Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Coats Group plc full year results call. My name is Bethany, and I will be your operator today. There will be an opportunity to ask questions by dialing in after the presentation using the details provided. I will now turn the call over to Victoria Huxter. Victoria, over to you.
Good morning, and welcome to the Coats Group full year 2021 results presentation. My name is Victoria Huxter, and I am the Head of Investor Relations at Coats. I'm here with Rajiv Sharma, CEO, and Jackie Callaway, CFO, and they are going to talk you through the results and outlook for the business. Without further ado, I will pass you over to Rajiv.
Good morning, and welcome to our 2021 full year results presentation. I will start with the highlights and divisional performance. This will be followed by a presentation on our financials by Jackie. The presentation concludes with our outlook statement after which we open up for Q&A. In this presentation, I refer to apparel and footwear division as ANF and performance material division as PM. Last year's strong performance can be traced back to decisions and actions taken in 2020 during the height of COVID to support customers, suppliers, and employees. These strong relationships are fueling our progress last year and this year. In 2021, we have seen robust demand recovery and accelerating growth. Sales grew by 29% versus 2020 and 6% versus 2019, supporting our expectations of a V-shaped sales recovery for Coats.
We also took two percentage points of market share, the highest gain in a decade. We accelerated our progress in sustainability and signed up for ambitious climate change and circularity goals. Sales of a premium recycled polyester thread have grown 159% to $96 million, establishing a clear link between sustainability and commercial wins. In 2021, we launched 21 new products that delivered $37 million of sales, and most of it had good margins. Despite COVID-induced disruptions, supply chain challenges, and inflationary headwinds, the global Coats team delivered a strong 12.8% operating margin and over $100 million of free cash flow. Our leverage now stands at 0.7x , providing a strong platform to take advantage of attractive organic and inorganic investment opportunities to further accelerate growth in the future.
The board is pleased to propose a final dividend of $0.015 per share, which is a 15% growth against the final dividend in 2020. We see continued growth this year and now expect performance to be modestly ahead of our previous expectations for the year. Lastly, and very importantly, we have commenced a number of strategic projects in the group that should collectively deliver $50 million of uplift in incremental profit in 2024. More of this topic on the next slide. Improving customer service, supply chain resilience, and overall cost-based productivity is a key enabler to grow sales and profits faster than market. We have flagged labor availability challenges in the U.S. for some time and have now concluded that these are structural challenges.
During the past two years of COVID, we have learned new ways to connect, collaborate, and be more productive as individuals and as a company. With that in mind, we have commenced a number of strategic projects. This includes footprint and portfolio optimization in a few countries and associated SG&A costs. By investing $35 million of exceptional cash over two years, we expect to deliver $50 million of incremental adjusted operating profit in 2024. These strategic projects will allow us to mitigate the labor availability issues in the U.S. and return PM margins back to 2019 levels in the next two years. Our focus internally is to accelerate profitable sales growth and to transform the company to be even more successful in a post-pandemic world.
Let me hasten to add that we will not provide more details on these strategic projects, and there are several sensitivities and protocols that we need to follow. However, there will be regular updates with more details to the market over the next 24 months. The next update will be during our H1 results announcement. During the next few slides, I will talk about the market for both ANF and PM and how we performed during 2021 in each of these divisions. First, I'd like to start with a market backdrop in ANF. As you can see from the top left-hand chart, we have seen a strong market recovery in global ANF retail sales, but it's still below 2019 levels. The U.S. and China were particularly strong, with Europe slower to recover. We expect global ANF retail sales to get back to 2019 levels this year.
The demand recovery was robust across all categories and resulted from a combination of pent-up demand, buffer buying due to supply chain challenges, and some normal restocking. The slide on the lower left-hand corner shows U.S. inventories improving but still below 2019 levels. We expect normal inventory build-up in 2023. Last year, we saw unprecedented supply chain volatility, with customers switching sourcing between geographies at short notice, competing for raw materials, and increasingly using expensive air freight. Companies that did well last year had strong brands, global supply chains, online channels, and strong balance sheets. Brands focused on online, sports, athleisure, denim, and mass market have done well last year. First, I'd like to start with the market backdrop in ANF. As you can see from the top left-hand chart, we have seen a strong market recovery in the global ANF retail sales, but it's still below 2019 levels.
The U.S. and China were particularly strong, with Europe slower to recover. We expect global ANF retail sales to get back to 2019 levels this year. The demand recovery was robust across all categories and resulted from a combination of pent-up demand, buffer buying due to supply chain challenges, and some normal restocking. The slide on the lower left-hand corner shows U.S. inventories improving but still below 2019 levels. We expect normal inventory build-up in 2023. Last year, we saw unprecedented supply chain volatility, with customers switching sourcing between geographies at short notice, competing for raw materials and increasingly using expensive air freight. Companies that did well last year had strong brands, global supply chains, online channels, and a strong balance sheet. Brands that focused on online, sports, athleisure, denim, and mass market did well last year.
