Good morning, everyone. Thank you very much for coming here today to attend the Samsonite 2014 final results announcement. With us today is our Chairman, Mr. Tim Parker, our CEO, Mr. Ramesh Tainwala, as well as our CFO, Mr. Kyle Gendreau. Without further ado, we will have our Chairman, Tim Parker, to make some opening remarks, followed by Ramesh, who will talk in more detail about the operations of the company. Thank you.
Okay. Thank you very much indeed, William. Good morning to everybody. You have the same three people as usual, but slightly different jobs. We have a new CEO here who is going to spend most of this morning talking to you about a very fine set of results, and as always, our CFO. We are very, very pleased indeed with these results. If you look the net sales up 15.4%, 17.3% in constant currency. Our EBITDA, again, well into double digits, up 13.8%, and adjusted net income up 9%. Those are the headline numbers. Actually, if you adjust the net income appropriately for some foreign exchange losses and stock option expenses, the adjusted net income pretty much follows EBITDA. This, of course, is the fifth set of results, I think, where we have shown very consistent double-digit growth.
This continues to be our absolute bottom line in the future for our investors, that we are able to achieve, at minimum, double-digit growth in our sales and double-digit growth in our EBITDA and net income. If we turn the page, you can see that the currency, and the strong dollar in particular, has had some impact on our sales. $40 million foreign exchange impact. Of course, towards the end of the year, the dollar strengthened appreciably against a lot of currencies, and in particular, the euro. As a company, we are a very diversified business now. We have certain hedges which we can employ against currency movements. We have seen a drop in the price of oil, which is particularly helpful to our business.
We are confident, as I think Ramesh and Kyle will discuss, we are confident about being able to operate with similar performance parameters against a backdrop of a much stronger dollar, probably for the foreseeable future. Last year, a range of currencies affected the dollar, the Chilean peso, the Russian ruble, the Japanese yen, a variety of currencies, and that cost us around $40 million. If we exclude the acquisitions we made, that is Gregory, Speck, and Lipault, our sales were up 11.9% in constant currency. The margins are off a tad, and of course, as we make acquisitions, there is some short-term noise in the margin structure of the business. Many of the companies that we acquire are not as financially robust as our own or closer to the break-even point.
Inevitably, they do act as a small drag on gross margins, in particular, Speck in this case, which we are in the process of rapidly improving from a performance perspective, which we will talk about at the moment. We are pressing the reset button in Brazil, and that's involved disposing of quite a lot of inventory, which again, has had some impact on our overall gross margin. If you exclude acquisitions, the gross margin improved slightly by 30 basis points. Again, I think this demonstrates that even in a year where the dollar was stronger, not weaker, we are still able to steadily improve our gross margins. Turning over the page. Again, if you look at the EBITDA margin, that is also affected by short-term impacts of acquisitions.
If we strip out acquisitions, our EBITDA margin continues to advance, and in fact, reached an all-time high of 16.8% last year. Adjusted net income follows pretty much what's going on at the EBITDA line once you take out stock compensation expenses, as is normal, and some foreign exchange losses due to the translation of certain intercompany balances. The underlying result is very much in line with EBITDA. Our tax rate, although it's slightly up in 2014, we are fairly confident of slowly reducing that rate over the next few years. It will stabilize in the region, we think, of around 26%. In general terms, as I said, if you look at the next page, a very steady, sustained track record of growth in sales and growth in EBITDA. If you look at the compound growth rates, you can see they're pretty consistent.
We are confident, as I said earlier, of being able to maintain this pattern. We are the leader in a very attractive segment, and we have plenty of weapons at our disposal to continue this solid and sustained performance. When I look at other companies who are in slightly different space, foreign companies quoted here or companies that are at the top end of the market, I think and I hope that you can see that being the sector specialist and being the leader in the marketplace is what underpins sustainable performance. I would now like to hand over to Ramesh, our new CEO, who will fill you in in a bit more detail. Ramesh.
As Tim said, you know for us, 2014 was a very satisfying year for a variety of reasons. One of the key reasons have been that our business grew double digits in practically or in all the four regions that we operate. We operate in North America, South America, Europe and Asia. The other thing was that we also could grow our business into non-travel segment. I'm just giving you the summary. I'm not really reading through those slides. Because as we have spoken since our IPO days, one of the key strategies that we've been working on our business has been to grow our business from a single brand to a multi-brand, from a single category to multi-category and multi-channels. That has been a consistent strategy that we worked for last five years, and we intend to continue to work over the next five years.
What had happened in 2014 is that a proportion of our revenue coming from non-Samson brands have significantly increased. The proportion of our non-travel business also have increased to almost a third of our business. And the proportion of our direct-to-consumer business have grown to around 25% of our business. That has been, we believe, a very satisfying achievement of 2014. That's the same trend we believe we'd be able to maintain it over the next couple of years' time , which once again will help us to get to what we have been talking about in the last couple of years, both me, Tim and Kyle. That we would like to see our business to be far more diversified in terms of brands, far more diversified in terms of the channels and also in terms of the category.
We would like to see Samson contributing 50% of our business, Samson brand and other brands contributing around the rest of the 50%. Similarly, the non-travel to be contributing to around 50% of our revenue from a third, which we are doing now. And direct-to-consumer business to be growing at also to around half of our revenue from about a quarter, which is happening this year. To go to the next slide. If you look at it, what I just mentioned, this has been a very satisfying year because if you see each of our region, Asia grew at constant currency by 18%, North America by 22.9%, Europe by 10.4%, and Latin America by 15.7%. Within Asia, one of the thing which is always an interesting topic to talk about is China.
In China, our business grew very well at 18.7%, in spite of lot of concerns which were raised that what's going to happen in our Chinese business. Of course, we have been benefited by the secular growth in the travel industry, which is helping our business to grow across all geographies. Same is true even for North American business. If you look at our core business in North America also grew by around 7.3%. U.S. by 5.8% and Canada by 35%. In Europe also, our business grew across every single country, including countries like Russia. I'm talking about in constant currency basis. More particularly getting into Asia. Asia, as I said, our business grew on an average by around 18%. The direct-to-consumer channel and like-for-like growth, which is an important parameter of the health of our business, we grew by 7.8%.
