Welcome to Dometic's webcast and Q&A regarding the new segment structure and the restated financials. Today I am pleased to present CEO Juan Vargues, CFO Stefan Fristedt, and Head of Investor Relations, Rikard Tunedal. For the first part of the call, all participants will be in listen-only mode. During the questions and answers session, participants are able to ask questions by pressing *5 on their telephone keypad. You can also type questions in the webcast. Now I will hand the conference over to the speakers. Please go ahead.
Good morning to all of you, and welcome to the presentation of Dometic's new segment structure. Let's start immediately by looking at where we are coming from. On the right, sorry, on the left-hand side, you have the chart showing our structure 2017. As you can see on the different colors, the gray area represents the original three regional segments that we had, meaning Americas, EMEA, and APAC. The green side represents what we reported as the Marine part at the time of the regional segments, but that was the Marine business that we had 2017. The blue part represented the hospitality side that we had at the time. As you can see, it has been a dramatic change during the last four years up to 2023, where we have seen all the segments growing.
You can also react on the fact that Marine has been showing fantastic development as well as segment Global, as a combination of both organic and acquisitive growth. Of course, the question, the first question is, why are we doing this new change again? The reason is really that we believe in focus. We believe that focus and specialization always pays off. When I joined the company in 2017, sorry, beginning of 2018, we had three regional segments, and we had three geographical segments in charge of, in principle, 14 different product groups and seven different verticals. Everything that we have done since the beginning has been really to try to reduce the complexity in the business, getting our management in the different segments to get deeper into both the product side and the customer side.
In reality, the journey is very much about shifting our focus from regions and a regional approach and more into products and a Global approach. Just to explain in some way, if we do have a number of factories doing refrigeration, you have much more in common by running one single customer, three refrigeration factories across the globe than having a combination of refrigeration and blinds. You do not have a lot of things in common between those two products. There is not a lot of synergies. You have different material. You have different suppliers. We believe that this Global approach will give us a higher number of synergies, and we will get even more understanding for different customers.
The first step in the journey after the system acquisition was really to create, on one side, the Marine subsegment as a part of the Global segment that we announced in 2021 first. Then, after the acquisition of Igloo in November 2021, we moved the Marine segment to become a new segment on the top, and then we included Igloo as part of Global. That's the way we have been reporting now for the last couple of years. At the same time, as background for the Igloo acquisition was from the beginning that we knew that we had enormous synergies between the Igloo organization and the cooling box business that we had within Dometic historically. This was really the plan from the beginning, but of course, we wanted to see Igloo developing in the first 18-24 months before making this change.
We have been working together now for two years, and we believe that it is time now to get additional attention to the Mobile Cooling Business, which is one of the businesses where we have major expectations moving forward. At the same time, we also communicated that we completed six acquisitions in the other area where we have very, very high expectations moving forward, which is Mobile Power Solutions. Therefore, we are taking this new step on one side, moving the Igloo business together with the Dometic legacy cooling box business to become Dometic mobile cooling, as we announced some months ago, at the same time as we create also a Global organization called Mobile Power Solutions that becomes one new subsegment within Global. The next question that we might get is obviously, so what about the rest? Land Vehicles.
I would like to reemphasize again that if we could split Land Vehicles into different products, we would do it. Because again, we see more synergies that way. Unfortunately, vehicles look differently in different parts of the world. Just to give you a sample, if you look at an RV in the U.S., the average number of air conditioners is two and a half. If you look at Europe, the average number of air conditioners is 0.25-0.30. The technology we have today is different enough not to motivate to have one Global organization driving air conditioning Globally. Having said that, of course, as you know, we are growing in some of these areas more. We have been commenting a number of times that we also prepare to divest and working on divesting some other parts.
That might lead to a situation down the road where we take next step. Again, we want to drive the business out of a product perspective. We believe that that's the driving force behind organic growth. Just to clarify even more, the three regional segments that we had in 2023 are being renamed to Land Vehicles Americas, Land Vehicles EMEA, Land Vehicles APAC, and they will be responsible for products and solutions for land-based vehicles, which means on one side the RV business, but that means as well when we are talking about trucks, we are talking about agricultural, so any kind of land-based vehicles where we have our equipment. That includes as well most of the standalone products, meaning tents, meaning racks, systems, and meaning as well what we call mobile cooking.
