Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. I would like to welcome you here today to the TTI Group's 2015 annual results announcement. I think we have a record attendance. I apologize, there are not enough chairs. I guarantee you we didn't save on beverages. Neil, sorry. Some of you people have to stand in the back. Thank you. 2015 marks another milestone for our group, and it is our 30th anniversary. I'm happy to report that TTI delivered another record year of revenue, profit, and gross margin. Accordingly, we also increased our dividend, which will make our shareholder very happy for the months to come. Frank, thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
We had a solid year of revenue while expanding our gross margin. When you see our results in more details, there was a small dent in our floor care division, which was minor. We relocated our manufacturing from Mexico to China, and there were some costs involved. Only one time. We are well on track to position our performance nicely for 2016. Joe will give you some more details. I'm sure that we will continue our momentum and only positive surprises to come. Thank you. Frank, on to you.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. As the chairman said, another record year for TTI, be it results and be it turnout. Thank you. Our revenue had a record of over $5 billion, with gross profits, net profit, and margins all increased for the eighth consecutive year. We have delivered all the targets set at the beginning of 2015. Continuous revenue growth, margin expansion, net profit increase, strong balance sheet, and low gearing. Our turnover increased it by 6% to $5.04 billion despite currency headwinds negatively affecting our top line upon translation. However, if we exclude the FX effect, our revenue actually grew by 10.5%. This growth demonstrated the strength of our brands and the results of our continuous, very focused investments in new products and marketing.
It's also worth highlighting that Milwaukee delivered a very strong growth of 17.7% on a global basis, or 23.7% excluding currency effect. Milwaukee's strong growth momentum will continue in the coming years, and Joe will share more with you later. Gross margins increased from 35.2% to 35.7%, a 50 basis point increase over last year. Gross profits increased it by 7.4% to $1.8 billion. EBIT increased it by 14% to $400 million, with margin improved by another 50 basis points to 7.9%. Net profit increased it by 18% to $354 million, with a margin expansion of 70 basis points to 7%. Earnings per share also increased it by 18% from $0.1641 to $0.1937. The board recommended a final dividend of HKD 0.2325 per share, an increase of 22.4% as compared to that of last year.
Together with the HKD 0.16 interim dividend paid, total dividend for 2015 amount to HKD 0.3925 per share, an increase of 24.6% over last year, representing a payout ratio of 26.2%. Power Equipment Division accounting for close to 79% of the group's revenue, led by Milwaukee's strong growth and the outstanding performance of our RYOBI's ONE+ lithium-ion product platform on both power tools and outdoor products, increased it by 11.8% or 16.8% excluding FX effect. Operating margins improved by 130 basis points to 9.5%, and operating profits increased it by 29.7% over that of last year. Floor Care Appliances Division's revenue declined by 11.2% or 8.1% after excluding FX effect. However, both our Hoover and Oreck delivered growth on a global basis after currency.
The negative impact of the adoption of the mandatory EU energy labelling directives, together with the planned exit of certain non-strategic low-margin businesses and categories, were the major factor for the revenue decline. With the causes associated with the EU labelling directives, investments in promoting our Living Minds cordless programs for 2016, and certain one-time expenses charged to the P&L in the second half of 2015, exiting non-strategic businesses and the relocation, as Chairman mentioned. Operating profits of this division declined by 64.6% as compared to that of last year. However, if we exclude these one-time charges, which is non-recurring in nature, operating margin actually was at 3.1%. From a geographic perspective, North American market, representing approximately 75% of the group's revenue, remained very strong, delivered a double-digit growth of 11.2% or 12.1% if we exclude the currency impact.
Europe, representing approximately 17% of the group's revenue, registered an 11.1% decline. Excluding the negative translation effect, our European business delivered an over 5.1% growth, supported by the Power Equipment's 14.4% growth in this region. Rest of the world, again, due to translation effect, only delivered a revenue growth of 3.5%, but in essence, the growth should be 18.9%. Australia continued to be the major growth driver in this region. Total SG&A spend increased by only 5.8%, representing 27.9% of the group's revenue, very comparable to that of last year. They increased mainly from our continuous investments in strategic SG&A to fuel growth momentum and for market share gains. R&D spend remained at 2.5% of revenue, comparable to that of last year. We've managed to leverage our administrative expenses against revenue growth. Administrative expenses only increased by 2.4%, supporting a revenue growth of 6%.
Net finance costs reduced by 48.8% to $13 million, representing only 0.26% of revenue as compared to 0.53% of that of last year. The improvement came from the retirement of some high cost debts in the first quarter of 2015 and better-managed effective finance costs during the year, leveraging on our balance sheet, low gearing, and strong operating cash flows. Effective tax rates was at 8.5% in 2015. We continue to maintain that, effective tax rates of in between 8%-10% is very sustainable going forward.