We added 41 new point of sale in Asia. The total growth in direct-to-consumer was around 28.6%. American Tourister grew at about 17.5%. Red, the new casual bag brand, which we have now extended beyond Korea into China and other North Asian countries, also grew by 91.9%. Samsonite, that's a core brand, it still continued to grow at about 9.6%. I spoke before, the travel segment in Asia grew by 13.7%. Whereas the casual bags, which is mainly driven by Samson Red and High Sierra, the brand that we acquired a couple of years back in North America, grew by 52.4%. The business category grew by 10%. But it's unfair to really look at the business category without the casual bag because there is an effect of casualization on the business category.
It is always better to combine both the numbers and then read them because more and more people are now carrying backpacks for business rather than carrying the traditional bags. To come to the next slide. As I mentioned, all key markets in Asia grew very nicely. China grew by 18.7%, South Korea by 12.8%, India by 19.9%, Japan by 32%. Japan also got benefited by more Chinese tourists deciding to go to Japan instead of coming to Hong Kong. The North American business grew by 22.9%, and even if you exclude the acquisition, which is mainly Speck, the business grew by 7.3%. Like-for-like growth in the U.S. grew by 6.6%, and the entire direct-to-consumer business grew by 9.3%. Samson grew by 9%, American Tourister 7.5%, High Sierra by 12.2%.
You must understand that you know some American [Tour], I mean, Samsonite travel business in the U.S. is a very mature business, so hence, our growth is more or less in line with the organic growth of the market or a little bit a shade better than that. As Tim already spoke about our EBITDA. Our EBITDA in North America looks like that it dropped from 15.7% to 15.6%, but if you strip out the acquisition, as we said, when we acquire new businesses, most of the time, in the beginning, their profitability is less than our core business. But when you look at our core business profitability, it actually grew over last year by 40 basis points to 16.6%. Coming to Europe.
Europe had another very strong year. The business growing by 10.4% on a constant currency basis, led by Germany 10.6%, Italy 12.3%, U.K. 12.2%, and Turkey, the emerging market, by 34.9%. The direct-to-consumer business grew by 19.9%, driven by 8.8% like-for-like growth, and we added 22 new stores in 2014. This does not include Rolling Luggage, the new acquisition that we made recently. The overall direct-to-consumer business grew by 64.4%. Samson grew by 6%. American Tourister, the new brand which we are just launching in the second half of last year. We launched American Tourister, which has grown very rapidly at 54.8%, and we believe that will be one of the key drivers which gives us confidence to say Europe would continue to grow at double digit even in 2015. Look in terms of the category. Travel category grew by 7.8%, business category grew by 34.9%.
The EBITDA margin seems to be decreased from 17.4% to 17.1%, but it is primarily because in the second half of last year, as we had spoken during our half yearly result announcements, that we intended to increase higher advertising investment behind American Tourister brands. If we strip that out, the profitability actually increased in 2014. Latin America also had a good year. The business growing by 15.7%. We had a strong growth in Brazil, of course, starting with a very small base, almost 100%, Mexico by 14.6%, and Chile by 8.1%. The profit margin went down, as Tim already said. We have been cleaning because we bought back the business. The Brazil business was a distributor-led business.
We bought back a lot of inventories, and we have been trying to clean the inventories because some of the inventories have been outdated, which has resulted into a drop in profits. We believe that Latin America is one of the next big opportunities, and the steps that we are initiating in Latin America gives us the confidence that it will continue to grow mid-teens in 2015. For the sales in the key markets, I just covered most of them, so I will probably skip this slide. If you look at the emerging markets, also our business have grown well. Russia, in spite of all the noise that we have on a constant currency basis, grew by 5.7%. You have markets like Indonesia growing at 14.5%, Brazil, as we said, 105%, Turkey 34%, Philippines 39%, South Africa 24.5%.
Still emerging market does offer us one of the big growth opportunities going forward. In terms of the key brands. All our brands have shown a very healthy growth. Samsonite grew by 10.2%. American Tourister grew by 19%, primarily driven by a very strong growth in Europe, combined together with a continual strong growth in Asia. Asia, it grew by 17.5%, whereas in Europe, it grew by 54.8%, and Latin America by 63%. I would say that we are just getting started with American Tourister in Europe and Latin America. I see no reason why American Tourister could not be as big as Samsonite in these markets, as is the case today in Asia. So, we are just getting started there. High Sierra had another good year. We grew by 24.9%.
High Sierra, apart from it continuing to grow in North America, the brand we acquired, we are now extending the franchise of High Sierra into some other Asian countries with very encouraging results in India, in Australia, in Korea, and some European countries like Germany and Scandinavia. We are just getting started with that. Lot more is expected in next coming few years. Hartmann was another year of housekeeping, we will call it. Hartmann, I see as one of our biggest opportunities going forward. We have just completed, as you see, we took this opportunity to display our new product assortment, which was launched in quarter four of last year. So, it is just getting started, and we believe over next three to five years' time, Hartmann can be built into one of a strong brand within our portfolio.
Gregory has a small sale because we just acquired last year, and same is true for Speck. When we acquired Speck is one of, I would say, in terms of the brand that we acquired, which has given us a pleasant surprise in terms of the opportunity that lies with Speck. We all knew that Speck could have been a big opportunity, but our team, led by Tom Korbas, who is also board member and also heading our North American business, have done an incredible job in Speck. Speck is one business which will continue to grow at a very rapid pace, not only in 2015, but also over next three to five years' time. We believe that by 2015, 2016, it already will start to deliver us profitability in line with our profits in North American business.
We are just getting to the, I mean the first quarter has been the first, let's say, you can say, is the weakest quarter for Speck in 2015 because their sales are not evenly distributed towards all the quarter. But as against making losses in the past, before we acquired the business, we have turned the corner already in quarter one. And we all believe that in next one or two years' time, it will start delivering profits in line with our North American business. These are some of the pictures, some of the products. This is some of the key assortments that we have in Asia. The next slide, there are some of the key products in North America. Then we have the products in Europe.
What I want to really share with you is, one of the strength of our business is this, I would call, the federal structure of our business. So, we are able to tailor-make our product assortment to suiting to the individual markets and individual regions. And that is one of the key strengths of our business, which makes our business fundamentally so resilient that in spite of so much of, let's say, there are parts of the world which has unfavorable trading conditions, and yet we are confident to say that even in 2015 and going forward, as we have done in the past, we are confident our business will continue to grow at double digits and also profits in line with the sales growth. This is American Tourister. The key product assortments. Then you see the North American, American Tourister products. They are very different than the Asian products.
