Wow. Welcome to Essity's Capital Markets Day 2024. Welcome to beautiful Spain, and welcome to Valls. My name is Sandra Åberg. I'm head of investor relations, and I will moderate today's session. I'm very, very happy to see you all here. Great. I'm very excited to now show you our state-of-the-art production site here in Valls. Here we produce many of our leading hygiene and health solutions that enable a billion people every day to live healthier and more active lives. Essity's next chapter is all about accelerating profitable growth. Today, we will share with you how we will achieve this. To do that, we have prepared the following agenda. First, you will meet with our CEO, our CFO, and our chief of strategy. Then we will focus on supply chain, and the supply chain team will take us on an exciting site tour.
When we return, we will dive into the plans of Health and Medical. Then it's time for innovation and brand building. After that, we will have a lunch where you will be able to explore our innovations and also see our Smart Hub. When we return from lunch, I Consumer Goods and Professional Hygiene team. after each session, we will give you an opportunity to ask questions to the presenters. If you want to ask a question, you just wave, and you will get a mic to the table. We will also have a final Q&A with the EMT, our Executive Management Team here on stage. At around 3:00 P.M., the buses will take you back to Barcelona. Does that sound good
Yes. Then just some practicalities. Read this and let me know when you have read it. No. Practicalities, we have, in case of emergency, you have the exits just where you entered. There are also restrooms in the main building to the right. Then you can see that your tables are equipped with coffee, tea, water, and some sweets. So make yourselves comfortable and enjoy the day. So now, are you ready to begin the day?
Excellent. Then I leave the floor to our CEO, Magnus Groth.
Okay, so hi again, everyone, and fantastic to see you. It was a great buzz and energy last night. We discussed everything from different product properties to what to do with all the cash that we're generating and lots of interesting questions, and I hope that you will either hear them answered here during the presentations, or there will be ample time to meet with all of us. Here from Essity today, we have the entire management team, but also a number of other members of our fantastic company, so take the opportunity. Don't only talk to the ones you meet all the time, but also meet with other representatives, and of course, representatives, we are 36,000 employees.
The people you meet today, anywhere you go in the world, you will meet people of the same caliber, people who are very committed to results, courageous, but also very caring and collaborating, creating this fantastic company. This is one out of 72 production sites. And of course, it is a fantastic site. But with all the hard work that we've done over the last 10 years, all our sites are fantastic. So you can go to any Essity site now in the world and see something similar to this. What's unique here is, of course, the proximity to Barcelona. That's very nice for us. But also the fact that we have many different categories here. So you get a kind of smorgasbord of different categories produced here. So those are something specific with this site.
But the quality, the attention to health and safety, the attention to service levels you will find in any of our sites. And we'll learn more about this today. We are, as you know, organized and set up in three very attractive business areas. And Health and Medical is the one with the highest margins. It's 20% of the business. Our strategy is overall just to grow because it's very value generating, high margins, low capital intensity. We have so many opportunities in the different categories here. And this is where we meet a large part of our one billion customers or one billion users every day. Of course, these are patients. It's caregivers. It's different caretakers. We meet them in hospitals, in healthcare institutions, but also they use our products in their homes.
Consumer Goods, what you typically then maybe historically have been kind of connecting to Essity, it's 50% of our business. Remember, we're almost half business to business in Essity, but Consumer Goods. here we meet our consumers on the retail shelf, but also online, and this is where you see and meet our products in people's homes, typically. Our overall strategy is to accelerate in the high margin categories. So incontinence care, Feminine Care, which are very, very attractive, and to improve and grow the margins and returns in Baby Care and Professional Hygiene, finally, where we are the global number one, and I would say we're more dominating than we've ever been. 26% of our business after nine months this year, where we just want to leverage that global dominance and grow even quicker.
And primarily then in our proprietary strategic systems, which have the highest gross margins and where we have the highest growth opportunities. So fantastic opportunities, three very different routes to market, three different ways of meeting our customers and consumers. In Health and Medical, as I mentioned, it's the healthcare setting in consumer, of course, in Professional Hygiene through many times distributors. But we also, of course, have a sales force going out to hotels, restaurants, airports, and working through distributors. So that's overall Essity, how we operate and our three different business areas. But of course, more important than anything, we meet our customers and consumers through these fantastic leading brands. And again, interesting, I think, to note that two of the strongest brands here at the top 10 on Tork are business-to-business brands.
But of course, we aim to be number one and number two everywhere. So these are all extremely strong brands, either globally, regionally, or locally. And we'll hear a lot more about these throughout the day. Finally, like a little overview of Essity and where we are today, what everyone in the company knows as my favorite slide. So please have a close look here. This is the financial performance of the last 10 years. So the first three years here are actually from the SCA Hygiene days. And as you can see, even during some super, super challenging times when we had lockdowns in the world and people were just using less hygiene products and less medical products, and then the supply chain shocks that hit us for one and a half years, even then we generated very strong cash flows and good results.
So a very resilient, very stable company and with a trajectory that's positive and where we are back on the trajectory we had before the pandemic. And of course, aim to continue to move forward in that way, generating a lot of shareholder value. Talking about shareholder value, this is the earnings per share development. So overall, over 50% development since the listing of Essity in 2017. And on an average annual basis or accumulated annual basis, then over 7% per year. So that's also compared to other companies in this sector, well, I would say in the first quartile of the performance of FMCG companies. I see some of you are nodding, so thank you for noting that. It's been a lot of hard work. We've come a long way. We'll talk about this and cover all of this today. We simplified and strengthened the organization, our capabilities.
We've done a lot of restructuring. Over 10 years ago, we had a dozen more plants than we have today. So the plants we have today, they are very efficient, very well invested, and they are in the right place and equipped then with equipment where we have been able to establish platforms. So for instance, in TENA Pants, we have 12 machines that are identical. In our baby business, we also have platforms using the same equipment, the same standards everywhere. Value creation, creating acquisitions, divestments. Of course, the latest divestment, Vinda, was very value creating. And so on and so forth. We'll hear more about this throughout the day. But what I want to convey as a very, very important message, and this has been the theme for us this year, as Essity is actually in better shape than ever.
Also one of the reasons that we have this Capital Markets Day here today. We're really proud about that, and we want to tell you this event, and it's something we talk about internally. It's also five years since last time we had a Capital Markets Day that was face to face like this. And of course, the fantastic opportunities to also see the site. But what we want to talk about today is that we have a very, very attractive product portfolio today. We have pricing power that we've proven through very, very tough times. We're more agile, we're faster. We know that our brands can take pricing. A much lower volatility in our earnings. And this is because of the structural changes we've done over the years, but also in becoming more agile in our ways of working. A more efficient production, as you will see today.
Of course, a very strong financial position. That was a key theme last night. I think that's a very, very positive discussion after many years of discussing, are we on the edge of a solid investment grade? Based on this conclusion, we set new targets. Maybe that's also some kind of an overall statement to give you today. We're not presenting any news today. I think this was very clear already in the invitations. I hope you didn't come here today to hear something fantastic, some new announcement. Of course, the reason why we're here today is to learn more about Essity through meeting our people and also seeing the facility. We have announced a lot of news this year. We have announced new financial targets that you see here, very, very ambitious.
Maybe not one and the other, but together, the combination is very value creating and very ambitious. We have, of course, announced the share buyback program, so a significantly higher amount of cash distributed to our shareholders. One reason why we're doing it, the main reason is actually that we at every point in time want to retain and keep a very, very efficient capital structure. That's why we added this additional tool for distributing capital than the share buyback program. And as you know, but I reiterate it anyway, our ambition is to do this now year after year after year, subject then to decision every year at the annual shareholders meeting. So this we aim to see as a recurring theme and as a way to distribute cash to shareholders. So that was the whole history and what happened up to this summer and today.
Looking forward, we stay with our very, very energizing and motivating vision that our employees love to be the undisputed global leader in hygiene and health. Are you crazy? Some people say, of course, we're not crazy. We see that year over year over year, we move in this direction. One proof of that is that we set these new financial targets. Of course, another proof is that we're growing market shares again. We're growing volumes. We're winning in the market, and a vision is a long, long way into the future. What we need to see is that every year, every year going forward, we take a step in this direction. That we have, I mean, I was saying it's fantastic. We have a billion customers or a billion users every day.
This means we have 6 billion potential customers and users that we are looking forward to attracting going forward in the longer term, and just then to set the scene for the presentations that you will hear here going forward, this is how we'll do it. Because another theme of this conference today, of course, and very much yesterday also was, so how are you going to reach your financial targets? Yes, we will give more in-depth insights of that. How will we achieve the about 15% return, 15% I almost used to previous targets, over 15% EBITDA margin and over 3% growth. These are the key points here. We will focus on growing markets and growing categories. Very simple. We kind of rise with the tide. Another good example is that we work and focus on successful customers.
One super successful customer that we have in Spain is Mercadona, 40% market share in the Spanish retail market. I mean, we've been growing with them almost double digit for 10, 20 years, so staying with the winners and working closely with them, providing everyday high quality, everyday super service levels, developing the categories, developing the shelf together with them. I mean, that's a way of gearing towards growing markets and categories. Focusing on opportunities with high margin potentials, and we'll see a lot of that here coming up very briefly. Competing where we have the right to win, of course. So we shouldn't waste our time where we don't have that opportunity. Earning the right to grow. This is Fredrik will talk about profitable growth and the value creation chart that every 36,000 employees in Essity knows about. You have to earn your right to grow.
You can't just grow. It has to be profitable growth. And we are also committed to invest in this. And we'll talk about investment levels going forward. And of course, capturing efficiencies across the value chain, primarily in the COGS, in the Cost of Goods Sold, but also in other parts of the value chain. And there are many, many opportunities. And of course, with digitalization, automation, AI, we see new opportunities all the time here. So we'll continue to see a high pace of savings going forward in all parts of the business. And the fantastic team that will achieve this. You met them last night. You see them on this beautiful picture. Six nationalities spread out over the world. We want to be very, very close to our consumers and customers. So they are sitting in the markets. They are experts in their fields.
They have fantastic backgrounds and CVs. They are committed to profitable growth, engaged, courageous, and focusing on the results. The first one following me here is Sahil Tesfu, our Chief Strategy Officer, ex-McKinsey partner, perfectly what we need as we are fine-tuning our strategies and plans. Welcome, Sahil. How will we tell us now how will we achieve our growth targets? Thank you for listening.
Thank you, Magnus. So as you have heard in Magnus's presentation, we have a very strong platform that we're starting off for our profitable growth journey going forward. We're also going to be guided towards our goal of becoming the undisputed global leader in hygiene and health by our new financial targets, which are to grow organic sales above 3% and EBITDA margin above 15%. So now in my presentation, what I would like to focus on is to give you some more details about the path that we have chosen to achieve these targets. Or in other words, I'm going to talk about the key building blocks of our business that we plan to unlock for profitable growth.
Before I do that, I'm going to give you some background about the markets that we operate in, because of course, there needs to be some context also for our growth ambitions. When we do calculate market growth exposure, we actually look at external sources. We also do our internal estimates because there is not a source for everything out there. We also only look at those category market combinations where we already compete in today. Everything that we do not yet do today is not reflected in these figures. The average market exposure then that we estimate that we have as a group is 2%-3% market growth. That's the average for the Essity group. Now, of course, that's a bit different looking at the different business areas because we have different geographic footprints.
We have different category plays depending on where we compete in. So when we then look at the Health and Medical business, the market growth exposure that we estimate is 3%-4%. Remember, that's roughly 20% of our Consumer Goods, the market growth exposure that we estimate is 2%-3%. That's roughly 54% of our sales today. Then finally, last but Professional Hygiene, the market growth exposure that we estimate as well is 2%-3%. That's roughly 26% of our sales today. There is, of course, a couple of trends that are driving the growth figures that I've just shown you here on this slide. The first favorable trend that I'd like to outline is the rising levels of disposable incomes.
That is relevant to the categories that we play in because with rising level of disposable income, hygiene and health products category starts to grow in the different countries. We also see different penetration levels today depending on where we look in the world. For example, the penetration of incontinence product is one fourth of that in Western Europe, in Latin America. We also see difference in penetration across Europe. For example, the penetration of tissue categories in Eastern Europe is only one third of that in Western Europe. For us, it is very important to look at these income levels also when we decide to enter a new market. If you want to have a reference point, one says that roughly $2,000 of GDP per capita is when it starts to become interesting to be playing in hygiene and health categories in a country.
Another trend that we're looking into is the aging population, which is also driving the growth in the markets that we play in. For example, in the incontinence category, as there is more old people, the demand for incontinence products also increases. Since there is more old people on the planet, there is also rise of chronic conditions. There's different chronic conditions you can think of. There is incontinence. I already mentioned that. There are chronic wounds. There are lymphatic and venous conditions. There's arthritis. And all of these conditions, again, are relevant across the Health and Medical categories that we play in. So incontinence, wound care, compression, but also orthopedics. The next trend that we see is the spread of infectious diseases. Why is that relevant to us? Well, first of all, it's relevant to the world.
