Floor Care business was actually up 53%. Look, the overall Floor Care business needs to be improved. We recognize that, and we're dedicated to that. Let's not lose sight of the progress our team has made launching a very exciting stream of cordless Floor Care products.
You'll see in a moment that we have an outstanding pipeline of products in Floor Care that will fuel the turnaround of the business and help it to catch up to the power tool progress that we've made. As Frank had pointed out, our sales are up double digit. Gross margin up 50 basis points.
Improvements in free cash flow is our very focused working capital management. Working capital as a percentage to sales was at 16.4% as compared to the 17% reported in 2015. Inventory days was at 86 days, same as that of last year, 2015. Seven days lower than the 93 days reported at interim. We believe the inventory days can be further improved going forward. The slightly higher inventory days been partly financed by the increase in payable days from 84 days to 89 days. Receivable days remained very comparable to that of last year at 62 days. Our receivables are of very high quality, and we do not anticipate any collection issues. CapEx spend was at $190 million, very much in line with our budget and projections. We project that our 2017 CapEx will be around $240 million.
Approximately 80% is spent on operations, improving productivity, efficiencies, and quality, while the balance 20% be spent on infrastructures, expanding our R&D centers, distribution logistics centers, and production capabilities. Total net debt reduced by 57.2% to $124 million only. We have maintained a portfolio of approximately 60% debt with fixed maturity, 40% for working capital. 53% of our debts are long-term and 47% short-term. Currently, all our debts are still on floating rates, we've already started studying the best optimal structure for the group, taking into considerations the interest rates may increase going forward or will increase going forward. This concludes my review, and I'll pass the floor to our CEO, Mr. Joe Galli.
Thank you. Thank you for joining, everyone. We're delighted to share with you yet another record-breaking year. Sales are up 9.8% in a marketplace that's not growing anywhere near that. We're clearly outpacing our competitors in every geographic region. Sales of our Power Equipment business were up an amazing 13.3%. This is not just Milwaukee, this is our entire Power Equipment business, our DIY business, our OEM business, our outdoor business. These results reflect just amazing performance in our local operations around the world. Floor Care down 3.3%, but that's misleading when you consider that the future of our Floor Care business was actually up 53%. Look, the overall Floor Care business needs to be improved. We recognize that, and we're dedicated to that. Let's not lose sight of the progress our team has made launching a very exciting stream of cordless floor care products.
You'll see in a moment that we have an outstanding pipeline of products in floor care that will fuel the turnaround of the business and help it to catch up to the power tool progress that we've made. As Frank had pointed out, our sales are up double-digit. Gross margin up 50 basis points. This is the eighth consecutive year, Frank, of improvement in gross margin. Eighth consecutive year, up to 36.2%. We were able to leverage our sales growth into a performance EBIT of 12.6% growth. Net profits up 15%, which is, in the environment we're in, with the level of investment we're making, we think is quite acceptable. This is a chart we love to talk about. For eight consecutive years, we have driven gross margin up from a modest starting point of 30.8% to a level now of 36.2%.
As Horst pointed out up front, we've basically doubled our output in China with the same headcount. Think about it, we've doubled our output with the same headcount. We are uniquely positioned to transition to any geographic region like the U.S. if the legal environment and the political environment creates an opportunity or a requirement to produce there, we can move at a very quick rate. I'll show you that in a moment. Okay, Frank pointed out working capital was better than last year at 16.4%. That's world-class. That still continues to be the best in the industry. Yet we do think there's improvement in inventory as we go forward. What we won't do is compromise our service levels to our customers.
If you were to look at The Home Depot or Bunnings or any of our other major customers, what you'd see is that we're routinely awarded vendor of the year recognition for outstanding service levels. We routinely exceed the levels of our competition, and we're doing it with an acceptable level of inventory. Now, that may come down a bit as we go forward, never at the expense of customer service. That's a hallmark of TTI. Look, the Milwaukee business is one of the growth engines of the company, along with Ryobi. We were able to grow Milwaukee last year 21%. Now think about that. That's 21% growth in a power tool industry. We're not in Silicon Valley here. We're talking about power tools, a GNP business for years. This significant part of the company is growing 21%.
As we've shared before, our plan is to grow at a 20% clip, really for the next five years in Milwaukee as we continue to take market share and stimulate market growth with our cordless strategy. I'm going to share that with you here as we go. The Milwaukee growth is extraordinary, not only because it's 21%, but because we were able to do it in every region that we're attacking around the world. North America was really strong at 20.6%, but Europe was the star of the company last year with a 21% growth rate in Milwaukee. As you know, the European theater is in a state of contraction. There's all sorts of concern about the economic health of the region, and yet TTI was able to grow Milwaukee 21.3%. That's maybe the most exciting result that we had last year.
Of course, the rest of world is paced by Australia, New Zealand, where we have become the number one supplier of power tools. Also we're beginning to focus on other countries in Asia, like Korea, like Taiwan, where we've had amazing success with our Milwaukee program and not at this kind of level. We're going in with significant premium pricing. We're finding users willing to pay up for the quality and the safety that we provide with Milwaukee. Horst mentioned up front, we're eighth consecutive year, Frank, of improvement in gross margin, eighth consecutive year, up to 36.2%. We were able to leverage our sales growth into a performance EBIT of 12.6% growth. Net profit's up 15%, which is, in the environment we're in, with the level of investment we're making, we think is quite acceptable. This is a chart we love to talk about.
For eight consecutive years, we have driven gross margin up from a modest starting point of 30.8% to a level now of 36.2%. As Horst pointed out up front, we've basically doubled our output in China with the same headcount. Think about it. We've doubled our output with the same headcount. We are uniquely positioned to transition to any geographic region like the U.S. if the legal environment and the political environment creates an opportunity or a requirement to produce there, we can move at a very quick rate. I'll show you that in a moment. Frank pointed out working capital was better than last year at 16.4%. That's world-class. That still continues to be the best in the industry. Yet we do think there's improvement in inventory as we go forward.
What we won't do is compromise our service levels to our customers. If you were to look at Home Depot or Bunnings or any of our other major customers, what you'd see is that we're routinely awarded vendor of the year recognition for outstanding service levels. We routinely exceed the levels of our competition. We're doing it with an acceptable level of inventory. That may come down a bit as we go forward, never at the expense of customer service. That's a hallmark of TTI. Look, the Milwaukee business is one of the growth engines of the company, along with Ryobi. We were able to grow Milwaukee last year 21%. Think about that. That's 21% growth in a power tool industry. We're not in Silicon Valley here.