Now you see the European key assortment, which has just got ready, and it is off to a very good start, a very strong start in Europe. Talking a little bit about some of the acquisitions that we made last year. We all know Lipault. Lipault is a youthful, vibrant, a French, a chic French Parisian brand. And we all feel it offers us a very interesting opportunity for us. Because in the travel segment, most of the brands, including the brands which are within our portfolio, they all have a very masculine character. And we have in the past have always tried to make products which can appeal to a woman. In the beginning, we will make something like a red or a pink, and we can see that a woman will get excited. But increasingly, they are getting less and less excited about that.
Even you can make products which are very feminine in looks. Like, last year, we designed a product called Essensis, with flower pattern on that. The product appeals to a woman, but the brand does not necessarily appeal to a woman. Because it is still Samsonite or American Tourister that tend to be more masculine character. And we believe that going forward, there is a trend in the market where women are willing to be more, I would use a word like they would like to celebrate their femininity. There is no reason why you need to have a common family luggage, which you share with your boyfriend or your husband. You like to have separate bags a nd Lipault offers us that real opportunity where we can use the knowledge of Samsonite to design good bags.
But at the same time now, for the first time, we will have a brand which can appeal, and we can touch the heart of the woman in the right way. You can see some of the products here. We have some of the stores now which are in Paris. I must admit it, that the stores of Lipault delivers us better sales than Samson stores just across the street. I'm not saying that Samson is not doing well. What I'm trying to say is that, a woman's ability to spend probably is more than I don't want to say that. Okay. But you get it. Speck, I already covered. We all personally believe that this is one of the biggest opportunities that we have now. When we bought this business, this was a business which was further away from our core competence.
We could say that we took that gamble, led by being nudged by our Chairman Tim, Tom and Kyle. I must say I was one of the pessimists I felt, "Gosh, why are we doing it? We're getting into something which we don't know." I was proven completely wrong. This is a business which can deliver us one of the biggest upside that we can possibly factor in our business, both in terms of the top line as well as in terms of the profits. We often quote that now our business probably this year is about less than $100 million. Next year, we'll do about $150 million or something like that. But we are the number two brand in North America. The number one brand there is a billion dollar. It delivers over 20% profitability. We see no reason using the machine of Samsonite.
We have the reach which very few brands in this segment or no brand in this segment has that kind of a global reach. We can do a lot more with Speck. Now with our increasing confidence about this category, we all feel much more excited than we were ever before on the opportunity of Speck. In the next slide, you'll see some of the products. We also have—
Yep. The first video, please.
Anybody get a visual on my phone? Anybody? You see my phone? Anyone?
That was Speck. The next acquisition, Gregory. Gregory is an iconic technical outdoor backpack brand. It seems that majority of the people who decide to climb Mount Everest, they tend to carry Gregory. Gregory, we believe, is a very good fit to our previous acquisition of High Sierra. High Sierra is like American Tourister to the backpack category. Whereas Gregory is the Hartmann of the backpack. Together, they really make the right fit for us to really expand our franchise into the backpack business. Backpack business is one of the fastest growing. Now we have multiple brands to really work in this segment. So, we have Gregory, which is sitting at the top of the pyramid. Then we have, at the bottom end of the pyramid, we have High Sierra, and then in between, we have brands like Samsonite Red, which is the fashion backpack segment.
And then we have Samsonite and Hartmann covering up the business backpack segment. All put together, it gives us a confidence that Gregory would be a great business. Gregory lifestyle products are extremely popular in Japan. When we really bought this business of Gregory, one of the key reasons why we bought, apart from its performance outdoor segment, where it is very strong, was it has a very strong brand equity in Japan, especially in the lifestyle segment. We are now developing our products in Japan. In the past, when we looked at it, the opportunity for Japan is humongous for us in Gregory. But Gregory business in Japan was serviced out of Salt Lake City in the U.S., and that was a missing link.
What we have done in place is that we have now, we put a design team in place, which is going to develop the product specifically for the Japanese market, and we would be able to launch our first collection in Japan in quarter three of this year, which gives us the confidence that Gregory would be a very good fit to our collection of brands. Here are some of the key products. Progress on Hartmann. I already spoke about it. We have just about got our product assortment ready. We have opened a few flagship stores. We opened 11 flagship stores by now in North America and a few of them in Asia.
I would say that 2016 would still be a year where we would be expanding our franchise distribution of Hartmann, and you will start to see Hartmann is something which will require some amount of more patient working. Because it is not going to be really flying tomorrow like that. Because you need to get the products right, and we need to get our distribution strategy right. We are treading on that path slowly, step by step, and the first feedback on the products and also on our stores have been very encouraging. You see on the next slide, the pictures of two flagship stores that we opened in Asia. The first one on the left-hand side is our flagship store in Ginza, Tokyo. This is the view from inside the store. The second picture actually is our store in China, in Beijing.
See some of the products, and you also have the products here on display. Progress on High Sierra. As I said, the business have grown nicely. In 2014, it grew by 24.9% on a constant currency basis. We are getting the brand started now in Asia and Europe. The first feedback from markets like India and Australia have been very encouraging. Similarly in Europe, our feedback in Scandinavian market have been very encouraging. Whereas the feedback from our other experiment that we did in North Asia, which was in China and Korea, and we also did some work in Germany, we got the feedback that we need to rework out on our products. The reworked out products will be in the market in second half of 2015.
We do believe that we have a lot of opportunity over next two to five years with High Sierra, and we would be able to grow this business to be a significant part of our business in next couple of years. In terms of the category, I already spoke about it, but I can cover it once again quickly. Travel grew by 10.9%, casual business grew by 25.1%, business grew by 34.6%, accessories grew by 76.3%. So, you see practically every category of our business have been showing very nice growth. In terms of point of sale expansion, last year we had 46,000 point of sale, which grew to around 49,000 point of sales. We added 152 company-owned store, taking it to 1,315, and we added some more wholesale stores.
As I spoke before, direct-to-consumer business is one of our key focus area, and we would like to grow that business from around a quarter of our sales today to 50% of our sales. One of our recent acquisition of Rolling Luggage has been a step in the same direction. E-commerce is a direct-to-consumer part of our business. The e-commerce also have been growing very fast. If you look at North American e-commerce business, it grew by 33.9%. In Europe, it grew by 64.4%, in Asia, 28.6%. Within these numbers, when you peel down, some of the countries, e-commerce start to become already a very significant part of our business, both our own e-commerce as well as the third-party e-commerce. I can quote countries like China and the U.K., where the e-commerce already starts to contribute around 20% of our total revenue in these markets.