We have the Marine business that is moving from being a subsegment to become, has been already, a segment, and they are in charge of products and solutions for the boating industry. We have as well Mobile Cooling Solutions, which is the combination of the Igloo business that we acquired in 2021 and the carve-out of all the Dometic cooling box business that we have up to 2023. Last but not least, we have Global Ventures, which is the combination on one side of the Mobile Power Solution, the Global Mobile Power Solution business that we are carving out from the regional segments, plus other Global verticals. Just as a reminder, in other Global verticals, we have three different verticals. One is hospitality, second is residential, and thirdly, we have mobile deliveries.
Looking at the changes at the top, this means really that the regional segments, Land Vehicles, will represent about 44% of the total business. The Marine business will be 23% of sales. Mobile Cooling Solutions will represent exactly the same number, meaning 23% of total sales. The new Global Ventures, combining other Global verticals and Mobile Power Solutions, will represent 10% of the total business. With that said, I would like to hand it over to Stefan, please.
Good morning, everyone. I will review the different segments, starting off with the three land vehicle segments. First of all, Americas, it's products and solutions for land-based vehicles in Americas within the RV and CPV industries. As Juan mentioned, it makes up 15% of the group sales in the new structure. We have been moving out Mobile Cooling Solutions and Mobile Power Solutions to the new segments, as we just mentioned. If we look on the financials for land vehicle Americas, they had a turnover of $4.2 billion in 2023. That is, compared to 2022, an organic decline of 32%. It has obviously been significantly impacted by the RV industry production in Americas, as well as the inventory reduction cycle in the service and aftermarket channel. The EBITDA margin in 2023 was -3.8% compared to 3.4% the year before that.
That is obviously mainly driven by the significant decline in sales. Just to be clear, the sales of this segment is sold across all our sales channels. Moving over to Land Vehicles EMEA, the comments above are the same as for Americas. I go directly to the segment financials. We had almost $6.8 billion in turnover in 2023. That is equivalent to -2% in change in net sales. The EBITDA margin stayed pretty flat at 9.3% compared to 9.5% the year before. Here, the same comment as for Americas is valid that the sales is coming from all sales channels. Moving on to Land Vehicles APAC, it is making up 5% of the total sales in the group. We had a sale of $1.4 billion in 2023, and that is equivalent to a 5% organic growth in 2023.
As a matter of fact, the already strong margin is actually increasing somewhat when we have been breaking out Mobile Cooling Solutions and Mobile Power Solutions, and ends up at 31.2%. Here we have the same comment as on the other ones that we are selling through all sales channels in Land Vehicles APAC. Moving on to the Marine segments, where we sell products and solutions for the Marine industry Globally. We have moved out Mobile Cooling Solutions and Mobile Power Solutions to the new segments. It was not a significant part of the Marine segment, so the share of group sales is going down from 24% to 23%. We achieved almost $6.5 billion in sales in 2023, equivalent to -4% organic growth. The EBITDA margin on 25% is slightly down versus the year before.
That is obviously driven by the organic sales decline and also that we have had an unfavorable service and aftermarket have been going down of the total sales. We are selling the Marine products through the service and aftermarket and the OEM channels. Coming in to segment Mobile Cooling Solutions, and as you mentioned, Juan, it was already clear from the beginning after the Igloo acquisition that we would take this step in combining the Igloo Mobile Cooling Business with the Dometic branded Mobile Cooling Business in order to drive further value creation and also secure the realization of the $50 million in synergies that we did point out in connection with the acquisition. If we look on the business as such, 80% plus of the sales is coming from the Igloo business in 2023.
In 2023, we had $6.2 billion in sales in this new segment, and that's equivalent to -11% organic growth. It was really impacted mainly by that we had a reduction by the larger retailers in the U.S. on their inventory levels. We have also seen a similar development in the APAC region within mobile cooling. We have an EBITDA margin of 8.8%, which is an improvement versus the year before where it was 8.3%. It has, of course, been impacted by the -11% organic development. We have also seen increasing logistic and warehouse costs in this segment. We are continuing to invest in new products in our product portfolio, which we believe is absolutely necessary to drive the development in this segment.
If you do the backwards calculation, you will see that the margin on the Dometic-related Mobile Cooling Business has been going down, and that is exactly related to declining sales, but also increasing extraordinary costs around logistic and warehousing. We are expecting that we are gradually going to come back to the margins that we have seen in the Dometic-branded Mobile Cooling Business, which has been around 20%. One hundred percent of the sales in this segment is via the sales channel distribution. Moving on to segment Global Ventures, that is really two distinct subsegments. It is Mobile Power Solutions, which is self-explanatory. We have other Global verticals, which have existed already before. That consists of businesses on the residential side, hospitality, and mobile deliveries. Mobile Power Solutions is going to make up around 70% of the segment sales in 2023.
