For those of you who are live with us here in Pordenone, my name is Jacob Broberg. I'm Head of Corporate Communication and Investor Relations. Some housekeeping rules before we start. All of you who watch online, you have the opportunity to ask questions. You just put the question in the on the website, and of course, I will then read out the questions. For those of you who are here in the room, you have the opportunity to ask questions, and we will then hand out the microphone. Today's presenters, as you hopefully have seen, is Alberto Zanata, the CEO of the company. Dave Herring is running our Food Business, Americas organization. Fabio Zarpellon is our CFO. If we take a look at the agenda for today, as you hopefully know, I mean, we will focus on three things.
It's a general update from Alberto, the food business in Americas, and of course, the financial update. For those of you who participate live here in Italy, you will also be able to see the factory, a lot of our products, and also demonstration of our connected appliances. I think with that, let's get started. Alberto, please go ahead.
Thank you, Jacob, and good morning to everybody. Let's start with the picture of what is Electrolux Professional today. I mean, watching the video, you already got the numbers about Electrolux Professional, but let's bridge this number with what it was a year ago. A year ago, when we met in Ljungby, for the one who attended the investor day in Ljungby last year, there are three major things that are different from what was presented to you in Ljungby. The first one is the turnover. This is a rolling 12 months, including the last quarter of last year and without the last quarter of this year. For instance, the sales of Unified Brands are not included or they are only for one month because we acquired the company December first.
The first number is that, for the first time since we separated, but only for the second time since we were even a sector in the division, we are above the SEK 10 billion in terms of net sales. It is a threshold, it is a step that we are taking in the progress we are doing to improve the business. The second one is that the share of laundry business is smaller compared to the one we had, a year ago. Two reasons. Clearly, the food and beverage business recovered faster or better. They recovered because it went down significantly because of the pandemic, while the laundry already recovered in 2021, and it has continued to develop steadily.
The second one is that we added the Unified Brands business that is in the food area. A comment could be, okay, we are growing more the less profitable part of the business. The reality is that if we match this mix with the market, you have to remember that the laundry business is a chunk of the food and beverage. It is natural that we have a larger part of that business in that area. The third one, equally important, is the geographical mix. A year ago, the share of business coming from United States, from North America, from the Americas, was much less than what it is today. That is already a third of the total business of this company. We will see this later, how important it is considering the current environment.
With this said, the first part of the time we will spend together, I want to dedicate it to the market. I believe, or at least these are the questions that I'm usually receiving, how is going, what is going to happen. I will not focus so much on this chart that is already well-known basically to everybody. Let's have a look at the result of some research, some analysis, that have been provided to us from external institutes during the past months. The first one on the left is showing the tourism or travel spending. You know that travel was one of the last, sub-segment of the hospitality industry recovering after the pandemic. In particular business travel, here we are talking about tourism. That was indeed the opposite of the first one to recover.
You see that one element is that for all 2021, the part of this business that recovered the group was the domestic travelers. People traveled staying inside of the country or inside of the continent. Indeed, Asia was locked down until basically spring, summer of this year. You see the second chart, the one on the right, that is showing the international tourist arrivals. You see the green line is the 2022 updated to July. It is a fresh number. You see how rapid is the growth of the number of international tourists arriving. This is showing the reopening, in particular of the routes to Asia, but also North America, the Americas in general. The tourism and travel is coming back faster and reopening in a global way.
Another important element that we consider, this is the out-of-home spending. Yesterday, today, you are participating in the out-of-home spending because we are all spending money to eat, sleep, travel or whatever out of home. There is not a direct relation between the out-of-home spending and the sales of equipment. But clearly, if there are more people spending money eating out of home, in the case of eating or washing the linen out of home, obviously our customers sooner or later will have to buy the equipment to treat this food, this linen, and this other stuff. It is not direct, but it is a good indicator to understand if the business is growing, if we are going to get sales of equipment today or in the near future. Here you can see, this is by geography.
Here you can see that the market is not back to the 2019 level yet. The out-of-home spending in 2022 is expected to be still below the 2019 level. It is expected to go over or to reach the 2019 level in 2023, and then further growing. This chart was updated during the summer. These numbers are coming from a search that was commissioned during the summer. The other element that is important to notice here is that if the overall out-of-home spending is not back to the 2019 level, it is in North America. North America recovered faster than the other part of the world.
This is the same chart. By definition, they have to buy more equipment because not only the replacement, that is the big chunk of our business, but there is also the new one coming. More outlet means more business. Here, this one has been updated to the last day of October this year. It's super recent, very fresh. In this case, I'm showing you United States and Europe. We have the same for Asia and Middle East. I tell you that the trend is obviously even more positive in those two parts of the world. The growth is faster in these two parts of the world. The important thing here is to see that in the United States, again, the number of outlets is similar to the 2019 level. No surprise considering what we saw before.
We also see that it is expected to grow even next year and the following ones. In Europe it is the same trend, so growing next year and the following one, but it is not yet at the level of 2019. Again, I believe no surprise, just confirming what we saw in the out-of-spending, out-of-home spending, but this is with a more strict relation, let me say, to our business. This is in some way confirming also the feeling that we have looking at the order intake that is still good.
Not as high as last year, but remember that last year, I think I mentioned more than once, that in some way the order intake was inflated by the number of order we were receiving that were anticipated by our customer because of the announcement of the price increase from January first, because of the fear of not having the product available when needed due to the lack of components or the supply chain issues. This doesn't mean that we don't hear, we don't see what is happening around. This is the reason why also a couple of weeks ago we're commenting the Q3 result. I said that we are preparing for a possible downturn, but at the same time, I would like to further underline that we are preparing.
We can't get by surprise obviously, but what we see from the market, from our customer or the customer of our customer is that they still in a positive momentum, the market or the industry, the hospitality industry with some plus, some minus where we are in. It is an industry that in any case is changing because the supply chain disruption created problem. The inflationary item that are today hitting the industry are creating problem. For instance, there are things where our customer are optimizing the menu. They are looking at instead of increasing the price of the item, they are reducing the quantity of food that you have on the plate. If they reduce by 10% the size of the steak, I bet you are not able to see this one happening.
It is in any case a reduction of the cost of the raw material. They are re-engineering the menu in the meaning that they are using items that are less costly than the others, or things like that. For sure, they are looking at the technology to make the operation more efficient. It is what we are doing in our factory. You will see this visiting the factory. At the end, the kitchen is a sort of small factory. If you are able to digitalize the operations, then you will make the restaurant more productive, more efficient, and at the end you are saving money. If you are using equipment that are using less energy, less gas, less water, you generate savings.
You do well for the environment, but in particular you generate savings for your operations. These are important things that are connected to trends that are there in the industry such as sustainability. I just mentioned this one, and it is not only to be green, to safeguard the environment. It's also to make sure that I have more money in my pocket. Energy cost, I believe we said it. Fabio will give you also some hard numbers about that, are not materially impacting our business, but they are the business of a restaurant. I believe that the electrical bill or the gas bill for a restaurant is one of the major offender, as well as for a laundry operation. To deliver product that are significantly reducing these two items is super important.
As well as everybody's talking about the ghost kitchen. It was the most talked-about things during the pandemic. I don't know what people were thinking about what ghost kitchen was. In reality, it is a kitchen, so it is an existing hard kitchen where there are people working inside. The only point is that customers are not going to that kitchen. That is only used to deliver food to customers because that time people were not able to travel to go to the restaurant, the restaurants were closed. That is not something that disappears after the pandemic. It is still there. That is a habit that we didn't lose. I don't know if you are used or not to call the...
Any company from Uber or whatever to get food at home, but in particular, the young generation are using this one, I would say every day. Ghost kitchen are still growing, and it is good for us because the ghost kitchen in particular, it is typically not one kitchen, but is the aggregation of several kitchen in one building, each and every one dedicated to different kind of ethnic food. For us that we deliver everything that you can think about in a kitchen, we are the perfect partner for the operator of this ghost kitchen because they can get from one company, and they can get everything that they need. With this said about the market, I believe the other question, so if one was, how do you see the market? The other question was, okay, how do you see the trend of the business?
How do you see you reacting to a possible downturn of the business? What happened when there was the financial crisis in 2009? We dig into the numbers. Now I'm presenting to you, I'm showing you a long-term trend of our business. If some of you already did it, and I know that some did it, looking at the annual report of the Electrolux Group, these numbers are different because we have been restating these numbers, eliminating, for instance, the sales of some businesses, the sales of some assets, that happened mainly 2010, 2011. Here you will see, you will not find the sales of, we sold a dealer in the United States.
We sold a production unit producing heating elements, so nothing with our business in Switzerland. There were buildings here and there. These are apples to apples, let me say, sales. You see that in 2009, when the financial crisis hit this, not this industry, but every industry, our business went down roughly 10%. No surprise, it was more on the food side, we didn't have beverage, and roughly half of it was laundry. Laundry is proving to be resilient as well as during the pandemic, also during the financial crisis, the laundry business didn't decline so much. That is the first thing. 2010 was the year of a rebound. Why such a high peak of profitability?
Because in 2009, during the crisis, they've been as normally restructuring, so taking out cost, incentives. In 2010, due to the drop of the demand, the price of the material went down significantly. The three elements all together, they boosted the business on that year. The other things, important one was that we had the European recession. In 2010, from 2010 onwards, America, for instance, went up. They continued to grow. This did not happen in Europe because there was the Euro crisis, at least those of you who remember it, and it was in particular hard or tough in the South European countries that were, and the South European countries were the largest share of our business.
These are the things that are explaining these things. For what concerned the last years, I believe I'm spending only a few seconds about that because I said that we are back over, at least rolling and clearly, around the EUR 10 billion or above of sales. The other important thing is that it is true that percentage-wise, the margin is not back to the 2019 level or even less to the peak that we had in 2017, 2018, where we were close to our target of 15%. It's also true that in absolute value, we are more or less back to the 2019 level. I've been always taught that typically you pay the bill with the absolute number and not with the percentages.