Few more stores which open in second half of 2014 in Asia. You see the Ginza store once again. Then you have Beijing, Lufthansa, South Korea, Cheongdam. Then you have Taiwan, Taichung. We also opened five stores of Hartmann in North America in second half. You have Charlotte in North Carolina, New York, Madison Avenue, in Philadelphia on the right-hand side. This is another concept which we have talked about it during last year also, that we wanted to expand our business and try a multi-brand store concept because now we have a multiple brand within our portfolio and also we are operating multiple categories, and we believe that this gives us an opportunity to launch a new multi-brand retail concept, and which we have launched in 2014 in few markets with very encouraging feedback. I have few pictures to share with you.
On the left-hand side, you see that J.S. Trunk & Co., that's the name which we are using in Europe and in North America, whereas in Asia it is called House of Samsonite. You see that store in Turkey. That store in the middle is in Westfield Mall in London, U.K., and you see COEX Mall in Seoul in South Korea. Then below that we have in Bay Plaza, New York. Some pictures of Lipault stores. See, these are stores you have on the next slide, one in Paris. This is on Paris. All three stores are in Paris, and we are now looking at expanding our retail as well as the wholesale footprint of Lipault in Europe. We will also launch the brand by end of this year in Asia.
Retail expansion Latin America. This is all the pictures that we have here from Colombia, from Brazil, and from Mexico. The selection of few stores that we open in second half in 2014 in Indonesia, in Canada, France, Singapore, Sweden. Retail expansion, together with the e-commerce expansion, is one of our key strategies going forward. Our advertising spend, we continue to invest more behind all our brands. Our advertising spend increased by 12% over last year. In percentage terms, it looked like in Asia, it grew from 7.1% to 7%. It's a minor de-growth in terms of percentage terms, but it's still very healthy growth. In Europe, we invested, as I spoke to you before, in some 6.3%, a very sizable increase because we start to invest behind our second brand, which is American Tourister.
In North America also, though the percentage term looks like we have not grown, but if you peel down, excluding the acquisitions, our advertising spend even in North America as a percentage of our sales grew to 6.3%. That's all the advertising which I can share. The Asian advertising of Samsonite. The next slide is Asian advertising of American Tourister. Samsonite in North America. American Tourister in North America. Samsonite in Europe, American Tourister in Europe and Latin America. What I want to say is, we can not only tailor-make our product strategy suiting to individual markets, but we also tailor-make our advertising and marketing and communication strategy to individual markets, and that's one of the key strengths of our business. I will ask Kyle, my friend, to take you through the financial overview of the business. Thank you.
Okay. Thanks, Ramesh. Thanks. Mine doesn't have very many pictures as usual, but lots of good numbers. Let me bring you through some of the highlights. Tim, a lot of these we've mentioned, but I'll just bring it a little bit deeper. We talked about adjusted EBITDA margin, and I know we've been here for three, four years now in the market talking about expanding EBITDA margin. Actually last year, if you pull acquisition out, particularly the year one of acquisitions when you're integrating and kind of working through synergies. If you pull those out, our EBITDA margins continue to grow. We grew to 16.8% up 20 basis points, in line with how we generally think about the business.
I think for this year, as people are thinking about this year in acquisitions, it'll be probably another year where we're fully synergizing these deals, largely Speck, which was the biggest deal we had. Tom is well under his way, but it'll be one more year before we get margins right where we want them, which will look like the U.S. margins. So, you'll see that hold the EBITDA margins probably flat for the year, from an acquisition perspective. Our net cash position came down this year. I think some people in the audience say, "Good job," I think, because we're always looking at what we're doing with our cash. This was a year where we grew our operating cash flows again. So, we generated $230 million in operating cash flows up from, I think, $193 million last year.
But we put some of that to work this year, and we acquired, again, the brands that Ramesh talked about and spent around $200 million on acquiring these deals. That coupled with a dividend that we made, and CapEx for last year. We used a bit of cash. We're still in a nice net cash position, and our debt capacity is still very strong. But it's a year where, probably for the last few years, we've been building and building, and we're now actually deploying with acquisition, as we said we would. Net working capital, we continue to manage that very, very well. I'll show you a little more details. We continue to run a little ahead of our targets. So, our targets have always been around 14%. We're 12.7%.
With Ramesh and I both pushing on this, we feel very comfortable that we'll continue to run a bit ahead of our targets. And I'll show you a slide as well on where we've been making some progress. Our CapEx was up this year, $69 million roughly, or $70 million if we round up, versus $57 million last year. What's feeding that? Some of that's retail expansion that Ramesh has talked about. So I'll show you a slide. We spent another $8 million versus last year on retail expansion. We'll do the same thing this year. So, I think in our annual report, we talk about next year's CapEx. You'll see CapEx go up just a bit more, in 2015. A large piece of that will be continued retail expansion with the new brands plus our core brands as well. We also had been investing in production facilities in Europe.
We've been expanding our Curv capacity in Europe, in Hungary particularly. We've also expanded our capacity to generate our own polycarbonate products as well, and off to very early, very good success with the products that are coming out. There'll be a little bit more of that this year, and we'll also this year be investing in a China distribution center, which we've talked about for a few years now. We're actually starting to move on that. Frank's in the audience. I know we're moving on that. That'll bring up our CapEx just a bit this year coming up. Reported net income, and I think this is a very important number because we have lots of numbers and adjusted net incomes. I think it's important that people understand, and Tim led with this.
When you really peel into the underlying growth in our business, we generally look at adjusted net income, taking out stock option expense, growing at around 13.9%, call it 14%, very similar to our EBITDA growth. Reported net income shows 5.8%, but in doing these acquisitions, there are transaction costs. My old days of accounting, we used to be able to lump transaction costs into deals, but today you expense them as you go. In a year where we've done three acquisitions, acquisition costs will actually bring that reported net income down. We peel through that and say, "Hey, underlying profit is what we're really focused on." I would say we're very happy with where we are from an underlying profit growth. I think we're probably guilty of over-disclosing lots of things.
I think if you read through our materials, you can get to underlying versus reported, so you can get to the numbers you're looking for. Earnings per share just follows suit, grew nicely. Adjusted earnings per share up around 10%. The board has once again recommended a dividend policy sticking to the policy we set last year. Our payout ratio will be roughly 50%, with a yield of a little over 2%, growing in line with our underlying profit growth. We're growing the dividend to shareholders by 10%. A very strong balance sheet. Again, I've covered most of this on the cash flow side, but our net cash came down. It's very obvious where we're spending our money. Our working capital, very strong, so you can see some of the numbers here. Again, our revolving credit facility.
