Welcome to 2023 Jefferies Global Healthcare Conference. I'm Nosi Kazwini from Jefferies, and I'm pleased to introduce you to Ulrika Kolsrud. Well done! From-
We practiced the name beforehand.
President of the Health and Medical Division at Essity. We will have a presentation of around 20 minutes, followed by a 5 minutes Q&A.
So thank you for that, and I'm, of course, eager to dive into the health and medical business with you. But before doing so, let's put that into some context and talk about Essity being a global leading hygiene and health company. And we have sales in 150 markets, we have 48,000 employees who together drive sales of SEK 156 billion in 2022. And we are set up in three different business areas, as you might know. Based on that, we want to be as targeted and as effective as possible towards the different customer and consumer segments that we serve, but at the same time benefit from the synergies that goes across based on our common needs between these business areas.
Health and Medical stand for 16% of the group sales and 20% of the group's profit. If we double-click on this a bit, you can see that our SEK 25 billion in net sales is quite evenly spread between incontinence products and medical solutions. Our colleagues in consumer goods also sell Inco, but in the retail channel, and here you also find feminine hygiene, baby care, and consumer tissue. Moving forward, we want this split to look a bit different. We want the categories medical solutions, incontinence care, professional hygiene, and feminine hygiene to be a bigger share of the total group sales. We prioritize growth in those categories, both organically and through M&A.
With the same purpose, we are aiming to reduce our exposure to consumer tissue, and therefore, we are, as you might have heard, we're having strategic reviews for our consumer tissue private label division, as well as our ownership in Vinda, which is 80% tissue. So that could potentially lead to divestments, but no decision is taken yet on that. Looking at the geographical split here, you see that roughly half of our sales or more than half of our sales is in Europe, and then we have North America, Latin America, and Asia, with 13%, 14%, and 17%, respectively. When we talk global footprint, I think it's worthwhile mentioning that we don't only have one, but two global billion-dollar brands in TENA and Tork.
So with TENA and Tork, we are global market leaders in the incontinence care category and in the professional hygiene category, respectively. And we have some other strong brands that you might recognize here within our portfolio of leading brands. One is JOBST that we have in compression therapy, that is making us a leader in compression therapy. And also worthwhile mentioning is that we are holding number one and number two, or number two position in 90% of our branded sales. Now, with these brands that we have, we care for the hygiene and health of 1 billion people every day. And I think that's quite amazing, and we're proud to be there for everybody and for everybody, and to break barriers to well-being.
And I would say also, I mean, we are highly committed to improve the well-being and hygiene and health of those that rely on us, and that engagement is really one of the critical success factors behind a very strong innovation performance. So we innovate to improve health and hygiene for those who rely on us, but we also innovate to continue to build our strong brands, and we innovate, of course, to gain pricing power and to gain market shares. And we also innovate to reduce climate impact. Sustainability is an integrated part in everything we do. So with every launch we do, we aim to take a step towards reducing climate impact. And an evidence of that is that with our European assortment, we have reduced carbon footprint by up to 43% over the years.
We also innovate specifically in this space. Here, here you see, for example, Leukoplast Eco, which is a wound care range that has 90% renewable materials. We also have reusable products in our offer, both in feminine hygiene and Inco, so leak-proof apparel and many more, many more examples. And we also invest behind technologies that breakthrough technologies to improve sustainability. For those of you who have listened to our Q3 report, you have probably heard about the production line we have for professional hygiene to use recycled food and beverage packages, where we actually make use of more than half of France's packages from food and beverages into professional hygiene products.
So all of those initiatives are small steps on our journey towards our ambition to have net zero emissions by 2050. All of our efforts and results, they don't go unnoticed. We are included in many of the sustainability indexes and have received a lot of rewards and recognition, for, for our work in this area. We are not only committed to our sustainability targets, we're of course, equally committed to our financial targets, maintaining a solid investment grade rating, to have long-term stable and rising dividends, to deliver 17% ROCE in 2025, and not the least, the annual growth rate of, at least 5% t hat last financial target really brings me to Health and Medical, because this is one of the areas, as I said, where we want to grow the most.