That has obviously been driven by the six acquisitions that we have done in the period 2021 to 2022 in all the three geographical areas. Going over to the segment financials, $2.6 billion in net sales, which is equivalent to -22% development. It has been very much driven by the development in the Mobile Power Solutions business and very much so to the US side of it, where it has been impacted both by the decline on the RV OEM side, but also the same decline driven by the inventory reduction on the service and aftermarket channel in Americas. The EBITDA margin is 14.1% in this segment. It has, of course, been impacted by the sales decline. We are continuing to invest in product development in this space to be a part of this fast-growing industry.
If we look specifically at the acquired Mobile Power Solution businesses, they have been delivering an EBITDA margin, which is well above group average despite challenging market conditions. If we look on the sales channel split, other Global verticals is distribution as well as in Mobile Power Solutions. With that, I would like to open up for Q&A. I hand it over.
If you wish to ask a question, please dial star five on your telephone keypad to enter the queue. If you wish to withdraw your question, please dial star five again on your telephone keypad. Please mute your line when you have asked your question, and please limit yourself to only two questions. The next question comes from Johan Eliason from Kepler Cheuvreux. Please go ahead.
Yeah, good morning. It's Johan here. Thank you for taking my questions. I was curious about the land vehicle segments now that you make them even more sort of focused in terms of product areas. We still see a significant difference in margin here between Americas, EMEA, and APAC. Can you sort of give us some explanation to the reason for the significant difference in margin? I guess part of it is that the RV volumes in Americas is obviously significantly weaker than in Europe. Is it also CPV or any other type of bigger aftermarket or other sort of profile that explains this difference? Do they all have the same margin potential in the future?
I would say that there's difference. I mean, first, we start with APAC. It is clear that APAC for us is, per se, two different subsegments. You have the Pacific area, and then you have Asia. Asia is very small for us. Pacific is huge for us. We have a very good organization, very huge margins. Of course, there is not a lot of competition. It is far away from the U.S. It's far away from Europe. We have, I would say, a unique position in that area. You have, on the other side, Americas. Americas is the one which is the most exposed to the RV side. We have a business, a CPV business in Americas, but it's relatively small in comparison to what we have in Europe.
They have basically not a lot of standalone products in comparison to what we have in EMEA. If we look at EMEA, it is the one having, I would say, the most diversified program. On one side, we have a CPV, which is substantially bigger than what we have in the other two regions. That is what the business, the CPV business, started once upon a time. The other side is that it is also in the EMEA region where we made a few of the important acquisitions complete in 2021. Both the Front Runner business and the CADAC business were there. They are coming as well with high margins. If I move from your first question to the second question, do they have the same potential? The answer is no. It is clear.
It is clear that we have more competition on the American market than we have on the European market. At the same time, it is also true that the American market has been extremely tough during the last couple of years. I believe that we will continue to see the same situation, meaning APAC, highest margins, EMEA in between, and Americas lower margins. Of course, we do not have the intention of losing money as we are showing for 2023. You have the service and aftermarket business, which is also a very, very important part of the business where we have a higher service and aftermarket in EMEA driven really by the combination of businesses and the fact that the CPV business is so much bigger in Americas. Americas is the most exposed to the RV OEM business.
Excellent. I wonder a little bit about the Global Ventures. Is that an area where we will see more acquisitions going forward, or is this also an area where you're considering divestments?
I think that Global Ventures is a very, very exciting area. We completed, as you know, six acquisitions in Mobile Power Solutions business. We believe that that market will continue to grow at a higher pace than the rest. We believe that that market is very fragmented, and we have a unique situation to be one of the companies rolling up that market as such. We will see more.
Okay. Excellent.
Just to complete on that one, I mean, the reason for calling ventures is that you have other Global verticals when the intention is really to develop Global businesses. You might be in a situation in three years from now where we feel that it's difficult to penetrate some certain markets with some of the products. We will not hesitate in raising the question up and saying, "Okay, is this something for the future or not?" I think I would like to split Mobile Power Solutions, which is definitely part of our future big time, and Global Ventures, which is very much about investing in a number of areas, having the potential, but where we still need to see that they can develop into the next step. I mean, one of the areas is mobile deliveries.