In June, in our interim reports, you would've seen that we expanded our credit facility to $500 million and extended the terms on that. We still have lots of capacity, is the way to think about it. As we're thinking about acquisitions or we're thinking about driving growth in the business, we've got a balance sheet with tons of capacity, both from a debt perspective and generating cash. We'll generate another solid year of cash, and so all of that feeds into plenty of capacity for us to continue to drive the business. Working capital, I think the things I'd point out here is we've brought the inventory days down. I think collectively, Ramesh and I feel that we can hold the inventory days at between 100 and 105 days. Everybody's focused on it, and so I think that really just continues to strengthen our ability to over-deliver.
Trade and trade receivable days have stayed very, very constant. Actually, as the mix of the business changes, we bring acquisitions in like Speck, which are largely wholesale customers with receivables. Holding days steady at 44, 45 days, I think is a good accomplishment, and you will see us continue. Over time, as retail grows more, this probably could actually creep down a little bit, where retail is a cash-to-us sale. Days payable is really a function of timing. Most of our vendor terms are around 105 days, so it is no surprise that our payable days are at around 100 days, and they just toggle up and down based on the timing of the year-end. That is very stable as well.
We feel quite good with this, and as a team, we are incentivized on this, so our ability to manage working capital, I think, will continue to do very well. CapEx, I have generally covered. A little bit of an increase in retail. You will see that increase a little bit more this coming year. Product development, R&D, supply, that is us investing in Europe primarily. I think that is exactly the right thing to do, particularly as we see currency moving. Producing in Europe is actually a good thing as well, and that helps us hedge some of the noise in Europe. IT systems, up and down, but generally consistent. We will spend about this range, and other is other. CapEx continues to be managed well, but we are actually spending a bit more.
Markets like Latin America, we did not really cover it on the slide, but a market where we will be growing, and retail will be a big piece of that. We will be spending CapEx in Latin America, where in the past we had been spending, but we are dialing it up a bit, as we said we would for Latin America. From a shareholder perspective, we have generally covered all this. Dividend, again, $88 million, up around 10%. You can see here, the payout ratios and the yields are looking very similar. Last year, we had reset this policy. We stepped up our dividend last year, and you should expect us to continue to pay a dividend in line with our earnings growth, and that is exactly what we are doing. Then we had some option grants, which they help us, senior management.
Deeper into the organization, the management, we put a program in last year. This is second year of us issuing options to management team, and deeper into the organization, which I think is very important to keeping people incentivized, just like shareholders, against the business performance. And then, last one you probably know this better than I do. Most of you probably look at it more than I do, but we have been performing very well from a share price perspective and outperforming the index, and I think that is a steady trend. We always like to look at the slides, so we figured we would throw it in there, too. Those are my updates. I may turn back to Ramesh.
Look at the engines of the future growth. I mean, in terms of covering the whole thing, I look at it basically as that, too. As I said before, we are lucky to be in an industry where there is a secular growth in travel. Travel is expected to grow across all the regions. When we look at some of the numbers coming from UNWTO, we are looking at growth of Asia-Pacific to grow between 4%-5%. Europe also growing 3%-4%. Different regions may grow slightly different, up and down, but every single region is expected to grow, and that is what will help our business to continue to grow. Beyond that, our core strategy, which I spoke in the beginning, is what we have been doing for the last five years under Tim's leadership.
All of us as a team together, we would just continue to work and implement the same strategy, which is, once again, I just end up to the last slide, which is try to grow our business into a multi-brand, multi-channel, multi-category business. Fundamentally make it far more diversified, and that is what we have been doing for the last five years, and I see no reason for us to go away from that core strategy. We would like to continue to build on the same and continue the same journey and try and make our business to be much more balanced between travel and non-travel segments, between wholesale and direct-to-consumer segments, and between Samsonite as a core brand and other brands that we have recently acquired.
That is what gives us the confidence that even in 2015, in spite of trading conditions being challenged in few economies, the currency movements happening in different ways in different regions, yet we believe we would be able to continue to deliver double-digit sales growth and a double-digit profit growth even in 2015 over the next three to five years' time. Thank you.
Thank you, everyone. Now we want to throw the floor open to questions. Please indicate by raising your hand, and we will give you the mic for you to ask questions. Thank you.
Thank you very much. It's Raymond from Merrill Lynch. Congratulations on the very good results. I got three questions. The first question, Ramesh, you mentioned that the direct sale will go to 50% of sales going forward. Just want to understand that in the future, what percentage, a ballpark figure, what percentage will be from acquiring from the existing network, maybe from your wholesale partner, et cetera, and what percentage will be our new retail store opening? How is it going to impact the margin and sales outlook going forward? Because normally speaking, retail might have a lower margin, but a stronger revenue compared to wholesale. This is my s econd question. My third question is more related to this year. For this year, regarding the EBITDA margin outlook, we have some tailwinds, and we also have some headwinds.
The tailwind will be lower rubber prices, petroleum prices. But the headwind will be the euro currency impact and slightly high A&P ratio. Speck consolidation maybe in the first half might be a negative, but second half might be a positive. In general, how do you look at the EBITDA margin in 2015? Thank you.
I'll let Kyle cover the EBITDA part of it, but I can cover the direct-to-consumer part of the business. On average, if you look at it last year, most of our retail business like-for-like growth have been around 5%-7%. As we look at our business, I look at a similar number coming from our existing retail doors, 5%-7% growth. In some time or some markets, it could be slightly better than that, and especially as we start to grow a non-travel component of our business faster. I was trying to share with our board yesterday, we have done some trials in a few of the stores in Italy and a few stores in Hungary. What we did was that we cut down the proportion of the travel product that we put in our store.
These were the four stores we have tried it, two in Italy and two in Hungary, just on a trial basis. So, we populate the store with more non-travel products to really see what does it do to our business. To our surprise, though it is only three months, we see that even if you cut down the travel products in our store to even half of the total space that you have in the store, the travel sales never comes down because we are such a strong brand. People who buy, they buy. If you offer him 15 travel line to choose from, or if you give him six line to choose from, he's going to anyway buy whatever you're offering to him. That has been our experience also in Asia.