Let me get out the door.
Our balance sheet remains very strong. Shareholders' equity increased by $189 million to $2.16 billion. Net current assets increased by 17.2% to $924 million. Our gearing ratio remained low. It was 13.4% in 2015. However, if we add back the one-time cash spend of $70 million for the purchase of our own corporate headquarters in Hong Kong in second quarter of 2015, our gearing would have been 9.9%, below 10% level. We are confident that our gearing will remain low with our strong cash flows from operations and very focused working capital management. Working capital as a percentage of sales was at 17%. The increase in percentage over 2014 was mainly due to the planned strategy to carry higher inventory level to support our service levels, considering our very strong growth momentum in the Power Equipment segment, particularly on Milwaukee.
Inventory days increased by five days with receivable days comparable to that of 2014. Payable days was at 84 days, three days less than that of last year. It's partly due to the cash discounts we offer to our suppliers, which accelerated our payments but delivered eventual financial benefits to the group. Our working capital as a percentage to sales will remain low and will remain below our target level of 20% going forward, with inventory days expected to gradually decline in the years to come. In any case, most of the inventory increase being self-financed by the increase in the payable days. Effectively, our suppliers are also helping to finance the increase in inventory. Operating CapEx for the year increased by 4.7% to $161.5 million, very much in line with our 2015 projections.
Total debt increased as a result of the cash purchase of our office, the strategic increase in working capital, and additional CapEx spend. Excluding the working capital financing, which basically is self-financed by our working capital, we actually are in a net cash position. Currently, approximately 92% of our debts matured beyond 12 months, so we have no refinancing pressure in 2016. Under the current low interest rate environment, we will continue to maintain 100% of our debts in floating rate, but we will closely follow the rate movements and realign our debt structure to optimize our portfolio if needed and accordingly. This concludes my review, and I would like to pass the floor to Joe.
Thank you, Frank. As Horst and Frank shared, we are thrilled to announce another record-breaking year at TTI. Sales up 6%, but in local currency, we were up 10.5%, which means in the markets that we're targeting, we are capturing market share like crazy. There is nobody in our industry that's growing anywhere near this kind of rate. Of course, the 10.5%, Frank, it reflects the Floorcare miss in sales. The Power Equipment part of our company was amazing. In fact, Power Equipment, in local currency, up 16.8%. It's true, Milwaukee is leading the charge. Our Milwaukee business is on fire. It's growing at rates that have never been seen in the industry. Our other power tool, Power Equipment businesses like RYOBI, ONE+, our outdoor business, our AEG business, all these businesses are growing beautifully throughout the world.
This was a rare year where we saw every geography and every brand of the company in the Power Equipment exceed expectations. We have an amazing company-wide level of momentum today. I'll talk about Floorcare. Floorcare is a very different situation. We're restaging Floorcare. We had some one-time issues, as Horst pointed out, we are also in the process of a very challenging shift from conventional Floorcare products to cordless and to a new commercial line, and I'll show you that in a moment. Our sales geographically were a real highlight in 2015. Of course, North America up double digit, Europe up five, and that's after the Floorcare situation. Europe was up strong double digit in Power Equipment. We see Western Europe as a massive growth opportunity for the company.
We love developed markets where there's a focus on safety on the job site and where the consumer that we sell to has the right level of disposable income to buy our high-end products. Of course, rest of the world, led by Australia, but not only Australia, was up 18.9%. As Frank pointed out, our P&L was a record-breaking picture for 2015. Gross margin up yet again, another 50 basis points. That may be the most important metric in the presentation because we are growing this company at a double-digit rate, while gross margin goes up year after year. Frank, how many years in a row now? We're talking eight, seven-
Seven years
seven years in a row. This is unheard of. We're capturing market share, but we're not lowering price. We're raising price year after year, and the gross margin keeps going up. That's an incredibly exciting end result of a new product flow and of a technology machine that we have here at TTI that none of our competitors can match. What we've done so far here is just the beginning. You ain't seen nothing yet because we have so much new product on the way that we are very confident we can continue this kind of trend as we move into the future. Of course, EBIT up 14, with the sales growth up 10, so that shows good leverage. Our net profit up 18. Again, excellent leverage on the bottom line. We still have a long way to go. Look at this chart.