As you know, we have been investing heavily in developing that area of the business because it is clear there is a customer demand. Until now, even if we are trying the products, even if we have some of the Global chains trying the product, still we do not have basically any sales. Of course, we cannot invest for another 10 years before we take a decision on whether that is part of the future or not. It might be that it is still early days for that kind of products. Did I answer your question?
Yeah, that's absolutely fine. And then finally, I just wondered, I mean, we saw some decent numbers and outlooks from European RV makers yesterday. How is your current market situation, Europe, North America, etc.?
Remember that we are one that we are reporting a couple of weeks. The only thing I can refer is obviously to what they are communicating. We see that if we look at our customers, they are reporting high numbers on the OEM side, and they are reporting low numbers on the service and aftermarket side.
Yeah. Excellent. Thank you very much.
You're welcome.
Thank you. Juan, I jump in here with a few web questions. First one from Per-Arne Blomqvist. The question is, it looks like the mobile cooling and mobile power parts previously that part of Americas, EMEA, APAC, and Marine, saw a significant margin drop in 2023. What are the key drivers, and what should we expect coming two to three years?
Yeah, my main drivers is basically two. On one side or three, I would say. On one side is volume. On the second side, and of course, we have seen that in any kind of consumer business, and that's a pure consumer business. The second reason is really inventories and the cost that we have for warehousing. As you remember, we have been talking about warehousing cost in both EMEA and Americas. If you think about cooling boxes, they take a lot of space. They are more penalized than other products.
Yeah. They are sitting exactly in that supply chain from Asia to Europe and to America. It is.
Absolutely. Thirdly, both in connection to the acquisition, but also Mobile Power Solutions, we believe that innovation is critical. We have been investing and will keep investing in mobile cooling, in developing both Passive Cooling Boxes and the Dometic brand, as well as active cooling boxes and the Igloo brand . We are starting to launch those products. Of course, you have an extra cost, an extra investment to develop those products before we see the sales. The same is valid to Mobile Power Solutions. On one side, of course, we are talking about the smaller companies, and we are investing in developing our own IP on those products. We see that as a temporary margin drop driven by volume, driven by the extra warehouses, and then driven by the extra product development cost that we have just now.
Thank you. A few more questions here on the web from Magdalena from Nordea. I noticed that the mobile cooling declined organically in 2022, also in 2022. Do you still consider this business as relatively more resilient than your other exposures?
Yes. We have many kind of events.
It's kind of a specific reason why it declined, actually. Yeah.
We have a pandemic every 100 years. I mean, we have seen both on the Dometic side, and we have seen on the Igloo side that if we go back to the period pre-Lehman Brothers, it has been, I mean, if you look at Igloo, they never had any negative organic growth. If you look at the Dometic side, it has been the same. I think that we have a strongly nervous situation with the pandemic created in the post-pandemic era. It will come back.
Another one from Magdalena. Do you have any specific EBITDA margin aspirations for each of your segments that you can share?
We have aspirations that we do not share. That's right. But I mean, you know, all of you, where we are coming from, you know that we have financial targets. It is, I think, very, very easy. We have, I would say, two very, very high margin businesses in APAC and Marine. We have EMEA that we need to get into group margins. We have mobile cooling that will be kind of middle-sized double-digit, as we announced from the beginning. We have Mobile Power Solutions that are Global that will be also high. And then we have Americas that we need to lift into those mid-double-digit business. So nothing new. I mean, I think it is more or less what we have communicated from the beginning. All that together will lift us to our financial targets.
Thank you. One more question here from Henrik from Carnegie. Could you provide a split of OEM versus service and aftermarket in the various segments to get a better sense of cyclicality in the various segments?
It's a little bit difficult because we have different combinations even within Land Vehicles. If you look at Land Vehicles, it's clear that EMEA is the less exposed. We have outdoor standalone, which is pure consumer products, while you have also the CPV, which is for us the cyclical from the perspective of that's a product where the underlying business is growing all the time. The penetration of the product, the cooling compartments, is growing all the time. If you look at the RV side, the aftermarket connected to the RV side is very similar across the different continents. Marine, we historically have been 50-50, 45-55.