When you go to IFC stores, an IFC or any of our Hong Kong stores, you will find that our stores are populated with less than 50% in the travel. That can help us to grow our like-for-like growth to be slightly higher than our current growth rate that we have at about 5%-7%. Now, beyond that, we have been adding about 100-150 stores every year. You will see that going forward, as Kyle already covered in our CapEx provisions also, we would increase the pace of adding our retail stores, not only the branded stores that we have, but as I spoke to you about this multi-brand store concept that we have. In 2014, we tried out with about 15 stores in different parts of the world with very very encouraging response.
We do intend to increase the footprint of our multi-brand stores faster than what we have done in the past, which will also contribute higher proportion to our sales. And third is, some of the acquisitions that we have done, and we will continue looking for some more tactical acquisition, which helps us to grow our retail footprint faster. And the fourth, we must not forget about the importance of the e-commerce as a part of the retail. For us, e-commerce operates together with retail. It is almost like we are implementing omni-channel across all our retail doors. And I believe that the offline business running through your direct-to-consumer business, which today makes up only 6% of our total revenue. But I said there are markets where it almost goes up to around 20% of our revenue.
If you ask me five or seven years' time , I would not hesitate to say that I would not be surprised if that starts to contribute to 25% of your sales. That means the sales which are getting booked through mobile devices or through internet. But that is integral part of our direct-to-consumer strategy. So, it is both offline and online. Coming to the margin on the retail. The gross margin on retail tends to be higher, for very obvious reasons. But at this stage, I would not like to really guide to say that the operating margins would be higher because the retail margins, you have gross margin being higher, but you also have a higher SG&A there.
But if I go by the past experience that we have, today, if you really peel down our North American business, we tend to see that our profitability in our retail in North America is higher than wholesale. That also has been our experience in Asia. And that also we have an experience in Europe so far. But I am not ready to stick my neck out and say that will that continue because in the future. Right now, we really focused on to grow the top line of direct-to-consumer because apart from everything else, it gives us a better control on the experience that we can make the consumer have with our brand. Because when you are dealing it through only a wholesale channel, you are limited in terms of the experience and the differentiation that you can create in the mind of the consumer with your brand.
I think it's more driven by that than our thinking that we would like to use that to improve our profitability. Yes, there could be a possible effect over a longer period of time that our profit margins could also see a small improvement as we will see an increasing proportion of direct-to-consumer. It may also have some positive influence on our working capital because our days sales of receivables would also probably come down as you do more retail. On the EBITDA, probably Kyle can explain in more detail about how our EBITDA margins are moving.
Sure. We tend not to just come out and say what the EBITDA margin is going to be for the year. But I think we've given you some hints on areas we're investing. Let's start with acquisitions. We have another year of sorting out Speck particularly. I don't expect that to move the margins up, and it probably is neutral to slightly down pressure. Still, it's actually slightly ahead of our own expectations. Speck's going very very well. But I don't expect that to help the EBITDA margins this year. It may be slightly down. I think we talked at the interim time, and it's a very important strategy for our European business to drive American Tourister. In the background, we're going to consciously spend a bit more on advertising in Europe for American Tourister. You saw some this past year.
We'll probably spend a little bit more as a percent of sales in Europe as well, and we think it's very important to driving that strategy with American Tourister. That'll have a little bit of EBITDA margin pressure as well. Now, we have some ability to steal from other regions, and we do some of that, as you saw this past year even. It's largely why Asia came down just a slight bit. We consciously shifted a little bit to Europe to get American Tourister growing. Oddly, it helps actually American Tourister in Asia anyway, because as Asian tourists see American Tourister in Europe, that's actually helping the brand as well. But net, I think you'll see us spend a little bit more on advertising than what we did this past year. That'll have a little bit of pressure on EBITDA margin.
There's a lot of noise on currency that people are probably trying to figure out. We're less worried on currency for this year, largely because, as we've talked in the past, we have a very good hedging program, and we're hedged in a fairly good position for Europe, particularly the euro, for most of the year. What hedging does is it gives us the time to react and work through product costing and what we're doing in product pricing and such. I'm not seeing huge gross margin pressures. I think our general consensus here is we'll generally maintain gross margins for the year. I think that's probably where we are. Could that slip 10, 20 basis points or something like that? Maybe, but still in line with the range that we always talk about for gross margin.
So you add all that up, and you probably can do the math yourself that EBITDA margins are flat to maybe slightly down this year. If you peel it back, and we'll do the same thing next year, if you peel it back, we think about our underlying core business. We feel very comfortable that this business continues to move and generate, and this retail strategy, Ramesh is being modest, it'll actually help EBITDA margins over time, maybe not in year one, because these stores need to ramp. So, our core premise of moving EBITDA margins up every year steadily is still how we think about the business. But this year will probably be a year similar to this past year. I missed one, Latin America, where we're making some investments. And so Latin America, you saw some of the dip in our profits this year.
It'll take us another year, probably, before we get Latin America starting to look like the way we want it. That'll have a little bit of strain on the margins as well. Totally fine. We're very consciously investing in the infrastructure and the retail footprint in Latin America to really get that moving. So, in markets like Brazil, where we're adding the right people to drive that business and really adding retail expertise to drive that business, you'll see those margins will take just a bit more time before they bounce back. And there's no reason why in a handful of years, Latin America's EBITDA margins get back to where they were, which has always been a kind of 16%, 17% margin business. So, hopefully that answers the question without just coming right out and answering it but giving you some details. We will, t here's also pressures, right?
When we talk about maintaining margins, there's a lot of moving pieces there. So, we are very focused on making sure we get some of the benefit on commodity prices. Those take a little while to get, actually. They don't just come. But as a team, we're focused on it. But there's other pressures. There's some currencies that we can't hedge. It's just not natural. So, you'll have pressures there. So, when we talk about a maintaining margin mode, that's with us getting some of those benefits on top of managing some of the pressures, which the fortunate part for our business is we're geographically diverse. Our product ranges are diverse. The way we go to market is diverse. We have a lot of levers that we can do to help manage the margins, and it's not just isolated.
One thing to remember is Europe, when you think about Europe, it's only 25% of our business, actually, because Samsonite and I mean, the North America business has grown with acquisitions. Asia has continued to grow very fast. The other thing that's in the background within Europe is we're producing something like 50% of what we sell in Europe in Europe now. As hardside has continued to grow and Curv has continued to grow, and this new polycarbonate product that we've talked about, where we're now producing ourselves in Europe. And so that actually gives me some added hedge or comfort in Europe when we think about euro, because lots of people are probably worked up about what the euro is doing. We built in some natural hedge just in the way we source product in Europe, actually.
Okay. Next question from the audience. Okay. Cathy Chao .