This is my favorite part of the presentation. It's, again, gross margin back to 2011. To go from 32.6 in a fiercely competitive industry where our competitors, Horst, have been in place for decades, and we're talking about large global companies like Makita in Japan, Bosch in Germany, Stanley Black & Decker in the U.S., and here we are taking all this market share and driving the gross margin up to unprecedented levels. That is, to us, the most exciting and the most critical part of the results announcement. I can assure you that that chart, that trajectory is not gonna stop. We really believe the next five years, we can keep doing that same thing. Now, some years we may go up 20 basis points, some years 50 basis points, some years maybe 70. The gross margin of this company will keep going up as we grow.
Where it ends up someday, we don't know. Can we get to 38 or 40? We'll see. I can tell you this, that every year you come to this presentation, you're gonna see that moving up. Okay, working capital. Frank mentioned that we put inventory in place by design to serve our customers. We added five days of inventory. Why? Because we already have a reputation at TTI, which Horst created, of being the best service level, the best supplier to retail partners like Home Depot or Bunnings in Australia. We have so much new product coming in the first half of this year, and we have so many commitments from our retail partners that we just couldn't take a chance, and we decided we would put the inventory in.
For me, this is a very positive element of our announcement because it shows that we are not shortsighted. Our competitors will often cut off production toward the end of the year so that they can show good inventory results to Wall Street. We think this is insane. We are trying to impress our customers, and eventually, our investors will understand that. That's why we built the inventory. Will we do it again this year? I don't know if it'll go up from 86 days. Maybe some years it'll be 90, maybe it'll go back down to 80. Remember what Frank said. The implication of that inventory build on our balance sheet is zero because there's no impact, because the suppliers, we are now paying our bills in 84 days. 10 years ago, we paid our bills in 20 days.
We now have such an aggressive purchasing organization that we've been able to extract very favorable terms from our suppliers. Don't think this is TTI being a bully and being rough and tough with our suppliers. We are pretty good negotiators, but this is really when you show numbers where we're growing double digit, the suppliers say, "Well, of course, I will accommodate your request, improve your terms." All the other competitors in the power tool business are growing low single digit, and they talk about mid-single digit growth like it's a big success. If we have mid-single digit growth, Horst would throw us out of the room. We wouldn't even accept that kind of result. Suppliers look at us and say, "This is a company that's growing like crazy. We want to be part of it.
Therefore, we will put the inventory in to support the growth of the company." Anyhow, Frank, by the way, 17% working cap as a percent of sales is still three full points below the target that we set of 20. The best-in-class working capital as a percent of sales in our industry is 20. Most of our competitors are way above it. We're at 17. We are the best in the world at managing working capital, and we're doing that while we satisfy our customers, which is a great thing. Okay, we measure productivity a lot of ways, but the most basic way is to look at sales growth versus headcount. Once again, our sales were up 10.5%, and headcount grew 2.2%.
We're not cutting back on heads that we need, because the productivity programs in our company are working so well, particularly in the manufacturing operations, we've been able to grow sales and hold headcount at a conservative rate. There's a lot of ways that companies show productivity. Most of them are very difficult to understand by design, you can't understand it. This is simple. If sales grows faster than headcount, you know we're managing overhead effectively. Okay. A highlight of our year, we had a lot of highlights, if I cover them all, we won't have time today, but a key highlight was our Milwaukee growth, where we yet again exceeded 20%, 23.7% growth in Milwaukee Power Tools worldwide. This is in a mature industry where these kind of growth levels have never been seen. How are we doing it?
Well, we're doing it with new product. We have so much new product coming in Milwaukee, largely cordless, largely high technology cordless, that is well ahead of our competitors' capabilities. With all those cordless products that we're launching, we've been able to generate growth that, again, you've never seen in the industry. Don't think that this is a one-time success. We are building a machine here at TTI that we believe is capable of delivering this kind of crazy growth. This is Silicon Valley kind of growth. This is not normal for a mature durables industry. This is the kind of stuff you see from Apple and from the brilliant companies at Silicon Valley.
We may not be based in Silicon Valley, Milwaukee, Wisconsin is a long way from there, but the numbers in the new product flow and most importantly, the culture of the company is that same kind of idea. I can tell you that we are targeting this kind of growth the next five years in Milwaukee, that is bold, and you start adding up the numbers, and it gets big fast, right, Horst? That is what we're committed to. We have the new product flow in place to achieve that. It is a very exciting time for our Milwaukee business. Now, if you look at Milwaukee around the world, most people think, well, yeah, that is just a U.S. phenomenon. You guys are strong at Home Depot. The U.S. is a key market for TTI. That is true.