We're talking about power tools, a GNP business for years, and this significant part of the company is growing 21%. As we've shared before, our plan is to grow at a 20% clip, really for the next 5 years in Milwaukee, as we continue to take market share and stimulate market growth with our cordless strategy. I'm going to share that with you here as we go. The Milwaukee growth is extraordinary, not only because it's 21%, but because we were able to do it in every region that we're attacking around the world. North America was really strong at 20.6%, but Europe was the star of the company last year with a 21% growth rate in Milwaukee. As you know, the European theater is in a state of contraction.
There's all sorts of concern about the economic health of the region, and yet TTI was able to grow Milwaukee 21.3%. That's maybe the most exciting result that we had last year. Of course, rest of world is paced by Australia, New Zealand, where we have become the number 1 supplier of power tools. Also we're beginning to focus on other countries in Asia, like Korea, like Taiwan, where we've had amazing success with our Milwaukee program. At this kind of level, we're going in with significant premium pricing, and we're finding users willing to pay up for the quality and the safety that we provide with Milwaukee. Horst mentioned upfront, and I think it's important to point out now that we have never put all our eggs in 1 basket when it comes to manufacturing. We have an outstanding manufacturing foundation in the U.S.
This is not something that we reacted to. This has been in place for a long time for a lot of reasons. We always felt that we should have geographic diversity when it comes to manufacturing. By the way, we also have manufacturing in Europe. These decisions are made based on a strategic plan that would allow TTI to flourish no matter what local laws are passed. If something happens in the U.S. and there's some sort of border tax, it's going to affect everybody equally. Everybody manufactures in Asia. It's not like we're the only company producing power tools in China. The great news is that we are positioned to ramp up fast in our manufacturing operations. We have 2 Milwaukee factories, we have a Ryobi operation, a Floor Care operation, and a Hansel operation.
We have a lot of friendly governors that seem to be anxious to fund our decision to increase manufacturing. If you say, "Well, what's going to happen to TTI if you do this?" Well, first of all, of course, U.S. has higher labor rates, but we'll save the freight. We have learned to automate our manufacturing, and we've proven that over the last 5 years. We have an amazing world-class manufacturing operation in China that is a perfect operation to supply the rest of the world. Everybody's talking today about the U.S., but we're growing like crazy in Canada and in Europe and in Australia and Korea and Latin America. We have China ready to go to supply the rest of the world if the U.S. focuses on production locally.
Again, I think you have to understand that the laws that may come across in the U.S. won't discriminate. Every manufacturer will be dealing with the same situation. It's just the winner will be the company that can move most quickly, and I think our execution track record speaks for itself. Okay, here's another interesting highlight of the company's success. We continue to be dedicated to hiring college graduates to provide manpower for our growth. This year, we will actually hire over 500 college graduates over 50 campuses in the U.S. and in another 12 countries around the world. This is a program that provides the future leadership for TTI, and it's an interesting group that we hire. These millennials that we hire, there's 52% female, there's 18% bi or trilingual graduates.
We look at 100 resumes, we interview 10 people, we pick one, we do that 500 times, and then the top 10% of those people are promoted into the company's opportunities or product management jobs, et cetera, throughout the world. There's no one in our industry that's remotely close to this kind of commitment to developing future leadership. One of the things about having so many millennials around, millennials all want to save the world, but they also live on social media, and they think their iPhone should control everything. You're going to see TTI blazing a trail when it comes to iPhone and Bluetooth capabilities on our products, whether it's in Floor Care or in power tools. This is an enormous advantage, and I think it's underestimated.
I think to have a group of 50-year-old executives sitting around trying to figure out how to turn. I think it's important to point out now that we have never put all our eggs in one basket when it comes to manufacturing. We have an outstanding manufacturing foundation in the U.S. This is not something that we reacted to. This has been in place for a long time for a lot of reasons. We always felt that we should have geographic diversity when it comes to manufacturing. By the way, we also have manufacturing in Europe. These decisions are made based on a strategic plan that would allow TTI to flourish no matter what local laws are passed. If something happens in the U.S. and there's some sort of border tax, it's going to affect everybody equally. Everybody manufactures in Asia.
It's not like we're the only company producing power tools in China. The great news is that we are positioned to ramp up fast in our manufacturing operations. We have two Milwaukee factories, we have a Ryobi operation, a Floor Care operation, and a Hansel operation. We have a lot of friendly governors that seem to be anxious to fund our decision to increase manufacturing. If you say, "Well, what's going to happen to TTI if you do this?" Well, first of all, of course, U.S. has higher labor rates, but we'll save the freight. We have learned to automate our manufacturing, and we've proven that over the last five years. We have an amazing world-class manufacturing operation in China that is a perfect operation to supply the rest of the world.
Everybody's talking today about the U.S., we're growing like crazy in Canada and in Europe and in Australia and Korea and Latin America. We have China ready to go to supply the rest of the world if the U.S. focuses on production locally. I think you have to understand that the laws that may come across in the U.S. won't discriminate. Every manufacturer will be dealing with the same situation. The winner will be the company that can move most quickly, and I think our execution track record speaks for itself. Here's another interesting highlight of the company's success. We continue to be dedicated to hiring college graduates to provide manpower for our growth. This year, we will actually hire over 500 college graduates, over 50 campuses in the U.S. and another 12 countries around the world.
This is a program that provides the future leadership for TTI, and it's an interesting group that we hire. These millennials that we hire, there's 52% female, there's 18% bi- or tri-lingual graduates. We look at 100 resumes, we interview 10 people, we pick one. We do that 500 times, the top 10% of those people are promoted into the company's opportunities or product management jobs, et cetera, throughout the world. There's no one in our industry that's remotely close to this kind of commitment to developing future leadership. One of the things about having so many millennials around, millennials all want to save the world, they also live on social media, they think their iPhone should control everything.
You're going to see TTI blazing a trail when it comes to iPhone and Bluetooth capabilities on our products, whether it's in Floor Care or in power tools. This is an enormous advantage, I think it's underestimated. I think to have a group of 50-year-old executives sitting around trying to figure out how to turn the iPhone into a device on a job site might not be the best strategy, I think that our campus recruiting program is going to bear fruit here as we go forward. I'd like to introduce today a way for you to think about our market over the next five years. Many people have said, "What are you going to do next?" Horst and I talk about this all the time. Milwaukee's growing like crazy. RYOBI's an amazing success story. What's going to happen next?