While the market has not yet recovered to 2019 levels, our ANF division has delivered 33% growth over last year and 5% growth over 2019. Growth ahead of market was enabled by two percentage points of market share gains from 21% to 23%. How did we do this? It's our strong customer relationships, supply chain resilience, operational delivery, and talented teams. Winning with the winners and sustainability are a key part of our playbook. 43 of our top 50 brands now have sustainability targets. We offer our customers market-leading premium products, excellent support and technical services, reliability of supply, and digital tools. Our global footprint and proximity to customers has remained a critical differentiator. Now let me turn to PM and start with an explanation of the new subsegments on the slide.
In order to provide more clarity and better align to the growth opportunities for the PM business, we have changed the way we operate and report the PM subsegments. We are happy to help investors map the previous segmentation to the new segmentation. We have Personal Protection, which is about 40% of divisional revenues, Composites, which is about 25%, and Performance Threads, which is roughly 35%. The medium-term growth rates expected for each subsegment are high single-digit for Personal Protection, double-digit for Composites, and global GDP growth rates for Performance Threads. It is really important to stress that there is no change to the medium-term growth expectations of 6%-9% for the entire PM division. Let me now talk a little bit about the subsegments.
The Personal Protection market has seen a healthy recovery as industrial activity and worker safety standards have risen. We have seen growth in thermal, cut, abrasion, and electric arc protective wear. Leading customers expect workwear to provide safety against multiple hazards and also be lighter and more comfortable to wear. In Composites, we are seeing a rapid expansion of the fiber optic network, with 65% of homes around the world still to be connected by fiber to the home. Fiber demand is expected to grow 7% or more between 2021 and 2026. The energy market is expected to increase CapEx for exploration and production. We are also seeing an accelerated shift towards electric vehicles. These end market dynamics will be favorable to a Composites segment.
Within Performance Threads, car production is expected to be up 9% in 2022 versus 2021, although it is still not back to 2019 levels. The mature markets of teabag and feminine hygiene remain robust with 5% growth during 2021. Lastly, sustainability is starting to be a factor in several industrial end markets. In terms of our performance in PM, revenues recovered well in all segments with organic growth of 19% versus 2020, including a recovery in Personal Protection, which grew by 40% in November and December to end the year up 12% on an organic basis. The order book for Personal Protection remains strong. In Composites, we saw good commercial wins in the U.S., and you can also see here on the slide a picture of our new Composites factory in Spain, which has 50% more capacity.
In Performance Threads, we saw market share wins in automotive, as well as a strong performance across all product ranges. Jackie will talk in more detail later about the margins, but excluding the U.S. business, PM margins were a healthy 14.4%. As already discussed, some of the strategic projects will enable global PM margins to return to at least 2019 levels next year. Let me talk about operational delivery and supply chain resilience. Our previous investment in technology and highly engaged teams allowed us to flex global supply chains to better serve customers. I am most proud of our operations teams who excelled in a tough environment. The backdrop has been difficult with COVID shutdowns in India and Vietnam, labor shortages in the U.S., as well as very difficult supply chain environment for everybody in our industry.
We took swift action to mitigate inflationary pressures early with price and productivity. We were able to flex our global factory and distribution network to serve customers from multiple locations. Our strong supplier relationships allowed us to source the required input materials on time. Health and safety is our number one priority, and as you can see, we have had the strongest performance to date in health and safety. Now let me cover innovation and sustainability and how these are critical to our future sales and margin growth. A key part of our company purpose is to make a better and more sustainable world. When we launched our sustainability strategy, Pioneering a Sustainable Future in 2019, we laid out ambitious targets for 2022 and 2024. Despite the past two years of COVID disruption, we remain committed to those targets and have made good progress on all five pillars.
Let me pick out a couple of highlights here. In the social pillar, one of our 2019 targets was to have certification from externally reputed agencies like Great Place to Work. We committed to have 80% of our employees working in a Great Place to Work certified site by 2022. Last year, we achieved 83%, reaching the target a year earlier. We also reached our energy reduction target of 7% a year early and expect to continue reducing energy intensity in 2022. We also delivered 159% growth in EcoVerde, our range of 100% recycled polyester products. Revenues grew from $37 million in 2020 to $96 million last year. We are on track to meet our 2024 commitment to have all premium polyester threads made from 100% recycled materials.
Our fourth annual sustainability report has been published today. It has more details on our sustainability strategy, targets and performance. If you would like to discuss more on our sustainability strategy, please contact Victoria for a meeting. During 2021, Coats has added climate change and circularity to its existing focus areas of water, waste, energy, social and recycled materials. This builds on a strong internal culture of health and safety, diversity, equity and inclusion. We have committed to reduce emissions by 46% in this decade and reach net zero by 2050. By 2030, 70% of our global energy consumption will come from renewables and all Coats products will be made completely independent of new oil extraction materials such as polyester and nylon.
We will also shift to circularity, creating products and packaging solutions that enable recycling and reuse, both within our own operations and across the wider garment industry. As part of our sustainability strategy, we have earmarked $10 million to fund the scaling up of green technologies and materials that are relevant to our industrial supply chain. We have begun to repurpose our Asia Innovation Hub to focus on the application of biomaterials. We are really proud of our sustainability journey and look forward to the future with confidence. Next, we have a short video in which Adrian Elliott, our head of apparel and footwear, talks about why sustainability is important to our customers and how it gives us a competitive advantage.