We are very, very strong in the U.S. and Canada, where Home Depot is based. Home Depot is a brilliant partner of ours. They do a fabulous job marketing our products. I think our chairman was clairvoyant in deciding to focus on Home Depot, what, 15 years ago, with the strategy of going exclusive with Home Depot in the U.S. and Canadian market. That has paid off for us fantastically, and you can see the 24.6% growth is pretty good. However, in Europe, where we are. Milwaukee was an afterthought brand five years ago. Europe was up 24%. This is a market where every headline says Europe is slowing down, the economy is bad. There is one issue after another in the European Union, and we're up 24%. Now, we don't let our managers read these headlines anymore. We canceled all newspaper subscriptions.
We just want people focused on new product, right? Sometimes it's best not to look at some of these gloom and doom headlines because we have so much new product and so exciting, we're leading a stampede and a revolution away from corded tools to cordless, therefore it doesn't matter what the economy does. If we continue to do this strategy, you'll continue to see numbers like this. Rest of the world up 15.5%. We are very excited about a focused strategy to develop Milwaukee in Asia, in Australia, in certain parts of Latin America, but it's very focused. There is a lot of markets that we're not focused on. For example, we are not in Brazil. In fact, we pulled out of Brazil. We thought five years ago it was too risky. All of our competitors raced in and have invested big time in Brazil.
We'll see what happens, I think I like our position of not being in. We also have been very conservative about China. We manufacture in China, but we really don't sell much in China. Now that the economy in China is corrected, our competitors have perhaps over-invested in China. We have no issues that we will lose nothing in China, right, Frank? Same with Russia. All of our competitors went into Russia. It was the thing to do. BRIC, Brazil, Russia, India, China. We decided to be very conservative in China. If we can't collect the rubles. I'm sorry, in Russia. If we can't collect our rubles on time, we didn't deal with the distributors. That's why we have had the least amount of pain, Frank, in the Russian theater versus any of our competitors. Anyhow, I like our geographic strategy a lot.
This is, again, a great statement about our company across the board, because every brand of power equipment was up nicely. Milwaukee was up 23%, but all the tool businesses collectively were up 16.8%. Think about that. 16.8% growth with the headlines you're reading worldwide in the economic environment, this is pretty incredible. The momentum we have right now on RYOBI ONE+ worldwide is amazing. This brand has become the number one brand of DIY power tools in the world today. More importantly, the RYOBI brand has become the number one brand of DIY, do it yourself, cordless products in the world today. There was a time when Bosch or Black & Decker held that position of leadership, today it's not even close.
We have developed a dominant overarching platform of cordless products called RYOBI ONE+ that's selling like crazy and growing in all the continents where we sell these products. Even AEG, which was referred to as a graveyard brand 10 years ago when we bought it, meaning it was a brand that was on its last leg. You get the metaphor, right? Suddenly, AEG has been electrified by our teams in Australia and Europe. AEG is now growing and has a very important position in the company. We have a sister brand in the U.S., which is a Home Depot captive brand. AEG and that sister brand work beautifully together. By the way, let's not forget outdoor. TTI is today the world's number one lithium cordless outdoor company. The whole world sells outdoor products that are petrol or AC.
We were pioneers here. Let me tell you, sometimes when you're a pioneer, it's not so easy because the retailers don't want to focus on it. Even our own company struggled with some of the vision we had for cordless outdoor. Today, TTI is by far the number one cordless outdoor power equipment company in the world. Our timing is impeccable because suddenly people realize that pulling a cord and having fumes with a petrol-powered string trimmer and rushing to the gas station every weekend and having a noise level that's impossible for your neighbors. People are realizing if they just buy a RYOBI lithium cordless string trimmer, there's no noise. It starts instantly. There's no trips to the petrol station. You end up with a much better experience for the user. Outdoor has become a major growth driver for the company.
Okay, let me give you some highlights on new products. I apologize in advance because we have so many new products we're rolling out that you're going to see some things that are new that aren't going to be covered in this presentation. That's a high-class problem, right? I'll try to cover highlights here, but I can promise you that I'm going to leave out a lot of the new product that we're going to roll out in the market this year, and there is a lot. The most important new product that we've ever developed is Milwaukee FUEL. This is a line of cordless products positioned at the very high end of the market in the ionosphere. These are the high-priced products in the market. They feature a brushless motor and more electronics on board than you have in your iPad.
These sophisticated, high-technology cordless products have swept the job sites worldwide. You cannot believe how fast contractors are abandoning their $99 nickel cadmium throwaway cordless drills, and they're moving right to a $249 FUEL advanced electronic-based brushless motors product. The momentum in this line at a very high price point is staggering. We've never seen anything like it. Our competitors-- We launched our first version of FUEL four years ago, and our competitors, this past year, launched products that they said were comparable to FUEL. They had brushless motors, some electronics. The month after our competitors launched their version of FUEL, we launched generation two, which is 50% better than the one we started with. The competitors took four years to launch products that were almost as good, and now they're back in a difficult position.