I think we wanted to share with you our vision about the marketplace over the next five years to give you some confidence that we can continue to grow our company the way we have in the past and deliver outstanding financial results in the businesses that we serve today. This growth we have will be fueled by one of our most prominent analysts has coined the phrase, the growth drivers of the company. We have Milwaukee and RYOBI are powerful growth drivers, soon to be joined by Floor Care. Let me show you how that growth will manifest itself here in the market. We think in five years, we're talking about serving a market that could be $35 billion-$36 billion plus. These are internal estimates.
This relates to a marketplace that we are, in fact, helping to create and develop. Our vision is to stimulate and create a market, much like Apple did with iPhone and iPad. We want to be in a position to harvest the benefit of that creation. We recognize we're never going to control the whole market. I think what people miss, none of our competitors have to lose for us to win. We have some very good competitors, Bosch, Makita, Stanley, DeWalt. These are well-managed companies, and they're very strong in their own geographic regions, and we understand that. We intend to be leaders in the market, particularly in cordless, where we already are exhibiting that leadership. What we create here will benefit everyone. The key is, we want to be the Apple.
We want to be on the vanguard and be in the company that's creating the opportunity. The power tool market has changed dramatically, and the reason this is so exciting is because of what we call the network effect in cordless. In the old days, power tools was called a best-of-breed business. You'd walk into a Home Depot and you'd buy a Milwaukee Sawzall, a Bosch router, a Makita circular saw, and you were considered to be a smart user that knew what brands to buy for what category. There was no interconnectivity, so your truck looked like a rainbow of colors, and it didn't matter if one tool talked to the other because there was no synergy, no connectivity. That's all over now. The power tool market is going to go to cordless.
In fact, the whole Power Equipment market is going to go to cordless, along with Floor Care. The opportunity for us is, because we have the broadest network, the broadest range of products that work off the same battery platforms, we think that we can convince a user to buy our tool kits to start and to lock them into our network over the long haul. This is a way where you can build a much higher level of market share and a much higher level of growth than the old best-of-breed days. Let's take a look, this cordless market potential. The total Power Equipment market potential, we think, say $36 billion. That's a big number, 2021. Much bigger than today, more than double today.
The iPhone into a device on a job site might not be the best strategy, and I think that our campus recruiting program is going to bear fruit here as we go forward. I'd like to introduce today a way for you to think about our market over the next five years. Many people have said, "What are you going to do next?" Horst and I talk about this all the time. Milwaukee's growing like crazy. RYOBI's an amazing success story. What's going to happen next? I think we wanted to share with you our vision about the marketplace over the next five years to give you some confidence that we can continue to grow our company the way we have in the past and deliver outstanding financial results in the businesses that we serve today.
This growth we have will be fueled by one of our most prominent analysts has coined the phrase, the growth drivers of the company. We have Milwaukee and RYOBI are powerful growth drivers, soon to be joined by Floor Care. Let me show you how that growth will manifest itself here in the market. Okay. First of all, we think in five years, we're talking about serving a market that could be $35 billion-$36 billion plus. These are internal estimates. This relates to a marketplace that we are in fact helping to create and develop. Our vision is to stimulate and create a market, much like Apple did with iPhone and iPad. We want to be in a position to harvest the benefit of that creation. We recognize we're never gonna control the whole market.
I think what people miss, none of our competitors have to lose for us to win. We have some very good competitors, Bosch, Makita, Stanley, DeWalt. These are well-managed companies, they're very strong in their own geographic regions, we understand that. We intend to be leaders in the market, particularly in cordless, where we already are exhibiting that leadership. What we create here will benefit everyone. The key is, we want to be the Apple. We want to be in the vanguard in being the company that's creating the opportunity. The power tool market has changed dramatically, the reason this is so exciting is because of what we call the network effect in cordless. In the old days, power tools was called a best-of-breed business.
You'd walk into a Home Depot, and you'd buy a Milwaukee Sawzall, a Bosch router, a Makita circular saw, and you were considered to be a smart user that knew what brands to buy for what category. There was no interconnectivity, your truck looked like a rainbow of colors, it didn't matter if one tool talked to the other because there was no synergy, no connectivity. That's all over now. The power tool market is gonna go to cordless. In fact, the whole Power Equipment market is gonna go to cordless, along with Floor Care. The opportunity for us is because we have the broadest network, the broadest range of products that work off the same battery platforms, we think that we can convince a user to buy our tool kits to start and to lock them into our network over the long haul.
This is a way where you can build a much higher level of market share and a much higher level of growth than the old best-of-breed days. Let's take a look this cordless market potential. The total Power Equipment market potential, we think, say, $36 billion. That's a big number, 2021. Much bigger than today, more than double today. There's nine drivers. Let me just touch on nine things that we think will help stimulate that, and then I will share with you why we think we're in a unique position to harvest the biggest benefit of this growth. First of all, there's the logical corded to cordless. Corded power tools are obviously gonna become obsolete, just like landlines have in the phone arena. We think that we will continue to stimulate a switch from corded to cordless. This is happening as we speak.
It's happening at a much faster rate than people realized, even in floor care, and it will continue to happen. That's not the only opportunity here that's driving growth. We have pneumatic. Traditional pneumatic products moving to cordless. Now, pneumatic tools are driven by compressors with a hose. They're heavy, they're noisy, they're awkward to use, and cordless is incredibly liberating because there's no hose. You're not tethered. The noise is very different. We think it represents the future. We have gas to cordless. This is huge. The greenhouse gas movement, the whole notion of environmentally friendly products is going to benefit TTI because we're on the vanguard here of developing cordless products to replace gasoline. It's mostly in the outdoor area, although there's some heavy equipment categories that also fall into this category.
Next, we have a massive opportunity that we have literally created, we're pioneering, and that's the whole notion of lighting. Every job site gets dark in the evening. At every job site, when the building is not complete and there's no power, there's no light. You need to provide temporary lighting sources. Traditionally, these are based on archaic, dangerous halogen products that are running off generators or off of a mainline. With the TTI technology, with Milwaukee cordless and also Ryobi technology, we can light up a job site with the same batteries that people use in their tools. This is such a big category, you can't believe it. There's no one remotely close to TTI in terms of the broad range of products or the innovative solutions for this category. Okay, next, we have the whole idea of power-assisted hand tools.