Like any business, our success results from adding value for our customers. To do that, we must understand deeply our customers' needs and broader market trends as, and ideally before, they develop. Sustainability is one of the most important trends, and we know that our customers reward partners who share their sustainability values, who demonstrate genuine sustainability leadership, and most importantly, who help them achieve their own sustainability goals. These industry leaders are setting a high bar across a spectrum of carbon neutrality, sustainable materials, diversity and inclusion, circularity, water usage, supply chain traceability. We believe that the boldest and smartest businesses also understand how this can create tremendous opportunities for differentiation and therefore competitive advantage. How are we at Coats demonstrating such leadership and delivering that distinctness to our competitors? Let me share some examples. Our shift to recycled packaging.
EcoVerde sales up from $6 million to $96 million in two years. The launch of sustainable products such as EcoRegen, developments in our manufacturing processes to reduce water intensity, our shift to renewable energy, our investments in Safety and Health, our leadership in Great Place to Work. The list goes on. Why is this important for our top and bottom line? We know that competitive advantage brings tangible results. Customers reward us with a higher share of their business. Product premiumization drives higher margins. Critically, it positions us to win with the winners for sustained and profitable growth. Already today, for example, over 60% of our brand led sales are with companies who have signed up for science-based targets. Not only do we benefit today, but also in five, 10, 15 years hence. Through sustainability, we deliver today and will deliver tomorrow.
Moving on to innovation. We launched 21 new products that delivered $37 million of sales during the year. Examples of innovation within ANF include Lattice Lite Eco, a revolutionary fiber-laying technology using sustainable materials to create footwear composite materials for the next generation of high performance super shoes. We also launched EcoRegen, a biodegradable thread made from 100% lyocell that supports greater circularity in the apparel industry. In PM, we launched FlamePro Orbit that has lighter weight, higher performance, improved strength and more safety. We also developed Epic Patriot for U.S. non-flame retardant military applications with a specially formulated lubricant. Our innovation pipeline to deliver sales and margin growth remains strong. Our focus remains on three areas. First, Personal Protection with the growth in protective wear and multi-hazard protection.
Two, Composites with the trend towards light weighting for cars, sports footwear, and the protection of data and cables or of energy pipelines. Three, biomaterials to accelerate the future of sustainable products. With this, let me hand over to Jackie to present the financials.
Thank you, Rajiv, and hello to everyone on the call. Let me start by summarizing the key highlights of our financial performance for 2021. We have seen strong and accelerating sales growth with 29% organic sales growth versus 2020 and 6% versus 2019. We saw sales growth across both of the ANF and PM businesses, driven by demand recovery and positive end market sentiment across all of our regions. At the beginning of 2021, we highlighted to the market the heightened inflationary pressures we expected to see during the year in the areas of raw materials, labor, and freight. Coats is a company that operates well in an inflationary market and has a well-defined and tested playbook. Consequently, we moved quickly to mitigate these inflationary challenges by successfully implementing pricing actions and self-help programs.
Our adjusted operating profit of $193 million was broadly back to pre-COVID levels and significantly up on 2020 as we saw demand flow back, and this performance was despite some further COVID disruption in Asia in the Q2 and Q3 . On cash, we delivered a very strong $113 million of adjusted free cash flow, which was supported by a proper recovery as well as continued tight control of working capital and capital expenditure. This left our balance sheet in a particularly strong position with leverage of 0.7x and provides us with the funds to invest selectively in the most attractive organic and inorganic opportunities to deliver further shareholder value going forward.
We have commenced a number of strategic projects, and we expect these projects to have a material impact on our operating margins with incremental operating profits of around $50 million by 2024. Slide 19 sets out the financial summary and our key financial metrics, which show us a significant improvement versus 2020. To aid comparison and to better assess the speed of recovery, we've also included the 2019 organic comparatives. Let's now take a deep dive on these key financial metrics, starting with revenues. Overall, the year-on-year increase in group revenues was 29% on an organic constant currency basis, and this recovery was driven across both ANF and performance materials. Although I note the ANF segment was harder hit by COVID in 2020.
Against 2019, both of our businesses have performed very well with a return to pre-COVID 2019 sales levels, resulting in a 6% organic growth versus 2019 for the group. Group operating profits were up 75% on an organic constant currency basis to $193 million as the significantly increased volumes delivered upside margin benefits. As a result, margins recovered to 12.8%, and I will cover the key profit lever movements in more detail shortly. Versus 2019, operating profits and margins were slightly down. This was primarily due to the COVID disruption seen in our Asian businesses in the second and Q3 and the operational impacts in our U.S. business as a result of labor availability issues.
Some of the strategic projects announced today will address these structural labor availability issues in the U.S. Finally, on this slide, EPS and free cash flow were both also well up year-on-year due to the proper recovery we have seen, as well as lower interest charges and a normalization of our effective tax rate. I'll give more details on these items later. Now moving on to operating profits. The next slide provides an overview of the movement in our group operating profits and margins during the year. Operating profit recovered quickly following the significant COVID disruption in 2020 as additional volumes positively benefited operating margins. We continued to offset inflationary pressures such as raw materials, rate, and wages through price and productivity initiatives.