The World Health Organization has declared in 2019, for example, antimicrobial resistance to be one of the top 10 threats for humanity, and this is relevant to us as a group because we provide solutions for infection prevention, but we also have wound care or hand hygiene solutions is what I'm referring to here. But we also have solutions that can help with fighting antimicrobial resistance in our wound care categories. Last but not least, there's also an arising awareness of well-being and self-care, initiated a little bit through the pandemic. We still see that trend being relevant in some parts of the world, and of course, it helps us with also coming up with products and solutions for a more affluent customer base.
All of these trends are favorable and are driving next to some other market developments, the growth that we have seen in the slide just now. Now, when we then think about how can we now tap into all of these great trends and unlock growth for the Essity group, we actually think about this in three growth pillars. The first growth pillar that we look into are business building blocks in our core business. So these are category country combinations that constitute our core business today and that can be expected to have the biggest contribution to Essity's absolute growth going forward. The second category of building blocks that we look into here, the second growth pillar, is to expand for more.
Those are category country combinations that provide big growth opportunities for us in relative terms while also having a substantial impact in terms of absolute growth. Then we also have a last category here that is the continue to explore category. Those are activities that we have in place where we are exploring. We're in pilot mode. Those are activities that hopefully at some point in time can move into expansion mode. Now, we also believe it's about finding the right balance between these three pillars. We believe the right balance to estimate that roughly a bit more than 2% of our organic sales growth can be expected to come from core business building blocks, roughly 1% from business building blocks innovate. We do not attribute any growth figure, particular growth figure to the explore bucket because I just said those are activities in pilot mode.
So if anything, you can look at them as upside to our plans that you will see here today. So now I talked a lot. It was a long intro. I promised you some more details about the building blocks for each particular business area. I'm going to kick it off with Health and Medical here. So you've seen that in Magnus's presentation, the tagline for Health and Medical is to grow to scale. And one should probably add to grow to scale everywhere because we are already the global leaders in incontinence care in healthcare. So it's more about achieving also a similar scale level in the other medical categories. But in any case, as you can see here on the slide just by the first glance, the focus here really is on strengthening and gaining that scale in our core business.
We're aiming for more than 3% organic sales growth in Inco, while our market growth exposure in that category is roughly 2%-3%. More than 6% in wound care, while our market exposure to growth is roughly 4%. We're committed to more than 3% organic sales growth, both in compression and in orthopedics, while we estimate the market growth exposure to be roughly 2%-3%. Now, we're also aiming for more. So while we're focusing on the core in the business, we're not losing sight of also growing into more. And that is actually related to expansion activities, geographic expansion, particularly in Latin America, Asia, and then MEA. Now, when we put all of this together, the big bubble there on the right-hand side, we're aiming for organic sales growth above 4% in Health and Medical.
Keep in mind again what I showed on the market exposure slide at the very beginning. We estimate our market exposure to be roughly 3%-4%. So when we're committing to a sales growth here above 4%, we're also committing to beating the market. Looking then at the second Consumer Goods, roughly 54% of our business. The tagline for profitable Consumer Goods is to accelerate high margin categories. In line with that ambition, in our core business, we're aiming for more than 6% organic sales growth in Inco, more than 3% in Feminine Care, while we're exposed to less than 1% of market exposure in Feminine Care. In Baby Care, we aim for more than 2% organic sales growth, while our market exposure is less than 1%.
And last but not least, the ambition for more than 1% organic sales growth in Consumer Tissue, and that compares to less than 1% market growth exposure. Given our very, very strong core business Consumer Goods, bear in mind that we already hold number one or number two position in 9% of our branded sales. We feel very confident also about our expansion opportunities here into more and for them to be substantial. The growth ambitions that we have here is we want to grow more than 16% in our absorbent apparel business. We want to grow more than 40% in incontinence in the U.S., while we're exposed there to roughly 5%-6% of market growth. And last but not least, we aim for more than 11% organic sales growth in our incontinence men business, which covers incontinence solutions for men.
And we estimate our market exposure to be roughly 8%-9%. So again, when we put all of this together, big bubble there on the right-hand side, we're aiming for more than 3% organic sales Consumer Goods. and again, remember, we're exposed to roughly 2%-3% market growth. So again, with this ambition, we're also committing here to beat the market. Last but Professional Hygiene business, roughly 26% of our sales today. Magnus said it. We're aiming to expand our very strong global leadership position. We aim to continue the renovation that we're doing in our core business here. And therefore, the focus here is to focus on the growth, organic sales growth of our proprietary strategic systems. And the position here is to grow above 4%. We estimate the market growth to be roughly 2%-3% in this segment.
We're also committing here, despite this renovation going on in our core business. We're also very confident given the global leadership position that Professional Hygiene, that we also have opportunities here to expand into more. Professional Hygiene is growth into adjacencies, into wiping and cleaning, as well as into soap and sanitizers to complete our bathroom bundle. The growth ambition here is to grow above 8%. That also clearly is above our estimated market growth exposure of 2%-3% in these segments. We're also committed to a Professional Hygiene, particularly in Latin America, but also in MEA. We estimate that organic sales growth ambition to be above 6%. Now, again, if we put all of this together, we ended in organic sales growth targets above 2% as we estimated right now.
I said before the market is 2%-3%. But despite the renovations that are going on here, we believe that we can achieve a growth ambition here above 2% and therefore grow with market and in parts of the market also beat the market. Now, if we put all of this together, what does this mean now for the Essity Group? You're, of course, all aware that we're aiming for this organic sales growth target of above 3%. And allow me to emphasize again here now that more than 2% of organic sales growth are going to come from our core business and roughly more than 1% of sales growth can be expected from our expansion activities, or in other words, from the M&A bucket on this slide. The visualization also clearly shows you a bit the difference between the different business areas.
I said it before in health and medical, the focus clearly is on the core business, strengthening the core business, growing to scale in all the categories that we compete in. A small contribution, however, still to be expected in the more bucket there. I said this relates to geographic expansion ambitions that we have. Then we Consumer Goods business, where you see a substantial contribution in the core part of the slides here. But you also see, since we have that very strong business, we feel very confident about expansion also into more, also substantial contribution there in the more Professional Hygiene, the contributions are quite balanced between core and more. Now, why should we believe that we can get all of this done? Well, you should believe it because we believe it.
But in addition to that, also there is a lot of proof points that we can share in terms of track record that we have of unlocking profitable growth for the Essity group and our shareholders. A couple of examples on this slide here. The TENA Pants business, which you will hear also a bit more about later today, has shown a CAGR of 17% between 1999 and 2023, while the market growth through that same timeline was a CAGR of 8%. Our Sorbact and Hydrofera wound care business had a CAGR of 18% between 2021 and 2023, while the market CAGR was 7%. Our incontinence business in Brazil had a CAGR of 26% between 2019 and 2023, while the market CAGR was 14%. Our Feminine Care business grew with a CAGR of 8% between 2019 and 2023, while the market CAGR was 4% in that region.
Last but not least, our proprietary strategic tissue Professional Hygiene, grew with a CAGR of 51% between 2019 and 2023. As I said, you will learn more about all of these examples from my EMT colleagues and their colleagues later as they present the different businesses that they lead. This now brings me to the end of my presentation. I would like to close by saying that we are ready to accelerate profitable growth, our profitable growth agenda. We have a very strong growth platform. Magnus talked about that. We know exactly where the profitable growth potential sits in the business, and we also know how to unlock it. Finally, we have adopted a profitable growth mindset across the organization because to succeed, we must not just know what we have to do.
We also must believe that we can, and we do. And with that, I hand it over to our CFO, Fredrik Rystedt, who's going to outline to you how we aim to maximize shareholder value while we're accelerating profitable growth. Thank you.
Thank you, Sahil. Thank you. I will, as Sahil also talked about, the future. So while Sahil talked a little bit about how we are going to achieve our growth target, I will do the same when it comes to the margin target. But I will actually start with just a little bit of historic recap because it's important to understand our history to actually fully comprehend how we will generate our future profitable growth. And I will end my presentation also with sharing a bit of our views on how we look at our capital allocation. So those are the three themes.
Let me just start by saying that Magnus alluded to all the things that we have done. We've been engaged in restructuring. We have sold companies and bought companies. If you kind of start with that list of activities, what it actually has done, it has created a portfolio that is much more balanced as a whole. It's generating a structurally higher profitability, but also a much more stable environment. What you can see Professional Hygiene and Health and Medical are now bigger parts of the overall Essity group. Also Consumer Goods isolated, you can see that incontinence and feminine are now bigger parts of that, and you have a relatively smaller share of consumer tissue and babies. Overall, a much more balanced portfolio.
If you look at the financial journey starting from 2018, and I chose the year 2018 because that was the first full year of the new company Essity. And as you can see, we are a much larger company. And this is, of course, a result of the underlying growth that we've had. It is a result of, of course, the acquisitions that we have made, but we've also divested, as an example, Vinda and Russia. But despite that, we're considerably bigger. And what is perhaps more important, you can see that our underlying margin or the margin is significantly higher, almost 3.5%. And if you combine that with a continuous efficient capital management that we spend a great deal of time with, you can also see that return on capital has improved even more.
Of course, if you have this high return on capital employed, then growth that we achieve and aspire to achieve also going forward is that much more value creative. Of course, another important thing that I'll come back to towards the end of my presentation is that we're a lot stronger in terms of our balance sheet. So just as an example, in 2018, we had a leverage ratio or net debt to EBITDA of 3.1. As of the third quarter of this year, we're down to 1.1 or 3.0 to 1.1. So a lot stronger. I'll come back to that in a bit. Now, many of you are familiar. It's not only 36,000 people in Essity that are familiar with our internal financial steering system that we refer to as the Value Creation Roadmap.
So if you look at the Y-axis here, that's where you find the return. And if you look at the Y-axis or X-axis, this is where you find the growth. And we map all our country and category combinations in accordance with this. So if any of those combinations are below the return threshold or our hurdle rate, as we refer to it, we put most of our emphasis on improving margin and capital efficiency until we actually have sufficient return. And if they are above, then basically we focus on profitable growth, enhancing growth, but of course also return. And if you look at our business areas in 2018, this is roughly where they were. So you can say all value-creating, but a bit lower in growth. Now, if we fast forward to 2024, what you'll see is that Health and Medical has improved both growth and return.
If Professional Hygiene, there is a significant improvement in structural profitability and Consumer Goods, both growth and return. So the improvement that you can see from a financial standpoint for Essity comes from all parts of the group. And if you sum that up and you look at Essity as a whole, we were value created clearly in 2018, but since then, of course, the journey has brought a much more value creating position. Now, just looking at this map, you can clearly see that there is more potential. We would like to move this higher up, both in terms of growth and, of course, also in terms of return. And this is what this day is all about. So just before I leave the history a bit, how did we improve the financial performance? Well, the main reason is about gross profit margin.
If you look at our gross profit margin and the improvement, the structural improvement, where did that come from? Basically, it's a combination of innovation-driven mix and efficiency. There are other factors as well. I talked about portfolio composition, but these two factors are the more important or the two most important factors. So starting a bit with mix or innovation-driven mix, the innovations that we bring to market, they typically, if you look at our innovation funnel or our innovation portfolio, the gross profit margin of those innovations are typically higher than the product offering that we have in our incumbent portfolio. So as we launch new product and as we strengthen the sales or grow the sales of those that we have recently launched, not only sales increase, but also the underlying margin.
This is a very key feature, and you'll hear Tuomas talk about this a bit later. The other part is the efficiency work that we have done here, illustrated in the form of cost or cost of goods sold. But we also have a lot of efficiency work within our SG&A setup. So as you can see, we have generated about SEK 0.5-1 billion per year in efficiency. And of course, this has been an instrumental part of our margin enhancement and return enhancement. So if I kind of leave history now a bit and I'll move into the future, we have set, as Magnus mentioned, these targets. So more than 3% growth, more than 15% of EBITDA margin. Now, there are scenarios where we could grow more, but that would be to the expense of lower margins.
And then, of course, equal scenarios where we could have a higher margin, but that would be at the expense of low growth. And all of these scenarios do bring lower net present value than what these targets would imply. So from our perspective, they are optimal in terms of bringing maximum value to the shareholders of the company. Now, the question, and Sahil, you touched upon that when it comes to growth, how are we going to achieve that? You're going to hear a lot more later today. But if you look at the margin trajectory as we see it reaching our target, this is approximately what it looks like. So as before, we expect the innovation-driven mix improvement to be a part of that margin enhancement.
There is also an element of portfolio or continued portfolio shift as we grow our higher yielding portfolios faster than the lower growth and lower yielding parts. But the overall and dominating part of the first part is basically the mix. Second, efficiency will be a core part of our journey also going forward, and we expect to generate SEK 0.5-1 billion also in coming years. And Donato will talk a lot more about that in the future. One other feature of accelerating growth is, of course, that we generate more scale benefits. So the operating leverage, and this is, of course, further contributing to the margin. The sizes of these bars represent approximately how we see or the weight of the margin improvement from all of these components.
Now, needless to say, to get this growth, we also believe that we will need to invest or will be investing into primarily A&P, but also selling expenses and to perhaps a smaller extent in digital capabilities. So it's not just getting this growth, it's also investing to get this growth. And this is basically the trajectory that we see. And of course, always at the same time as continuing to grow our top line with more than 3%. So I'll leave now the margin. I'll leave the history, and I'll turn a little bit to our capital allocation. So you are familiar with these. We haven't changed them. So if you look at the capital structure, we want at all times to maintain a solid Investment Grade rating. And when it comes to dividend, long-term stable and rising dividend.