Hand tools can, because cordless products are becoming lighter and more powerful, we can take traditional categories that were manual and turn them into power-assisted products, cordless products. We have a unique opportunity here because we're the only company that is committed to what we call subcompact cordless. They're ultra-small cordless products that adapt themselves to automating these manual applications. Okay, next you have hydraulic. When you hear our U.S. president talk about infrastructure, you should think, "Oh my goodness. TTI is in great position." We've been working on infrastructure products for the last five years. One of the key infrastructure areas is the old hydraulic. Hydraulic tools are tools powered by large, noisy, dated contraptions that haven't been rethought for decades.
We have been able to take cordless products and come up with solutions here that will liberate the infrastructure user, and I'll show you some of those products today. We have over 50 infrastructure-oriented products that we're rolling out this year alone. I don't think anybody else even thought about the category like that. This is an exciting part of cordless. Okay, one of the things you see with the whole iPhone market is that people today replace their phones. There's nine drivers. Let me just touch on nine things that we think will help stimulate that, and then I will share with you why we think we're in a unique position to harvest the biggest benefit of this growth. First of all, there's the logical corded to cordless. Corded power tools are obviously going to become obsolete, just like landlines have in the phone arena.
We think that we will continue to stimulate a switch from corded to cordless. This is happening as we speak. It's happening at a much faster rate than people realized, even in Floor Care, and it will continue to happen. That's not the only opportunity here that's driving growth. We have pneumatic. Traditional pneumatic products moving to cordless. Pneumatic tools are driven by compressors with a hose. They're heavy, they're noisy, they're awkward to use, and cordless is incredibly liberating because there's no hose, you're not tethered, the noise is very different, and we think it represents the future. We have gas to cordless. This is huge. The greenhouse gas movement, the whole notion of environmentally friendly products is going to benefit TTI because we're on the vanguard here of developing cordless products to replace petrol.
It's mostly in the outdoor area, although there's some heavy equipment categories that also fall into this category. We have a massive opportunity that we have literally created, we're pioneering, and that's the whole notion of lighting. Every job site gets dark in the evening. At every job site, when the building is not complete and there's no power, there's no light. You need to provide temporary lighting sources. Traditionally, these are based on archaic, dangerous halogen products that are running off generators or off of a main line. With the TTI technology, with Milwaukee cordless and also Ryobi technology, we can light up a job site with the same batteries that people use in their tools. This is such a big category, you can't believe it.
There's no one remotely close to TTI in terms of the broad range of products or the innovative solutions for this category. We have the whole idea of power-assisted hand tools. Hand tools can, because cordless products are becoming lighter and more powerful, we can take traditional categories that were manual and turn them into power-assisted products, cordless products. We have a unique opportunity here because we're the only company that is committed to what we call subcompact cordless. They're ultra-small cordless products that adapt themselves to automating these manual applications. You have hydraulic. When you hear our U.S. president talk about infrastructure, you should think, "Oh my goodness, TTI is in great position." Because we've been working on infrastructure products for the last five years. One of the key infrastructure areas is the old hydraulic.
Hydraulic tools are tools powered by large, noisy, dated contraptions that haven't been rethought for decades. We have been able to take cordless products and come up with solutions here that will liberate the infrastructure user, and I'll show you some of those products today. We have over 50 infrastructure-oriented products that we're rolling out this year alone. I don't think anybody else even thought about the category like that. This is an exciting part of cordless. One of the things you see with the whole iPhone market is that people today replace their phones much more often than they used to in the old days before cordless phones existed. The same is true in power tools. End users don't want to be caught on a job site with their customers using a cordless tool that's three or four years out of date.
The replacement cycle of power tools is changing rapidly. It's not iPhone and it's not iPad yet, but it's a lot more. In the old days, power tools would be in place six, eight, or 10 years, and now three years is kind of the average cycle, though it varies based on user. Okay. One of the things that people are grossly underestimating is the long-term impact of the battery aftermarket. Remembering that batteries have no price elasticity. If you are in a system, if you're in a Ryobi or a Milwaukee system, the battery replacement is a must purchase, and the margin potential for the companies that control or have leadership in cordless is immense. We haven't even begun to benefit from what's going to happen as we look three, four years out, because there's a lag time for the battery aftermarket.
It's a very exciting element of our future. Let's not forget, there is a significant opportunity in cordless that's very different than the old days of power tools. A user walks into a Home Depot today and they buy a combo kit of Milwaukee tools, say, a drill driver and a saw. Suddenly, our rep sits with them and says, "You've already made the investment in this $1,000 combo kit. You can buy bare tools without batteries or chargers. You can buy them for a fraction of the cost of a loaded cordless product." Instead of paying $250 for a cordless circ saw, you can buy one for $89, the bare tool, and use your battery you already have to power that circ saw. We trained our sales network very carefully to encourage users to add on to their purchase.
The ASPs of our sales have gone from the old days where it was $99 or $199, and today, it's very common for us to sell $1,000 or $2,000 worth of tools to one user who was planning to spend a couple of hundred dollars, and suddenly they realize the economic benefit of these bare tools. If you go into our retail partners or our industrial distributors, you'll see bare tool walls now on display. We're not the only company in this business, we're just furthest ahead, and we intend to market the bare tool benefits in Milwaukee, in Ryobi, in Floor Care, and in all pockets of our company. It's a major deal. One thing I may also mention to you, we are also the only company that's discontinued nickel cadmium batteries in our professional side of our market now.
Our competitors are talking about cordless, and they're selling a lot of cordless, but there's an interesting high percentage of cordless sales by some of our competitors that are still nickel cadmium, which is an out-of-date, archaic technology. The reason they do it is because it's inexpensive, and it allows their numbers to be better. We decided to discontinue NiCad, but there's so many NiCad cordless products that are in the installed base around the world, and that's a frothy target for us to go after. We want to pursue those NiCad users and liberate them much more often than they used to in the old days before cordless phones existed. The same is true in power tools. End users don't want to be caught on a job site with their customers using a cordless tool that's three or four years out of date.