While we expect inflationary pressures to continue into 2022, our early actions on price and productivity initiatives leaves us well-placed to continue to mitigate these as we have successfully done in the past. At an SG&A level, and as expected, we saw many of the temporary cost savings put in place in 2020 reverse alongside a natural increase in variable costs of selling with the strong demand that we have seen. The above impacts led to a significant increase in operating margin in the period, which was up 330 basis points to 12.8%. Let's now look at segmental margins on slide 21. Both segments saw significant improvements in margins from 2020 as volumes came back into the business due to the COVID recovery. ANF margins have recovered to a very healthy 15%.
This recovery was as a result of excellent commercial and operational delivery, pricing actions, and procurement self-help initiatives, offsetting heightened inflationary pressures and the COVID disruptions during the year. These operating margins are ahead of pre-COVID 2019 levels by 30 basis points on a reported basis. PM margins are up 270 basis points year-on-year to 7.1% as a result of the improving volumes. However, they were held back by the continuing labor availability issues in the U.S. It is noted that excluding the U.S. business, where we are facing these localized labor issues, PM margins were a very healthy 14.4%. As already noted today in relation to the U.S., and as part of the strategic project activity, we will address the labor availability issues in the U.S.
As a result, we expect a material improvement in PM margins. On slide 22, we show the bottom half of the profit and loss account, and there are four areas I'd like to cover off on this slide. First, the exceptional and acquisition-related items of $14 million, which include $12 million spent in relation to our pursuit of strategic acquisition opportunities during the year. Our approach to acquisitions remains disciplined, and we will continue to look for companies with complementary capabilities that can further strengthen the core technology, innovations or intellectual property, which can be scaled to deliver growth and value for customers and shareholders. Secondly, you will see that net finance costs were significantly lower than 20, primarily as a result of the $4 million interest receivable in relation to a historic indirect tax claim in Brazil.
In addition, we had lower interest on our borrowings due to lower interest rates and lower average levels of net debt. The third item is the normalization of our underlying effective tax rates to 31% after the spike that was caused by COVID in 2020. As profitability had normalized to pre-COVID levels in 2021, so has the effective tax rate as expected. The final item to flag is the proposed final dividend of $0.015 per share, which is 15% above 2020 levels, and reflects the strength of the group's balance sheet, the strong growth and recovery out of the COVID pandemic, and the board's confidence in the strategy and growth outlook for the group. Moving now to slide 23, where we see the strong cash generation for the year.
At an adjusted free cash flow level, we delivered $113 million compared to $28 million last year. This is a very strong performance, although I note there are some non-recurring benefits within this number as a result of the COVID actions taken during 2020. For example, the non-payment of staff bonuses, which would usually be paid in March. The increase in cash generation was largely due to the recovery in operating profits that I've talked about earlier. We also maintained our discipline across other cash levers as set out in the slide, and this was despite some increase in working capital via inventories to support customers given supply chain disruption.
Our closing net debt of $147 million, excluding leases, was lower than at the end of 2020 as a result of the strong adjusted free cash flow noted earlier, more than offsetting our ongoing pension payments and our return to paying shareholder dividends following COVID. This level of net debt equates to leverage of 0.7x , which is slightly below the target range of between one and two times. We have also maintained a comfortable liquidity position with committed facility headroom of around $330 million. I would like to reiterate our capital allocation policy, which remains unchanged. We are focused on reinvesting in organic growth, inorganic growth opportunities in line with our disciplined acquisition strategy, supporting pensions and paying our progressive dividends.
On slide 24, I give an update on our U.K. pensions position following the most recent triennial valuation, which had an effective date of 31 March 2021. I'm pleased to say we reached agreement with scheme trustees well ahead of schedule, and the valuation resulted in an improved technical provisions deficit of GBP 193 million. This was GBP 59 million below the previous valuation. As a result of this, we've been able to agree the same level of annual contributions going forward at GBP 22 million or around GBP 25 million when including admin expenses and levy. These contributions will run till 2028, but we now expect the deficit to be paid off slightly ahead of the previous schedule.
On an IAS 19 accounting basis, the U.K. pension scheme is now in a healthy surplus position of $108 million, and that largely reflects the differing valuation methodologies of gross liability between the accounting methodology and the more prudent technical provisions basis of accounting that derives our cash funding of the U.K. scheme. The improvement in the accounting position to a surplus on our balance sheet predominantly relates to net actuarial gains of $203 million, which was driven by a higher discount rate due to higher corporate bond yields, as well as asset outperformance and the contributions we have made to the scheme during the year. On slide 25, we set out the specific financial guidance in relation to the strategic projects that we are undertaking.
For the overall project, we anticipate some $50 million of bottom line EBIT benefits to be delivered in 2024. The footprint aspects of this program will largely be focused on PM markets, with a resulting material improvement in PM margins, as I mentioned earlier. The total exceptional reorganization cost to achieve these savings will be around $35 million, with the majority of that occurring in 2022 and with the remaining actions planned to occur in 2023. As a result of the timing of these actions, we expect the full run rate of savings for 2024 to be achieved before the end of 2023. In terms of the near-term impact on 2022, we expect incremental EBIT benefits of around $5 million-$10 million to be delivered this year.
Lastly from me, and as with previous announcements, we have provided future modeling guidance, the latest of which is set out on slide 26. I'm not planning to go through this in detail, but we'll be very happy to arrange follow-up calls if you have any questions on this.