We are having a good growth momentum. We have now for, I think, 10 consecutive quarters, we have grown both Inco and Medical Solutions, and, in Q3, we delivered close to 6% organic growth. We have had some pressure on the margins following a lot of cost increases that you're all well aware of, but now we have gradually strengthened our profit margins up to 16.3% in Q3. For those of you who might not know this business too well, it's good to know we're operating in four different categories. Inco is roughly 60%, Wound Care 20, Compression and orthopedics, 10% each, roughly.
And in looking at the assortment then on, on incontinence care with TENA, we have products ranging from very thin liners for little leaks to highly absorbent products for heavy incontinence, and we also have skin care products that are specifically developed for, for elderly skin. Then in Wound Care, we have products for all ranges of the chronic wound healing under the Cutimed brand, but also a wide range of Leukoplast products for the hospital setting and for the home environment. Then if we look at compression therapy, we have a comprehensive assortment of JOBST wraps, and bandages, and compression garments for people that suffer from lymphedema or venous conditions of any kind. And then we have orthopedics, where we focus on, on non-invasive products under the main brands of Delta-Cast and Actimove.
So here we're talking casting, splinting, braces, for fracture management, different kind of support products to get back to sports after you've had an injury, or for chronic conditions, and also physiotherapy products like strapping tape, for example. So one thing that is common across these four categories is that they target conditions that have a high prevalence in the population, and that is also reflected in the market size. So our products are in high demand, and the demand is growing. We are supported by a growing, aging population, and also that the prevalence of chronic conditions are increasing all the time. So that, of course, puts us in a very good position for profitable growth.
Besides being in the right categories from a market growth perspective, we're also in higher margin categories with low capital intensity. As I've said, we have strong positions and strong brands to build from. We're not only positioned for profitable growth, we're also well equipped for profitable growth. We have I would say many companies have strong medical expertise, of course, in the healthcare environment. Then there are other companies that are very good in consumer goods, that know brand building, that know consumer insights, and so on. But I dare to say that not many have the combination of those two capabilities, and this is a competitive advantage for us.
Also, another strength is that we are present across the different channels, so we can move where the customers and consumers move and capture channel shifts in a good way. Then, also in med tech, of course, you need to satisfy many needs. It's not only about the patients or the caregivers, it's also about the payers, the healthcare providers, business owners, and so on, that you need to satisfy. And I would say our understanding of those various needs for those touchpoints and those various priorities, in combination with our strong R&D scale capabilities, is really what makes us successful when it comes to innovations. Now, just a few minutes on each of the categories, and we start with Wound Care.
Because in Wound Care, we have some unique solutions that gives us the right to win. And we have also, in the past years, moved from being number 7 in global market position to number 5. And we aim to strengthen that position further. And we do that by targeting some very specific and highly relevant needs among the healthcare professionals, being skin integrity and infection management and infection prevention. And our last recent M&As is in wound care, is targeting exactly that and playing to exactly that, because here we have some unique antimicrobial technologies to support us. While I would say professional healthcare space is our core when it comes to wound care, we also expand into self-pay channels.
So, so we expand also into the consumer healthcare space, leveraging this capability combination that we have. Moving to compression therapy, where we have 13% share of market, which makes us then a leading brand in this, and also here we aim to strengthen our position even further. We will do that by winning with customers, winning with payers, and winning with consumers or users. If we start with the customers, if you're, for example, a fitter in a medical device shop, then you're very interested in having the best possible patient outcomes, but you're also interested in having a convenience in your everyday work.
We continuously improve the convenience for our customers by making it as easy as possible to fit patients into the right garments, by making it as easy as possible to order and access aftermarket services, et cetera. Then if you look at the payers, for them, we bring health economic benefits. And lymphedema, there are some 150 million people worldwide that suffer from lymphedema, and when you bring health economic benefits, Let's put it this way, when you treat lymphedema correctly and manage lymphedema correctly, you don't only help them and improve the well-being of this huge community of people, but you also save cost in society. And then we have the users, and you should know they wear their products a lot of times 24/7.
So on top of their agenda is, of course, comfort, and we bring superior comfort. One of our recent innovations is the JOBST Confidence line, which is a next-generation compression garments based on a very unique technology. I've heard patients say that it feels like a second skin, wearing those compression garments. That's, that, that's really music to our ears because that's exactly what we want to get at. But they also care about that their garments are appealing. Of course, they wear it 24/7, so they also want to look good, and here we do a lot as well to meet those needs. For example, we have color trend collections, so that we enhance fashion in this category. Moving to orthopedics, here we have 6% share of market.