So if I turn starting with the capital structure, I already mentioned that since the beginning of the Essity era from 2018, we have strengthened the balance sheet quite considerably. And now we have an approximate net debt of SEK 29 billion and a leverage ratio of 1.1. So I mentioned that we always strive to be solid investment grade. In rating terminology, that means below 3.0 in terms of net debt to EBITDA. So that's the max. But under normal circumstances, we don't want to operate there. We want to operate between 0-2. And we have no set target within that range. So this is what you can expect. We should be under normal circumstances between 0-2. I'm going to talk a little bit about how we deploy our capital and our free cash flow.
But before I do that, let me just touch on a couple of things. First, the cash flow as such, because one of the key features of Essity is the stability in our cash flow generation. We continue also under tough circumstances like the pandemic year or the hyperinflation years of 2021 and 2022 to continuously generate both operating cash flow and free cash flow. And in the last couple of years, clearly as a result of higher margin and profitability, cash flow has improved further. So the first and foremost, of course, priority for us when it comes to using our capital surplus is basically organic capital expenditure. This is where we have the highest net present value. This is where we have the highest return. And as you can see, we have invested around about 5% or so of our sales in capital expenditure.
We have increased a bit now in later years and will continue to do so simply to cope with the added growth that we see ahead of us. But it's not just about adding CapEx. It's also how we allocate it. And we've said many times we wish to allocate the capital to where we have the highest yields. And the graph to the right here is an illustration of exactly this. You will see here the amount of CapEx in relation to the operating assets of every category. And what this tells you is simply that we overallocate to incontinence products, to feminine, and to medical, not a surprise given the fact that we have much higher return in those areas. What you may find a bit surprising Professional Hygiene is slightly low on this list. The reason isn't that we don't believe in Professional Hygiene.
The reason is simply that we have done quite Professional Hygiene, taken down the CapEx need a bit, and secondly, that a lot of Professional Hygiene is mixed driven or is coming from relatively lighter from a capital Professional Hygiene. so of course, we intend to continue to Professional Hygiene. now, the free cash flow, how do we allocate it? Well, if you just look at the total spectrum of our toolbox, first and foremost, we, of course, always focus on our dividend. And I already mentioned it. We intend that to be stable and rising. Number two, as Magnus already alluded to, we have introduced the share buyback program here in 2024, and we intend that to be a recurring part of our capital allocation toolbox.
We get this question a lot, how do you actually decide the amount? How does the board do that? The starting point is our free cash flow less the dividend. The first part is always the dividend. We also expect or aspire to have a certain part of deleveraging. Deleveraging. What is left there is potentially available for a share buyback program. This is how we reason free cash flow, dividend, a certain deleverage, and the rest is potentially there for a share buyback. Needless to say, we have and we also will pursue M&A activities. I'll spend a couple of minutes on that topic because it has been an instrumental part of building the Essity that you now see. We'll continue to do that also as we go forward.
The reason for doing M&A is pretty obvious. Of course, it brings growth, profitable growth to the company. We also add capabilities that we don't have or would be too cumbersome or too expensive to build on our own. Needless to say, we would like to continue our portfolio shift. We have identified, based on the strategy, opportunities for all our business areas. Starting with health and medical, advanced wound care is a priority, compression therapy, another one. If you look at geographical presence, then U.S. is of our first priority. This doesn't rule out, it's not mutually exclusive, but this would be on the top of our list. If you Consumer Goods, also there from a geographical perspective, United States and Feminine Care, as you can imagine, something we would like to become bigger in wherever we are in the world.
Professional Hygiene, where we really focus our attention: soaps and sanitizers, wiping and cleaning. And there we are, in relative terms, fairly small in D&E markets. So this would be a specific priority. Once again, just to be super clear, this is not mutually exclusive. We would look at also other geographies as an example. To sum up, you've heard us talk now about growth and margin and also capital deployment. So if I just sum up, we have set our financial targets and we have our different policies. And the implication of these targets is basically that we aspire to have above-market growth in terms of sales. We are looking forward to a strong EBITDA and EPS growth, just as we've had in the past.
We continue to strive for a rising dividend and a recurring share buyback program within the boundaries of our free cash flow. So with those words, thank you very much for listening.
Thank you, Fredrik. And I invite Magnus and Sahil up on stage again. Thank you for explaining how we have grown a strong platform and also for explaining the key building blocks to accelerate growth and deliver on our targets and maximize shareholder value. Now we will move into Q&A. So if you have any questions to start with, Charles? Yes.
That's right.
Just wait for a microphone from Patricia. Great.
Hi, Charles from UBS. Thank you very much for the presentations. Just a quick follow-up on Professional Hygiene.
Obviously, the area where I guess your ambition is to grow slightly below the market growth rate, which would imply, I guess, stepping away from some categories, some geography or de-emphasizing one of those. Is that the correct way to interpret it? And if so, maybe you could expand on where that deep pri oritization is
Okay. Yeah, I can talk to that. So Professional Hygiene, there's a clear tiering structure that you have very basic products. You have kind of the better assortment, and then you have the Professional Hygiene, we're very clearly focused on the premium, what we call then the strategic assortment. So we already stepped out to the large extent from kind of the basic assortment. So that's done. But what we're saying is we're not going to invest.
That's growing the basic part of the business, especially in emerging markets. We're not getting in there because the returns are not. So when we invest for future growth, we focus on the premium part where we see great opportunities and in the adjacent parts also that Sahil presented. So that's why. So don't expect any future restructuring needs or that we'll step out of any markets Professional Hygiene. it's just that we focus on a smaller part of the Professional Hygiene market.
And also we will hear Professional Hygiene after lunch. oskar, please. Wait for the mic.
Oskar Lindström with Danske Bank in Stockholm. I'd like to go back to that chart where you showed the building blocks to achieving your targets. And you had a number of sort of positive impacts.
And then at the end, there was the negative impact from increasing investments into growth. Now, what do you think will be the phasing of these? I mean, should we expect the costs to come sort of upfront and then the rewards to come later, or should they come at the same time? What will be the sort of phasing of these?
Fredrik?
Yeah.
Profitable growth.
Profitable growth.
Oskar, you're talking about the margin bridge there. And you should expect that phasing to be more or less simultaneously because what we do is that as we kind of launch new products, we also put more A&P behind it as an example. So there is no point in innovating or launching if you don't put A&P. So it's just a higher activity growth agendas.
So it's not that you make the investment now and then you hope for something to happen a couple of years from now. It will be gradual both. So the investment will increase as also growth increases. So more or less simultaneously, you can say.
Should we also assume that the increase in A&P will be gradual from the levels where we are now?
Yes. Yes.
Wonderful. Thank you.
Carla has a question. Just like, yeah. Thanks.
Carla Carpenter and Nordea Asset Management. Just on the growth target of 3%, you previously talked about that being really volume and mix. But what is the role of price and inflation in that other than just the pass-through of raw material price? If we assume most categories, most cost categories, we are again in a positive inflation world. Is it conservative to assume zero pricing over time?
Yes. Yeah, we hope so.
But we are assuming that. So we don't add a price component in our growth ambitions. It is basically not included. But of course, we believe that, of course, there is a pass-through when it comes to input costs. We've always been doing that, but it's not an explicit assumption of our growth here.
And all the market growth numbers you cited, they are volume growth numbers.
And mix.
Yes. Okay.
Perfect. Patrick, yes.
Thank you for the presentation. The capital allocation toolkit I thought was quite interesting. And I'm just wondering how much in terms of M&A firepower are you trying to allocate towards that bucket? And then maybe on the deleveraging bucket, how should we think about that? And then maybe thinking about the buyback. I know in terms of market estimates, there's a few numbers out there.
Should we think of SEK 3 billion as a fair number rolling forward? Thank you.
Yeah, should I start? Sure.
Yeah.
Okay. So first question is the deleveraging part. I think we have a strong balance sheet, so there's no gigantic need to deleverage. So we're not actually looking at a major deleverage. We just want to have that component so it continues to deleverage as we go forward. When it comes to M&A, it's not that we take a portion of the free cash flow and allocate to M&A buckets every year. We don't do that. We can just conclude that if you look at the balance sheet structure that we have currently, and you've got a bit of leeway there, maximum is three, but under normal circumstances, zero to two.
If you use those kind of thresholds and you look at our EBITDA, you get a fairly good sense of what the firepower is. Obviously, that's fairly significant, right? It's as simple as that. I think when it comes to the third, when it's a share buyback program in terms of amount, I think there we need to come back. Simple as that. The principles I've outlined when it comes to the exact amount, obviously, that's something for a later discussion. I think the important message is overall that, of course, this is a kind of a positive situation. It's not anything negative. It's a big change compared to a few years ago that we have deleveraged, that we now have this new tool in our toolbox that we can do share buybacks. Of course, we'll find our way.
We've taken a very important first step here in initiating a share buyback program. And now, as we move forward, we look at M&A opportunities. We see how quickly we generate cash, of course, and the other important component. And we'll find the balance between all of this going forward. And it's not that we're aiming to build up some huge war chest or anything like that. We see this as a very, very positive problem or opportunity going forward.
Thank you.
Yes. Molly.
Hi. Thanks for the presentation. I was surprised to see the big chunk of growth coming from U.S. retail Inco Consumer Goods side. why do you think you can win in that market today versus history?
Maybe we should leave that Consumer Goods. or would you like to explain that?
Maybe just a clarification on Sahil on, because that's a very high growth number, but on a quite small base, of course, you have to remember. It's a huge market, of course, and we think we have the right to win.
Exactly. I think Andres will speak to that a bit more in detail, but I would say it's fair to say that we have shifted gears in terms of how we go to market, the kind of insights we're able to generate, and also the team that we have put in place now. There have been a couple of changes in the last 12 months that Andres can speak to. That's why we're confident that we can have a growth ambition, again, as you say, from a small base, but still, of course, also significant to beat the market times three.
But we have the plans in place, and Andres will shed some more light on that in his presentation.
Perfect. Then I want to thank you for answering all the questions because we will move forward now to the second session.
Thank you.
Yes. So now we're moving forward to the second session where we will focus on supply chain. I will hand over to Donato Giorgio, President, Global Supply Chain, to explain to us how he works with end-to-end supply chain to fuel profitable growth through margin expansion, but also through supporting growth. Welcome up on stage, Donato.
Thank you, Sandra. And I really, from the deepest of my heart, on behalf of the global supply chain, I welcome you in Valls, in our beautiful factory. We are really honored and privileged to have a community like you here.
Together with my colleagues, I hope I will present to you and we will convince you as the global supply chain in Essity is a key driver to support the margin expansion and growth that you have been hearing up to now. This company has been working very hard in the last years to create an end-to-end customer-centric supply chain that all our stakeholders can trust and can trust in terms of safety, quality, customer service, and the best use of the money that you allocate to us and our customers give to us. I think we have a very organic and integrated network of our suppliers, which is an important part of our value creation, from having the right contracts to create innovation and to support new ideas and to give agility in everything we do.
Then logistics and distribution for an industry like our industry is becoming a real important competitive advantage. Ilham, we share more on this. The concept I want to pass to you is that this integrated end-to-end supply chain is a full service of the business unit. Everything you will listen to today from my colleagues in order to really support and fuel and this grow and ensure that really it makes happen. As Magnus said in the introduction, we have done also a lot of work in the footprint, in particular in tissue and in personal care to grow, to make sure that we have the right location in the right position with the right technology, with the proximity to customer.
Actually, we are very proud to show to you today an example of this factory, which is a multi-business unit factory, Professional Hygiene, consumer tissue, inco, and soon we'll also produce feminine. It is an example of our excellence in manufacturing that can support customer proximity. How do we do this? How do we intend really concretely to support this profitable growth from a manufacturing supply chain point of view? These are our four elements that are completely aligned with the Essity strategy. First of all, our people, which is the important or most important asset that we have. We want to position ourselves state of the art in safety, health, and well-being in working in this place because I hope you will feel today on the floor. You will see today on the floor.
This is our culture, our way of working, our people is the best asset of this company and will create all the things that we are doing, so taking care of them is the most important thing to do, then you will hear from Ilham now very shortly how we are growing and we are taking care of our customers in terms of customer service, advanced planning, use of digitalization to be the best in supporting this growth. Because the most important thing that we can do in the supply chain to support Essity strategy is to deliver everything that is needed at the right time, and also, I really invite you during the lunch break to go and look at the demonstration of our supply chain hub that we will have available for you. I think that will be an interesting experience for you if you go and see.
In terms of operation, I really again hope that you will feel now in a few minutes in our factory that we are really the best in the industry where we are. We implement lean manufacturing as a state of the art with total employee involvement. We leverage the digitalization where it makes sense and to really expand and enhance the capability of everything we do. And again, we use our big supplier base to improve all the value we create end-to-end up to our customers. And last but not least, and I will have some concrete example where we are mostly proud of is sustainability, how we work with sustainability as a value creator element in the short, mid, and long term. If there is one KPI I want to share with you, I was discussing yesterday at dinner with some of you.