Indeed, the strategic project financials I just covered on the previous slide. I conclude by reiterating the strong performance of the group in the year, the accelerating sales growth, the continued mitigation of inflationary pressures, the ongoing strength of the business and balance sheet, and the future margin progression as a result of strategic projects. Now I'd like to hand back to Rajiv.
Thank you, Jackie. I'm now going to display our highlight slide, talk through the outlook before opening up for Q&A. Commercially, operationally, and financially, 2021 was a really strong year for Coats. I would like to thank all my colleagues for their tireless work, remarkable resilience, and fortitude. I look forward to updating you in the middle of the year on the progress of the strategic projects that were announced today. Our focus is to accelerate profitable sales growth and transform the company to be even more successful in a post-pandemic world. Finally, in terms of the outlook for the rest of the year. The strong end to the year has continued into the start of 2022, and despite some evidence of stock replenishment from customers during this period, we expect continued growth for 2022 as a whole.
We remain confident in our ability to mitigate inflationary pressures through pricing and productivity actions. We now anticipate the group's full year 2022 performance to be modestly ahead of our previous expectations. Thank you very much for your time, and now I hand back to Victoria.
Thank you, Rajiv. We now have some time for Q&A, and the Q&A session will begin shortly. If you would like to ask a question, please dial into the conference call using the details provided on the screen in front of you on page 30 of the slide deck. Otherwise, just stay connected to listen to the Q&A session. We will pause for a few minutes to allow time for everybody to dial in. Once you are on the line, please follow the operator's instructions.
Thank you for standing by. To raise your hand, please press star followed by one on your telephone keypad. The first question today comes from Charles Hall at Peel Hunt. Charles, please go ahead.
Thanks. Morning, everyone, and well done on a very impressive statement. Few questions. Firstly, can you just talk a little bit more on pricing? You've obviously had to push through a fairly significant amount in terms of recovering $60 million or so of additional cost last year through pricing and productivity, and presumably similar sort of level this year. Do you feel the pricing environment has changed? Is that a sort of post-pandemic feel, or is there something that you're doing that is different this time around?
Okay. Good morning, Charles, and thank you very much for your compliments here. I think the pricing environment last year was reasonably favorable for a few reasons. One is, you know, overall inflation as far as raw materials were concerned. But I think more importantly, the reliability of supply became a really big issue. Pretty much everyone up and down the value chain in our industry was aware that in order to get goods from one country to another country, you might have to ship it by air, you might have to hire more people because of, kind of, you know, COVID-related absenteeism, et cetera. So, you know, bizarrely enough, last year, the pricing environment was quite favorable and it was relatively easy to get price last year.
Do you see that as an ongoing situation where customers are much more concerned about getting on time in full than purely the best price?
I think 2022 is gonna be more of the same, Charles. I think reliability of supply is gonna be the number one priority for most of the brands. After that it's gonna be quality, sustainability, et cetera.
Yeah. Got it. I know your exposure to Russia and Ukraine is tiny, but if you could just give a bit of insight into what operations you have got there in terms of revenues and people and how things are.
Okay. Let me start with, you know, Ukraine first. We have eight employees and two contractors. Our number one priority is their safety, and I won't be talking more about them, you know, primarily for their, sort of, you know, for their own safety there. We don't have any manufacturing in, you know, Ukraine. It's primarily a warehousing operation. The revenues in Ukraine is 0.3% of group sales and profits, close to negligible. I think overall from a financial standpoint, it's not really relevant. The key focus for us is really the people and making sure that they're safe, and we are investing a lot of time and energy to make sure that they are safe. I'm happy to report as of this morning, they were all safe.
With respect to Russia accounts for roughly 0.6% of group, you know, group revenues. We have 11 employees there. It's getting more hard to ship product into Russia. Given with what's happening with the banking system there, it's hard to get cash out of Russia. I think from a practical standpoint, it looks like getting products in and cash out is gonna be a challenge in Russia this year. We are actually, you know, evaluating our options as far as Russia is concerned. Again, even in Russia, it is very important for us to make sure that the employees there are safe. If we do decide at some point in the future that, you know, due to unforeseen circumstances, we can't continue, then we'll make sure that we'll take care of the employees.
Great. Thanks for that. Lastly, you've already had an exceptional charge relating to an M&A transaction, and Jackie sort of went into some detail on that. Do you want to just give a bit of color on what happened there and your thoughts about future M&A?
Right. I guess with sort of in respect to that M&A, you know, I'm sure you know that we can't go into too much of detail here. We are bound by NDA. It's fair to say that we were looking at a reasonably large acquisition. It was transformational in some ways. We had reached into, you know, advanced stages of due diligence. I guess at every stage, you're actually sort of, you know, assessing the balance between risk and reward. There came a point where the risk was slightly more than what you know was acceptable to us, and we decided not to sort of continue going forward with it. I think the key point here is to highlight two things, I think.
One is the ambition that we have, and we have been talking about it, that we wanna move beyond just smaller bolt-ons into mid-sized companies or some transformational deals. That's what we were trying last year. The second thing is it just shows the discipline that in the company that we will not get sort of you know unreasonably attracted by something which might look good on the surface, but you know carries a lot of risk. I think the overall discipline around M&A continues in the company. Going forward, you know, we have stated our ambition. We are looking for slightly larger acquisitions. The areas that we're looking at continue to be the same. It's essentially performance materials. It's the Coats Digital Solutions, which is our software business in apparel.