This is why we're taking so much market share in cordless. I can assure you, we're already working on generation three, four, and five. We have a bold vision when it comes to cordless. We are going to be the global leader in cordless in the high-end price point, mid price point, DIY price point with RYOBI. That's a clear focus of the company. Okay, this year, we're launching a couple of amazing additions to the FUEL family, the FUEL platform. The first are these revolutionary- Cordless nailers. Historically, on a job site, a wood-based job site, where you're building homes out of wood, historically, you would buy a nailer that was fired with a pneumatic, with a hose, with a compressor. These are pneumatic nailers. You had a nailer that was tethered to an unwieldy pneumatic cord. The hose.
The hose connected to a compressor, which had to be fired by a generator. The compressor, which is noisy and huge and heavy and expensive, the compressor had to be connected to a generator because a job site doesn't have power. Now you have two large, unwieldy, expensive, dated power sources to drive nails in wood. We eliminate all that with a cordless nailer that has the same kind of performance as one of those tethered nailers, except there's no compressor and there's no generator. This thing is so fast you can't believe it. When users try this nailer, they won't give it back. They won't put it down. It's so jam-free and so quick that it changes the way people look at not only nailers, but cordless in general. I think this is going to trigger the next stampede from corded to cordless.
I think when people see that we can do a nailer in cordless that's this good, they're going to realize that the days of the corded Power Equipment products are over. We're going to launch that this spring. It's very exciting. We also are proud to continue to expand the FUEL brushless motor platform. We have the broadest line of brushless motor tools by far. In fact, that's our current line of 18-volt. I think our competitors have about 10 tools that are brushless, and we have 50 on the way to 500. When we get to 500, we'll go to 1,000. We're just getting started. Our competitors view this as a necessary evil, and we view this as the iPhone, the future. We don't want to make landlines anymore. We're not making payphones anymore. We're focused on the smartphone market, which is FUEL.
We also have the only line of subcompact brushless motor products. No one's even attempted to do this yet. The reason is, it's really hard to take a brushless motor, shrink it, and put it in a subcompact tool and get the power and the runtime that the user demands. But we've done it here nine times, and we have another 30 of these on the way. That'll give us almost an exclusive position in the subcompact market, which is large and growing. Excuse me. This year, we are enhancing the FUEL platform with something that's really revolutionary, and it's called ONE-KEY. For the first time, we have a line of power tools, and really in the whole Power Equipment industry, this program is the first time you have a digital Bluetooth-controlled line of power tools. We have created a unique Milwaukee cloud.
If you buy a ONE-KEY tool, and we have six of them today, and we'll have 100 of them in three years. If you buy any of our ONE-KEY tools, which are really FUEL power tools that have this Bluetooth capability and these electronics on board, suddenly you could take that iPhone. If you're an electrical contractor in Silicon Valley and you have 1,000 trucks on the road, with that one iPhone, the manager of that construction firm can set the torque, the RPMs, the watts out, whatever metric is needed for the job site, and take all the guesswork out of this for the end user. You can set it one time at headquarters. You can track every tool in your fleet.
If you have 20,000 tools and you're the purchasing manager for a big contracting company, you can track the whole thing on one iPhone on the Milwaukee app with our cloud. There are literally hundreds of apps being developed right now for our tools with the iPhone or other smartphone capability. There are hundreds of apps. Contractors, when they see this, it's interesting. We presented this to many, many big users around the world. Inevitably, they come up with ideas that we didn't think of. What we've created here is kind of an open platform, we want contractors to share their ideas with us, we want to turn those ideas into apps. Now, the Milwaukee cloud is exclusive. The technology we have and the tools is bulletproof protected and impossible to replicate.
We think we're way ahead of our competitors here in this kind of mindset, but we also want the user to feel like they can help us design apps, because this is an emerging industry. It's a very exciting time. It's interesting. In the old days in power tools, and I hate to say this because I date myself, but I started in the industry in 1980. What was I, 10, Stephan? I guess my father started me. Anyhow, in 1980, the engineering in power tools was key. The engineering back then was, you hired electrical engineers, mechanical engineers, a metallurgist or two. Some industrial designers. When nickel-cad came along, you hired some chemical engineers. That's what an R&D department looked like, was that group of traditional engineering graduates. Today, all those engineers are still in place in the company.