As if I would be an analyst, what I would look at a company in terms of excellence is running in safety. Because safety is an indicator where no one can cheat. It's really the real long-term indication of how you run your operations. And if you can run a factory with high safety, you are all the other things that run well. If you are not running in excellence, yes, you can boost some KPI, but in the long term, you don't have excellence. And we are extremely proud that in the last few years, we have reduced 62% our incident rates, TRI. And we are really applying and going on the journey to be among the best companies in the world in safety and taking care of our people. And this is an indicator really long-term on how we introduce, how we apply excellence in our operation.
I know that you always ask and you are interested in our estimated future COGS savings and the guidance that Fredrik and Magnus always give. Of course, we reconfirm that. I want to give you also the assurance and the sense of confidence where they are coming from. Yesterday evening, I also had some questions about productivity. Is only productivity giving this? No, of course, it's not only productivity, but it's a holistic approach of this. First of all, continuously doing footprint optimization. I mean, the world is not standing still. The market dynamic, the geographic condition, a lot of things change. We are continuously reviewing our footprint optimization on many aspects. Supplier value creation, once again, use our supplier in a holistic way, in an advanced way. This creates a lot of value. Material rationalization, use our material in the best possible way.
The material cost goes up and down, but our competitive advantage is to use it in the best possible way to delight our customer and consumer with an optimized use of material. And, absolutely, of course, the same is for energy. And use digitalization and automation is a pragmatic and practical way to have the right investments to really leverage and create value in the short term. Of course, we have also long-term trials and pilots for digitalization, but everything we do with digitalization and automation has to generate value in the short term. And I hope you will see some great examples right now in the factory. And distribution and logistics is really a competitive advantage for us in the future. And for this, I would like Ilham to join me on the stage. Ilham is Vice President, Planning and Logistics.
Thank you, Donato.
I would like Ilham, please share with us how, from a planning and logistics, the supply chain will add value to the strategy of the company.
Thank you, Donato. Hi, everyone. My name is Ilham Smaali. I joined Essity in July 2023. I will do my best to give you a flavor of what is the role of supply chain in Essity and what we have done in the last few years into being one of the few companies that have been investing into top-notch capabilities in our planning and logistics. One of the areas that I would like us to spend a few minutes is really around our Essity supply chain hub, which is a competitive advantage and the competitive engine that we have created in Barcelona, so not so far from here.
It's, I would say, a hub that has three roles for the company. It is giving us the infrastructure to orchestrate our operation for European footprint and, in some cases, for our global footprint. I will give you some examples in a second. It's also a campus where we are developing the finest supply chain professionals. We know in our reality today, attracting the right talents is a challenge. Attracting the right talents, developing them, and retaining them is even more of a challenge. Today, we are very proud that we have multiple talents coming from the best companies of the world that decided to join us and to be part of this adventure. The third pillar is really about equipping Essity with a supply chain lab where we can test, learn, and scale the best technologies to give us optimization, efficiencies, and competitiveness for the future.
What we are doing practically here and what you see here is a representation of our supply chain. Everything starts with customer needs. You heard Donato talking about that. Our role in supply chain is to ensure that we are unlocking the growth in a profitable way everywhere Essity decides to play, and we have equipped ourselves with top-notch capabilities in demand planning to be able to generate forecasts in a way that it is fast because we know the world is moving extremely fast than it was in the past, but it is doing that with the finest technologies. We have what we call mathematical model time series that allow us for more than 40,000 combinations. What is a combination, you will ask, so it is what article we are going to ship or sell from which location to which customer.
We have already in place machine learning to do that as well for us, and we do it in an extremely lean organization setup. As we speak, we are finishing supply planning integration. Once we have understood what is the demand to come, it's extremely important to give a signal to our suppliers, to give a signal to our production factories. We are sitting in Valls, and Valls is one of the factories that we are leveraging the capabilities already from the Essity supply chain hub in Barcelona. Again, we do that, and we are one of a few top-tier companies that have been creating this capability, and it gives us a magnificent recipient for AI, for GenAI. Everybody is talking about it. What Essity has been doing is creating the environment and the conditions so when this technology is mature, we can really get the benefit out of it.
Last but not least, when it comes to transportation planning, and you will have a flavor on the demo, we have implemented over the last few years a complete digital suite of solutions that gives us already the capability today for more than 60 countries in Europe. And we have the same capabilities in North America to have 95% of our transportation planning that is done touchless, which means that our people are focusing only on 5% of the transportation planning to handle it in an exception mode. And this is, I would say, a technology and the capability that is tools that are people capabilities that many of our companies come to learn from us and to understand how we can leverage this approach for their own businesses.
All of this has helped us to build the platform that we will be scaling even more by creating critical partnerships with our strategic customers and suppliers. We are already testing that, and we aim in the years to come in order to really enable the profitable growth to do that even more because everybody, supplier or customers, they all want the same thing: a data-driven supply chain that allows resilience and competitiveness in all times. I know it was fast, but I wanted just to give you a few elements of what you could expect from Essity supply chain. You will see more during the demo, and I hand over to Donato to talk a little bit more about sustainability.
Thank you. Thank you very much, Ilham.
I mean, a practical proof point and something that we are really proud of is that during COVID time, that some of you remember what COVID was, and during the supply chain disruption years of the last years, we never, ever stopped delivering to our customers. We always kept delivering to our customers. It is something that in Essity we are super proud of, and I think is a proof point that this system is working and will work even better for the future to support what our colleague will present. Then moving to sustainability, which you know is a very important and strategic part of this company. And we believe sustainability will also create a lot of value if we take in the Essity way. And I'm pretty sure you remember that we have committed to reduce 35% in the Scope I, II, and also Scope III.
But also, most important, we are one of the companies that we really are going to go to Net Zero, reinventing this industry and being really the undisputed leader in this industry. Up to now, we have a very good proof point. We have reduced 26% Scope I and II and 10% Scope III. And you say, practically, how we do it? We really work every day on this and in an integrated way in the short term, mid-term, and long-term activities. What I mean short term, the best sustainable activity is the kW or the energy that we do not consume.
So being the best in what we run, being the industry leader evolving from supplier in running our machine and our materials at minimum waste and maximum utilization is the best we can do every single day, every single minute for the planet and also for the balance sheet. And of course, renewable energy, whatever existing, we roll out everywhere where it makes sense, also according to local regulation. Then, and this is what we do every day, every minute, and I hope you will see here too. In the midterm, we are using a lot of alternative material. We are the first one that used hydrogen in tissue production. We are the first one using geothermal in tissue production. We are the first one with the fossil fuel-free tissue mill in Lilla Edet. And we are rolling out this everywhere.
But what we are doing most is to take a lot of technologies, experiment a lot of technologies that are outside our hygiene area and bring in our area. So outside the tissue and the personal care normal industry and bring here. And this creates a lot of value. And then in the long term, something that we are absolutely proud of is that we are reinventing this industry with disruptive breakthrough technology innovation between technology and R&D. One example that on behalf of the company, I'm very proud to show, this is something that is unique in the last 3,000 years. This is the first experimental, not so much experimental, it's ultra-industrial machine that we have developed with Voith that we have announced that produces tissue paper with no water and no gas. You see there is paper here. It's a high-quality product.
There is not a single drop of water, and there is not a gas pipe here. While you see every tissue mill around the world needs to have huge rivers and huge gas pipes to go in. And this is, for instance, together with the alternative fiber plant that we have in Mannheim and many other things, is how you can see this company's set to rewrite the future, basically. With this, I welcome the most important person for today, which is Miriam, and she is the Operations Director for Spain and the plant manager for Valls. So tell us what fantastic and beautiful thing we will see here today.
Welcome, everybody. So it's a pleasure to have all you here in Valls. I'm Miriam Guasch. I'm Operations Director in Spain. I have been working in Essity for 24 years.
I started as a controller, so finance runs in my blood. After that, I was moved to logistics. Then I took the responsibility in one factory that we have in the north of Spain, in the Navarra area. It's a factory that we bought to Georgia-Pacific. And I had the challenge to put the culture of Essity in that factory. And I think that we did well. And after that, I came back here and I took the responsibility of the operations in Spain. So what is the intent today? So I will try to be as fast as possible because I think that the most interesting part is on the shop floor, okay? But what we are going to see is how we are working in the manufacturing. You see that Ilham was presenting the full supply chain. So here today we are in this small piece of manufacturing.
So the first thing that you are going to see; it's the process engineers that are presenting you our process. I think that it's really interesting. You will see that these people; it's coming from our surroundings. We are working with the universities since years in order to make attractive to the universities and to the schools to be the first choice of the students to come here. You will see that. After this, we are going to explain how we are working in digitalization. I think that you have heard Donato talking a lot about digitalization, but it's a key element because we manage with the digitalization to link the needs of the manufacturing, but in order to fit the strategy of the company, the growth that you will see later on. Okay. So it's a key element.
And the good thing that you are going to see today, it's tangible what you are going to see. It's not just words, not just strategies, okay? So you will see afterwards. And the last but not least that I'm really proud of, it's the culture of this company. It's the idiosyncrasy that we have that in all the decisions that we are taking, we are putting the business and the people in the center. So you will see how we are working with the people, so how we are making all of them capable. We are an organization that we are running 361 days a year, 24/7. So you can imagine the power that we are building in order to make capable all our organization, which is the funnel, okay?
Everyone is able to take decisions based on data because everything is digitalized, but also we invest a lot in the capability of those people, okay? This is what we are going to see now, okay? Some logistics. Now you will see outside that we have two buses. We fill these two buses, one after the other. Then you will see in one bus that will be Donato together with Marc, the production responsible. In the other bus will be myself together with Paul Davies, the VP of Manufacturing, okay? Also we have some guides in those buses. Please follow the guides because today we are using different kinds of safety rules for this visit, okay? Because we are ensuring that you are not going to touch any machine because I think that you are not able to run any paper machine, okay?
Follow the people in order to be safe. What you will find inside the bus will be a vest and a cap, okay? And an audio guide in order to make it useful to hear everyone doing all the explanations. What we will do, we will stop in one paper machine. You will see how we are transforming the bales that you will see here, all these bales, into a mother roll of 3,000 kilos. Then we will go to the converting tissue where we will see how a mother roll is transformed from this mother roll to a bathroom tissue because it's impossible to store a mother roll of 3,000 tons in our bathrooms, okay? And later on, we will go to the personal care unit where we will see how we are producing TENA Pants, okay?
While all these process explanations, we will see these strategies. More important things about safety. We must use the handrail, sorry, in the stairs. There are a lot of stairs in the paper machines, so be safe with that. Then also attention with the trucks and the forklifts, so use please the crosswalks. If you need to answer any call, it's not a problem, but do that in a safe mode. So stop, answer the call, whatever you need, and then the guide will be together with you and you will join the rest of the team, okay? Questions? No? Let's go then.
Let's go.
Hello. Welcome back from the tour. I hope you found it interesting. If you have any questions still for the supply chain, please ask Donato, Ilham, and Miriam during lunch.
And Ilham will also have the Logistics Smart Hub team down by the canteen, so you can go there and talk to her. Now, the next step on our journey is health and medical. Health and medical is a growing and very important business area for Essity. And to tell us about the business and our different growth initiatives within health and medical, I invite Ulrika Kolsrud, President, Health and Medical. Welcome.
Thank you, Sandra. So let's dive into the health and medical business, which stands for 20% of Essity sales. And we are a global business with a broad presence across the geographies. Incontinence care accounts for a bit more than half of our business. And then wound care, compression therapy, and orthopedics stands for 20%, 10%, and 12%, respectively. Since 2019, we have grown this business 28% and also strengthened our profit margins.
One thing that is behind this, one positive development that is behind these figures is that we have managed to, after getting negatively impacted by the pandemic, we've managed to grow medical solutions for 14 consecutive quarters. What's also very pleasing to see is that we are now back to growth in incontinence care after stepping out of some low-margin business in the past year. Looking now at 2024, we are growing 4.2% if we exclude the exits I just talked about. On top of that, we have strengthened our gross margins and we have strengthened our profit margins by as much as 5.6 percentage points. What's behind this performance?
It's a lot about excellent price increases, of course, but that is in combination with market shaping because that's absolutely fundamental in our business that we work with the payers in the healthcare system in order to enable price increases in our regulated business. A prerequisite for us to be able to raise prices is our differentiated offers. We have stayed focused on driving innovation and leveraging our superior technologies throughout these volatile times. We have also had some acquisitions to support and strengthen our offers further. One is securing the Sorbact technology through the Abigo acquisition. Some of you might recall also the waterproof casting that we got through the AquaCast acquisition. Another part of our success recipe is cost saving. Especially in our incontinence care products, we've managed to take out cost of the specification without impacting product performance.
So that has been good. And we've done that through smart material choices and also through technology shifts. And we have restructured our unit to make us more simpler to operate and also reduce our operational costs, making us fit for the future. And then if we look to the future and moving forward, we are in a very good position to continue on this positive, profitable growth journey. We have some really strong positions to grow from, not the least our number one position in incontinence care, in compression therapy, and in fracture management, which is part of orthopedics. We, as you heard Sahil say, we expect to grow some 3%-4%. And the drivers behind that growth, one is the prevalence of the chronic conditions, the high prevalence of the chronic conditions that we serve.