Hi, good morning. Cathy Chao from HSBC. I just had two questions. First on M&A and second on uses of cash. First, in terms of M&A, is there any change in direction in terms of acquisition targets? Because it seems like you have quite a diversified portfolio of products, but the recent acquisition was more retail driven. Can you give us some direction in terms of where you're going in terms of acquisitions? Secondly, uses of cash. It seems like there's quite a high cash balance, and I know the dividend payout has been raised, but is there any other intended uses of cash apart from the CapEx, like you discussed, and also future acquisitions? Thank you.
There is no real change in our acquisition strategy. As we have always spoken, for us, an acquisition, when we look at the opportunities, first the opportunity has to present itself. Sometimes we are also simultaneously, we are proactively looking at opportunities. So we have a portfolio of brands now for us, but we can clearly see there are gaps within our portfolio, where we could have opportunities to acquire. We have a strong balance sheet and a very strong CFO, who tells us that, "Don't worry about the money. We'll find the money." So, I would say there are gaps in terms of the product segments where we would like to looking for some acquisition opportunities, and we continue to work on that. Then, there could be also opportunities, as I spoke to you, in terms of retail.
What we did with Rolling Luggage, which gives us a very very strong footprint with almost about 30+ stores in major airports across the world, because airports have been one place where our representation has been not that strong. Rolling Luggage was the beginning of getting our footprint stronger and strengthened at the airport duty-free business. We were looking for some more opportunities which could help us to grow faster in terms of our ambition to make direct-to-consumer deliver 50% of our contribution. These are the two areas we will continue to look for in terms of merger and acquisition, which is exactly the same what Tim spoke during the IPO days. We are just carrying the same baton, which was being done in the past. There is no change in our outlook and strategy towards M&As.
Yeah. I think that is right. We are also digesting three brands from last year, too. Brand acquisitions have their own kind of energy level that is needed to get them placed. So, we have probably taken a slight hiatus on lining up brands, but we have not stopped looking, actually. When you start to do acquisitions, lots of brands actually start to show up your way. So, I would say our pipeline is as good as ever, and we are being kind of selective as we think through what we do. Rolling Luggage was a nice add because it is a little bit out of the brand space, and it actually gives us a platform to take some of these brands and to grow as well. So, from a year ago, I would say we have probably dialed up just the slight changes.
We have dialed up looking at some of these retail opportunities as a way to expand in areas where we are not. Even markets like Latin America, there are interesting plays there. Other plays in Europe, I think, like I said earlier, are interesting. But we are not shy of opportunities to look at. From a cash perspective, I think we have always I thought we were going to get kudos. It is the first time we actually used cash this year and brought it down a little bit. We generate a lot of cash. We still think there are lots of opportunities, and it is not a marketplace that is filled of tons of large deals, but there are bigger deals out there.
I would hate to become more aggressive on kind of a cash strategy when we still think there are opportunities to drive growth. That is still kind of our mentality. But we are working hard to spend it, actually. I think we did a good job this year with the brands that we filled in. So, we like being in a capacity of having ultimate flexibility in driving the business, right? I think we have said in the past, if we run out of opportunities that make us excited about driving the growth in the business, then we might change our strategies there, but we are not feeling that way right now, so.
Okay, let's see if we have any questions from people online.
We have a question. We have a question from UBS, Erica Poon. First question is, what is the pace of rollout for American Tourister in Europe? The second, has the company taken any pricing actions in light of foreign exchange movements? And the third, what drove the higher effective tax rate in 2014, and what is the trend for 2015?
What was the first question?
Pace of AT rollout.
What is the pace of rollout for American Tourister in Europe?
Yeah. Okay. American Tourister is getting started in second half of 2014. As you see from the numbers, the business grew by almost 50% in 2014. And in 2015 also, I would believe that's the kind of a growth that we would expect from American Tourister. We're starting from a small base. For medium-term, I see no reason, as I spoke before, the American Tourister to become as big as Samsonite in the travel segment, which is the case today in Asia. Coming on the pricing action because of the currency. As Kyle tried to explain to you, in Europe, we have currency pressure, but we have multiple levers. As we said that over 50%-60% of our sourcing of our European sales are actually happening in Europe itself. So, which is euro denominated.
We can naturally hedge because we source almost 60% of what we sell in Europe within Europe, so that our outlook and strategy of investing in our Hungary plant was actually driven not so much with the currency. I would say actually now it will deliver us some upside to our business because we felt that with adding all the duties and freights and the flexibility that we had, Hungary was the right place for us to expand our manufacturing. And now it is coming. It just went on stream, the additional capacity, last month. Me and Kyle, we were together there in Hungary. It's off to a very good start. And the first collection, which is coming out from that plant called Neopulse, have received very encouraging feedback in the Offenbach Fair, where we presented the collection two weeks back.
In terms of the pricing action, we definitely do intend to take a price increase in Europe in 1st of September. As Kyle said that we already have a hedge for 2015. We are practically hedged for all our purchases till end of this year. But 2016 is already knocking on our door. And we do believe that currency will remain at the similar level where it is today. So, as proactively, we are taking a price increase in Europe selectively on few collections, so that we can protect our margin.
We should not forget that Samsonite has the pricing power. We are the category leader. So, for us, there is no problem at all whenever we take a price increase, like we did in the beginning of this year in Japan. We always tend to take a price increase whenever there is a pressure on our cost side, and our past experience tells us that that has never been a problem. On the tax, Kyle can cover that in a little detail.
Yeah. On the pricing side, as we've always said, our competitors are feeling typically the same pressure. If anything, in Europe, we're probably oddly in a better place than we've been in the past, just with the shift in kind of manufacturing that we've had with [inaudible]. It's not really, we've shifted manufacturing, but our hardside production and Curv sales have continued to grow so well, it's just naturally grown into that. On the tax rate side, Tim covered that we're expecting our tax rate to creep down a little bit this year. We actually implemented some tax strategy within our business this year. In doing that, we had to spend a little bit to execute the strategy. Largely around fixing some of our U.S. tax positioning. We will get the reduction in tax rates next year.
I'm very comfortable that you'll see a tax rate with a 26% and change, maybe all the way to 26% next year off the back of the restructuring. This year, we had to spend a little bit to actually make that happen, and so that's why you saw the tax rate creep up just a tiny bit, this year. If you peel that out, our tax rate's actually kind of generally where it's been right along. So, it was really just strategy-driven, for a benefit we'll see next year.
Other questions from the floor?