It is important also to look at the absolute numbers also because investors. We pay the dividend on the absolute number, so it's a third of the absolute number that will be divided for dividends, obviously subject to approval and so on and so on. The other important thing is that if this is what happened in 2019, today we are a different company from the one we were in 2009. If a financial crisis will hit us, today we are a different company than what we were in 2009. We have a laundry business. We had it in the past. It is even stronger and larger today. We know it is proven also by the pandemic that the laundry business is more resilient.
The other thing that I said, I mentioned that we've been hit harder than competitors because we had majority of our business. The North America business was less than 10% at that time. The market in U.S. restarted, in particular the commercial restaurant chains that during the financial crisis, they had the best year ever. When you have a crisis like that one, that is not the one that we had with the COVID when we were locked at home, but you have a financial crisis, people will not change the habit to eat out of home. They will just spend less. They're spending less, you go to the commercial restaurant chains. I was living in the States and I remember that McDonald's was advertising a full menu for $0.99. Chips, burger and cola.
I mean, you can afford even if you are in a financial crisis. Today, one-third of our business is in the U.S. The share of business coming from commercial restaurant chains is much larger than what it was in the past. The third things that I will not forget is that we just left a crisis much worse than the one that hit the market in 2009. We have been proving that, we have been able to manage the downturn, the slowdown of the sales, managing cost, managing assets, managing the business at the end to keep going. I think it's important to remember this one because we are preparing, as I said, we are preparing for a 2023 that we hope it will be another year in the recovering path.
Clearly the signals out there are not so positive. We believe the availability of components will be much better than what it has been during this year. It has been a nightmare in the factory to manage. You know pretty well what we've been forced to do in the laundry business because we were missing the electronic board. By the way, I was reading reports, also from our competitors who had the same experience. They had to pre-produce product and now they are recovering them. We are also expecting the material price going down. The surcharge that we applied in May now has been consolidated in price. If you remember in May, we said, we don't know, it is expiring in October.
It has been consolidated, becoming a price increase, and we are planning to have some price increases also next year to compensate the other inflationary item, in particular transportation that is important for us. We are doing the things to prepare this company to the worst, clearly hoping for the best. If this is the market, these are in some way the history, but also how we are preparing ourselves. I believe it is important to say that despite everything, this chart is exactly the same that I presented when we separated in 2020. Our strategies unchanged, and not because we are lazy or because we have no ideas. It's because these are the important priorities. These are the things that if we are able to deliver well, we'll make this company stronger and more profitable.
I believe it's very simple and I like, and I think that if I'm here to present to you the strategy of this group using 20 slides, then if I would be you, I would be doubtful that we will be able to deliver about that. This is simple. Everybody in this company knows that we have to grow the business through innovative solution or product, that we have to grow the customer care, that we have to grow in North America and with the chains, and now you understand also why considering what happened in 2009. That we have to invest and accelerate the digitalization of our product and our offer.
What I want to spend few minutes with you is to update you on where we are against this priority, because if they were the same when we separated, it is important to see where are we now against this priority. The first one is about product. We are constantly bringing new product to the market. Many of them are product that are addressing the chain needs. The one on the left, for instance, the SafeBox is a specific product for the delivery and for the drive-through business, ghost kitchen or those kind of stuffs. We are constantly bringing to market product that are delivering enormous savings in term of energy and water. This has been something that we have been doing since ever, I would say. It is deep into the DNA of this company and the people working here.
We don't have even to talk about the possible savings or the fact that we need to develop products with savings, because this is coming to the mind immediately to everybody who is in the development area. We are also making progress for what concerns the restaurant chains. You see the progression coming during the years. The year when we had the financial crisis that I told you, it was the year where we had a limited business also in North America, to the day when we have obviously now Unified Brands, the part of the group, and as a consequence, contributing well to the development of the chain business. Please do consider this one. If you make a comparison with our competitor, roughly the American, they have 50% of the business coming from American chain.
We have 50% of our turnover in North America coming from commercial restaurant chains. This is related to the entire group. There is also the laundry side, and obviously, with the laundry, I think you understand that you don't sell laundry appliances to McDonald's. We sell washing machine to McDonald's for the mops, but it's not really a core business for the commercial restaurant chains. If you exclude the laundry there, you are around 25%, roughly, of the business coming from chains. Good progression year-over-year. We are making progress also on the customer care business. I've been asked more than once, where are you? Here, this is the progression of the share of business coming from customer care versus the total net sales. 2017, why 2017?
Because 2017 is the year when we launched the Essentia program, the program that is a sort of flagship for Electrolux Professional for what concern caring about the customers. You see that now is above 18%. It's close to 20%. That was our initial target, even if never declared. It was our initial target for what customer care concern. I'm very proud of this one because it is also coming with a strong development of the top line, of the sales of the product. It's coming mainly from having sold consumable accessories, so upselling. When a technicians is visiting a customer, is not just repairing the product, is also upselling services to this customer, items that can make the product working better. It is important.
Clearly, the largest part is still the spare parts, but I don't think we want to build a business selling parts because this means that the product broke when we sell a part. We want to build a business, making sure that our products are lasting longer and working better. Last but not least of our strategy pillar is obviously the digitalization of a company. These are the targets that we've been also showing to you in the past. Here is where we are. Last year, we had the pilot countries, Germany, Sweden, UK. During this year, we expanded or we deployed the system and the OnE platform in many other countries from Korea to New Zealand to many European countries. We still miss big country like North America, like Italy, for instance, or others.
In the country where we installed the OnE platform, we already see that the target we had have been overcome because 72% of the orders in those countries are going through the OnE platform. They use the OnE platform to access, to connect with the company, to place the orders. We see that in terms of value is less. Why? Because if you have a large order, typically a project, still they prefer to do it in other ways than going through the platform. It's coming. Look at parts, accessories, and consumables. We are talking about 100%. We do not receive any more orders in those countries for what concerns parts, accessories, and consumables in any way other than through OnE platform. Because we are adding value to the customer. I'm always stressing this company.
The digitalization, the connectivity, whatever you want to call it, is meaningless if you do not add value for the customers. Adding value is super important, in particular, when we will be able to connect even the product. When it is not only a business connection between the dealer, the service agent, the company, the customer, but is also among them, plus the product. This is also, you will have the possibility, at least the ones being present here in Pordenone, you will see to see it live, to see how it works, because it's not anymore something, a dream or something there. It's reality. It is what we are going to bring to the market today in food and in beverage in laundry.
I believe that the laundry, in particular in North America, in a couple of years from now, there will not be any coin shop, any laundrette that will not be fully connected. Because it's giving the possibility to the customer to improve management, to improve efficiency, to manage well, in particular, if you are a chain, all the appliances that you have spread around the country. In particular, you know, at least the one knowing me, that this is my dream. It's the dream to have the service provided automatically to our appliances without having the customer calling the service, but having the service going to visit the customer and telling them, "Look, your product will be down in an hour.
Better I repair it for you." This is where we are in all these things, and all these things are embedded in our overall vision. That is what we call our sustainability vision. That is not just being green, even if it is important, in particular on these days, when we see many things changing the environment. It's important that we go ahead with our plan, and we are perfectly in line with our ambition to be climate neutral 2030. Not only, we have been also clearly addressing the fact that while our declaration and our target are related to scope 1 and scope 2, majority of the CO2 emission are coming from the usage of our product. 90% of that is coming from the usage of our product.
That is the reason why we are going to set up the way the target also to reduce the CO2 emission from our product, so including the scope 3 in our environmental target. This is good for the company, it's good for our customer because they will save money, and clearly good for the world where we live, or at least our kids will live in the future. With this said, I believe, Jacob, we are back to you.
Thank you, Alberto. We will now open up for questions. Those of you who are in the room, you can use the microphone and ask the questions. For those of you who are online, I remind you that on the web window, you can just write your question, and then I will read it up here. I open up for questions. I have no question from the web yet, but maybe someone in the room.
Yes. Thank you. Karin, Handelsbanken. Can you talk a bit about competitive landscape, mainly in the food and beverage business? Maybe firstly, what happened during the pandemic in Europe, which has been a bit more fragmented market. Have you had some smaller competitors exiting, merging? What has happened there? Specifically about North America, what has happened since Ali Group took over Welbilt in the U.S.?
At first, I believe you could, you should ask Dave about the North American one.
We'll save that.
I believe there are no changes in what we see in the market. Okay? Remember that Ali is famous for the way of managing the business from Ali is to leave the company that they acquire normally totally independent. I'm not expecting that there will be a different treatment for the Welbilt group. I don't see, for the time being, at least, we don't see difference in the dynamic. Reps, dealers are still doing the business as they were used to do in the past. So nothing special. We have also to say that 2022 was a crazy year in the meaning that component availability, scarcity of product. In many cases, you were getting what you were able to find.
Let's put it in this way. We don't see differences. We don't see company going out of business. There have been not so many movement in the acquisitions. I would say that beside the big one, so Ali and Welbilt, the largest is the one that we close in December with the acquisition of Unified Brands.
All right, good. Maybe one additional one about laundry. I mean, you see that it has higher margins, it's more stable, it's maybe lower growth. Are you still seeing more organic growth in front of you, or have you reconsidered your position when it comes to M&A? Do you think that there might be some scope for M&A in laundry?
Okay. First, we never said that we don't want to buy laundry company. Okay? We acquired Schneidereit in Germany. If a laundry company is coming to market and is becoming available, and it has the right profitability, I believe we will for sure evaluate the possibility to acquire. The point is that there are not so many. While in the food business, there are thousands of company, very small, some of them, sizable others, but there are many, many companies. In the laundry, there are really few players, if you consider country by country, and we are talking about mainly the professional part. If you remember, we are always segmenting the industrial, but we are not really interested on that one because the margin is low to run the business in that part.