The most important, the fastest-growing part of our technical environment at TTI is the software development engineer. The same graduate that's working on social media apps for the iPhone is who we are after to design these capabilities for the tools. Of course, these graduates are in incredible demand. They're hard to get. Maybe there is an advantage in not being in Silicon Valley because if we were in Silicon Valley, we would have a lot of competition for the same engineer. Let me tell you, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, we look pretty good if you're a software development engineer and you don't want to move out west. There's a method to the madness here, and we've been wildly successful in attracting brilliant young software development engineers who could easily go to one of the Silicon Valley companies. Not everybody wants to go out west.
I can tell you that when you visit our R&D centers, it's going to look very different than it used to. It's going to look like a millennial-based environment. Nothing is traditional about this. That's how you attract the talent that we need to pull this off. You're going to hear a lot more about ONE-KEY as time goes on. Home Depot was very kind, and they shared their excitement of ONE-KEY in their recent results announcement, and their results were spectacular. We rolled this out last month, and the products are selling like crazy. Very exciting. Okay. Believe me, ONE-KEY is not the only interesting thing that we've rolled out. We have created a line of lighting products powered by Milwaukee batteries that will, we believe, revolutionize the whole notion of lighting on a job site.
If you think of a job site, contractors are working in the evenings. There's a lot of indoor work where there's no power, so you need lighting on a job site. Historically, with incandescent bulbs or fluorescent bulbs, the lighting was limited. Cordless lighting would be limited. The lights weren't bright enough and capable enough to really light up a job site. With the LED lighting technology, we are now able to put a light on a job site that's powered by a Milwaukee battery, and it will replace a generator-powered light that costs five times as much, and is noisy, and has all sorts of other issues. We launched these lights last year, and we can't keep them in stock. It's unbelievable. These are not really power tools. There's no motors in these, right, David? These are lights.
These are flash. The flashlight used to be, Horst, $9.99. This flashlight, this is what this is $249, and we can't keep them in stock. I think that lighting will become a business within TTI that has immense potential. The beauty is that the same battery in the drill is in these flashlights, in these lights. The platform becomes even more embedded. We believe our position becomes even more unassailable versus our competition as time goes on. Anyhow, you're going to hear a lot about lighting in the future. Okay. We're not going to abandon our core user, which is plumbers. In fact, we have so much new cool product coming for the plumber. We think we're going to change the way they do their job on these plumbing job sites. Same with the electrician.
The second most important vertical historically for Milwaukee was the electrician, commercial or residential. We have all sorts of cool innovation for the electrician. Of course, all the ONE-KEY and FUEL products work beautifully for the plumber and the electrician. Of course, plumbers and electricians tend to work in dark areas in buildings, the lighting is appropriate there too. There's a lot for our core user. Our accessory team has done a magnificent job of reinventing categories that have been around forever. This is a next-generation SHOCKWAVE. These are screwdriver bits that will withstand the unbelievable amount of torque you get out of a Milwaukee impact driver. These screwdriver bits. They have a beautifully designed red coating around the ductile part of the bit, where it'll flex but not break. These are uniquely designed products. This is our second generation.
This is the number one growing line of screwdriver bits in the world today and has a lot of potential. We also developed these beautiful. Now, Stacy, this is not jewelry. These are drill bits. These are titanium nitride-coated drill bits. Titanium nitride happens to be gold. Well, you can make it gold if you're smart, and therefore, it's a little easier to market. The titanium nitride adds lubricity to the drill bit, the drill bit will last longer, drill faster, and with less heat. Lubricity is a good thing for a drill bit. However, we've added a new unique capability. We have a hex shank, so you can pop these drill bits in an impact driver, not just a drill bit, an impact driver. We also incorporated SHOCKWAVE technology so that these bits are ductile where they would normally break.
Instead of snapping the drill bit, which just happens all the time, the bit will give a little bit and then keep on going. We launched this a couple of months ago. Who would think you could reinvent the drill bit? Drill bit's around for a long time. We have, when you do that, you disrupt the market, and there's a lot of profitable growth potential for TTI. The tape measure business is new for us. We got into the space four years ago. Our largest competitor has a dominant position. That's going to change. We are going to attack this market globally with an array of products that we think represent superior designs. We have very competitive pricing. Let's face it, our tape measures are beautiful. Who can resist tape measures that look this much better than our competitors?
I didn't put the competitor slide up. I don't want to be too mean. If you saw their tape measures, you would walk right past them in the store. You would buy the ones up on this slide. Right, David? There you have it. We'll launch that this year. We have a line of chalk reels. This is a traditional product, snap reels. You snap a string on a job site. You lay chalk down. Then the contractor knows where to put the foundation, et cetera. We've re-engineered these with planetary gears and replaceable front ends. Our products are dramatically better than the product that's been on the market for years. It's a real step forward for us. Of course, we have now work gloves. These gloves will keep you safe.