The other one is the growing aging population that Sahil also talked about. Now, this demographic shift, it's not only driving the demand of our health and medical products. It's also driving demand of healthcare. Healthcare systems around the world that I think most of us experience also are struggling with constraints in staffing and constraints in funding. Also, what this is doing, this is of course a consequence of that is price pressure on us, but another consequence is also that some care is moving from institutions to the home care environment. Another trend that we see, as many other industries, is of course the increased demands on sustainability, both from regulation as well as from customer requirements. Now, some of these trends might imply that we have some business challenges, but more than anything, they offer business opportunities for us.
Because for us, our holistic superior offers that provide health economic benefits become even more relevant in this environment. One example of that is the services that we provide to incontinence caregivers that help nursing homes to deal with the lack of staff. I'm talking digital solutions and trainings and so on. Another thing is the solutions we bring to prevent infections in surgical wounds and in chronic wounds. And that is mitigating the massive burden and cost on healthcare that comes with infection. So our solutions become even more relevant. Also, the combination that we have with medical expertise and consumer know-how and the broad channel presence that we have is making us very well equipped to capitalize on this trend towards home care.
Then, not the least, we have R&D capabilities, strong R&D capabilities to continue to innovate so that we continue to differentiate and premiumize even further, but also improve sustainability and cost position. This is not the least true in our incontinence care business, where we continue to lead and shape the market, strengthening our number one position further. We do that by continuing to innovate and commercialize our TENA Total Care offer. That consists of a wide range of products to meet individual needs, digital solutions for care efficiency, and services and tools for the caregivers. We have some really hard evidence that this makes a difference to healthcare. We have done, for example, a study together with an NHS trust in England where we looked at prioritizing individual care over cost per unit of the products. The results were just overwhelming.
Better care, reduced workload, and a staggering cost save of GBP 500 million. That's what I call a really compelling proposition. So we have a lot of benefits from this holistic solution that we have in incontinence care. Then in wound care, here we have strengthened our position over the years, and we aim to continue to outgrow the market and build scale in this category. And we aim to do that by focusing on our competitive advantages, our unique technologies. And one of them is the winning technologies that we have in infection management and prevention, Cutimed, Sorbact, and Hydrofera Blue. Another one is the fast-growing skin-sensitive range that we have, which is based on our superior technology for adhesion. So many examples of that.
Then if we move to compression therapy, I would summarize the strategy here by that we are winning through delighting all the different stakeholders. So consumers being one stakeholder, they wear compression garments 24/7. What are they looking for? Comfort. So we bring superior comfort and enhance that with sustainability and fashion in this category. Then we have the customers, another stakeholder. They want this to be as easy as possible to put patients in the right garments, to order products, to access aftermarket services. And we aim to be the easiest one to work with. The third stakeholder, payers in the healthcare system. And for them, we bring health economic benefits. And in fact, now in the U.S., the authorities have recognized the benefits that come with diagnosing and treating lymphedema. So that has resulted in the Lymphedema Treatment Act that some of you might have heard of.
So the coverage of insurance for compression therapy has increased. Then orthopedics, here we focus on where we have the strongest right to win. We have the strongest, very strong right to win in the cast room where we are the recognized experts. We also have a very strong right to win in pharmacy channel, especially where we can cross-sell with TENA and Leukoplast. And an example of that exactly is what we did in Poland where we launched the Actimove braces and supports some three years ago. And that is the example here to the right, that is showing that we already now have reached a number two position. So this is not a big business in isolation, but I think it shows what we can accomplish with our fantastic assortment.
A bit bigger business then is the home delivery business in the U.K. for TENA, where we have grown 11%. One driver behind that growth is that study that I talked about recently. Then the strong growth rates that you see here in Sorbact and Hydrofera. They are a testament to the competitive advantage that I mentioned when it comes to infection management, but also I would say a proof point for our ability to integrate M&As because both of these are coming from M&As that we did in 2021. The fourth case of this selection of success cases that I brought is the fact that we have gained more than our fair share of the increased demand coming from the Lymphedema Treatment Act in the U.S. Growing lymphology in the U.S. with 16%.
Now, what's common across these categories, and Sahil was mentioning that, is that we see a lot of potential growth in the business we are in, in nurturing the core. And in order to succeed with that, two very important areas are commercial excellence and innovation. And if we start with commercial excellence, we continuously work to enhance our sales capabilities to improve productivity in our sales force. Also, it's absolutely important for us to have the most effective and efficient go-to-market in every channel and category combination, market and category combination that we have. We are also transforming our go-to-markets, and I would say that we are in the forefront of using digital tools, new digital tools to make sure that our customers get a seamless omnichannel experience from us.
We are also in the forefront of market shaping to make sure that we get paid for the value that we bring both today and tomorrow, and with me to talk about how we do that is our Vice President for Sales and Marketing in Region UK, Ireland, and South Europe, Ida Hyvärinen.
Thank you. As you have heard, we are innovation leaders and we have superior solutions, but as Ulrika said, it only makes sense if we're able to get value for what we create, and that's why market shaping is a very critical thing for us to do and something we do very successfully. If you think I told some of you yesterday already, but if you think about it like an iceberg, only the top of the iceberg is visible above the water. It's the same with many chronic conditions and the cost of that.
If you take incontinence care, only 4% of the total cost is linked to the product. The 96% is linked to managing the condition as such. That could be changing the product, that could be leakages, that could be laundry. So that's really a significant part of it. We have become a really important partner for our customers in coming up with new future-proof solutions for the care and also for procurement models that really consider these hidden costs, the 96% that you don't see. We promote what we call value-based healthcare. That is a model that looks at outcomes rather than the cost per piece, and we engage with both policymakers and procurement functions to discuss how can we do that in a good way and show them that quality products can actually give better patient outcomes. It can reduce the total cost of care.
For us, of course, it allows us to sell higher margin products. I'll share a couple of examples with you. The first one, Ulrika already mentioned, the one from the U.K. with NHS with incontinence care, where there is a significant saving for them. There are significant benefits for the patients using better quality products, individualized care. For us, it means that we can sell better quality products, higher margin products, and longer term have a more profitable business. Another example I want to share with you is our Leukomed Sorbact product. That's a wound care dressing. We use that with women who had cesarean section in the U.K. where we did this pilot. The project showed a 38% drop in surgical site infections.
And related to that, it showed around 30% reduction in readmissions and in the usage of antibiotics. So that is really, really significant. And with them, we pioneered the first ever value-based procurement case study in wound care. So this product is a very differentiated product. And that means that we can actually get paid for the value we create with it, pricing it differently in tenders. So these projects demonstrate the power of market shaping and what it can do. And they have actually inspired the NHS to change their purchasing methodology and new procurement methodology so that it going forward will reduce the share they allocate to price and tenders to only 40%, with the remaining 60% dedicated to value in terms of patient experience or outcome.
In markets where our customers are not as advanced as NHS, because this is really at the forefront, but in other markets, we advocate for what we call multi-supplier tenders. That could, for example, be in Sweden, where that kind of tendering allows them to have both low-cost suppliers on the tender and us with higher priced premium products. And that allows both the procurer and the patient to get the products they want. And it allows us to get paid for the value we create.
Thank you, Ida. I think, and I hope that this gave you a view on how important this part of market shaping is for us and a part of our commercial excellence to make sure that we get paid for the value that we bring and also to support healthcare on their journey.
Now, the other part, the other strategic priority in order to grow for us is clearly innovation. And some examples here. One example there is TENA ProSkin that we have, which is a fantastic range that is designed not only for superior protection, but also for superior skin health with some really advanced features to secure that. And you can learn more about this innovation and all the other examples here when you visit our exhibition in the canteen during lunch. But for now, let's spend a few minutes to dive deeper into the innovations that we have in wound care specifically. And we will do that with our Vice President for Global Marketing and Innovation for Medical, Anand Chandarana.
Thank you, Ulrika. Just to reiterate something that Ulrika said earlier on, we are the fastest growing among the large wound care players globally.
That's something we're very proud of. Not only do we want to continue that growth, but we'd actually like to accelerate from here on out. That's a strategic imperative because wound care is a key to our margin mix. It's one of our high margin categories in health and medical, but also across Essity. The way in which we're going to grow and accelerate our growth is by strong commercial excellence, as Ulrika alluded to, but of course, innovation for the future. In wound care, our heritage is, and our leadership is in adhesive fixation. I could say perhaps it's an unbiased opinion, but we are industry leading when it comes to adhesive fixation. We have perhaps the best technological capabilities here.
This is fundamental in wound care because you need to produce products that stick to skin and can come off without causing pain and trauma. Makes sense. That is something that we will double down on and we will continue to innovate with. That's been a heritage of ours. That's functional adhesives. Historically, we've focused on developing our wound care portfolio to be sort of a full-line portfolio, fulfilling all the big gaps to allow us to have something which is a strong clinical offering across all key wound types and across all phases of wound healing, and commercially so that we can have strong positions on contracts and formulary and GPO listings. That is something that has brought us to the strength of position that we have today.
Recent efforts and recent innovation have focused on where we believe we have the right to win and we have the highest uniqueness with our technologies. And that is exudate management or fluid management, important in wound care, and infection management. So namely, the technologies that I'm alluding to here are Sorbion technology and Sorbact technology. And with Sorbion, we have an unparalleled performance when it comes to fluid absorption and fluid retention. And what we've tried to do is to get that technology into as many platforms and wound product types as possible so we can get them to as many patients as possible. And what you'll see in the exhibition today, and you see it up on the slide previously, is a dressing that we've designed recently, which is Sorbion Carbon Plus. And that is with an odor neutralizing technology with the carbon.
We hope to do more with expanding Sorbion to more and more platforms and technologies. When it comes to Hydrofera and to Sorbact technology for infection management, I don't think it's an overstatement to say that we've changed the game. Unlike traditional anti-infective products, which kill bacteria, our products bind, inhibit, and remove bacteria safely, non-cytotoxically. That is, I guess, helping in the fight against antimicrobial resistance, which is becoming a real threat. What we want to do with those well-appreciated technologies, which, by the way, allow us to grow some 20% year on year, what we hope to do with those technologies is to expand usage, to expand the claims so that they get on as many patients as possible.
And then going forward, we have exciting technologies beyond functional adhesives and beyond infection management, where we really want to look into wound healing, where we want to look into sensorized dressings. And those are areas that our insights suggest that there are unaddressed challenges, and we really believe that we can meet them. So we'll do that through a combination of internal competence and expertise, as well as external partnerships and M&A.
Thank you, Anand. So I hope two things with this. I hope you are intrigued now to come and learn even more about our wound care technologies in the exhibition. I also hope that you hear how proud we are over the portfolio, the competitive portfolio that we have in wound care.
And that strong offer in combination with that this is a high-yielding category for us and also the market growth in this category is why wound care is the area where we will grow the fastest in the coming years. Then incontinence is, by its size, contributing even more to the absolute net sales growth. And as you can see here also, we expect most of our growth coming from nurturing the core by capturing market growth and capturing market share, which we have a lot of opportunities to do. But with that said, of course, we will also tap into some of the many expansion opportunities that we have in this business, not the least in geographical expansion, and we're then talking D&E markets specifically.
Then last, but certainly not least, out of our growth drivers is M&A, because we see M&A as an important enabler to complement the organic growth to get to scale. Our priorities from a category perspective are wound care number one and compression therapy number two. From a geographical perspective, our priority number one is U.S. We also see, as Anand was alluding to, M&A as an opportunity for us to complement our R&D resources to make sure that we bring innovation to the markets. To close this session and summarize, we aim to grow to scale by accelerating organic growth and complement that with value-creating acquisitions. We aim to expand our margin, sorry, by leveraging that scale, but also to continue our relentless efforts to find efficiency improvements in the business.
Innovation continues to be a very strong priority for us, both to continue to differentiate our offers based on customer and consumer insights, but also to continue to improve cost position and sustainability. Innovation is furthermore an enabler, together with public affairs activities and market access activities, to continue our successful market shaping that is so important for society, for patients that we serve around the world, and for our continued profitable growth. Now, I think, Sandra, we might have some time for questions, or?
Yes, we do. Thank you, Ulrika, Ida, and Anand. For me, it was very clear that you have a very strong business with unique solutions that really make a difference for patients, caregivers, and also societies. Very interesting. Now we have time for questions. Do you have any questions for this healthcare team? Niklas?
Yes, Niklas Ekman from Carnegie.
Just curious, when you're talking about M&A, what kind of opportunities are we talking about? Size? Is this a very fragmented market? What are the M&A opportunities here?
Yeah, I don't want to get into specific targets as such, but this is a very fragmented market. All of the categories in the medical area are fragmented. Compression therapy, as you might know, is a lot of family companies. Then in wound care and orthopedics, it looks a bit different. And we see opportunities both when it comes to grow bigger M&As, but also bolt-on M&As that we have done now. If you go back to 2021, we did four of them that delivered on our expectations, not the least the Abigo acquisition and the Hydrofera acquisition that we talked about. So that is also interesting for us.
Anything you want to add, Anand, since you are working actively with M&As in our team as well?