The semi-professional, that is typically connected to consumer products, to consumer producers. The big chunk in the middle is what we call professional. They are the product that we produce, that we market, and half of the market is covered by two brands. One of the two is Electrolux Professional. Then the other, Zanussi Professional, but we don't have so many competitors. More than happy, honestly, if something is coming up, but it's not excluded. The only comment is that there are not so many. I think it's important, the first part of your question is about the organic. You are sitting pretty close to Paolo, who is now leading the business area laundry.
He will be very happy to tell you that there are a bunch of opportunity to grow organically in the laundry business. There are markets where we do not have a very high market share. There are business models where we are just starting. For instance, the rental business that is relatively common in the laundry business, and we have it limited only to Germany and Austria. There is still the possibility to grow organically, gaining market share while following the market.
Thank you. Thank you. I have a couple of questions from the web too. The first one comes from Henrik Christianson at Carnegie. He asks if you can say anything about profitability levels on customer care business compared to appliance, sales of appliances, and also profitability of when you sell it through the OnE platform, is it different compared to traditional sales channels?
Okay. The profitability of the customer care, we don't disclose the hard numbers, so the exact number, but I believe you clearly understand that it's higher than the product sales. It is important to say that the two things are in some way related clearly. If I don't sell the product, it's harder to have the customer care business. The two things, they get together pretty well. When we develop, for instance, new product, we are always thinking about how we can also match the product development with a customer care package development.
The profitability of the OnE platform.
Yes, the OnE platform. The OnE platform in this moment, no, the profitability is not higher in terms of gross profit. Evidently not today, but I'm expecting that tomorrow I will generate efficiency in the order management. In the cost, in the fixed cost that I have inside of the organization.
Thank you. Next question is from Oscar Stjerngren at Nordea, who asks, given that the demand seems to soften, has it become harder to increase prices to offset cost inflation? What's your view on 2023? Will you be able to fully compensate 2023?
I think I mentioned that we converted the surcharges into price increase. They were expiring at the end of October. They've been transferred, they've been solidified into a price increase, and we already announced our price increase from January first. It is not as large as it was in the past, but you will see also when Fabio will present the financials. That today, with the current prices, with the carryover of what we did last year and beginning of this year, we are already totally compensating the material. We are also able to compensate the inflationary item. Unless things are different, for what we know today, this should be more than enough to compensate the inflationary item next year.
We are also thinking that materials, they should go down sooner or later.
Thank you. We have a question from Johan Eliason at Kepler Cheuvreux about the laundry. Can you give some details on how our laundry business has become stronger since the global financial crisis in 2009-2010? Is it because of increased market shares, or more consolidated markets? Why is it stronger today than 2009, the laundry business?
Okay. I don't want that you feel that I'm arrogant, but I believe it's stronger in us because we did better. We develop a great product, technology product that are bringing value to the customers. With this one, we gain market share. We gain clearly market share. I don't believe that our sales in North America are growing double digit, but not 11%, much more than that in laundry, and the market is not growing so much. It is clear that we are gaining market share, thanks to the very good product, quality product. We don't disclose this number, but we are obviously measuring the service call rate, and we never had such a low service call rate that we have today.
They are durable product, reliable product that at the same time are very innovative with the technology. That always is easy to combine the two things. It's a gain of market share that I believe will continue, and in particular, thanks to the digital innovation that we are bringing to the market.
Thank you. Do we have any more questions from the room? If not, I think we will conclude for now. Thank you, Alberto.
Welcome.
We will now leave for Dave Herring, who will present about Americas business. Please, welcome on stage, Dave.
Thank you, Jacob. Good morning, everyone. I will say, I'm very excited to be here. As the newest member of the leadership team coming with the acquisition 11 and a half months ago, not quite one year yet. Got anniversary next month. 11 and a half months ago, it's been a whirlwind. First and foremost, those 11 and a half months feel about like 11 and a half days. As we get into it's been exciting. And, you know, I get the fortunate pleasure to talk about the second strategic pillar, about how do we expand the food service and chains, and particularly, how do we grow our share in Americas that influence the rest of the world. Really before I talk about that, you know, I wanna talk a little bit about going through the acquisition process.
When you come from the outside, obviously there's natural concerns. You know, what's the impact on Unified Brands? You know, what's gonna be the impact on the people I've developed, on me personally as a career? As we got into this early in the discussions of the acquisition, it's last summer, end of last summer, at the height of the pandemic, you know, the country restrictions. I remember talking with Alberto and Fabio, and we're trying to figure out how to meet personally, you know, together. Countries were locked down. You know, we're looking at neutral countries. It's like we're trying to find the Switzerland, if you will. We ultimately got an opportunity to come here, and we got to see this complex and the investment that's been made by Electrolux Professional.
Their pure strength in the European market is pretty phenomenal. On the flip side, in the U.S., it's relatively small. As we sat down and started to talk, you know, we got through the pleasantries and the introductions, but I started to hear Fabio's and Alberto's vision of the future and what could this be and what should this be. It started to get exciting. It went from a concern to, quite honestly, excitement and optimism. We started talking about how does the market look different in the U.S. Alberto particularly served five years in the U.S., starting the Electrolux Professional business. He saw these nuances and these differences. As we talked a little bit at the table last night, a kitchen, you heat something or you cool something. Here in Europe, it's done differently.
You see a pretty elaborate kitchen, very nice setup, and a less emphasis on chains than in the U.S. In the U.S., half our business is with chains. They're not looking at one restaurant or one showpiece, they're looking at 1,000, 2,000, 10,000 outlets. A very different approach. They're still cooking, they're still cooling, but at the end of the day, it's a different approach to it. When I was part of the Dover Corporation before this, the executives didn't understand that. You know, we're one of 20 different companies. Again, a strong, financially viable company, good leadership, but just different markets. Here, what I noticed right away is they actually understand the market better than I do. It's kind of fun to know the nuances.
What Richard faces in Asia is different than what we face in the Americas, which is different than Europe. With that, you know, as I look at the number two priority, we're one of 20 companies before. Now I'm the second priority, top priority of the corporation. You can imagine it's a little bit more exciting going forward. And you'll see that on my leadership team and on our entire integrated group in the Americas now. Really, there's five main, major takeaways, if you will, from my presentations. One, the importance of the U.S. market. It's growing. If you look to the size of the markets, it's a large market. In the relative share, while strong in Europe, is very small in the U.S. Home of the large global food chains.
The fact of the matter is it's very prevalent in the U.S., and those chains are not only growing in the U.S., but they're expanding internationally. To be effective in any market, you've gotta be customer obsessed. You've gotta understand the nuances of the channel to market, what they value, how to design with them in person, and that's very important. We talked about acquisitions or M&A or what's going on in the dynamic market. Well, the fact of the matter is a third of the market in the far right side, a third in the middle, and a little bit larger share, but the rest in the Americas. The fact of the matter is it's important.
Also you look at the growth rate, 'cause that point is restaurants, especially in the chains, as we see them go through different environments like the recession, quite honestly, they're very sophisticated. They will slow down quickly and adjust, but then they'll ramp up and adjust their model quickly. As we got into lockdown mode, let's face it, restaurant chains, quick service restaurants, were already set up for delivery, for drive-thru, for different ways of doing it, and they've accelerated, prisons, hospitals. In those, there's over 500,000 outlets, so we can't touch each one individually as us, so we have independent resellers and independent reps that call on them. We have strong historical relationships with those. In the restaurant chains, they do kinda half and half.
While we'll sell and spec directly with their operations folks, at the end of the day, they'll fulfill it through a distribution network because they've got so many outlets, one location won't work for them. Another growing area is the retail chains. What they'll do oftentimes, while their primary business is grocery or a convenience store, they'll start doing prepared food on the side. They're pretty sophisticated too, so they'll tend to order and place business direct with us. Again, you've gotta know each channel of the customer and how they work. We'll spend all day on this chart. Being customer obsessed is also about knowing the channel, having a relationship with those channels.
For us, again, not to spend a lot of time on this, but we have a direct sales team that's focused on our independent reps, on how they go to market. We have a direct sales team that actually focus on our end customers, drive the spec, especially the chains, and then they'll drive that business through our distribution channels so they can fulfill it with the dealers. Certainly on the parts side of it, we got yet a different supply chain or channel market, and we have partnership there and with our authorized service agents. Something that I think Europe's done much better than us is on that customer care, that aftermarket sale.
In the U.S., we're typically very, very focused on that initial equipment sale, so we have opportunity to expand, learn what's been done over here, and successful, and apply that to our home base. The question came up about the changes in the marketplace and the landscape as far as competition. You know, for the U.S., you see a little over half the business is really handled through, I call them the major category suppliers. Middleby, Ali, ITW. But even those folks go to market, we compete with their individual brands. I don't compete as Unified Brands or Electrolux Professional now with Middleby. I compete with Groen versus their steam platform. I compete with Welbilt, with Delfield versus Randell. So again, it's very much down to the product category level.
That other category on the far side, the single category players, hundreds still exist, are still relevant in the U.S. You know, folks like True, which does refrigeration very, very well, private company. Alto-Shaam does combi ovens. CaptiveAire and Bob Luddy, he owns the air handling systems in the ventilation. He has been doing the business for 40 years, mid-1970s, and still running strong. You have got Perlick, which is on the third generation of the family. The grandchildren are running the business now, which is back bar equipment. There is a long runway, not just for organic growth, but there are opportunities that come forward with like-minded, high quality, highly engineered products that as it become available, it is something for us to consider. If you look at the timeline, this is really important, trusted brands.