The replacement cycle of power tools is changing rapidly. It's not iPhone and it's not iPad yet. In the old days, power tools would be in place six, eight, or 10 years, and now three years is kind of the average cycle, although it varies based on user. Okay. One of the things that people are grossly underestimating is the long-term impact of the battery aftermarket. Remembering that batteries have no price elasticity. If you're in a system, if you're in a Ryobi or a Milwaukee system, the battery replacement is a must purchase, and the margin potential for the companies that control or have leadership in cordless is immense. We haven't even begun to benefit from what's going to happen as we look three, four years out, because there's a lag time for the battery aftermarket.
It's a very exciting element of our future. Let's not forget, there is a significant opportunity in cordless that's very different than the old days of power tools. A user walks into a Home Depot today, and they buy a combo kit of Milwaukee tools, say, a drill driver and a saw. Suddenly, our rep sits with them and says, "You've already made the investment in this $1,000 combo kit. You can buy bare tools without batteries or chargers. You can buy them for a fraction of the cost of a loaded cordless product." Instead of paying $250 for a cordless circ saw, you can buy one for $89, the bare tool, and use your battery you already have to power that circ saw. We trained our sales network very carefully to encourage users to add on to their purchase.
The ASPs of our sales have gone from the old days where it was $99 or $199, and today it's very common for us to sell $1,000 or $2,000 worth of tools to one user who was planning to spend a couple of hundred dollars, and suddenly they realize the economic benefit of these bare tools. If you go into our retail partners or our industrial distributors, you'll see bare tool walls now on display. We're not the only company in this business, we're just furthest ahead, and we intend to market the bare tool benefits in Milwaukee, in Ryobi, in Floor Care, and in all pockets of our company. It's a major deal. One thing I may also mention to you, we are also the only company that's discontinued nickel cadmium batteries in our professional side of our market now.
Our competitors are talking about cordless, and they're selling a lot of cordless, but there's an interesting high percentage of cordless sales by some of our competitors that are still nickel cadmium, which is an out-of-date, archaic technology. The reason they do it is because it's inexpensive and it allows their numbers to be better. We decided to discontinue NiCad, but there's so many NiCad cordless products that are in the installed base around the world, and that's a frothy target for us to go after. We want to pursue those NiCad users and liberate them with the wonderful qualities of lithium. We're in a position to do that because we don't have to worry about our NiCad sales going down. We discontinued NiCad seven years ago at great pain at the time in terms of sales and profit, because we were absolutely committed to lithium. Okay.
Maybe you say $36 billion is crazy. I can't get my mind around a market that big. Even if it's $30 billion, the implication for-- I have a feeling, my people think that I'm conservative, believe it or not, they think that there's more opportunity than what I've just articulated. Who knows what it is? The fact is, we're creating a market for cordless. We're driving it. We're convincing users to switch. Our competitors are benefiting, too. If our competitors come out with an announcement and their sales are up and not down, that doesn't mean that we're losing share. That doesn't mean that it's affecting us. I actually think it's good. I think it shows that the overall market is healthy and we've created opportunities for everyone. My chairman expects us to be leaders, and believe me, we will.
We will be leaders in the space. I think every time a competitor sends out an announcement and their sales are up four or five points, that doesn't mean it's had any effect on us. In fact, our leadership position in power tools is crystal clear. We're the only company. The fastest growing segment of cordless over the last five years is called subcompact. These are ultra-compact tools that cater to the user of the future. These are ergonomically friendly tools that are easy to use. They're lightweight. Because lithium and because brushless motors combine to give you so much power with such light weight, we're able to replicate what traditional full-size tools can do with these tools that weigh a fraction, a third as much. We're the only company that's made a commitment to subcompact.
We have competitors that are talking about new generations of cordless that cover all kind of platform, all kind of voltages, and they've skipped the whole subcompact sector. I always thought cordless products were supposed to be smaller, lighter, more compact, and more convenient than corded, like your iPhone. People aren't buying cordless phones that look like landlines. They're buying smaller, lighter, more compact products, and that's what subcompact gives us. If you look, we have raced ahead in this space, and it's almost game over. There's no one that's even close to having the leadership position in the 80-plus subcompact tools that we've got, which will be hundreds and hundreds in five years. We also, make no mistake, we have a clear leadership position in terms of technology and breadth of line and user acceptance when it comes to full-size cordless.
If you look at that picture, five years ago, there were 25 tools in the picture. I can tell you five years from now, I'm going to have to get Horst to get us a bigger screen because there will be three times the amount of cordless products that you see in that photo. It was interesting, on Bloomberg this morning, I was doing a live interview with Bloomberg, and they always ask you the same tired cliché, "What is your biggest worry as a CEO?" My biggest worry is hiring enough engineers to develop all the products that our guys have come up with. Our product pipeline is so stacked that the trick for us is how do we convert all those cool ideas into products that we can race to market. Far, we're doing pretty well, and with the wonderful qualities of lithium.
We're in a position to do that because we don't have to worry about our NiCad sales going down. We discontinued NiCad seven years ago at great pain at the time in terms of sales and profit because we were absolutely committed to lithium. Maybe you say $36 billion is crazy. I can't get my mind around a market that big. Even if it's $30 billion, and I have a feeling my people think that I'm conservative. Believe it or not, they think that there's more opportunity than what I've just articulated. Who knows what it is? The fact is we're creating a market for cordless. We're driving it. We're convincing users to switch. Our competitors are benefiting, too. If our competitors come out with an announcement and their sales are up and not down, that doesn't mean that we're losing share.
That doesn't mean that it's affecting us. I actually think it's good. I think it shows that the overall market is healthy, and we've created opportunities for everyone. My chairman expects us to be leaders, and believe me, we will. We will be leaders in the space. I think every time a competitor sends out an announcement and their sales are up four or five points, that doesn't mean it's had any effect on us. In fact, our leadership position in power tools is crystal clear. The fastest-growing segment of cordless over the last five years is called subcompact. These are ultra-compact tools that cater to the user of the future. These are ergonomically friendly tools that are easy to use. They're lightweight.
Because lithium and because brushless motors combine to give you so much power with such light weight, we're able to replicate what traditional full-size tools can do with these tools that weigh a fraction, a third as much. We're the only company that's made a commitment to subcompact. We have competitors that are talking about new generations of cordless that cover all kind of platform, all kind of voltages, and they've skipped the whole subcompact sector. I always thought cordless products were supposed to be smaller, lighter, more compact, and more convenient than corded, like your iPhone. People aren't buying cordless phones that look like landlines. They're buying smaller, lighter, more compact products, and that's what subcompact gives us. If you look, we have raced ahead in this space, and it's almost game over.