During the last couple of years, since the OEM side has been growing so dramatically in connection with the pandemic and the backlog, we have been lower on some, but we are expecting that to recover and to be again 50-50, 45-55. While if we are looking at the RV side, it's more 65% OEM, 35% AAM.
Thank you. One question here on the APAC segment. 31% EBITDA margin, quite high. Is this resilient? What is driving this? I think you partly answered that before, but maybe you can repeat it.
No, but I think we have a competitive arena, which is pretty unique. It's clear. We have another factor, which I think is important that is supporting us, is that the Australian market as such is also changing. We have seen a lot of Chinese imports, also RV imports. We have also a strong organization in China, which is equipping those vehicles from the beginning. At the same time, once the vehicles reach Australia, Australia has very, very strong regulations, which means that they have to be equipped with Australian-approved products from a safety perspective. That benefits us big time. Even if the vehicles are Chinese, the equipment has to be approved, and we have all the approvals and the service organization in place. I think that the Australian market is very unique. Again, you never know.
Obviously, we are going to get tons of different competitors in the coming five years, but so far, we haven't seen that.
I mean, to add, I mean, Australia is an early adopter market. I mean, it's where many new trends are emerging. From that point of view, it's a market where there is coming out a lot of new products, obviously. I think the answer is that we feel that it is a high margin, but we see absolutely pathways to keep that profitability level.
I mean, of course, that 31% is extreme. Whether it is 31% or 27% is a little bit more difficult to tell. It is a high-margin area of the world without any kind of doubts. I have to say, it's not unique for this industry. I have been working for a number of different industries, and we always have higher margins in that part of the world, especially when you have 80% of the APAC business in the Pacific. It would be different if we had 80% of the business in Asia.
Thank you. The last kind of web question we have here is, this is the third reset in four years. Is this the last one?
For the time being, as I mentioned before at the start, it's really, I mean, I would love to also move from Land Vehicles into Global products. The way the American RV industry looks like in comparison to Europe or in comparison to APAC today is different. We see obviously a trend in Americas where vehicles are becoming smaller. We see Asia, which is a lot of SUVs coming in. This might be changing in the future, and then we will need to rethink. I mean, again, if I could have a big bang and create Global cooler groups, I would do it because I believe that we have much more in common in that area and that will give us more expansion opportunities by using the same technology, same products, vertical by vertical, instead of being as dependent as we are on a few verticals.
Again, that's the intention, is to continue, but we don't have anything in sight just now. That might be a combination of how the markets develop at the same time as what kind of areas could we divest tomorrow.
Yeah. Thank you. That was the last web question. Over to you, Marlin.
As a reminder, if you wish to ask a question, please dial star five on your telephone keypad. The next question comes from Johan Eliason from Kepler Cheuvreux. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Hi, it's Johan here again. Just a little bit of follow-up on the segment. I mean, it is an important part of your growth target of 10% on the top line. Is there any sort of area? I mean, you mentioned solar power, obviously, being one such area. If you look at the LV segment, so the Marine or mobile cooling, is there any specific area where you see a significant M&A opportunity?
Yes, we do. I mean, you go back to what we did 2021, 2022, we also acquired a number of companies in the outdoor standalone, meaning portable products. And we believe that that's also a very interesting area with high growth opportunities, with high margin opportunities, where we have seen the companies that we acquired developing nicely despite tough market conditions and where we would like to become much more Global than we are. It's very much about reducing the exposure to a few verticals, as we have been talking about. You have clear touching ground between what we are doing on the RV side, but also the fast-growing automotive. I think we have been talking about the SUV, the pickup market, and where we have a lot of space to fill the trunk and the frunk with portable products coming from us.
We see on one side Mobile Power Solutions, on the other side, standalone products. Then from a Marine perspective, it is really interesting as well. We see very much doing what we are doing, looking for Steering Systems , looking for Ride & Handling Products in other parts of the world. We can complement, obviously, what we are doing in North America so well.
Okay. Excellent. Thank you.
You're welcome.
I think that was the last question that we had. So we would like to turn this call. Any final words on?
No. Thank you very much for your attention. I fully understand the questions on whether this is going to be the last time. I cannot promise that. What I can assure you is that we are doing our best to bring even more transparency to the business, more understanding of how it looks like. Hopefully, you get some more understanding after this call. It is really about getting deeper and deeper in each of our businesses and to see that we have good opportunities to develop both from a growth perspective and a profitability perspective. Thank you very much for your attention, and talk to you soon again. Thank you.
Thank you.
Bye.