That's something that really resonates in the U.S. because while we're not oftentimes designing the entire kitchen, we'll be very focused on certain applications within the kitchen. At Unified Brands, we tend to focus on the center of the kitchen, where the chef interacts, that chef stand, that chef table, how they're gonna prepare the food, how they're gonna hold the prepared food or while it's being prepared at its exact temperature. If you get the peripherals of a restaurant, oftentimes very utilitarian type equipment, shelving, racking, generic refrigeration. We don't do a lot there because we can't add a lot of value. As you get towards the center of the kitchen, that chef is actually creating their brand. As you help them optimize their factory, I would say a food factory, it makes them more efficient and more profitable.
We really focus in on that center of the kitchen. With trusted brands, those chefs that grown up through school or as first jobs in a restaurant or as they open up their own restaurant, they go back to, "Hey, I used to work with Groen on this," or, "Hey, I worked with somebody out of Middleby on this." It's very important. On this chart, you'll see Electrolux Professional is really established at the far right side in 2004 when Alberto came over. In a way, still a very new brand in the U.S., even when you talk about longevity.
If you look at with the strategic and very select acquisitions that Electrolux Professional did in 2017 with Grindmaster, and then with Unified Brands this past year, now all of a sudden, we're no longer a 20-year-old company, we're a 120-year-old company. With people that. You know, I've gone out in the field, and I'll see our kettles from Groen, started in 1907. I'll find them from 1980, 1990, still operating. What they'll do is they'll make sure they repair that one because they know it works, they wanna keep it running. So again, it's about being a trusted brand. By being part of this bigger family, now also we have opportunities to take these brands that do very well, are very well trusted in Europe, how can we bring those into the U.S.?
What's the new Electrolux Professional in the U.S.? First of all, historically, it's the U.S. has been much more of a regional distribution center with some small manufacturing for Electrolux Professional with really a commercial-oriented focus. Now if you look at it, we're 650 employees strong. We're over 100 years old in the industry. You know, we're $250 million plus in U.S. dollars in sales. We have 600,000 sq ft or 60 sq m in factories in three different locations. You see a host of unique brands and trusted brands. Now, again, I'm not personally, I'm not looking to be the next Ali or Middleby that has everything and this and that and all these different.
We wanna be the right value-add engineered products into this space, 'cause that's where you get that customer intimacy, and that's where you can really make a difference on their operations. We're highly regarded with leading brands. We do have long-term customer relationships. I remember when I first started with Unified Brands 8 years ago, the leadership at Dover said, "You can do anything you want, but just be careful on the sales side," because our sales team has years and years of experience. Our head of sales, spending 17, 18 years with us now, started his career at Coca-Cola. Again, it's a deep industry with deep knowledge. In my career, working with Emerson Electric, Avery Dennison, I can name on one hand the number of customers I know by first name. It's a very industrial type of industry.
Here in the food and beverage, it's very much hospitality. I know more customers by first name, I know their spouses, I know their kids because it's part of that, the community. That relationship goes a long way. It's hard for me to come over here to Europe and infiltrate a customer, just like it's hard for Electrolux Professional historically to come to the U.S. from Italy and infiltrate a customer. Bringing that together and then bringing the products and trusted brands behind it is very powerful. Our three facilities, our newest or most modern one is in Vicksburg, Mississippi. We used to have five rooftops. Combine them down to three and actually increase our square footage for growth in the future. Just like all the other companies, each of our brands used to be a privately held small company.
As we've brought those together, we're getting efficiencies and scale and build-up. Vicksburg, Mississippi being our newest with a little over 300,000 sq ft and 265 employees. It's predominantly focused on our growing cooking line and our Power Soak wash line. If you go up north to Weidman, Michigan, I know these are easy to get to, but in Weidman, Michigan, in the middle of the state is our facility predominantly focused on Randell. Randell was part of the DeLorenzo family years ago that was acquired by Dover. We still have three, well, I should say two of their sons that work for us for years and years, and the third one actually retired last year. It's a very intimate business.
These employees, 320 strong up there, a lot of them been there for 10, 20, 30, 40 years. It's a very sticky industry. Once you get in, I guess you can't get out, I'm finding out. The fact of the matter is, there are siblings that work there's cousins, there's nieces, there's nephews. Again, it's a very tight, personal, family-style business in a much bigger corporation. Certainly, last but not least, is Louisville, Kentucky, which was the original or the legacy Electrolux Professional facility. Again, the production's been moved off into Thailand, but it's really a distribution center and warehousing for product coming from Italy and from Asia for Electrolux Professional that's staged there and then moved to our customers. Again, all three very critical sites, all three very important sites.
Again, long-tenured employees that have been there for years and years. Now I talked a little bit about new product development and innovation in the space. To have in-country research and development is absolutely critical. It sounds funny or a little cliché, but we will design products on the back of a napkin. The one on the left is a cheeser station, and we actually have it in the demo room now. It's something where we do business with eight out of the top 10 pizza chains in the world. They're some of our largest customers. Quite honestly, the two we don't do business with, they're price-driven. It's okay. They can buy cheap, and they try to cheapen their product or how they go to market.
The ones that truly are specialists in this area, we work with on a day-to-day basis. We've taken years and years and years of experience and designed something around that market that's very specific to solve a certain need. Cheese is the most expensive and one of the most important brand's main portion of a pizza. If you put too much on a pizza, you're wasting money. It's too much raw material. If you put too little on a pizza, it affects your quality of taste and flavor, which is bad for the brand. We actually work in scales and in different technologies in this to actually make it just perfect. 'Cause again, pizza is about fast, it's about delivery, it's about getting it out there. They wanna do it fast.
You got, let's face it, high school kids making a pizza. How do we make it easier and more effective for them to do it? We apply our experience across the industry. Now on the right side, a little bit different type of development. We're a leader in the steam category across the U.S. with a 100-year-old brand. We've got hundreds of years of experience on what works and what doesn't work. Steam's a difficult category, water quality, et cetera, et cetera. By understanding that and making it the most robust, the highest quality, updated and modernized features, we can actually innovate around a segment, not just a customer platform. We have roughly 50 engineers on the payroll in the U.S., focused on a day-to-day basis, working with our customers and working with our operations to make sure it all comes together.
Other examples of chain relationships and why it's so important to us. Here's three different examples. You know, a leading sandwich chain, as they're looking at how do I create differentiation and create my brand? You know, I may go from a pressed sandwich, a panini-type style sandwich, but going forward, I wanna do a toasted sandwich. Again, they wanna do it fresh. You know, they want, they don't wanna make them a day or two before and just warm them up. They wanna make it fresh for the customer. Oh, now with the pandemic, they wanna put a drive-thru in, so they gotta be efficient.
We looked at ways of taking our prep table experience with very precise temperature control for the fresh ingredients, but then they want a warming table in front of it, so when they toast the bread and put it down, it doesn't get cold on a cold platform while they're preparing it. We integrate different features. Then I remember working with this particular chain, they were new to the drive-thru, and they were actually looking at seconds. How do I shave off seconds for that customer? Because I'm preparing a fresh sandwich. It's not pre-made. I've got to take the order. When they drive up, it's got to be ready. Deals like this get decided on saving two seconds, saving one second. It justifies a program.
In the middle is the pizza chains, and you'll see, actually, I think you'll see this table in the demo room over there. There are ways of doing it, and it's very. You can buy a pizza prep table off the internet, but it's gonna be pretty generic. It's not gonna hold the temperature exactly. If you're in the back room of a large pizza outfit, there's a big oven right next to a table that's trying to hold the temperature constant on these ingredients. The challenge of being very precise is what sets us apart out there. On the far right, a high-growth burger chain, one we talked about the other night. Very interesting. We do a three-compartment sink that looks pretty generic. In the U.S., you can buy a three-compartment sink for about $1,200.
We put a motor on it and charge $15,000. Now there's a difference in the value. What we're actually doing is this pot and pan washing. I don't know about you, but when I was growing up in school, I worked in the kitchen. You know, I worked back in the washroom. The worst job is the pot and pan washer. What we try to do is automate that. How can we make it so you're not sitting there scrubbing, but we tumble the pots and pans, and it takes the gunk off, and then they're much easier cleaning. You can take that resource and put 'em in the front of the kitchen, not in the back. When we went to this high-growth burger and fry chain, what we found out is they're doing their french fries.
They take the potato, they slice it, drop it into the water in a three-compartment sink, and then they'd have a person standing there all day moving around. Their objective was to take the starch off that cut potato, and they're doing it manually. They're running the faucet. You talk about sustainability. They'd run the faucet all day, just pouring through. What they get is a certain flavor on their French fry. Well, one of our salespeople a few years back was watching this, actually going in there to sell them a pot and pan washer and said, "I think I can do that better for you," being customer intimate, being on-site. What they did is we converted our Power Soak sink to be a produce washer. Now they cut the potato, they drop straight in the bath.
It's got water jets. It constantly tumbles in a closed loop, taking the starch off more effectively. Happier employee, he's up front. When they put it in the fryer to fry it, not only did they find they're more efficient at removing the starch, so therefore, the flavor is more consistent. Their signature fry was more consistent. Once they found out it was more consistent, the employee was happier. The peanut oil that they use to fry it in is their most expensive raw ingredient. Well, now with a cleaner cut potato, starch removed, they can recycle and reuse that peanut oil for five days instead of two days. Cost savings. In California, there's a water restriction. They didn't use as much water. Again, this isn't just about buying a sink on the Internet. It's about how do we solve their biggest challenge.