If we get any opportunities as far as consolidation in the core business is concerned, we'll, you know, we'll certainly be looking at that. That doesn't change.
Great. That's very helpful. Thanks.
Thank you, Charles.
The next question today comes from David Farrell of Jefferies. David, please go ahead.
Hi. Morning. Yes, echo Charles Hall's comments on a great set of results and outlook. I've also got three questions. The first one is regarding non-US performance material margins. I think in the H1 , they were 16.5%, and for the full year, they were 14.4%, which is just the H2 , they dropped off quite substantially. Can you just confirm what's been going on there, please?
Hi, David. It's Jackie Callaway here. Thanks for the question. You know, I think both actually the ANF and the PM margins benefited in the H1 from the temporary cost savings that we put in place in 2020. As we've seen, they have normalized during 2021, but that's probably a bit more weighted towards the H2 of the year.
Okay. I just wanted to ask around kind of the competitive landscape. Clearly, 200 basis points of market share gain is quite exceptional for you guys. I wonder what the ability of the second and third players in the market is to catch up with you in terms of their sustainability offering. Clearly, at the tail end, it's gonna be difficult. Are the larger competitors working on new products which you think might come snap back and take some market share back off you?
Okay. David, I guess if you look at last year's market share gains of two, you know, two percentage points, I would say that half of that came from our global competitors. It's the likes of the number two, the number three, the number four and the number five. The balance 50% of that came from the long tail that we had here. With respect to innovation, sustainability, they all have new products. They all have their own version of sustainable products. If I look at our EcoVerde sales, which is our recycled polyester thread sales, last year we did about $97 million of sales. Based on market intelligence, customer feedback, third-party sourcing of, you know, information, it is our belief that collectively, all the other players are doing about $15 million of recycled polyester thread sales.
Compared to 97%, of course, sort of gonna collectively, the rest are doing around 15%. The gap is pretty wide. I think the gap will remain wide into the medium term. I do expect the number two and number three companies to catch up in the future.
Okay. Lastly, before I turn it back over, I just wondered, you know, in terms of your client base, traditionally, very much at the premium end, I just kind of wondered how negotiations were going with the kind of more fast fashion labels, as they step up their sustainability agendas.
Right. Are you talking about pricing, David, or just general negotiations?
No, I think traditionally they've not been willing to pay your prices. You know, they would
Right.
Take an inferior thread. But I expect, you know, given where they want to be in terms of sustainability, though that might have changed as they'd be coming back to you.
I think if you look at the $97 million of EcoVerde sales that we had, roughly one-third of that went into sort of new customers, European fast fashion brands. We're actually seeing sustainability as a big lever to not only gain market share but also to get pricing premium. Roughly the price premium that we're getting from some of these fast fashion brands is between 7%-9% compared to comparable products there. Yes, in the past, a lot of these fast fashion brands were very price sensitive, but I think given what's happened in the last three, four years, a lot of these brands are looking to reinvent themselves and focus more on sustainability.
Okay. That's great. Thanks very much. I'll send it back.
Thank you, David.
The next question comes from Maggie Schooley at Stifel. Maggie, please go ahead.
Thank you. Good morning, Jackie. Good morning, Rajiv.
Good morning.
How are you? Just a few questions. Composites, with the EV acceleration in automotive, which was quite clear over COVID, can you give us an update on your discussions with the automotive OEMs? I know your time to market on acceptability has been quite quick for what is a long-term supply chain. Just an update on how things are going there. Secondly, potentially an unfair question and more longer term, but you've had a very good movement on the pension. I know there's a difference between the technical and accounting issue, but it would suggest that perhaps this gives you more long-term options and perhaps premature, but any understanding of what could possibly be done longer term on the pension would be helpful.
Lastly, on water consumption, given huge amounts of water consumption in the industry, I know you have some pretty aggressive targets, but if you can give me an update on those projects to continue to reduce water consumption in the production of your product, that would be very helpful.
Okay. Let me start with the Composites then I'll ask Jackie to talk about pensions. I'll come back and talk about water consumption here. Composites clearly remains a high growth area for us. I think this decade, Maggie, the growth is gonna be fueled by two sort of areas in Composites. One is gonna be telecom, so this whole thing around 5G rollout and fiber to the home rollout, which is still in its nascent stage right now. And there's still a lot of homes that need to be connected there. We see that growth structurally, you know, very strong this decade, and that's gonna fuel a lot of the Composites growth. The automotive Composites that you're talking about, the whole light weighting of cars, electrification.
Today, the business that we have is largely with existing legacy, you know, automotive brands who are looking to lightweight some of their existing cars that they have. We are in discussions with several EV companies to see how we can actually, you know, make for them battery trays, which is the biggest issue that they have today in terms of heat, you know, heat dissipation and light weighting. I am reasonably confident that in the next few years, this is gonna become a bigger and bigger part of the Composites portfolio. If all goes well, probably by the end of the decade, this is gonna require a massive large factory somewhere in the Western world.
Jackie, do you wanna pick up on the pensions?