There's no one that's even close to having the leadership position in the 80-plus subcompact tools that we've got, which will be hundreds and hundreds in five years. We also, make no mistake, we have a clear leadership position in terms of technology and breadth of line and user acceptance when it comes to full-size cordless. If you look at that picture, five years ago, there were 25 tools in the picture. I can tell you five years from now, I'm going to have to get Horst to get us a bigger screen because there will be three times the amount of cordless products that you see in that photo.
It was interesting, on Bloomberg this morning, I was doing a live interview with Bloomberg, and they always ask you the same tired cliché, "What is your biggest worry as a CEO?" My biggest worry is hiring enough engineers to develop all the products that our guys have come up with. Our product pipeline is so stacked that the trick for us is how do we convert all those cool ideas into products that we can race to market. So far, we're doing pretty well, and we're hiring an awful lot of engineers, but it's a high-class problem. I love the notion of twin drivers of growth.
We have not only amazing success with Milwaukee, but you have to recognize the RYOBI brand has gone from one of many do-it-yourself power tool brands to a point where today RYOBI has got a commanding global leadership position in DIY power tools and in particularly in DIY cordless. This is amazing. If I ask you, name the number two competitor in DIY tools, you will have a hard time coming up with it because it's RYOBI, and then there's five other brands that are almost meaningless in this category. There's no global brand, and there's no brand that has taken the notion of an overarching platform where one battery works in outdoor products, garage door openers, a host of power tools, et cetera.
When we talk about cordless, it's true the professional market for cordless is going to be vast and probably five times bigger than DIY. The DIY market's big too, and we're ready to go with Ryobi in the DIY side. It's very exciting. Okay, now there's one other thing that Horst and I feel like we should clear up with the investment community. If housing starts in the U.S. go down 3%, investors sell our stock, and people think it's going to have some kind of effect on TTI. It's true. ResCon in the U.S. and worldwide is an important segment for TTI. It's about $1.8 billion, as we project, Steph, on the 2021, out of the $36 billion. There's 23 other verticals that I never hear about from our investors and our analysts. Think about it. There's 24 verticals.
ResCon gets unbelievable air time. One of our competitors is hyper-focused on ResCon, and I know that because I launched their brand, and I wrote the strategy. It was all ResCon. TTI is different. We are hyper-focused on a broad base of verticals, including all these infrastructure areas that you hear the new U.S. president talk about. I can tell you there's a lot of them, and we are not just a ResCon company. You'll see today some examples of this. Let's flip through some highlights on Milwaukee. There's way too many for today's review, but like always, we'll just share a couple of highlights on some new things. We were first to market with the world's highest power battery, the nine amp Milwaukee high output battery. It's selling like crazy.
We expect our competitors to launch similar versions six months or a year later, which is fine. We'll have a new version, as you know, in the future to stay ahead. We cannot keep these high-cost, high-powered power tools fueled by that battery in stock. It is amazing what's happened with these products. The highlight of our fourth quarter launch program was our miter saw. We have engineered a cordless miter saw that is actually smaller, much lighter, and more compact than corded units and even the other cordless units. It's selling like crazy. We are thrilled with the reaction of this flagship product. Perhaps the biggest opportunity is not as sexy. This is a line of we call mid-torque impact drivers, impact wrenches.
These products are used in a variety of infrastructure applications to drive lag bolts or any kind of threaded mechanical fasteners that are a little bit thicker, which is what you see in the infrastructure arena. We have a line of these that's unique. They're incredibly powerful, and this is designed to replace the pneumatic impact wrenches that you see in all sorts of applications. You recognize them in the automotive channels because if you get your car repaired, you'll see these pneumatic impact wrenches to buy a new set of tires. What you don't see, perhaps, is the nuclear power plants and the offshore drilling rigs and the thousands of infrastructure projects that all rely on this kind of device. The thing is, historically, they've been pneumatic. In the future, we think it'll be cordless.
We won't get 100% of it, we're going to get an awful lot of this cordless market because we're first, and we have a terrific design. We also are entering on the Milwaukee side, the petrol replacement outdoor products. These are great for professional landscapers. This is yet another range we're launching. I think one of the biggest opportunities in the company in the line that's very much still underestimated, misunderstood, is high-performance lighting. Here's an example of a wonderful infrastructure product. If you ever see a utility repairman working on a power line, a telephone line or a power line, they're lifted up in a bucket or a cherry picker, a device that raises you up to get so you can work on a power line. This is a bucket light that hangs off of that bucket.
A lot of times the power goes down at night, and a lot of times that user's up there trying to fumble with a flashlight and fix the issue. These lights are designed to change the way the utility worker can light up his job site. There are dozens of these high-performance lighting products that we're rolling out that all use the same batteries as our 12 and 18-volt system. They're all unique to TTI. They all use the unbelievable LED lighting technology, which replaces the dreadful halogen and fluorescent incandescent solutions of the past. The potential for this is so vast, I think people can't believe it. This has become very topical. As Horst knows, we were working on these devices long before we had a new president in the United States. This is an example of an infrastructure-centric product.
This is a 3-inch thick cordless cable cutter. If you're working on cable lines in New York City under the streets, and you have to cut a 3-inch thick cable, you're not going to do that with a wire cutter. Historically, people do this with these enormous, expensive hydraulic cutting devices, and they're inherently unsafe because if it's a live wire, there's no real way to detect that, and you can get this arcing, which is not a good thing. We have a remote control cable cutter. You can orient this to cut the cable. You can activate it remotely. If there's any juice in that cable, there's no danger to the user. This will be adopted by safety-oriented countries in a millisecond. It's cordless. It works off the same battery as the rest of the system.
It's not a sexy product that sells at retail, but it's an infrastructure product that's got vast potential. Here's another example. This is another cable cutting product. This is to cut above-ground cable. There's lots of these various types of, we call them FORCE LOGIC hydraulic replacement products, all infrastructure based, whether it's a dam, a bridge, a tunnel, all these infrastructure projects need these. It's unique. They're incredibly powerful, and this is designed to replace the pneumatic impact wrenches that you see in all sorts of applications. You recognize them in the automotive channels because if you get your car repaired, you'll see these pneumatic impact wrenches to buy a new set of tires. What you don't see, perhaps, is the nuclear power plants and the offshore drilling rigs and the thousands of infrastructure projects that all rely on this kind of device.