Now even that chain is based in the U.S., and we have very little infrastructure as Unified Brands outside of US. Every store in the world has one of our sinks. Now I'm working with Richard as we look at how they are expanding in Asia. We have a factory that happens to do wash equipment in Asia. Now all of a sudden, what I couldn't do before in eight years I've been here, in the first 11 months, we've already built prototypes in that factory to supply the local market. So that's where you're gonna start seeing this type of value. These next three, four slides really just kinda talk about the expansion of the portfolio. You know, that $25 billion market, $9 billion of it's in North America, in the Americas. Then it breaks down.
$3 billion of that $9 billion is in refrigeration. It's, you gotta be careful. You can't just say refrigeration, and that's it. It's one size fits all. There's within each category, there's probably 10, 15, 20 subcategories. A refrigerator prep table, an undercounter refrigerator, a freezer, a vertical, static refrigerator. There's a lot of different categories. Historically, as Unified Brands with really four key product groups, we're really restricted in what we could sell. For that burger joint, we're doing very well on a Power Soak sink, but we don't have fryers. We don't have cooktops. We don't have combi ovens. Now we've got some access to that. How do we take that long-standing relationship, understanding of the channel to market and that really intimate relationship and being customer obsessed and bringing in more products?
You can see with the Randell line is really where we focused in the past. Now we've got thawing cabinets and blast chillers. Again, high-value product lines. That thawing cabinet now, we do very good in the chicken sandwich industry also or in restaurant chains. We didn't have a thawing cabinet. To take frozen chicken to be ready to be thawed and prepared for food, it's a very precise application. It's very dangerous if you do it wrong. With unique technology like the thawing cabinet, now with those places that we're doing a breading table, now we can bring in a thawing cabinet, and they got a trusted relationship. We can bring the product in, and we're already starting to see opportunities going forward.
Likewise, on the Kelvinator side, when you're in there with highly customized, unique products, they'll naturally turn to you and say, "Hey, can you supply us some of this more standard stuff?" Historically, we walked away from that. Electrolux Professional and our Kelvinator brand, we've got a lot of good, standard, high-quality refrigeration that we can add to the order. Again, we're expanding outwards. Cooking is probably one where we're known the best for in the steam categories with steamers, kettles, braising pans. Very strong leadership position in the U.S. It actually does pull us into South America and over to Europe and Asia because of our presence in that category. Our CapKold systems is really a combination for large venue cooking for hundreds, if not thousands of people.
We didn't have high-growth categories like speed cooking with SpeeDelight or with the cook-chill systems, which combines cooking with quick refrigeration to a safe temperature. Then while we had or where we had braising pans and very well known for that, for that category, we didn't have the subcategory of pressurized braising pans. Again, another unique, highly engineered product. Now we can pull that together. When we talk about addressable market versus not addressable, there's a lot of categories within cooking. Again, there might be 100 different types of cooking equipment. As we had a very narrow range as Unified Brands and did very well with Electrolux Professional, we can expand that. Now, there's nuances between how it's done in Europe as far as the heights of the counters, the dimensions.
Is it metric or is it English? The certifications, of course, and then the styles of cooking. There's more prevalence to electric cooking here versus gas cooking in the U.S., but now those are even coming together. There's opportunities to take that product, either import it to the US, take our product, export it, but now we have expertise on both sides, so we can start optimizing this equipment going forward. Warewashing, I'd say we're still relatively niche. The Power Soak category is one that Power Soak company kind of invented itself with the power sink. There it's not so much about taking market share, it's about expanding the applications. When we acquired this company in 2012, it's pots and pans.
Now almost a third of this business is on the food prep side, washing vegetables, washing fresh fruit, cutting french fries and getting them prepared. It's really expanding the applications and how we can apply the technology. Certainly undercounters and door and hood-type machines is something we didn't have access to before. When you're in the washroom doing pots and pans, there's always an undercounter, there's always a hood-type machine. It's an opportunity to pull this together. One I'd say on the beverage side, and certainly working with Philippe, who sees beverage across the globe, is oftentimes food and beverage go together. On the beverage side, where food may be their primary category, it tends to be a little bit tighter margins.
On the beverage side, it tends to be a very high margin for our customer, a new revenue stream. When we're rolling out that potato washer at that food chain, the rollout actually got delayed because they wanted to put in a shake machine. Shake machine was a new ticket item for revenue for them and very, very high margin. So we actually got put on the back burner because of that beverage opportunity that this customer found and sought after. Once they got that done, they went back to ours. So again, this one tends to be a little bit quicker cycle. The products around the world seem to be a little bit more standardized. Again, it gets into a recognized, trusted brand.
While the equipment may not vary a lot, if you're not a recognized, trusted brand, I'm not gonna put 20,000 of these in at my chains and all my outlets around the world, 'cause I gotta know, one, it's gotta be up and running, and two, when it's up and running, I'm getting another revenue stream, I'm getting a higher margin. It's very, very important. Maybe the most popular topic for a group like this. You know what? One thing when we first got acquired on December first and Alberto and Fabio and others came to our facilities, not only was there a passion about this industry, but there was a focus. Everything was done very deliberately.
Number one, we had to separate from our parent company, Dover, and we had to set up in a country that had relatively little foundation from Electrolux Professional standpoint. We had to set up Unified Brands as a stand-alone, separate from shared services. We did that. Second is both Unified Brands and Electrolux Professional have very aggressive growth objectives and business objectives last year. Coming out of the pandemic, how do you recover? How do you deal with the supply chain challenges? Number two, deliver on the business. Make sure we don't lose sight of our customers, because as we all know, when you're busy fixing the back office and putting it together, it's pretty tough. We did that, and we're both combined companies and individually are having a very, very strong year.
Not without disruption, not without supply chain challenges, but it's come together very nicely. During this, we've actually merged the two business organizations 100% together, and that was announced on July first. Again, we've been able to really act quickly, while being very customer obsessed. One area that we just doubled down on is on the chain sales team. One thing is the customers could not feel our pain, you know, going through an integration. The importance of the customer, especially as they're coming through the pandemic, we had to make sure we took care of them. The first thing we did, even as the organizations coming together, is we merged the sales teams together immediately. That's worked very well. Then there's other opportunities going forward.
You know, there's some synergy targets absolutely that we're striving to get. Now realize, the infrastructure for Unified Brands across the Americas was relatively established and large and in a way self-sufficient. Then we're really integrating this much smaller foundation. While there's room for synergies, there's not the natural one-for-one replacement. It's really coming together in the strengths of both businesses. Certainly on the revenue side, I think you can feel, you know, my passion, excitement. We've got salespeople just champing at the bit who are waiting to go. But at the same time, they're hesitant 'cause they wanna make sure it's set up right 'cause we're not gonna disappoint a customer. On the sales revenue side, we've already got many projects that are coming together. We've got a chicken sandwich shop that wants to use the thaw box.
We've got Asia that wants to look at how do we make our Power Soak over in Asia. Quite honestly, it's following a U.S. chain over there, but there's also local applications in the Chinese market for it. We've got an individual on the Electrolux Professional side that had a great personal relationship with a small pizza chain. They're now buying our tables. You know, before they didn't have access to it. Again, it's the revenue side. I like to say we're being conservative, but we're going into budget discussions, so it's a little aggressive. But the reality is there's opportunities, but we have to execute because if we have a false start, it sets us back decades in a relationship.
On the cost side, while it's the infrastructure is relatively small, the fact of the matter is, on the procurement side, as part of Dover, we were the largest buyer of the raw material, stainless steel. No other Dover company really bought a lot of stainless, so we led the negotiations in stainless steel. Well, now we're part of a parent company or a group that buys a lot of stainless steel. In working with Carlo and the team, we're already seeing avenues on how do we leverage that scale, not just on stainless steel, but on components, on motors, on alternative suppliers. During this supply chain challenge, foam for insulation became a real challenge. We worked together on it. There's opportunities to take out cost and just leverage our global reach now.
On the business system side, with the Electrolux Professional business system, with Grindmaster, with Unified Brands, we're in three different business systems, so we've got three books to close each month. We've got three customer service teams because it's three different systems. We got three invoices going to customers. Another area of opportunity is by the end of this year, coming into January, we'll be down to two, and then this time next year we'll be on one system. While it's efficiency in the background, it's much better for our customers in the front end. It's exciting. There's opportunities. I'll clearly say the low end of this range has already been identified. Again, our focus was separating from Dover. Done. Our second objective is to make sure we deliver the business plan while we're pulling the group together.
That's well underway. Now we're really just starting to aggressively go after this. The sales team is biting at the bit to get there. We've already had the innovation team over. We're comparing notes. This connectivity you're gonna see, it's an area that Unified Brands was starting to think about how to invest in. You can imagine our excitement when we see a company like Electrolux Professional come over and they say, "Don't worry about that, we've already got you covered." When you're selling just a steamer or just a prep table, connectivity to us was like, it's an afterthought.
Now that you can be part of a broad kitchen in that aftermarket service side, when a prep table goes down or your center console in your kitchen goes down, the restaurant has to shut down. You know, how can we be more predictive and proactive in the maintenance? Again, a lot of excitement going forward as a group. With that, like I say, it's fun to be part of this team. Being number two, not number 20 in number of companies, but number two in the strategy, you can imagine a lot of excitement. I'll say right now, we've retained 100% of the leadership team on both sides.
We've got the teams excited and when you get the passion of the Italians going, I mean, it's a lot of magic going on, so thank you, and with that, Jacob.
Thank you, Dave. With that, we open up for questions. Again, you can ask questions here in the room, and we have, of course, questions online. Karin, please.
Yes. Thank you. Two questions, starting with customer care. One of the earlier slides showed the customer care sales excluding Unified Brands.
Yeah.
Is it because you don't have data available, or is it because it's very low number, or is it because it's such an integral part of the way you work?