Hi, management. It's Robby Gu from Morgan Stanley. I have two questions. First, just follow up on the pricing, and also related to the Samsonite branded sales growth. If you look at 2014, first half was about 11% growth, second half, 6%. Ramesh, you mentioned that you are a price leader and that historically there's no problem raising prices for your products. Just thinking, going forward, we're pushing American Tourister, so we clearly see opportunities in the value segment. We have Hartmann, which in the premium segment, we have opportunities there. If you see other competitors who are doing well in the premium segment, it seems that that whole segment is gaining market share. So that leaves the mid-range and upper range where Samsonite sits, sort of is that whole segment getting pulled, both by the upper range, the premium guys and also the value guys?
If we think about Samsonite growth going forward, sure, we can gain market share through some incremental volume, but from a pricing perspective, will we see some limits to how much that price can go up by? My second question is more on near term on raw material prices. The oil price coming down and related plastic cost coming down. Are we undertaking some negotiation with the upstream raw material suppliers on an aggregate basis to capture more cost savings? Whether that will that flow through in 2015 to fund some of these increasing advertising and retail expansion investments?
Let me answer the easier one, the price and the commodity price. As Kyle already covered with you, that definitely we do see that the commodity prices are somewhat helping us in terms of the polymer prices coming down, and which has a definite positive benefit on our business. But there are two parts of it. When we do our own manufacturing, our hard side manufacturing, which we do, let's say, in Europe, in Hungary, and in Nashik in India, we can see those savings coming in very quickly because the polymer prices are internationally linked. The prices go down, and you can immediately, next month, your price gets reset to the new price levels. So, you can start to see a part of that saving, which we have our own manufacturing, can be seen much more quickly.
Whereas what you source from the vendor goes through a protracted negotiation . Sometimes, you have to move the product line from vendor A to vendor B and move the other line from vendor B to vendor A. Because the Chinese vendors are not so good at reducing the price. They are okay to lose their business but not correct the price. They always have some reason. The Chinese labor is not coming back after Chinese New Year. That's a story which I've heard for 19 years, and it continues even now. So, I think it takes time. What Kyle said, some of the benefits, we will see it trickling down in part of it in 2015, but you won't see all of it coming in 2015. Because it takes some time. There's always a gap.
We also have about 100 days of inventory, which is sitting at the old prices. It definitely is helpful when it comes to the currency pressures that we have. We are still guiding that our margins, when we look at it on a blended basis, to remain stable over 2014, not really moving up. There are pluses and there are some minuses, and all put together, we feel confident and comfortable that we will be more or less flat versus 2014. Coming on to Samsonite part. First of all, when you look at the premium market, it's a very important part of the market, but it is also a much smaller market in terms of size when you talk about the travel luggage segment.
I'm sure you're referring to a few brands, but if you look at their travel luggage segments of the two brands that most of the people talk in the top segment, it adds up to only $400 million in sales. That's the travel luggage segments. Some of these numbers are in the public domain. You can add up those numbers. One of the brands have declared the results, the sales being $300 million for 2014, and the other brand has about $500 million of sale, but of that, 20% is their travel luggage sales. So, the total sales is only $400 million in sales. They are not really affecting our business because their total growth in the travel luggage segment of that business of these two brands that we referred also have grown by 4%.
Whereas our travel luggage business have grown by around 10%, and within that, Samsonite sales also has grown by 5% - 6%. So, I wouldn't say that they are really affecting our business. But what is happening to our business is that we say that travel segment, as the industry is growing by 5% - 6%, we already have a very formidable market share in that premium segment of the business, which we define it at about $150, going up to around $500 price segment. That's where Samsonite has a play. In that segment, we do have a very sizable market share in practically every economies of the world, barring, let's say, Latin America. So Latin America, we haven't really operated as yet extensively. But if you look at our share in North America, if you look at share in Europe, and I'm talking about travel luggage only.
If our share in Europe in that segment, in Asia, we have a very high market share. So, there we have always guided since our IPO days, and last time also when Tim was addressing all of you, that we do believe that our business in that segment now will grow at an organic rate of the growth of their market, which is around 4% - 5% or maybe a shade better. So, we grow by 6%, there's nothing to feel embarrassed about. The opportunity for us, why American Tourister grows faster is because we have started to operate that segment only for last five years in Asia and only for last six months in Europe. So, we haven't really extensively operated that market. And if you look at the pyramid of the market, the top end of the market with your $500+ segment is a very tiny segment.
It contributes according to us, less than 5% of the total value of the sales. Then below that, you have what we call as the premium segment of the market, which is $150 going up to $500. That is where Samsonite has a play. That is about 25% of the market. But there is a market which is 70% of the market, which sits below that. But of that 70% of the market, at least 50% of the market sits at between $100 and $150. That is a segment which becomes accessible with American Tourister. Our past experience dealing with this brand and this segment in Asia makes us believe that the business can be done in that segment with similar profitability as we do with Samsonite. You do not get out of the gate with the same profitability.
In the beginning, as we launch American Tourister in Europe, our profitability as compared to Samsonite will be slightly lower, and we look at our operating margin, it will be even lower because you are investing behind a brand. As a percentage of the sale of the American Tourister brand in Europe, our advertising spend would be higher. But as we will grow the sale, it will more or less come to the same level as what you see what is happening in Asia today. In net, when you look at it, we are not losing share to anybody. We are still gaining share in travel segment with Samsonite, and we are gaining huge share with Samsonite in the business and casual segment, and that is what you see in our numbers. With Samsonite Red, we are also now relaunching Samsonite business in a much more serious manner in Europe.
You will see a lot more effort from us on the Samsonite business segment, in Europe in second half of 2015. We have actually carved out an independent team which must work on the business product. Otherwise, sometimes what happens, the category is smaller for you today, the attention which it needs to get in the entire pie of Samsonite, somewhere gets diluted. What I have done, I have split the Samsonite business in Europe into two separate teams, starting from the business teams, going all the way down to the designers and the sales team. So, they will work independently on the business and the non-travel category under the brand Samsonite. That has been our experience in Asia. Today, the non-travel part for Asia in Samsonite pie of our business is almost 40%+ and growing faster.
Maybe by end of 2015, if not that, by 2016, it already will be half of our total revenue. But that is not the case today in Europe. So I would say Samsonite business, which you see in our number also, have grown by around 10%. But of course, American Tourister will grow at a faster clip than Samsonite because our share in that segment is smaller.
Great. Thank you very much. I think that's all the time we have today. Thanks again for attending the results presentation.