The thing is, historically, they've been pneumatic. In the future, we think it'll be cordless. We won't get 100% of it, but we're going to get an awful lot of this cordless market because we're first and we have a terrific design. We also are entering on the Milwaukee side, the petrol replacement outdoor products. These are great for professional landscapers. This is yet another range we're launching. I think one of the biggest opportunities in the company and the line that's very much still underestimated and misunderstood is high-performance lighting. Here's an example of a wonderful infrastructure product. If you ever see a utility repairman working on a power line, a telephone line or a power line, they're lifted up in a bucket or a cherry picker, a device that raises you up to get so you can work on a power line.
This is a bucket light that hangs off of that bucket. Because a lot of times the power goes down at night, a lot of times that user is up there trying to fumble with a flashlight and fix the issue. These lights are designed to change the way the utility worker can light up his job site. There are dozens of these high-performance lighting products that we're rolling out that all use the same batteries as our 12 and 18-volt system. They're all unique to TTI. They all use the unbelievable LED lighting technology, which replaces the dreadful halogen and fluorescent incandescent solutions of the past. The potential for this is so vast, I think people can't believe it. Now, this has become very topical.
As Horst knows, we were working on these devices long before we had a new president of the U.S. This is an example of an infrastructure-centric product. This is a three-inch thick cordless cable cutter. If you're working on cable lines in New York City under the streets, and you have to cut a three-inch thick cable, you're not going to do that with a wire cutter. Historically, people do this with these enormous expensive hydraulic cutting devices, and they're inherently unsafe because if it's a live wire, there's no real way to detect that, and you can get this arcing, which is not a good thing. We have a remote control cable cutter. You can orient this to cut the cable. You can activate it remotely. If there's any juice in that cable, there's no danger to the user.
This will be adopted by safety-oriented countries in a millisecond. It's cordless. It works off the same battery as the rest of the system. It's not a sexy product that sells at retail, but it's an infrastructure product that's got vast potential. Here's another example. This is another cable cutting product. This is to cut above-ground cable. There's lots of these various types of, we call them FORCE LOGIC hydraulic replacement products, all infrastructure-based, whether it's a dam, a bridge, a tunnel, all these infrastructure projects need these kind of tools. We're trying to liberate that user too, not just the DIYer, with a cordless solution that uses the same battery they use in their drill and their saw and their recip saw.
This is how we come up with crazy numbers like $36 billion, because the infrastructure market, the potential, it's hard to size it. I can tell you, whatever it is, we intend to be leaders in the space. One of the cool things about having a floor care company and a power tool company together is that we can sell an awful lot of floor care devices under our power tool brands targeting different users. This is a Milwaukee pole vac. It's super powerful. It's a different user than a Hoover or a Dirt Devil or a VAX user. It's a job site user that needs a quick cleanup with a lot of power. It's noisy, it's got great suction, and it's perfect for job sites. By the way, I believe a lot of contractors will take this home, too, that's okay.
Here's an interesting thing. The benefit of hiring millennials, again, is that you develop marketing ideas and products that are tied to your iPhone. This lovely device is called a TICK. It's not meant to be a brand name that makes you feel good, but it's descriptive. The TICK is a job site tool and construction tracking device. There are consumer versions of these things now, but they don't hold up on a job site. They don't have quite the distance capability. This has got 100 feet distance capability. It's indestructible. You attach it to a ladder or a drill or a wheelbarrow or your kid's motorcycle, whatever it is, but you attach it to any device and it will track on your iPhone the same Milwaukee ONE-KEY app that's being downloaded at record levels in our industry.
That same app is used to track these TICK-enabled products. Anyhow, it's not a great brand name, but the margins and sales potential are quite exciting. Okay, let's turn to Ryobi, the other growth engine of the company today. Ryobi is, as I said, number one in the world in consumer or DIY cordless. That means we're number one above Bosch, above the old Black & Decker brand, which I was involved with for years, above all the brands in Australia and the U.S., et cetera. That number one position is only going to get better. Here's just this first six months this year, we're going to launch a myriad of new ONE+ products. You have a miter saw, you have a brushless hammer drill, you have a belt sander, first time in ONE+. You have a really cool sump pump.
Cordless sump pump, which has got lots of applications around the home, and I think we're going to see these on job sites. You have a glue gun, cordless finally. You have a palm router. You have an inflatable toy inflator. We'd never put this in Milwaukee, but at Ryobi, it's perfect for an air mattress, et cetera. It's the same battery you use in your drill. You can see the potential for this in the home. We have a palm sander, and this goes on, and there's a new planer. We have so many ONE+, so many ideas in Ryobi with our DIY team that I think we're very confident over the next five years that we can grow that business, not at the rate of Milwaukee, but certainly way above what the market expects. Remember, cordless is inherently more profitable than corded.
There's the network effect, which accumulates even more sales, and the battery aftermarket is quite exciting. Our key retailers are 100% behind the Ryobi ONE+ phenomenon. In fact, they're helping to drive it because they're seeing the benefit. None of this stops with outdoor. Our outdoor team has been outstanding at coming up with cordless innovation, and the whole idea in outdoor is to liberate people from petrol to cordless. Naturally, we're still selling petrol. We sell a few plug-in outdoor products, but the future is going to be increasingly more cordless. This is our fifth version of an 18-volt string trimmer, this one with a brushless motor. It's lighter, it's more powerful, it's got less noise, and it's amazing performance for an 18-volt string trimmer.
We have a mower. This is a 40-volt mower that will literally replace your gas or your petrol lawnmower. The one charge gives you 45 minutes of runtime, which is the same as a tank of gas, and the cutting performance is amazing. There's no cord to pull, there's no noise, there's no greenhouse gas issue, and suddenly we have a cordless growth driver in a space where we've never participated, which is the lawnmower space. The new blower, same thing, a fantastic revolutionary blower off the same battery as the mower. The final part of our story this morning is Floor Care. We are not pleased with the performance of our Floor Care operation worldwide. We are incredibly pleased with the strategy that our team has put together, as Frank pointed out up front. Of course, we've hired an outstanding team in Floor Care.