People buy them not only for the safety. People really do like to show that Milwaukee badge off. If you're a contractor, you want people to know you're a Milwaukee guy. They get tattoos too. The problem is you can't see the tattoo at a job site. I have a lot of pictures of people sending me the tattoos. I really don't think I should show them here because they're in funny places. The gloves are an interesting addition to the company. Really, this is our first safety product. If you think of a job site, what are we doing? We are surrounding the job site with lighting, which is new, safety equipment, which is new. You can see that these are categories that have hundreds of millions of USD in potential. We just put our toe in the water.
We're just getting started here. This is why we're so optimistic about our growth. There is lots and lots of potential in all these categories for Milwaukee's formula to grow. We've also attacked a couple of traditional markets. These are markets that nobody thought you could disrupt. The pipe wrench, which has been around, what, David, 100 years? We have a new pipe wrench, which is a category that the plumbers all use. We have designed a line of pipe wrenches that disrupts the market, where they're priced at a premium. They have superior features. The people we show them to love them. We will roll out our pipe wrenches this year. We have a line of adjustable pliers. This is known in the U.S. as a Crescent wrench. We have a better Crescent wrench than Crescent.
We'll take some market share there in another traditional category. Of course, we have our INKZALL markers. These markers target the job site with superior ink and all sorts of other features that contractors like. We're selling an awful lot of markers with the Milwaukee brand. Our hand tool family, if you remember back, Stephan, what, four years ago? We just entered the hand tool market when we had acquired Stiletto, we acquired Hart. We had a very tiny hand tool business worldwide. We've shared that our vision is to develop a $1 billion platform in TTI with hand tools. You can see now, when we used to say that, people would chuckle and laugh at us and say, "Oh, my goodness, Stanley's got $2.5 billion in hand tools.
You guys are crazy." People aren't laughing so much anymore, because if you look at this slide, this is what we've done in 4 years. I can assure you that people that worked on all those products are busy right now in a padded secret chamber working on another 500 hand tool products. We will build a very large hand tool platform in the company, mostly sold under Milwaukee, but not exclusive to Milwaukee. Okay. We bought a company 2 years ago that's turned out to be a fantastic success. Company's called Empire. Empire was the number 1 level company in North America. This business has doubled since we bought it. We've improved the manufacturing capability, and we're about to roll out some really exciting new product for levels. Every job site has a level. It's funny.
10 years ago, we all thought the level would be obsolete, and people would go with electronic devices and shoot lasers across the room. There's not one job site you can visit in the world today, not one single job site on any continent that doesn't have levels. Usually, there's four or five of them. People buy the electronic measurements, they still want that level. I guess contractors have learned it's pretty important that the house be straight, right? The building, or bad things happen. We are going to pioneer one innovation after another in the level market. This acquisition, which we didn't talk much about, has turned out to be wildly successful. Okay. I told you already about AEG. This is a brand. This was a graveyard brand. The funeral was complete, and it was about to be lowered in its resting place.
A European team revived it beautifully. Our Australian team took that revival and took it to another level. Suddenly, AEG is a growing brand in the company. It gives us a price point below Milwaukee, above RYOBI, so that we don't have to ever get too aggressive on pricing with Milwaukee. When our competitors get desperate at the end of a quarter, and they want to write big orders and all that, we don't have to react with our premium brand. We can do it with AEG. AEG has a sister brand in the U.S. that we work with Home Depot on. It's really a global platform that's worked really well. Okay. RYOBI is the number 1, as I mentioned, number 1 line of DIY tools in the world.
We're going to strengthen that with the launch of our first brushless DIY product, the 18-volt RYOBI brushless drill. It's not FUEL, it outperforms any DIY cordless drill in the world, it's not even close. This is a very sophisticated product. We're actually launching it in Europe, where the user has a higher level of sophistication and is prepared to pay a much higher premium over a conventional cordless drill. That'll roll out this year. The RYOBI ONE+ program People might remember back when Horst started with this was a very small family of blue tools with very basic capabilities. That has led to a massive sprawling range of RYOBI ONE+ tools with the best-looking colored industrial design in the industry.
We have the only overarching platform of DIY cordless, because our outdoor products, like the lawnmower, and our indoor products, like the drill, all work with the same battery. The lifestyle products like the fan or the radio all work with the same battery. None of our competitors have figured this out. This is inexplicable to us, mind-boggling. It seems basic that you would have a DIY line that all would have the same charger and battery, but there are so many orphaned platforms. A competitor, they fire a product manager who misses their numbers. They put a new product manager in, and the first thing the new product manager does is says, "I'm going to change the platform." We have competitors with dozens of platforms in the DIY space, and we have one platform.