That makes us number 3 in on this non-invasive part of orthopedics. We are number 1 in fracture management, though. Our aim is to leverage and build on that number 1 position, to strengthen our position also with braces and support and with physiotherapy, and to win across the different channels, both in the casting room but also in sports channel, as well as in pharmacy and e-commerce. Then a few words on our biggest category, which is incontinence care. Here we have 22% of the healthcare market globally, some 14% in North America, and close to 40% in Europe. What has taken us there is our superior offers, our superior solutions, but also our holistic offer. This holistic offer has, of course, the wide range of TENA products.
It also has some digital solutions that supports individual care, it supports sustainability, and not the least, cost efficiency in healthcare. And on top of that, the customers have access to all our profound expertise and experience through TENA trainings, through tools that we've developed for them, and through clinical support. So, with this holistic offer, we are really a really strong partner to healthcare in their ambition to provide good quality care at the lowest possible total cost. And this is also something we drive a lot, that we promote value-based procurement in this space. 'Cause we lead and shape the market, and we aim to continue to lead and shape the market in Inco.
Now, looking across these different categories, we have some exciting expansion opportunities, besides, of course, gaining market share in our, in our, in the business we're in right now. And one is that there is a market shift towards home care, self-care, and self-contribution with, of course, healthcare funding being under pressure and also staffing in healthcare being under pressure. And here we aim to win in home care with family carers and expand in self-care, and invest in AMP behind this, have the right innovations to win here, and also to really leverage this unique capabilities that we have with medical expertise and consumer know-how. Geographically, we also have exciting expansion opportunities, not the least with medical, where we have the ambition to grow double digits in DNE markets.
Then when it comes to offers, we see expansion opportunities, both with sustainable solutions, but also along the continuum of care. So not only managing conditions, but also tapping into prevention and tapping into monitoring. So if I try to summarize in one minute what our priorities is about, it's about growing and strengthening our leading positions through organic growth by innovating, by expanding, and by applying an effective go-to-market and through M&A. At the same time, we are relentless in our efforts to enhance profit margins by growing the most in the highest margin areas in combination with price management and cost efficiency and efficiency improvements. So it comes down to accelerating profitable growth.
And if any of you in here now is interested to hear more about how we accelerate profitable growth through innovation, it would be very nice to see you in our webcast that is coming up in a few weeks. It's not only health and medical, but across the other two business areas as well. So hope to see you there. And with that, I think maybe Sandra, you can join me if there are some questions. So Sandra, if you don't know her, she's our head of investor relations. Yes, please.
Thank you. Thanks very much, Priscille. As far as the Europe is concerned, I would like to understand a bit more how is your business model. Are you directly present and distribute directly all your products, or you are, you know, supported by local distributors and wholesalers? Thank you.
This looks very different from market to market, also within Europe. But I would say in a big part of Europe, we have a direct go-to-market model. But we also operate through wholesalers and distributors in some cases, and in some markets, we go both. So depending on the country and the category, it looks different. And we always evaluate which is the most effective and efficient go-to-market, depending on the potential and situation. Other questions?
In the meantime, while you think of questions, I can tell you, because when I talk about the prevalence of these conditions, I mean, we can—I think we can all relate to that, there are hundreds of millions of orthopedic injuries every year, and we can all relate to that there is a lot of wounds to care for after surgery and cuts and scratches and so on. But what most people don't know is that that incontinence affects the life of 400 million people worldwide, that it's 1.6% of the population that suffer from chronic wounds, and as I mentioned briefly, there are 150 million people that suffer from lymphedema. So it's really, it's really conditions that have a high prevalence in the, in the market.
Anything you want to add on, Sandra, while we wait for any potential question?
No, but it's really good. It's actually our first d o you hear me? Maybe I need to speak here. It's actually the first time we are here at the healthcare conference. We usually attend a lot of consumer staple conferences, but of course, I mean, health and medical is definitely an area that we want to grow, and therefore, we think that it's really good that we're here to make sure that everyone knows about our health and medical and how we work with that, and also can answer all your questions. So we have a full schedule here today, and we're very, very thankful to be here. It's a good conference.
Now, you've got a minute to think of a good question.
But I think then, if you have any further questions as you read more about Essity, you're just more than welcome to just contact me. Okay? Thank you very much for joining.