Yeah, I will say it's an area of opportunity for us. We do have sales there. A lot of our customer care sales are aftermarket parts and warranty, you know, post-warranty repair type of thing. The fact of the matter is it hasn't been a big focus for us. We've got some areas to learn there and actually expand it. Likewise, sometimes it gets to the equipment. If you're dealing with a refrigerator per se versus a high-tech combi oven, which takes different types of cleaning and that type stuff. There's different needs by different categories, but nonetheless, we have a long ways to go there as far as learn and advance.
All right. The second question, if we compare the factory here, and then we would visit your factories in the U.S., is there a big difference in, for example, automation rates?
You'll see a lot of metal being bent. We both have advantages and disadvantages. I'd say over here you're gonna see more of the automation in some of the major investments that have been made here, which are very attractive to us to figure out how to do that. It depends on which facility you go to. If you go up to our Michigan facility, it's a lot of the custom refrigeration. We're very well known to take an idea from a napkin to a prototype in two weeks. It's a lot more of a fabrication hands-on shop, less automation. As you go down to our Mississippi facility, while again, almost 90% of all of our backlog are customer orders, so they're either designed to order or they're highly configured to order.
Down there, we're seeing opportunities to implement more of that type of automation. I'd say some nice advancements and some key learnings from here that we can apply over in the Americas.
Thank you.
I'll take a question from the web in the meantime. It's Henrik Christianson from Carnegie. What products or product categories do you see the most potential to sell into the U.S.? I mean, from Europe then. When do you expect to see a tangible acceleration of growth driven by the broader product offering being part of the Electrolux Professional group?
Great question. Did that come from Fabio or from Alberto? No, the fact of the matter is that there's unique products, and what Unified Brands has historically done very well has really been a specialist in certain categories. When I say things like the speed oven, we haven't done that before, but we sell a lot of cooking equipment. The ability to pull that along and quote it together, or as we enter a customer where they're trying to change and update their menu from one item to another, we have access to those specialized pieces of equipment. I see that actually going on now.
Typically those are a little bit longer cycle for sales, especially in the chains, because the chains are gonna wanna test, test, because ultimately they're gonna deploy it to hundreds if not thousands of locations. We've got some of that work already underway. I think we'll see that naturally progress, which we're already starting to see some small orders. You know, the small pizza chain I mentioned, we're already selling them pizza prep tables. We'll see this continue to expand going forward. Any of the more engineered or specified piece of equipment where we add value, that's where we'll play. But then on the other front, you know, with the Kelvinator Commercial, it's more standardized. It's still good, high quality standard refrigeration.
When we're in there selling a custom refrigerated piece of equipment, we can naturally start pulling that through. We're seeing it kind of on both sides. I'll say through this next year, we'll start seeing pockets of wins. I think as we get through next year into 2024, we'll start seeing that escalate.
Thank you. I have one more question here in the room.
Thanks, Dane. Could you comment a bit about the white spots that you see now? You mentioned the cooking solutions maybe and also the beverage solutions.
The which spots?
The white spots that you miss in your product.
Yeah.
Portfolio, and also the fact that maybe acquisitions is more maybe on the larger side, on the beverage side, if I.
Yeah.
Correct.
Yeah. If I look at some of the spots and some of those categories, you know, one will be, you know, subcategories within the category. Even as we mentioned on that one competitive slide, you know, companies like Perlick that has back bar equipment and engineering solutions, we just don't do that today. But again, it's highly specified, highly engineered. There's different examples of that that are subcategories in there that we just don't participate in. There's opportunities. Now, some of those spaces too will get to very generic equipment, you know, very standard refrigeration, you know, the truckload sales. Quite honestly, I'm not sure I'm overly interested in it. It really varies by product.
Even in the cooking side where, you know, we've got access to fryers, we've got access to different types of cooktops, we gotta see can we add enough value by either bringing that overseas, from here to the U.S., or is it a basic enough a design, 'cause we've got engineering, you know, cooking engineers, we've got factories and all that, could we take the design and actually execute it in the U.S., you know, again, to get some of the scale and some of the cost out. I think there's opportunities on both sides. While there's a few players that are trying to fill out every one of those rims, realistically, at least still in the U.S., and especially in chains, they're optimizing their food factory.
They're looking at specific slices and saying, "Who's the best to help solve this?" I think there's a combination of opportunity to bring more of this product in and harmonize it for the U.S. standards, and vice versa, taking ours out. I'm hoping, and I know we're all looking for the right acquisition opportunity. There's a lot of players out there that are very attractive.
You should be able to do that in the new structure.
Yeah. It's one thing, too, is when I joined Dover, at that point in their evolution, there was a lot of focus on participating in this kind of industry-wide roll-up of acquisitions, and it was a very big focus area for them. When I got there, the first thing I did, I built what I consider a very strong staff around me. Everybody that's on my staff has run a bigger business than they're in now. The intent was to build the foundation so we can layer on top of that. Now, for all the right and wrong reasons, depending on who you talk to, Dover had different visions. We've had different chairmen, different CEOs, and it evolved. It's more opportunistic in this space versus strategic.
I think what we'll know right now is if you're an opportunistic buyer in the food space, you're not gonna win, because there's no good deals. You know, just to kind of the private equity side, it's really strategic, and people are paying a premium for premium brands. The excitement for me is it's very strategic on this side, it's very opportunistic on that side.
Okay. Thank you.
Thank you. I have actually no further questions online or in the room. With that, I will say thank you, especially to those, watching us online. We will now take a break and be back at 10:45 A.M sharp. Thank you for the online viewers. See you soon again. Welcome back to Electrolux Professional Investor Day. We are broadcasting live from Italy. Now we will talk about the financial update. With me, I have Fabio Zarpellon, the CFO. Please, the floor is yours, Fabio.
Thank you, Jacob, and good morning to everybody. Let me start the financial update confirming the financial targets. Financial targets that are exactly the same we announced in March 2020 when we have listed the company. Financial targets that are about profitably growing this company and reaching the 15% EBITDA margin. It is to operate this organization with an efficient use of the asset. In particular, we set an important target on operating working capital to keep it on average below 15% of sales. We want to operate with a solid balance sheet, keeping the leverage of this company below 2.5x in terms of net debt on EBITDA to keep the strength of a strong balance sheet.
The combination of profitable growth with an efficient use of assets give us the opportunity to offer to our shareholders a payout of roughly 30% going forward in terms of net income. Where are we today in this journey? If we compare Electrolux Professional today compared to a couple of years ago when we listed the company, we are a different company. We are a much stronger company. You have heard from my colleagues this morning that our presence in the market is different. We increase our presence in the high growth and high margin part of the market. United States, now with the acquisition of five brands, represent over 30% of total sales. Our presence in the customer care is over 18% of total sales. The chain business represent over 16% of our total turnover.
In the same time, along this last couple of years, we improve the competitiveness of our operation. You remember, we have invested in a new state-of-the-art operation in Thailand, where we have merged the two existing operation, one for laundry and one for beverage. A new state-of-the-art operation, where we move also the production of beverage that we were manufacturing in the United States. Last but not least, we continue the digitalization of our company. You heard earlier this morning, the ones that were present physically here, the great achievement that we deliver, both in terms of product connectivity as well as the digitalization of our relation with our customer. What about terms financially, the last three years? I would say that, and we were talking for the ones that were with us during dinner, the last three years have been pretty hectic. A lot happened.
I've been in this industry in the last 20 years, but so many disruptions in a short period of time, I've never seen it. Let's start with 2020. Pandemic hit us. Hit us personally, but also professionally. Look here, we did perform pretty well also during pandemic. We delivered roughly SEK 500 million in EBITDA. Over 7% in EBITDA margin. This was possible because proactively, we were managing the situation. We were not just wait-and-see, but proactively, we took the decision to reduce the spending, to keep the margin. Proactively, we monitor our receivables. At the same time, also during the pandemic, we kept the critical investments like the digitalization. From spring 2021, with the market recovery, we started the profitable growth path.
You see that we deliver in 2021, and also this year, a double-digit organic growth. Our profitability rolling twelve months is now at 9.6%. If I compare to ourselves, Electrolux Professional to the pre-pandemic time, I would say that in terms of size, we are larger than 2018, but we are not yet there in terms of profit margin. I believe it's worth that we look at it together. Let me start with the sales. Rolling twelve months, we are over SEK 10 billion. We were roughly SEK 1 billion lower in 2019. What's the main difference? Unified Brands contributed significantly to the increase of the turnover with over SEK 1.3 billion in terms of sales.
The second piece, pretty much relevant when comparing with 2018, is the contribution from price. Already from the second part of 2021, to compensate the significant increase of raw material that continued into 2022, we had to significantly increase price. Our industry had historically 1%-3% price increase. What we had to execute from the second part of 2021 was a much larger price increase, and that was necessary to compensate the inflationary items. The last part in the bridge of sales is about the market. Here, Alberto mentioned earlier, the market is not yet back to 2018 level overall. Here, when we look into more the details, we can say that in terms of volumes, the laundry, yes. In laundry, we are back to 2018 value.
In America and chains, the market is back. Europe and Asia Pac. In particular in Asia, China, not at all. China, the situation continue to be difficult considering the lockdown measure that are still in place in that market. What about the profitability? When we compare to 2018, we are still having a gap of a couple of points. We have a currency translation and transaction that are tiny, but still positively contributed. Unified Brands joining us is a great asset. You understood it from Dave. That is also accretive. It is accretive for food and beverage business, as well as the total group. At the same time, we were talking about the price execution. Strong price execution that we have been delivering so far, but not yet enough to fully compensate the direct material cost increase when we compare ourselves to 2019 level.