Yeah, I think just touching upon what you said, Ulrika, regarding the fragmented market, we believe that especially in the categories we operate in, there is room for consolidation. And we think that that's probably where we can play a part. And just as Ulrika said, when it comes to size of transaction, I'm trying not to look at Fredrik over there, but I don't think we're limited per se by size. So it has to be the strategic fit that we can find and, of course, synergies and value creation over a period of time. So yeah, we've...
Yes, Ali.
Thank you. Hi, guys. Ali Shemmari , ABG. Thank you so much for taking my question. I'm just wondering in terms of the margins.
I mean, we've seen the trajectory being quite strong and you're currently at the 19.6% margin. So I'm just wondering, are you currently happy with that level? And you've talked a lot about growing within the segment and within wound care as well. And we've seen different types of peers. They have quite high margins, sometimes above 22%, 23%. Where do you guys see yourself going forward and what margin would you be happy with in medium term? Thank you.
I would say we're happy but not satisfied. So yes, we have today a healthy margin. And every growth on that margin is value creating. So our number one priority is to continue to grow because that will be margin accretive to our business. And that will also bring the scale. As we've said, we grow to scale, and the scale will inherently also help us with the margin expansion.
So growth is our first priority, but that will also give margin expansion. Yes.
We've already seen that the CapEx return on the CapEx that you spend in this segment is one of the highest within the whole company. But I can imagine that there's also a higher level of R&D spend compared to sales. How are you trying to measure, and yeah, how are you looking forward on a good long-term level of R&D spend as a percentage of your net sales?
I will start, and maybe you can continue, Anand, because you're totally right. R&D is fundamental to our business. And we've had some years now. You've all been seeing the pandemic and also the aftermaths of the pandemic with a lot of volatility in the supply chain where we have invested a lot of R&D resources also in business continuity.
What's great now is that now we're back in having a much healthier portfolio, a healthy portfolio when it comes to innovation projects, looking both short-term with upgrades where we, for example, as you said, Anand, combine technologies and make them even better and make sure that they can be used for as many patients and conditions as possible, but also some really breakthrough innovations in our pipeline. This is important for us and something that we continue to build. Now, of course, with even further scale, we will also be able to reinvest in even more R&D. That's also something that we look forward to with that scale. Do you want to build on that?
Yeah, just very quickly, to echo what Ulrika said, R&D spend is, of course, one metric that we look at.
But of course, over the last few years, we've also added to our technology portfolio by acquiring companies. So you sort of have to balance those two things. And then, of course, another metric that's important to us going forward where we do want to look to ensure that we have the right level of spend in R&D to have a fresh portfolio. But the other metric we look at is, of course, our vitality index. So what percentage of sales is coming from those new products? And that's, as well as the innovation, we're working on launch excellence to make sure that we get the most out of the technologies that we do bring to market. So just to answer your question, both metrics are important. Does that make sense?
In the end of the day, it's the superiority that matters that we are offering the best products and solutions to our customers and consumers. I think not the least, I mean, this is the case for all our categories, but not the least, you will hear about some of these superior offers that we have in our incontinence business that has helped us to take us to where we are in incontinence that will continue to fuel growth in incontinence. There, of course, we are market leaders and have a fantastic innovation muscle as well, not to forget. More about that soon.
Charles, last question.
Sorry, Charlie from UBS. Obviously, there is some overlap between health and medical for the hospital channel and the practitioner channel. I guess you also sell through the sort of pharmacy channel Boots, I guess, in the U.K.
Is your route to market different now? I don't think you use distributors, but tell me if that's wrong. And I guess, what are the synergies of having that business within Essity given, I guess, it is a different channel to some of the other product areas? Thank you.
Two things. When we talk about our go-to-market, that's what I meant with that fundamental for us in commercial excellence is to have the most effective and efficient go-to-market depending on the market channel and category combination, so that's really in healthcare, the funding system and the decision-making system looks different from market to market, from category to category. So for us to really nail that is super important, and the good thing in the pharmacy is that there it makes a lot of sense to come with a broader portfolio.
That is one of the examples I showed with our launches of Actimove braces and support in Poland is a good example of that. That would not have been possible if we had not already had a strong position with TENA and Leukoplast in that specific pharmacy channel. So that helped coming with the broad portfolio, and we got synergies from doing that. The other thing I think, which is a competitive advantage that we have within Essity, is that we have both the medical expertise and the consumer know-how. And that plays out especially well in the pharmacy, I would say, because there we know brand building with the Essity knowledge that we have. We can bring the medical expertise to train the pharmacists and make sure that they are fully equipped from a medical standpoint.
But then also we know how to get rotation in their pharmacies because we have the consumer know-how. So I would say exactly in the pharmacies where that strength plays out fantastically well.
Perfect. Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Thank you.
So now we have the last session before lunch, and I'm going to introduce you to our President of Global Brand Innovation and Sustainability, Tuomas Yrjölä, and Meta Redstedt, Global Master Brand and Communications Director. They are going to tell us how they work with innovation and brand building to fuel growth. The floor is yours.
Thank you very much, Sandra. And good to see you all. Last night, I got tons of questions on how do you innovate, what's new, how do you build brands, and how you came to the right place because we'll answer all these questions for you.
Together with Meta, we're very proud and excited to take you through the journey, how we built our brand building capability, how we've strengthened our innovation program, and how that's going to accelerate our growth. We are a company that serves consumers and customers at the end of the day. You saw this number earlier today. We serve over a billion people on hygiene and health across 150 countries, which not only shows you what kind of scale our brands and products have, but it also tells you what kind of trust every day consumers and customers put into Essity brands. This goes across categories. Starting on incontinence, where over 65 million people trust the Tena brand, and as you heard from Sahil, this number is obviously continuously growing as we drive the awareness and the aging population grows, the population who need answers to their needs.
It goes across Feminine Care, where over 200 million women plus use and trust our Feminine Care products every day across the world, across our leading brands. And maybe the most staggering number is on our biggest brand in terms of sales, which is on Tork, where over 100 billion times each year, someone is cleaning or drying their hand using a Tork tissue on the go. Chances are you were a part of this crew in the last 24 hours coming here in the airports or wherever you travel. And once you see Tork, you can't stop seeing it because you'll see it everywhere. So all these numbers, obviously, we're proud of them, but we're not going to stop here. This gives us the foundation in terms of the user base that we come to work every day to serve and understand the unmet needs.
And that is really the essence of our presentation in this session. We'll talk about how we drive barrier-breaking innovation and how we continue to build very courageous brands that are leading brands that will further accelerate demand into all of our portfolio. And you'll also learn about how we do it in a very globally scaled way, yet very locally relevant way so that we win always in the market with the consumers and customers. So why don't we start with innovation? Innovation is a big part of the growth. You already heard it earlier today. We've got very clearly defined principles how we decide what is a good innovation. So the first and most important criteria we use is there needs to be a consumer or customer pain point or problem that we solve.
We don't fall in love with a solution and then start looking for a problem. We fall in love with the problem, and then we use all of our technical capability to solve that problem in a superior way. You'll be able to see during the launch all these superior products and services that we offer, which are always designed to drive new usage, new growth, bring new users into our brands. They're often margin steered. You heard Fredrik talk about it. We always ensure that we expand the gross profit with our new products. We integrate sustainability into all of our innovation. You heard about Donato talking about how we need to accelerate to Net Zero. The best way to get there is by redesigning the way we make our products. Last but not least, very importantly, we make our innovations very ownable.
So we've got a very strong and capable intellectual property team who ensures that the innovations that we develop are unique to us and therefore very ownable. Obviously, the external environment since the COVID and after has been very volatile, which has sort of challenged also our capability in terms of how can we even faster respond to the fast-changing external environment. And we've kept raising the bar therefore, especially in our R&D function, to ensure that we can serve those needs even faster. We've invested in rapid prototyping capability both in our personal care as well as on our tissue side, which allows us to do new product development very fast in much shorter time and cost versus the past to get consumers or the products into consumers' hands quicker.
We've invested a lot in virtual product development, which allows us to pretest products virtually on avatars before we need to go to industrial scale. Again, it cuts down the development cost and speed to a significantly smaller number than what it was before, and we've also kept pushing our research excellence forward, so that includes working with leading universities, opening up even more with external suppliers and innovators, as well as making sure that we've got the best capability when it comes to critical parts of our products, such as odor control, absorbency, hygiene, and skincare. So we've kept raising really the bar across all these important areas, so just to bring these principles, because these principles are nice, but what does it mean in practice? Here's the latest innovation on Tork. It's called Tork OptiServe. You'll be able to see it firsthand there during the lunch.
If we start with a pain point, basically we've got facility management people coming to us saying, "It's a mess to manage all these different toilet systems. And could you simplify that? Because we'd love to have just one solution so it'd be easier for our facility to operate." So we did exactly that. We basically developed a range and a product which is one refill that works across different systems. We took out the core of the product, which reduces packaging waste by 92%, which is really important for our customers who are very committed also to sustainability. So we help them through this offer. And last but not least, again, we've made this super ownable and patented so no one can copy it, which is just part of the business model of Tork.
By the way, I didn't mention it, but this is again also margin accretive for us. So it drives therefore financial return and helps us to sweeten Professional Hygiene. we talked a lot about PeakServe before, but this is yet another example of how we bring the same concept to life across different systems. We don't only do this on Tork. We do this really across the categories, and this is really working for us. I know you guys like numbers, so I brought some numbers to you in terms of our innovation performance. First and most important number for us is always superiority. What percentage of our sales is consumer or customer preferred versus the leading alternative? We have 61% of our assortment being superior. We're margin accretive.
So if you look at the average gross profit of our innovations we've launched over the past two years, it's over three points better than the business we've replaced. Our innovation has bigger reach. We've innovated on over 50% of our sales in the B2C side over the last three years, which means upgraded existing assortment, brought new assortment. Anand used the word innovation vitality. So that's exactly that number. And then we're driving a mantra of fewer, bigger, better launches, which means on average the innovation sales size is up 25% over the last three years. Again, it shows you that we're scaling our ideas better and they're driving bigger impact in the market. We also measure very closely the sustainability impact of our innovation, and it's at highest ever rate.
So now year to date, 86% of all of our innovation portfolio delivers either an environmental improvement or a social improvement. You see some of the examples here where we either replace materials, we reduce materials, or we go from disposable to reusable, which are ways to, again, reduce the CO2 impact and accelerate our journey towards net zero. Right, so that's innovation. But obviously, you can have great innovation, but you need to have great brand building to make sure that everyone's aware of the great innovation you do and continue to build trust. And we have a very clear and proven recipe how we build leading brands in S&T. So it comes down to four principles. First of all, we ensure all of our brands are very distinctive. They're very unique.
We're very consistent with the way we build our brands, which means you're consistent over time, which builds trust. You're consistent across all the touch points, and you're also consistent across the markets. We invest a lot, obviously, in visibility. You heard about A&P driving top-of-mind awareness. And again, because we deliver superior products with the innovation, we're not shy about talking about that our products are superior, which leads to a lot of trial. So you guys might be thinking, "That's very nice theory, but how do you prove it to me in practice?" And let's look at one category, which is Feminine Care, where if you look at across what we call V-Zone brands, we've harmonized all of the brands across the world under one positioning.
If you look at these four principles from how distinctive the brand is, and we'll show you a video which brings that to life, the kind of claims that we make, like 97% of women recommend Libresse, to prove again the superiority of our products, how consistent we are in the way we execute, and how visible these brands are, both again, whether it is on digital, on media, but also in store. Here's an example from Mexico shelf where we just introduced the new global packaging, and you can see how good what we call the shelf pop is. We're very close to reaching 60% market share in Mexico, which is just a good example of how the whole model works. Now, the distinctivity and the positioning of the brand is very important.
We have a campaign which has been going for 10 years, which is called Live Fearless. And instead of me trying to describe to you what that is, I'll play you a short video that recaps the journey of the last 10 years on the Feminine Care brands.
We've come a long, long way together through the hard times and the good. I have to celebrate you, baby. I have to praise you like I should. When we started together, this was the period category. Since then, we've led the way dynamiting shame. We banished the weird blue liquid, showed period blood for the very first time, exploded the myth of the perfect vulva, dared to go into the womb. You make me glad I'm the one. And we turned the light on periods at night. We've uncovered the good, the bad, and the what the.
Along the way, we've been vilified, banned. But it's been worth it. We've changed an entire category. That's the reality of having a period. Changed culture. This really opened my eyes to it, honestly. Changed the way to diagnose pain. Celebrate, baby. Changed the law. And praise you like I should. We've sparked millions of conversations. You're so rad. Thank you. You're so fine. And become the fastest-growing Feminine Care brand in the world. Celebrate. Thank you so very much. And through the pain and the pleasure, the good and the bad, we've never doubted each other. I have to celebrate you. I have to praise you like I should.
I hope that woke you up before the lunch, at least. So we're very proud of the work. Over the last 10 years, our FemCare business has gone from EUR 0.5 billion to over EUR 1 billion.
And we've really changed and disrupted the whole category. I mean, you don't see blue liquid anymore, which used to be the standard of showing how the products perform across not only our brands, but the whole industry. So we're very proud of that. But we're not going to stop there. So we keep pushing the bar. And right now in brand building, we're very focused on how do we leverage AI and generative AI in the way both how we generate new content. So we're just launching a new content creation hub, which allows us to deliver, again, very fast, much lower-cost advertising content and adaptation across the touch points. We're becoming very good at performance marketing, targeting our users, and leveraging all the first-party data.