We are focused on a strategy that we think long term will allow TTI to succeed. The focus is on cordless and robots. The focus is not just me-too product, but it's on technology. For example, we created a capability called REACT. REACT actually adjusts automatically the Floor Care product, the vacuum cleaner, whether it's cordless or corded. It will adjust to the floor surface and set the beater brush and the height to exactly the height you need for that surface. What house or what building has the same floor surface everywhere? None. You go from carpet to tile, you go from linoleum to another floor surface, and this will adjust because of the sensors in the system. It's controlled by your iPhone. There's so many capabilities here that we think we're onto something really big with Floor Care.
The technology is called FloorSense. We'll show you later, but it's amazing. It will also adapt to cordless, which we'll launch later this year. We finally are launching robots. Robots are tricky because the suction is important, but we think we have robots that will be really cool and whiz around your flat and also deliver the appropriate suction that we're proud of it with the Hoover and the VAX brand names. We have some wonderful success over in the U.K. with our new cordless VAX products. You can look at the overall sales and say, "Oh boy, these guys are really struggling in Floor Care." Actually, that's not true because the hottest product right now in the U.K. is the VAX Blade, which is a unique product that we've pioneered. We launched it in the U.K.
It's got this technology called Helix, which orients the motor on its side and gives it more suction and separating capability than a traditional motor. It's cordless, and it's a pull vac, so it weighs one-third of an upright. It's an example of thinking differently in Floor Care in a way that will allow us to achieve, we think, in the future what we've been able to pull off in the past with power tools. Anyhow, turn it back over to our Chairman, Horst Pudwill, for his final comments.
Thank you very much, Joe. I don't know, one question was asked, what is our space, our floor space-
In fact, they're helping to drive it because they're seeing the benefit. None of this stops with outdoor. Our outdoor team has been outstanding at coming up with cordless innovation, and the whole idea in outdoor is to liberate people from petrol to cordless. Naturally, we're still selling petrol. We sell a few plug-in outdoor products, but the future is going to be increasingly more cordless. This is our fifth version of an 18-volt string trimmer, this one with a brushless motor. So it's lighter, it's more powerful, it's got less noise, and it's amazing performance for an 18-volt string trimmer. We have a mower that is. This is a 40-volt mower that will literally replace your gas or your petrol lawnmower. The one charge gives you 45 minutes of runtime, which is the same as a tank of gas, and the cutting performance is amazing.
There's no cord to pull, there's no noise, there's no greenhouse gas issue, and suddenly we have a cordless growth driver in a space where we've never participated, which is the lawnmower space. The new blower, same thing, a fantastic revolutionary blower off the same battery as the mower. The final part of our story this morning is Floor Care. We are not pleased with the performance of our Floor Care operation worldwide. We are incredibly pleased with the strategy that our team has put together, as Frank pointed out up front. Of course, we've hired an outstanding team in Floor Care. We are focused on a strategy that we think long-term will allow TTI to succeed, and the focus is on cordless and robots. The focus is not just me-too product, but it's on technology. For example, we created a capability called REACT.
REACT actually adjusts automatically the Floor Care product, the vacuum cleaner, whether it's cordless or corded. It will adjust to the floor surface and set the beater brush and the height to exactly the height you need for that surface. What house or what building has the same floor surface everywhere? None. You go from carpet to tile, you go from linoleum to another floor surface, and this will adjust because of the sensors in the system. It's controlled by your iPhone. There's so many capabilities here that we think we're onto something really big with Floor Care. The technology is called FloorSense. We'll show you later, but it's amazing. It will also adapt to cordless, which we'll launch later this year. We finally are launching robots.
Robots are tricky because the suction is important, but we think we have robots that will be really cool and whiz around your flat and also deliver the appropriate suction that we're proud of it with the Hoover and the VAX brand names. We have some wonderful success over in the U.K. with our new cordless VAX products. You can look at the overall sales and say, "Oh, boy, these guys are really struggling in Floor Care." Actually, that's not true because the hottest product right now in the U.K. is the VAX Blade, which is a unique product that we've pioneered. We launched it in the U.K. It's got this technology called Helix, which orients the motor on its side and gives it more suction and separating capability than a traditional motor. It's cordless, and it's a pull vac, so it weighs one-third of an upright.
It's an example of thinking differently in floor care in a way that will allow us to achieve, we think, in the future, what we've been able to pull off in the past with power tools. Anyhow, turn it back over to our Chairman, Horst Pudwill, for his final comments.
Thank you very much, Joe. I don't know, one question was asked, what is our space, our floor space? We purchased our property in China 2003. Still one-fourth is not used yet, and ready for expansion. In the United States, we just purchased, or we were given, close to 5 million sq ft in South Carolina.
A fantastic location. We still have another 3 million sq ft for expansion, which already has been built into our CapEx cost. Whatever we spend in 2017 or 2018, geographically, we can move $200 million, which we have half to North America and half in Asia. We are very flexible. Anyhow, I previously said I'm very pleased to announce with our performance. I would like to ask you, I hope you are very pleased with the announcement and the performance we're having now. March 2017, we have very good visibility. All I can tell you that we're heading for another very successful year. About M&A, M&A was mentioned very little. We are constantly looking on the valuation companies, which is a strategic fit for us and technically advanced technology, and we are working on it.
We also discussed in our board meeting that we will further improve our communication with our investor, giving him more from time to time update. I know we're reporting twice a year in Hong Kong and the U.S. quarterly, we owe you more frequently update. We will not disappoint you with our performance. Thank you very much for attending, and looking forward to seeing you here again with another record result. Thank you very much. We purchased our property in China 2003. Still one-fourth is not used yet, and ready for expansion. In the United States, we just purchased, or we were given, close to 5 million sq ft in South Carolina.
A fantastic location. We still have another 3 million sq ft for expansion, which already has been built into our CapEx cost. Whatever we spend in 2017 or 2018, geographically, we can move $200 million, which we have half to North America and half in Asia. We are very flexible. Anyhow, I previously said I'm very pleased to announce with our performance. I would like to ask you, I hope you are very pleased with the announcement and the performance we're having now. March 2017, we have very good visibility. All I can tell you that we're heading for another very successful year. About M&A, M&A was mentioned very little. We are constantly looking on the valuation companies, which is a strategic fit for us and technically advanced technology, and we are working on it.
We also discussed in our board meeting that we will further improve our communication with our investor, giving him more from time to time update. I know we're reporting twice a year in Hong Kong and the U.S. quarterly, but we owe you more frequently update. We will not disappoint you with our performance. Thank you very much for attending, and looking forward to seeing you here again with another record result. Thank you very much.