Thanks, Rajiv. Maggie, we did comment that we've been very pleased with where we landed with the valuation on the pension, the UK pension. That's put us in a position now where we've set up a joint working group with the trustees to look at the longer term de-risking of the scheme. That is a longer term journey. It's probably somewhere around the sort of eight to ten years, but we've kicked off those discussions and I'll hope to be able to update you on those probably at the half year or next year's full year results.
Okay. Interesting. Thank you. On water-
Okay. Just on water here, I think, so a couple of things here. One is that we are, you know, focusing more and more on recycling of our existing water, so we don't consume a lot of external water coming in. That's the first thing. The second thing that we're doing is looking at a dye house where we use a lot of water, either for cleaning the machines or in the dyeing process. We're working with the dye and chemical suppliers to make sure that we can actually use less water in this whole process, along with less chemicals.
The third thing that we're doing is, you know, in terms of our own production and how we load the factories, we are looking at smarter ways to actually manage the loading of machines where, you know, wherein we can optimize water. The fourth thing, which is quite basic, is stop the leakages that happen across multiple factories, you know. You know, a large factory can have sources of leakage. I think those are the four basic things that we're doing in terms of water, you know, water consumption reduction. The other thing is, we have invested in a startup in terms of waterless dyeing here, and that seems to be maturing to a point where now those machines are starting to go into customer sites.
You know, if this technology can mature and scale up, it's basically gonna revolutionize the way we manufacture and it's gonna be zero water consumption. We're looking at the transformation side of it, but in the meantime, we're also doing the basic blocking and tackling, measuring the water consumption, recycling and reusing of water.
Very helpful. Thank you across all fronts.
Thank you, Maggie.
The next question today comes from Mark Fielding of RBC. Mark, please go ahead.
All right, thanks for taking my question. Got sort of three questions. A few of them link into things you've been talking about already. I mean, firstly, obviously you in terms of EcoVerde, you've talked about the 2024 target. Just, you know, maybe talk a bit more about how you see growth over the next year or so. I know in the past there was, you know, bottlenecks in terms of things like raw materials, et cetera, for that. Just checking that, you know, there's no issues there in terms of manufacturing capacity from your side as you look to grow into it. Maybe take that question first.
Okay. Thanks, Mark. I guess with EcoVerde, last year we did $97 million. The expectation this year is that we'll do around $150 million. It could be higher, it could be lower. This is just an estimate right now here. There are no supply issues, so we have enough of recycled polyester suppliers across the world. As you would expect, a lot of our EcoVerde sales depend on how the brands are planning to market their final products. It needs to be in line with whatever the brands are doing as far as the entire garment is concerned. There's no point in having a recycled polyester thread when the rest of the garment is made out of oil, you know, oil-based products. We are clearly seeing growth in this area here.
More and more brands are now trying to get the entire garment or the entire shoe made out of recycled materials. I think we are confident about $150 million this year, and that's gonna, you know, significantly increase the following year.
Thank you. Actually, can I just ask a follow-up linked to that. With the launch of the sort of all-natural thread, obviously EcoVerde, you said basically uses your existing manufacturing infrastructure. Is it the same if you go all-natural, or is there gonna be more meaningful shifts to your manufacturing processes?
If we go all natural, it's we can still use the existing machines, the existing labor, the existing standard operating procedures. There isn't any incremental investment we need to do there. Just in terms of plant-based or eco products here, that is the end game. All right? Recycled product is basically a transitionary phase between where we are and where we need to get to as an industry. We have started with these all-natural plant-based products last year, and I'm hoping that over the next couple of years, we'll start to see more and more of that growing.
Great. Thank you. Now technically my second question, although it's actually my third, 'cause I had a little follow-up there. Just can you talk a bit. Obviously, you know, up strongly on where we were in 2019. Very strong finish to the year. Just maybe talk in a bit more detail about how you see inventory build in the market. Obviously, as you said, there's been a focus on things like reliability. You know, where are we in inventories versus, you know, past levels? Do you think structural inventories in the market change, et cetera?
I think last year, if you look at the growth last year, it came as a result of three factors. One is the pent-up demand that was sort of building during, you know, the COVID year. The second one is buffer buying. Essentially, that is brands buying more than what they need to offset the uncertainty around the supply chain issues across the world. The third one is sort of a normal restocking in the inventory. I think these are the three factors that led to the volume growth last year. I think these three factors will still be in play this year.
Hopefully then by Q1 next year we'll start to see supply chain issues normalizing, the inventory buildup, sort of, you know, getting back to its sort of, you know, normal levels and pent-up demand being sort of addressed. I think this year is gonna be more of the same.
Just to clarify that then, in terms of inventory levels and where we are.
Yeah.
You know, my impression we're not back where we were in 2019 yet, but you know.
That's right.
Is there a risk at some point that we roll past this and we go to a destock? Or do you think that's not a problem?
I don't think that's gonna be the problem because there'll still be supply chain issues this year.
Thank you. Finally, a follow-up to the earlier question on the H1, H2 split in margins and margins being lower in the H2 . I noted Jackie's comment about the benefit from temporary savings. I suppose just it's been a while since we've seen a normal year. Is there any seasonal factors as well or any other factors? Should we think about the H2 margins as more of the base for future forecasts? Or is it more the year level as a whole that you think is representative?