We generate massive amounts of data with all the touch points, and we've got great capability now to turn that data into increased demand. A lot of work ongoing here, which we believe will just further boost the growth. It'll further boost these leadership brands that we have. We've got a very strong portfolio. 90% of our sales is either number one or number two position. We've got, obviously, the global leading brands with Tork and TENA. We've got global leading positions in consumer tissue and feminine. As you know, they're each EUR 1 billion individually. We've got a very strong portfolio of local brands which have leading positions in the markets they operate. We see that our brand performance keeps improving. This is consumer share of mind, what they think about our brand health, what is the strongest brand in their mind.
You can see that our percentage of sales is growing year after year. And I'm sure it'll continue to do that as we accelerate the progress. So speaking of leading brands, I'd like to introduce Meta, who's going to talk to you about the journey of TENA. So please welcome Meta to the stage.
Thank you, Tuomas. Hello, everyone, and happy afternoon. We are just after 12:00 P.M. and before lunch. So stay with me, and I will talk to you about the incontinence market and about TENA. Sometimes when we talk in the office, we say that if incontinence was a country, it would actually be the third largest country in the world. India first, then comes China, then would be incontinence, and after that, the U.S. That's how big this market is, and of course, of a big interest for Essity.
It's not only big, but it is also still growing. And the reason for this growth is not only the demographics that we've heard about today. It's also the fact that only 20% of people that have these issues use purpose-made products. The rest use something else. So you can imagine how big the opportunity is for us. But there is also one other thing that really helps us in the growth, and that is the change that is going on in the conversation in society. People are talking much more openly today about sensitive problems and issues, and incontinence is one of those. So when we talk more openly, taboo goes down and purchase intent goes up. We are a global leader in this business. We play in more than 80 markets, and we play almost 100% branded. Millions of people turn to us every day at TENA.
They trust us for what we do, and we are convinced that our success is because we are so widely spread across different target groups. It doesn't only give synergies that we talked about before, but it gives a breadth of insight and learnings for us to help our consumers and customers. Like Tuomas said before, falling in love with a problem. And that is how we grow our business, bringing innovation, communication, solution that really helps our consumers because incontinence, nobody wants. Our purpose is to rewrite the story around incontinence's challenges, and we want to be perceived as a leading force for positive change. One great example of how we turn strong insights into fantastic growth is the pants business. Here we have been leading for many years, fantastic CAGR.
I'm not supposed to say a final figure for next year, but we are heading in a very good direction towards EUR 1 billion, I can tell you. So that's really good. In this market, we have developed based on insights. People do not want to wear a diaper. They want to wear something that is underwear-like. And we have a wide assortment in this segment now, just because we are so good at understanding what underwear-like really means for consumers in this business. And the latest launch this year, and I look so much forward to share it with you during lunch, is the new TENA Pants Silhouette. And that was launched due to a very simple insight. Women felt 100% secure with our product. That was not the problem.
The problem was that it was a little bit bulky in the back, and that made women worried and concerned that somebody might notice. And you can imagine the taboo and stigma that goes with that. You are worried about the leak, but then you also need to worry that somebody can see it. And that's why we brought this new product to market. And all the early signs show fantastic signals of acceleration of growth in this great pants business of ours. On men, the story is completely different. Here, the insight is related to the no knowledge about these products. One in four men have incontinence issues after 40. One in 10 of these people use purpose-made products. One in 10. The rest, I could spend the whole day telling you what they do, but it's not nice. So here, with this, our job is to raise awareness.
Our job is to make consumers try the products, educate how to put the product in their underwear, and also to bring fantastic solutions and innovations to market, and one great thing that we have just launched and that is taking off really nicely is the washable absorbing underwear. So I will show you a demo film of what that is about and how we talk about it on the web. Caregiving relatives are a very compelling market due to the fact that the healthcare system is shifting. People will more and more, and our estimate right now is that in 2030, two out of three will be taking care of a loved one in one way or another, at home or in their homes. That's how the future looks, and our insights in this market is not about taboo or things like that.
It's about the complete no knowledge that these people have when this happens. From one day to another, the situation is completely overwhelming, so here we cannot only bring superior products. We need to bring guidance, direction, support, connection for them to feel that they know how to deal with this. Our job is to show caregiving relatives that we are understanding their situation and that we are on their side, and I will share with you now a piece of advertising that we are using across Europe today because we advertise more and more towards this market since it is growing so much, just to show how we are on the side of the caregiving relative.
Initially, it was quite a shock being told that you've got a disabled daughter, and I reflect now and think, "Look at what we've got." I started caring for my mom in 2015.
In some ways, it feels like our roles have reversed. Shortly after I married James, he got MS. I've known him since I was 17. He was the center of everything and very successful. Phoebe's got potential like any other. We want her to fulfill her life to the best she can. It's been tough. She started having these accidents. It's not the body that she's used to. I do feel lonely sometimes. You've got to keep riding the waves no matter what gets thrown at you. I often don't feel seen. I'm trying to teach myself to do what I want to do and also be there for my mom. As a carer, you have to manage that sense of never-endingness. For me, to get an eight-hour sleep would be heaven, but I've still got a 21-year-old that wants a cuddle every night. It's very special.
There's no joy like this. There's no pain like this. No, there isn't any love like this,
so last but not least, the professional decision-makers, a huge target group for us. Ulrika and Ida spoke about all their constraints and their struggles. They struggle with a lot of things: staff turnover, financial pressure, limited resources, and here, our job, of course, we bring superior products. We bring digital solutions, but it's the holistic approach that we are taking with customers today to really bring value and be a great business partner that helps us differentiate and win in this market, so here, you see a couple of examples of how we communicate what TENA is about. It's beyond product. It's more than just absorbent products. It's really the full service package that we give to them so that they can focus on what they should focus on.
Summing up on TENA, our mission and passion is to break barriers to well-being for people every day. Very meaningful job, I can say, but of course also we are extremely inspired by the growth opportunity that still lies ahead for us for many years. Thank you.
Thank you, Meta. We're very proud of the journey we're on, on TENA, but also across the categories. Just to bring this all home, I mean, if you look at our performance looking back in terms of improving what we call product superiority, and here we look at it holistically, so across the price, the brand, and the product experience, we're now at all-time high at 61%. When we look at our plans looking ahead, we have roadmaps across the product, country, category combinations to keep raising the bar.
So we're very excited about the journey, the capabilities we've built, and what lies ahead as we sort of accelerate the growth with brand building and innovation and all the work that hopefully you got a taste during these last 20 minutes or so. So that completes our session. I think it's over to you, Sandra, to instruct us going forward.
Thank you very much for that presentation of what you work with daily. I'm very impressed about how the TENA story and also how we build the other brands. And thank you, Tuomas and Meta, also for putting numbers on everything. We know that you know that we like that, and you really did that in a really good way. And very impressive numbers also, and still high ambitions going forward. Yes? So good luck with that.
Thank you.
Thank you.
You will have the opportunity to ask questions to Tuomas and Meta during lunch. Okay?
Perfect. Thank you.
Thank you
Because with that, it is time for lunch. And lunch will be served down in the canteen in the main building. And during the lunch, you can also then, as you've heard throughout the day, take the opportunity to explore all our different innovations. We Consumer Goods exhibition here. Meta and Tuomas, and also our Consumer Goods, Andrés Gómez and Volker Zöller, will be standing there. So take the chance to talk to them and ask questions. Then, in that corner, we have the Tork brand, and Pablo Fuentes with team will be standing there to talk to you about Tork Vision Cleaning as an example. And then, Ulrika said, down in the canteen, she and her team will be standing and talk about health and medical.
In a room next to that, you have the Logistics Smart Hub and Ilham with her team. Okay? Grab something to eat, walk around, meet with everyone, and feel free to challenge all my colleagues with lots of questions. Let's see. We have an hour. What time is it now? 12:20 P.M. Let's meet back here then at 1:20 P.M. Okay. Enjoy the lunch. Hello. Welcome back from lunch. I hope you enjoyed it and that you had the opportunity to check out all the different innovations and the smart hub and that you were able to speak to all my fantastic colleagues. Now we're moving ahead in the agenda, and we will now Consumer Goods. that's our largest business area, and here we provide solutions that everyone needs every day, no matter what.
And here to talk about how we accelerate growth in our high-margin Consumer Goods, we have Volker Consumer Goods, Americas. please, the floor is yours.
So welcome back after lunch. This is almost the most difficult spot they gave us after. No, come on. How is the energy? So we will try our utmost to keep you a little bit awake and entertained. So now we Consumer Goods, and i think Magnus started today talking about 54%. It's the biggest business area what we have in our portfolio. When we are starting looking at the addressable market, this is basically where we are in with our categories, then it's a very sizable market. We speak about a market size of EUR 63 billion and a predicted growth in the coming years between 2% and 3%.
When you listen to the presentation, which I assume of Sahil, we Consumer Goods shall grow more than 3%, which means the message is very clear. We want also, in terms of growth, to outperform the market. What is very important for us is our strength. 90% Consumer Goods business portfolio has a number one or a number two position. Why is this important? Because there's always a place for the market leader on the retail shelf. There's always a place for a strong, challenging number two on the shelf. It will be more and more difficult for number three and four brands to keep on profitably shelf space in retail. This is valid in Europe, but also in Latin America. But it's more not only about the 90% of number one and number two positions what we have.
We have also, and this is a quite interesting figure, in 53%, we have growing market shares, and there's a lot of talk, and we talked also during the tour about the downtrading consumer, so for a branded business, this is a very strong figure, so 53% have growing market share in quarter three, and 71% have growing or stable market share. I think this is a pretty strong performance, but I will talk about the downtrading consumer a little bit later. When you look at our geographical footprint, you can say roughly two-thirds of the business sits in Europe. This is our biggest business. 26% sits in Latin, and the other 8% are more or less globally spread after the divestment of Vinda.
From a category perspective, 58% with consumer tissue, 42% in what we call the personal care categories, with feminine 18% and Inco 15% being the biggest ones. If you look at these figures, these are figures you know very well. 2024 nine months year-to-date figures. We have reported a negative growth of minus 1.1%. What is a little bit hidden in this figure is this is mainly coming from price reductions we did in 2023. The underlying volume growth was very, very good, and when you look at quarter three isolated, our OSG was already + 3%, with 5% coming from volume and 2% negative in pricing, so we are in a position at the moment that we are overproportionately growing the business and outperforming the business. One of the big focus areas of the last years, I could even say, is the gross profit margin. Why?
Because we need a healthy gross profit margin in order to step up A&P investment behind our brands, and when you look at the development here, 29.3%, 240 basis points up, I think this is also very, very good development, and I think you had a question before how we see A&P investment in the future. Exactly what we have done in the cost of goods sold and in pricing gives us the possibility to step our investments into brands, and we have been reporting a 12.4% EBITDA margin in the quarter, and don't forget, this was not a year where the raw material market was in favor of us. This is the long-term development of the Consumer Goods. we are reporting a 3% growth. Of course, this is very much affected by the divestments of Russia and Vinda.
But what you also can see is a significant step up in the EBITDA margin from 10.9%, slightly below 11%, to 12.4%. And we believe we have established over the last years a platform which has the right to grow. And this explains also our ambition to outperform the market in the future. What are and what have been the critical success Consumer Goods? one of the biggest changes, I'm 30 years with the company, is most probably on the innovation side that we are coming from a more technology-based. So what can the machine produce to a much more consumer insight-based innovation funnel? I think Tuomas was giving you some very, very nice examples, but I think we are today in a very consumer insights-driven innovation one.
What we also have done, the speed how we bring innovation to market and the frequency in every category, we have been stepping up. We have today more faster and also more powerful innovations there. Another recipe for success for us is that we are consistently, and I emphasize the word consistently, investing behind our powerful and trusted brands. We believe that we have a superior go-to-market process, and there is a very, very special focus on the point of sales with our perfect store program. When you look at the tissue category, then insights are showing that sometimes shoppers are taking purchasing decisions within 5 - 8 seconds. So the point of sales is the point where you have to win. And we have been addressing this with our perfect store program. Donato was talking, and I think this was very nice, about COVID and our ability to deliver.
If there was anything positive from the COVID time is that we have been demonstrating the supply chain, our agility to deliver and support our customers. And based on that, we were in a position, and we are still leveraging this to develop much stronger retailer relationships compared to the past. Then, of course, there is a point, and I will talk about this a little bit more explicitly in a minute. There is a point about agility and pricing power, what we have been demonstrating, what we were forced to demonstrate because the prices, the cost, of course, have been suggesting that. And there is a last point here, which is, of course, not only in consumer tissue, also in the personal care category, it's very important for us. This is a cost-efficient end-to-end supply chain.
I would call it, I think Donato was talking about this early on, I would call it a customer-centric end-to-end supply chain. I think you got an impression what Hub is doing at the moment, what we mean with that. If you look at the last five years, I would say there have been very eventful. 2019, mainly for the European business, new European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, the Green Deal. Everybody was talking about sustainability. Everybody. It was only one topic. Every top to top with the retailer sustainability. 2020, COVID. Do you remember the times of the empty shelves, no toilet paper, no bathroom tissue available? Everything was about product availability. This was followed because the pandemic was, of course, a health crisis with an increasing hygiene awareness. At the same time, we had lockdowns. Consumers couldn't spend money, so they spent more for our products.