First, we discussed a lot about component price increase, raw material price increase, and additional ingredients that of inflation is about the logistics cost. It's not only about availability of containers, availability of ships. It's also a significant increase of transportation costs, both inbound and outbound transportation costs. Last piece is coming from lower volumes. Our utilization of the factories is still lower than 2019. Having said so, I believe that, if this is, let me say, the journey and the comparison with 2019, since the spring of last year, we restarted a profitable growth journey. Profitable growth journey that has been accelerating significantly this year. Look at quarter one. This year, quarter one, we delivered more than double the EBITDA of last year. In quarter two, the increase was 36%. In quarter three, close to 60%.
We are within a strong, profitable recovery trend, where price and price execution play an important role. If you remember, during the quarter three call, we said in the quarter, we compensated with the price increase, the direct material, and the component cost increase in food, in beverage, and in laundry. With this strong price execution, we have the indication that at the end of the year, we will be able, not just for the quarter, but for the full year, to fully compensate the direct material cost increase. Few words now on the balance sheet of this group. We are operating in a healthy industry with an asset-light operating model. Our operating working capital on sales historically has been 15% or even below. Recently, we have had an increase that has been the result of a conscious decision.
A conscious decision to increase the inventory of components, a conscious decision to increase the inventory of finished products, to secure that we have the ingredients to guarantee a good service level to the customer. That was the purpose, and this is the reason behind the increased trend on operating working capital that, by the way, remains at absolutely reasonable level. Rolling 12 months, we are at 15.6%. Now with, let me say, the improvement of the supply chains, I see this trend structurally going towards an improvement in the quarters to come. The other piece of an asset efficient management is the fixed asset. Historically, we have been operating this group with a couple of points in terms of CapEx requirement on sales.
It did increase during 2018-2020 because of a specific investment, the large and efficient manufacturing facility that we built in Thailand. Now you see that once that initiative has been completed, we came back to this historical spending. When I think about our strategic plan, our requirement going forward, I believe that we can continue to operate with that level of CapEx on sales, meaning around a couple of points also going forward. Cash. Cash is key every year, in particular in these years. This is a company that has historically generated strong cash. Look at the years 2017, 2018, 2019. Over SEK 1 billion cash generated every year, more than 100% cash conversion. Look also what we did in 2020. Difficult market, pandemic, operations sometimes closed. We generate more cash than EBIT.
2021, over SEK 1 billion cash generation. We have the strength, we have the condition, we have the management capability to continue to deliver strong cash generation. Yes, this year we are delivering less than 100% cash conversion, is because of the inventory. I would expect that already in quarter four we will go back to a positive cash conversion. Cash has been an important tool to manage our balance sheet. We inherited roughly SEK 1 billion net debt when we separated from the group. In September 2021, all this debt has been repaid thanks to the strong cash generation. We invest in Unified Brands. Conscious decision, good decision. Our ratio net debt on EBITDA increase.
We have to say, and this is also what we reported in quarter three, that from a revaluation perspective, roughly 10% of the net debt has been increased because of different revaluation of our pension fund liabilities in Switzerland. You have to say that this 10% that is inflating the value of net debt, inflating the ratio, the net debt to EBITDA, is more an accounting treatment with no implication on the financial net debt, as well as in terms of income for this group. Strong balance sheet, and I would say also pretty sound loan structure. A loan structure that, as you can see from this chart, foresees no obligation of repayment in 2023, so in the year to come. When it comes to the revolving credit facility, this is the picture.
SEK 172 million available at the end of September. Beginning October, we fully repaid. Now we have the full SEK 200 million revolving credit facility fully in place. This is important to sustain the organic growth of the business. I would say it also show that we have the means. If a good M&A opportunity come on our way, we have the tool in place to manage it also from a funding perspective. The last part of my presentation is on a key topic. It's about our journey to the 15% EBITDA margin. My big message is, the journey is confirmed, the pillar of the journey are confirmed, at exactly the same as I presented to you last year in Sweden. Half of the journey to the 15% will come from cost out, productivity improvement.
Half will come from growing sales and mixing up. Cost-out initiatives are pretty clear. It's about improving our production. It's about improving our logistics value chains. The new factory in Thailand, the move of the production from the United States, the former Grindmaster production is to Thailand, is part of this journey. It's about improving the productivity in the operations, but also in sales. A question came earlier about the benefit of digitalization in terms of productivity. We are at the beginning of that journey, but when you start to see that all spare part business is managed digitally, a large portion of the pilot country product sales is managed digitally, you can just start imagining what the benefits in terms of productivity improvement that we can extract through this important move of our organization. Moving into the sales piece.
Our focus in the last years, and our focus in terms of business plan going forward, is not just to grow the business. It's allocating resources in terms of OpEx and CapEx in growing the high margin part of our business. It's about the chains, it's about the customer care. It's also about ensuring that when we introduce new product, they are not just meeting proactively customers' needs, but also securing that the new product we introduce is having a better margin, a better profitability than the existing one. Last but not least piece is about taking care and enjoying the growth of the market, gaining market share. This is the volume piece, is not just growing with the market, but gaining market share thanks to the synergies and the innovative solution that we are putting in place into the market.
In conclusion, at least from my side. We are operating in a healthy industry. In this industry, we are a pretty healthy company. We have a solid balance sheet. We are a strong cash generation company. As you see, we restarted the profitable growth journey. The recent acquisition of Unified Brands is an important add-on to our strategy. You saw the potential that this is going to offer to our group. As well as we have a clear and solid plan to improve our margin going forward. Overall, if I summarize Electrolux Professional compared to couple of years ago, two messages. First, our financial target are confirmed. Second, as you have seen from my presentation, the speech of my colleagues, we are definitely much more equipped and much better equipped to deliver on this target.
Thank you, Fabio. With that, we open up for questions again. As always, you can write the questions on the web, and also there are opportunities for questions here in the room. One question in the room here.
Thanks, Fabio. When we saw the slide from 2019 to last quarter, you lost one percentage point on the margin due to volume. If we take the next from, I gather, 2022 until 2025, that's my guess, you have 2.5% on the volume. How much do you see being self-help from new products and also margins or new markets, and how much is dependent on, let's say, not a soft 2023, but a normal market?
Okay, let me say the following. First of all, we are living in a particular uncertain moment, and it's somehow difficult to say how the market is going to evolve into next year. Coming back to that bridge, I would like to underline two things. First, the bridge to 15% comes from half of it is coming from cost out initiative and mix up. These two parts we are going to deliver regardless of the market development. When it comes to the remaining 2.5%, I strongly believe that our innovative solution with also better margin are going to represent a significant part of that 2.5% that we represent here in this picture.
Your point is actually that most of it is more or less self-helped from your company?
Not really.
Oh, not at.
We are creating the condition to improve the margin, even if the market is not developed as fast as it has been historically.
Yeah. Okay. My last question is on the cash flow. If one takes for granted that next year will be a bit softer, your cash generation must, all things being equal, be quite substantial. Is that a correct assumption?
I can talk about what happened in 2020.
Yeah.
Business went down.
Yeah.
Cash conversion.
Exploded
Was exploding.
Yeah.
And also, I would say that, also in case of recession, in the case of 2021, we showed the ability to manage, in particular, the customer relation. If I remember the first quarter one, 2020, quarter two, 2020, there was question around quality of receivable, the management of the credit. We have been proving pretty good in handling it. Coming back to your question, even if the market will soften, I expect the cash generation, all the rest equal, because we don't know what else may happen. We need to be prepared, but we don't know what else will happen, will be still positive, pretty solid also next year.
Thank you.
Kelly?
Yes, thank you. The 15% margin target, if I assume unchanged gross margins at 40%, then that would suggest that you would need roughly SEK 15 billion in sales to get to 15% EBITA margins. Does that sound reasonable, or should I assume higher gross margins as well when you do the initiatives that you talked about?
You should assume improved margin, absolutely. Because the initiative I mentioned, in particular on the cost-out initiative, meaning improvement in terms of production setup, reducing logistics cost, improved productivity in our operations as well as in the sales organization. They are part of reducing the cost base, or better, improving the productivity in our organization. It's not necessarily that we need to stretch the volumes part, but I would say that half of that gap, that is roughly 5%, will come from improved margin in doing exactly what we are doing today.
That remaining other half, does it need the kind of revenue that I sort of just back-of-the-envelope calculated?
This is your, let me say, evaluation, and I'm not questioning your rationale. Clear, the volumes and the market recovery will be an important ingredient on that improvement. Better, will be an important ingredient regarding the time on when we are going to deliver that 15%. I would like to stress it, the two other ingredient, the cost out initiative and the mix improvement that we can deliver, and we have been proving to deliver in the last two years on top of the market recovery.
All right, thank you. Secondly, I think Alberto showed a slide where it was flat raw material prices for next year. Does that mean that you are pretty much locked in, or that you have locked in your raw material pricing for next year?
We started to lock specific commodities when we judge the price is reasonably good. So far, pretty selectively, because the expectation is that at least for some commodity, we have reached a sort of peak, and we expect some decline in the quarter to come. Yes, we started hedging activity into the first part of next year, but so far pretty selectively, because we want to watch out for what is happening before taking longer commitment.
All right, thank you.
Thank you. I have a couple questions from the online viewers. The first one is from Henrik Christiansson of Carnegie. On the EBITA bridge to 15%, what share is a factor of headwinds turning into tailwinds, such as supply chain normalizing, raw material costs coming down, operational efficiency ironed out? How big share is tailwinds, headwinds moving into tailwinds?
I would say that more than half of that is coming from headwinds coming into tailwind. We have to say that profitability could have been much better already this year if the disruption of the supply chains and the logistics would not had happened already this year. I would say year to date, we are over 10% EBIT. 10.3% is what we reported cumulated in the first three quarters. The margin would have been significantly better if we would not have the disruption that we had that affected the real cost of the logistics, but as well as the productivity of our operation.
Thank you. We have another question from Johan Eliason at Kepler Cheuvreux about M&A pipeline. What's the focus on the M&A pipeline going forward?