I don't think you can make those comments, Mark, or those assumptions about the H2 or the H1 . I think, you know, we just had that. We had a year where we've come out of 2020, and it's been a bit of an odd year in terms of how that played out with costs. I don't think you can read anything more into it than that.
When you would say, you know, as a simple analyst, and I'm, you know, adding the roughly 300 basis points to margins from your cost saving plan today, the full year level is probably a good representation, 'cause you say there's a lot of moving parts through the year, Vietnam closures, et cetera. Is that fair?
I think what we're saying on the strategic projects is that you look forward into 2024 and basically we're seeing a $50 million incremental EBIT into 2024. That's what we've put in as guidance on that.
Perfect. That would be relative to the full year base rather than sort of H2 run rate, I suppose is what I'm saying.
I think that's a fair assumption. Yeah.
Perfect. Great. Thanks, Jackie.
The final question today comes from James Zaremba at Barclays. James, please go ahead.
Hi. Morning. Yes. One, just a clarification on the kind of the market share point. I guess I sort of, from what you said, re David's question, it sounds like the kind of market share from the, you know, number two to five players driven by, you know, potentially EcoVadis, certainly seems it's something which you'd expect to kind of continue on a medium-term basis. But then I guess if you, maybe if you'd comment around the market share gains versus the tail. You know, is that related to, you know, the reliability kind of focus you said is in place at the moment and, or is that something a little bit more structural, and how you see that kind of continuing? Obviously it's quite exceptional growth coming from market share.
A second question would just be around the cost restructuring. I guess it'll be, you know, how much of this relates to the bolt-ons you've made over the last few years in North America. I guess is there any risk that, you know, how you're perceived as an acquirer changes if you're making, I guess, significant restructurings to some of those bolt-on businesses? Thank you.
Okay, let me start with the market share question you had, James. The market share gains against our near global competitors is driven by two factors. One is our global scale and our ability to actually be very reliable in terms of supply. That was the primary reason. The secondary reason was, you know, EcoVadis or sustainability performance that we have. These two factors were the biggest in terms of our top global competition. With respect to the long tail, it's basically reliability of supply. Most of the long tail do not play in the sustainability arena.
Thank you.
Your second question around the cost of the changes there. I think if you just take a step back, James, you know, we have been flagging for at least two years, maybe three, that we're having challenges with labor availability in the U.S. That is a significant issue for us. We were hoping that, you know, after all the COVID subsidy or the COVID support that the federal and the state governments were actually providing to you know citizens in the U.S., that people would kind of gonna get back to work.
That has not happened yet, and we now have concluded that the labor issues with respect to quotes and with respect to the manufacturing areas that depend on unskilled or semi-skilled labor is gonna be a challenge even in the medium to long term. We have to look at structural responses, which are part of the strategic projects that we're announcing. You know, there's no point in running a factory at 65% capacity utilization because you'll be losing money all day. The whole idea is to make sure that we are able to you know have our factories in an area where we can have labor, and we can satisfy customers. Again, just to add some more color to the U.S. here.
For the last three years, our factories have been running at roughly 65% capacity utilization. The order book that we have had for the last three years has been very strong. From a customer standpoint, demand has been very robust. You know, fulfill all the demand that we have, our factories would have been running at 85%-90% capacity utilization. The fact we don't have people in the factories is sort of constraining us here. These strategic projects that we have announced today are purely driven by the fact that we need to improve customer service in certain geographies. The way you improve customer service is to make sure you've got the right capacity, the right machines, the right labor in play to actually meet, you know, the demand.
That's what we're doing right now.
Perfect. Thank you. Maybe just as a follow-up, I guess. That sounds like one which has maybe come about due to kind of the U.S. circumstance from last year. Of course, you've got the cost savings in the other regions. Is this kind of, you know, you sort of had a big program a few years ago, a second one now. Is it kind of, you know, only biting off what you can chew at one point in time? Or is it sort of actually the footprint is, you know, where you'd want it now over the next, you know, five plus years on the back of this?
I think that's an excellent question, James. The program that we announced in 2018 and completed in 2019 was largely focused around SG&A optimization. This time around, it's basically footprint optimization and portfolio optimization, so that's the primary driver in order to improve customer service in certain geographies. Now, the moment you do footprint optimization and consolidation of footprint, you will have synergies as far as, you know, SG&A is concerned. Of that $50 million that Jackie mentioned in terms of incrementally, but in 2024, we expect half of that is gonna come from footprint optimization, the other half is gonna come from associated cost being taken out.
Perfect. Thank you. Congratulations on the results, as everyone else said.
Thank you, James.
We have no further questions in the queue, so I'll hand back to Rajiv for any closing comments.
All right. Thank you. Thank you very much for your questions. All of them very, you know, very interesting and deep questions. You know, we are really excited about the performance that we delivered last year. I think we're even more excited about this year and the future. I think this is you know, last year's, you know, performance is just evidence that the strategy that we had in place, the execution, the global footprint. I think we're in a sweet spot right now. I can just see that the medium to long term is looking very bright. Just as a data point.
The last crisis that happened in 2009, you know, we had a V-shaped recovery, but more importantly, we had a five-year bull run after that. I can see that, you know, coming out of this crisis here, it's gonna be an equally strong three to five years. Thank you very much for your time, and I look forward to meeting some of you this evening or tomorrow.
This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for joining. You may now disconnect your lines.