We've been incredibly disciplined about this, of course, for 15 years, and it is paying off like crazy. Anyhow, that's the RYOBI ONE+ program. We enjoyed great growth here last year. This year will be even better. In outdoor, we've taken ONE+ and turned it into really outstanding, lightweight, compact, and affordable outdoor cordless products. Not all users need a giant lawnmower or string trimmer with a heavy, expensive petrol or even lithium motor and battery. These products are lightweight. We just launched another generation. They're selling like crazy. Really for many of the homes in Europe or North America, this is plenty of power and does the job for the user. We're really excited about that, especially since these batteries are the same batteries that we sell in our drills. We also have, though, a 40-volt platform of outdoor.
This platform gives you the same runtime as a full tank of petrol. If you take that lawnmower and you charge the battery, that runtime on that battery is the same as a full tank of petrol on the same lawnmower. People's objection to cordless historically in outdoor has been, "Well, I need more runtime." Now, that's over. You don't need to run to the gas station and buy more petrol. You just go to your garage and get your second battery, which is fully charged, and pop it in, and you can double the runtime. Again, without the noise, the fumes, and the aggravating pull start, which becomes an issue as the petrol products age. Anyhow, this 40-volt line has a lot of promise, and it's selling like crazy. We've become a dominant supplier of pressure washers, both electric and petrol.
The pressure washer category is a significant business in North America and Europe. To wrap it up, on Floorcare, we have given a lot of thought and put together a very disciplined long-term strategy, a long-term roadmap to turn this business into one that delivers consistent improving results. Floorcare will never have the margins of Milwaukee. It doesn't have to. All we have to do is improve it year after year, and it will contribute to the company. There are two things we're doing in Floorcare. The first is cordless. We are obsessed with cordless. Cordless is the future. We are going to move very fast away from the corded platform we have today in Hoover and in VAX, which is over in Europe, and we're going to move to a cordless platform. This is painful.
When you do this, you disrupt your own range. It's hard. If you look at "The Innovator's Dilemma," the famous book, it's tough to obsolete what you sell. If we don't do this, we'll never get Floorcare where it needs to be. We just decided we're moving forward fast, and we're going to turn as much of Floorcare as we can into cordless. The second thing, which might be the biggest opportunity in Floorcare, is commercial. If you think about where Milwaukee is to TTI and RYOBI, Hoover, and Oreck, and VAX, commercial could be the same thing to our consumer vac business. We have hired a dedicated team that know what they're doing on commercial cleaning. We have a really cool technology called HushTone.
HushTone is a line of vacs, corded and cordless, that are so quiet that if the cleaning service in your office is vacuuming outside of your office, you won't hear it. If you're in a hotel and you're trying to sleep when the housekeepers are cleaning up the rooms, you won't hear it. We think that the HushTone. This was not easy to develop, and it's not cheap. It's not for the homeowner because it's expensive. We think as time goes on, the HushTone combined with cordless will give us a commercial opportunity for growth in Floorcare that our competitors don't have. Look, we're pleased to share these record-setting results with you. I know there'll be a few questions on Floorcare, Stephan or Frank and I will explain it to you.
Really, our Floorcare situation is, as Horst said, it's non-recurring in nature. We have a good plan. Let's not forget the 80% of the company that just delivered amazing, spectacular record-setting results, again, after last year's results. Before I open up for questions, we really don't give much guidance to investment community, but I can give you broad-based guidance. The next five years in the company are going to look just like the last five years. There's so much new product coming, you can't believe it. You can do the calculations and figure that out. I can promise you, the same people that engineered all these amazing new products, they're not on holiday right now. They're working on a whole another wave of products, and it's really our competitors' nightmare. There's so much coming now, you can't believe it.
I've never felt more optimistic about the future of TTI. I've been here now almost 10 years. Just wait till you see what we do the next five. Mr. Chairman, we turn it back over to you. Thank you very much.
Yes. Thank you, Joe. Let me say a few words. I'm confident that our solid performance will continue in 2016 that we had in 2015. I share something with you. Because of Joe, I had to get an additional email. 15 emails maximum a day from Joe, but up to 350. I'm so confident, Joe, I think we have to explain our investors. We have great retail partners in the home improvement, such as Home Depot, Bunnings, and so on. You all should know that our main business is so many thousands of distributors or main dealers all over the world to sell our products. Selling is one thing, but millions of customers have endorsed our product, and we are the number one preferred choice. You understand?
That I'm very proud to tell you today, we have a very solid future ahead of us, the best is yet to come. Thank you very much.