The focus on the M&A pipeline is the same that we had in the past. It's about focusing our attention in growing the large U.S. market, and within the U.S. market, the presence in the quick service restaurant chains. This is somehow our top priorities when it comes to the M&A activity. Clearly, we are still watching what is happening in laundry, because laundry is definitely a pretty attractive part of the market, as well as working in completing our and strengthening our offer in the beverage part of our product portfolio.
Thank you. I have no further questions, not in the room and not online. With that, I will say thank you to Fabio, and I will ask Alberto to come to the stage again to make the summary of the day. Please, Alberto.
Thank you, Jacob. I'm back to the slide describing the strategic priority because if I look forward, as also Fabio presented, they've commented about North America. Our profitable growth comes from the execution of the strategic priority, the four pillars plus the operational excellence. That means, cost out, but also making our operations more profitable and obviously more efficient. We are making progress. I believe in all this area we are making progress. A new product are going to be launched during the coming days, weeks, beginning of the year, 2023. They are all product, and we launch only product that are improving the margin of the company.
Products that have higher margin than the one we replace, in case we replace products, or if they are new products that are covering wide spots as somebody describe it, that in any case are accretive to the overall profitability of the company. Customer care. Oh, sorry, going through the second one, as Dave pointed out, growing in North America and chain business. I'm reflecting on a question that Fabio got about the gross profit. Remember that more we will grow with the chain business, lower will be the gross profit. Because typically the gross margin is lower with the chains, but the profitability is much higher because the cost to sell is much lower. So the chains typically are paying less than a normal customer, obviously, because they buy hundreds of thousands of product.
At the same time, the cost to sell is clearly lower than the one you have if you sell to an independent restaurant owner or other thing like that. Expanding in North America, we are making progress. One-third of our business is coming from North America. 16% of our business is coming from chains, that is 25% of the food and beverage segment. A quite sizable portion. Still room for improvement? Absolutely, yes. We can do it organically or eventually accelerating the growth inorganically. Customer care, we are making progress. Again, one of you pointed out that it was excluding Unified Brands. It's just because we are going to include this one. As Dave pointed out, currently, the customer care participation to the business of Unified Brands is below the average of the group. I don't see this negatively, honestly.
On the opposite, I see this as an enormous opportunity to grow a highly profitable business also in North America. We will include Unified Brands. We are going to include Unified Brands clearly on this one. We are going to transfer to Unified Brands all the learnings and the actions that have been developed during the past years, since 2017. We are talking about five years of experience in creating a portfolio of accessories, consumables and services that we can sell to customers to make our product working better than what they are today. Obviously, we are going to leverage also the digitalization. I hope you appreciated, and I saw a lot of people talking and asking Karin how it works here and there. Good to see that at least you got the message.
You can imagine that people that are working in the kitchen, they're even more interested about that one because it's not just something funny, is a nice demonstration. It's something that is creating value, and we are in the progress of doing this. I was discussing with one of you how we can differentiate ourselves making this. It is something different. I'm not saying the competitors, they have the one-to-one connection with the product. Don't think that we are the only one in the world having the possibility to control the oven, for instance, downloading a recipe or other things. Our competitor, they do it, but they do it with one product. I have the appliances at home connected, and they are covering more than one screen on my mobile phone. It's unmanageable, guys.
These are the appliances that you have in a demo kitchen, and they are already roughly more than 20 appliances. This means two screens of your mobile phone. In the kitchen back there are roughly 100 appliances. You need probably 10 mobile phone because you don't have enough screens to cover them. What I'm trying to say, it is unmanageable. The one-to-one connection is not manageable. You need a system integrator. There are company that try to do it, and we know that the customer are looking because they are asking us as well as our competitor to create this environment. There are company that try to do this, famous Alexa. Before having Alexa in the professional business, I believe, I don't know if I would be still here talking to you.
In any case, it will take time. We can do it today. It is the difference because we are producing all the appliances that you see here. If you don't do this, you can integrate, as we do, external appliances, but you can only read the documents. You cannot download the information. You cannot drive, you cannot download information on the appliances. That's the big difference, and this is the big advantage. It will be forever? Probably not. I'm pretty sure that sooner or later, this will be made available for every product or to integrate every appliances. In the meantime, we have a competitive edge. Considering the time that took to develop these things, I believe it is something that will last for some years. It is not only connecting the appliances, it's creating efficiency.
A good question was, do you have more margin or the margin is higher when you sell through the OnE platform? The answer is no, but the cost to sell is lower. That is the important thing. The cost to sell will be much lower because the efficiency will be significant in the overall process, for us, but also for our customers. We are delivering about that. It is not a high-tech industry where things are changing overnight, where you can expect an exponential transformation of the company. It is something that we do step by step. Hopefully, we will do longer step than the one we have been making in the past, but this is where we want to get.
Just to conclude this part, I believe there are things that I like you to take back from a day spent together or half day spent together. The first one is the market. Again, I'm watching television as well as you are doing. We all hear what is happening, with the war, with the inflation, with the meeting that they are having around the world. We are all concerned about that. For this reason, we are preparing. The reality is that what we really see every day in our customer is that the market, the restaurant are still full. If the restaurant are full, they are using the appliances. If they're using appliances, sooner or later, they will have at least to repair the appliances, if not change them soon. Things are still happening there.
The market is still a market that is requiring service and product from our industry in the restaurant business, but as well as in the laundry one. Not only I see this, the Asia market. I've been recently in Asia a couple of times. First time visiting the new factory in September. It was not possible before. Now you can travel easily to Asia. I think the only country that is not open yet is China. All the other countries are perfectly open. They are operating. People are starting to move in and out. They are late in the curve of the recovery, but it's a huge market. We as a company, Fabio was pointing out this quite clearly, we are a different company compared to the one that had to face the pandemic.
Even compared to the one that had to face the financial crisis in 2009, we are better balanced geographically with a larger presence in North America. We are better balanced from a customer point of view with a larger share of business coming from chains. We already went through a couple of crises like this one, like the others, I'm not saying no. We went through this crisis reacting proactively, preparing as we are doing, and then executing the things that we prepare in case things, bad things are happening. We are different than what we were. I think at least better than what we were. We clearly have a U.S. business. It is an important strategic priority, but it's not only because it's that. Structurally, the business in the United States is more profitable.
Structurally, the business in the United States and the business with the chains is more profitable. It is important to grow the business in that part of the world. It doesn't mean that I don't have to grow somewhere else. On the opposite, we want to grow also in the other area. Obviously, the importance of growing the business in North America is structurally important for this company. Last but not least, the delivery of the strategic priority is the right way to go for reaching the 15% EBITDA target. I think in all the area we are making progress.
In some of them, I don't look even at the first one, that is the growth, because clearly we are growing more than 4% year-over-year, but because we are recovering from a significant drop. That one probably we have to start restating in the coming years to see really if there is this organic development. All the others, starting from the management of the operating working capital, with all the caveat that Fabio described, taking conscious decision to keep going the business with our customer. Then the debt that is still, despite the acquisition of Unified Brands, is still below our target and the possibility to deliver the dividends to the shareholders. We are in line with our, with the achievement of our targets. Good question.
I would love to have the crystal ball and tell you when we will get them, in particular the 15% EBIT. I believe we are living years full of uncertainty, so it is surely important to keep the flexibility and to be agile enough to adapt to the different environment. Nobody would have expected the war between Russia and Ukraine beginning of the year, and then the missing components, and then the inflation, and then since 2019 that I'm still repeating these things. Every year is different and every year is more challenging. I'm not saying anymore that everything is over and next year will be a regular one, because I failed all the time during the past years.
Really important is to learn about agility and flexibility. These are the things that, I would say, we've been executing and showing during the past months. With this said, I would say we are summing up the day. Before leaving you, I take the opportunity to show you something that is, you are the first one to see. Now I was thinking about Jacob, who was pointing out that on the pen, in his pen, there was Electrolux only. Here is Electrolux Professional. Now I was thinking that now we have something in front of us. Because when they join, we've been discussing that, as they pointed out, the customer, they look at the brand on the product. That is what they see.
If you think about the three big brands, ITW, Ali, and Middleby. Sorry, my mistake. The three big companies that he was pointing out. In reality, the brand that are on the product, the one that are seen by the customer are not those ones. There are no brand, product branded ITW. There are no product, at least in our industry, there are no product branded Ali. That is the reason why I always said that as a single brand, Electrolux Professional is one of the largest. In the past was also majority of our sales, the Electrolux Professional brand.
Now with the acquisition of Unified Brands, with the acquisition of the other company in the other industry, and with the desire also from the people in the companies, but also from our dealer and our customer to have a sort of, let me say, reinforcement of what is behind the brand, which is the company that is behind this brand that is supporting the development of the brand, that is strengthening the brand. We had to think about that one. That is the reason why we are introducing a corporate brand, so the Electrolux Professional Group. It will not be on the product, this one, but it will be what we will use as an umbrella on top of all the brands. Also because Electrolux Professional at the end is the usual challenge of the company that they have.
They both have the name of the company and one of the brand that is the same. In some way, Electrolux Professional, I tell you, in Italy, Electrolux Professional is competing with Zanussi. If you are competing, it's harder to say that you are part, and it's known that they are part of the Electrolux Professional Group. You can see that is a light umbrella, whatever it is, but the Electrolux Professional Group will be the name that will be outside of this building. It will be the corporate brand that we will use to support and strengthen all the brands that we are having. Now, the percentage of business coming from the specialty brand is larger than what it is, or it was years ago, and we believe with this move we will make them even stronger than what they are today.
Again, thanks to everybody for being here virtually or physically. Back to you, Jacob.
Thank you, Alberto. With that, we will conclude this Investor Day. Thank you for watching and see you next time. Thank you and goodbye.