And of course, the premium segment was growing very, very, very fast. 2021, pipe prices peaking, our first or next wave of price increases. 2022, Ukraine war started, energy crisis, more price increases, etc., etc. So what we have been doing, and this ended then in 2023, you could say as a reaction of hyperinflation with a downtrading consumer, especially in consumer tissue, less in the personal care categories, we were forced and we have demonstrated our organization agility in a fast change. In five years, every year something differently on top of the agenda. When I talk about demonstrated agility, I mean, of course, I speak also about agility we have proven in the supply chain in other parts of the organization, for example, also in the innovation side. When you have a downtrading consumer and hyperinflation, you have to adjust your innovation funnel to the market.
But what we have been doing is, on average today, we have much shorter customer contracts than in the past. Why is this important in an unpredictable environment? It gives us the possibility to adjust prices much faster to the situation than we had this in the past. We have basically today, except where it's legally needed, no contract terms longer than one year. Usually, it's maximum six months and a lot of open contracts and so on. We have proven in this crisis time that we were able to manage bold price increases. Now I would call it it's about smart price increases. What do I mean with that? We speak in the language of sales about applying the principles of Net Revenue Management.
So as we speak here, we have 700 people in our European sales organization undergoing a training of net revenue management, which deals with finding the right promo efficiency, the right mix, dealing with price pack architecture, and all this stuff. So this is what I would call more smart pricing in order also to have value creation and positive mix improvement in the future. A big part of what we have done in the past was capability building. What do I mean with capability building? We were one of the first companies educating our sales staff on virtual selling. We were used until 2020 to meet physically customers, interact with them. Believe me, virtual selling in a Teams mode is a completely different stuff. What we're doing right now is we are training our organization on monetization of sustainability. You have seen a lot about our sustainability roadmap.
Obviously, there's also a price tag to that. So of course, from the commercial side, it's our responsibility to get a payback from our customers. But it's not only about what we do in sales. I think it's also important what we do on the sourcing side. And I talked with a couple of you during the tour about furnish improvements, fiber mix improvements. So we have been working a lot, and this is also reflected, of course, in the COGS savings, which we are showing. Donato was showing early on. We have worked a lot with changing the fiber grades to a different one to optimize the cost mix. We have been also working with our pulp suppliers on alternative contract models in order to have more flexibility when the market is changing in one or the other direction.
We have done a lot, I think, to demonstrate pricing agility. Shall we have a look into the various categories, Andrés?
Sure, Volker, thank you for that. Now we will walk you through our categories and the role they play in this value creation journey we are working together. Let's kick off with intimate hygiene. Intimate hygiene made up of incontinence and Feminine Care and the role they play in our business. Let's start with incontinence. Our goal, our ambition is to keep leading and shaping this category. Essity, through the TENA brand, is now number one brand in incontinence globally. We hold number one positions in Europe, number one position in Latin America, and number one position in countries like Canada. How to keep doing this, of course, there is a big challenge in incontinence. You need to turn deniers into acceptors.
And that is why it is so important trial. We invest a lot on trial. But then once you try the product, once you try our solutions, we need to accelerate our penetration and, of course, keep building our brand, a trusted brand, to break taboos, to break stigmas, especially around incontinence. But it's not just keep leading. It is also to keep expanding this leadership. And that is why we are making a big bet on TENA Men. TENA Men is going to be the next big thing. Mark my words.
TENA Men is going to be the opportunity, one of those big opportunities we have to differentiate and bring innovation to the market. But it's not just about new segments, new opportunities. It's about geographies as well. Where we are not leading yet, our goal is to be the best improvers. And a good example of that is the U.S.
This morning, we had a question about the U.S., okay? And what we are doing now in the U.S. is that we are acting as strong challengers in the U.S. market, okay? So we have established a new organization in this market. We have broad capabilities, retail capabilities, consumer capabilities. We are over-investing in e-commerce. We are building a new brand, TENA brand, with a different approach. And actually, we are now the fastest-growing incontinence brand in e-commerce in this country. So now we are acting as strong challengers in the U.S. market. And speaking of challengers, this is a fantastic example. A decade ago, SCA decided to enter into the incontinence market in a massive market like Brazil. Brazil is probably the biggest market in Latin Consumer Goods, one of the top five biggest markets in the world in Consumer Goods.
10 years ago, we were just challengers in this country. This is how SET performs when acting with consistency in the market, with innovation, with quality, being close to the consumers, but also making and building strong partnerships with our customers. Now we are super proud leaders in this market with 32% of market share. I love this picture, okay? The second category in intimate hygiene is Feminine Care. What is our ambition in Feminine Care? Accelerating growth. We are leaders, undisputed leaders in Latin America. We are number three players, strong players in Europe, and approaching a strong second place in Europe. Of course, the fuel of what we need to fuel right now in Feminine Care is about keep bringing right solutions with the right performance. Performance drives purchase intention. Discretion is super important in this category. Of course, protection.
But also this is supported by strong regional brands. We don't act in this category with global brands, but instead of that, regional brands. So we operate in different markets with different brands like Nana, Bodyform, Libresse, Saba, Nosotras. So the power of the brand is super strong and relevant in this category, but not just keep accelerating. Like incontinence, like in TENA, we want to expand the market. And one of the big opportunities we see is the night segment. Night segment is a very strong segment, growing rapidly, faster than the rest of the category, actually. But it's not just important because it's very useful during the nighttime. It is also because night products are long-lasting products. So long-lasting products are very, very interesting for the consumer in moments where convenience is critical nowadays.
And last but not least, Essity, always one step ahead in terms of the mega trends, has decided to expand opportunities into the absorbent apparel by using brands like Knix in North America, Modibodi in Australia, and that's the other opportunity to keep expanding this category. And this is just a great example as well of how Essity builds leadership in the different markets. And this is just fantastic because in Mexico, we operate using Saba brand, and with consistency, with quality, with a lot of innovation, building strong partnerships with our customers. We are now holding number one position in Mexico, the second biggest market in Latin America, and among the top five in the world after Japan. And actually, we have a quite similar position in countries like Colombia with Nosotras brand.
This is just to prove to you that when we work consistently, this is what we can get. Finally, Europe. Europe is just a fantastic case where we are growing faster than the rest of the market. We have been outperforming the market during the last four years, building super strong positions in key markets. Number two in the U.K., number one in the Nordics, number two in France, actually number two in Italy as well. How this has happened so far, investing in those fastest-growing formats, investing in capabilities like revenue growth management, as you said, Volker, before, increasing availability in those fastest-growing retail channels, and of course, with a strong segmentation in those higher profits segments that we are having in this category. Then I can hand over to you again.
We have left the other slide a little bit longer.
Fastest-growing FemCare business in Europe is Sahil
Sure, we can stay there longer.
Extremely proud of. Now we go to consumer tissue. Our biggest category you have seen, 58% in our portfolio. You saw from Sahil also the expected market growth. We expect the market to grow between 1%-2%. It's a EUR 17 billion market. In Europe, we have a market share of 25%, a quarter of the market, by far the market leader, relative market share two to the next competitor. With 90% market share in Latin America, we have also a pretty reasonable, pretty strong market position. Our ambition in consumer tissue, in line with our portfolio changes and portfolio strategies, is to grow in line with the market, which means in translation that we continue to prioritize the value creation before over the volume development.
What is really very important now, I can talk a couple of words about the downgrading consumer, is that we are winning, we want to win across all the tiers, and that we are strengthening what we call the mid-tier offer. What do I mean with that? Our strength is in the premium, and this is where we are playing, where we're enjoying higher margins. But in the consumer tissue category, we have seen in 2023, as a result of the price increases happening in the market, we have seen in downgrading consumer. At the moment, you have seen the 53% brands are gaining market share. So now the brands are fighting back, but in 2023, it was that. So in order to keep the consumer on the brand and not lose it to a competitor or retail brand, we have been refocusing on the mid-tier segment.
So we have been introducing new articles, some of them you see here in the background, in order to respond to the downgrading consumer. Our strategy remains, of course, if the position or if the situation, business environment allows it, to also trade up the consumer again to higher tiers in our assortment. Sustainability in consumer tissue is absolutely crucial. Disposable product, energy-intensive, water, water, water. And we have the solutions. We are today perceived as the market leader in sustainability when it comes to consumer tissue. We have been inventing the coreless product. We have been inventing the wheat straw product here. We have been, in terms of how we are running paper machines with hydrogen, you have seen the Voith example, which is something for the future. We have the leading sustainability solutions on the market. And it remains important for this category, absolutely.
Last but not least, what we believe is with our dual track strategy, i.e., a commitment to our own brands and to strategic retailer brand businesses. You have seen in the production here, Bosque Verde for Mercadona. You talked about the market shares of Mercadona. This provides us with the unique scale to run successfully and profitably a tissue business. We have also said a couple of years ago that we are, in some parts, we have a special focus. And this is a nice example. You can also get some samples here. I think you found them also in your hotel room, about moist toilet paper. In 2019, we have decided to so-called boost moist toilet paper brand. Why? Because the predictions were this is the fastest-growing segment in tissue. It's not really tissue, but it's basically retailer and sees it as a tissue product.
Actually, the prediction was correct. The market has been growing 7% per year, which is enormous. You have seen 1%-2% is the tissue market, 7% is that one. And SET, we have been growing 16%, so twice the market. And today, 2024, we are more or less the market leader in every European market where we are present. So this is one example. And there are others like the coreless products, like facials and hankies, where we have a special focus and where we are really also investing most of our A&P money behind that. Another nice example from our colleagues from Latin America is this product here. Again, based on consumer insights, what is the consumer asking for? And the consumer asks for a sustainable range. So under the Familia brand, we have been launching the Familia Green, which is a 100% recycled fiber range.
It's 20% lower carbon footprint for all the raw products, i.e., kitchen, towel, and bathroom tissue. And already after the launch, the product has reached a 5% market share, which is really significant in a relatively short time after the launch. And you will not attend any presentation of two sales guys without any advertising. So let's have a look at.
[Foreign language]
Good. Let's come to our—you like it. Let's come to—I thought you were starting to dance now. Let's come to our fourth and definitely not least interesting category, which is Baby Care.
Baby Care, I mean, by definition, you are renewing your shopper base every three years. So the point of market entry is very, very important to us. And a lot of our innovations of the last years have been really focusing on the recruitment sizes, sizes one and two. You can see them also here in the background. This is a category where we have made, and thanks to our colleagues in Tuomas's organization, a big mindset shift. I think we had a little bit of a mindset of being a fast follower. You could even question if we were fast, but we were a follower one. When you look at the innovations we are presenting you here in the background, like what we have now, the new leakage solution, what we call internally Tetris solution, launched in a couple of countries already.
When you look at Poo, so the pocket solution and so on, SET was the first one on the market with the solutions. And now others are copying us with that one. So this is something where we are extremely proud of from a fast follower strategy, going in more in leading and shaping the market in the baby category. What is also important in the baby category, and the baby category for us means, of course, also building on a super strong business in the Nordic countries, where we're enjoying in all the four countries market positions of 60%. This is really great. And what we have there is a fantastic loyalty tool, the Baby Club, and with 90% of the Nordic parents registered in this club. So this is a fantastic base for us also to generate insights. So this is also part of our strategy.
Shall we conclude by answering the question, where will the growth come from?
Sure, Volker. Actually, this slide summarizes quite well that long story in a short way. What we aim for the coming years is to protect and strengthen our core, grow in line with the market in consumer tissue, but outperform the market in those intimate hygiene categories and personal care categories. It's not just the core; it's to expand for more. You heard about TENA Men as a key segment for incontinence, night segment for Feminine Care, absorbent apparel also for Feminine Care. Last but not least, and this is not wishful thinking, the big bet that we are making as strong challengers in the U.S. market.
And I'm not saying, and I'm saying that this is not wishful thinking because we have been growing at double-digit rate during the last eight quarters in the U.S. since we designed this strategy to act as strong challengers in the U.S. market. So the strategy is just working, okay? And lastly, this is just a summary of what you just heard from us. Firstly, we aim to strengthen our leading positions in Europe and Latin America, but also we need to expand to act as a challenger in those wider spaces that we have in terms of the category and in terms of the geographies. We need to invest more to grow in those highest margin categories, innovating, building our brands, building our brands. We are super passionate about the brands. Also investing to win in the point of market entry and in the point of sale.
Last but not least, a lot of efficiency end-to-end. Efficiency is not just cost-cutting. Efficiency is about capital management. It's about resource allocation. It's about end-to-end efficiency mindset, starting by our suppliers and extending this mindset to our customers. That's a top priority for us in our categories. Of course, expand our margins through mix, pushing ahead our mix to more profitable categories and segments. Having said that, thank you for listening and I'm open and happy to have your questions.
Thank you very much. Good proof points of strong market share development, really high leading positions and lots of good profitable growth. Also interesting to hear your high ambitions and plans to grow the high-margin segments even more in the future. We have time for two questions. Who would like to have one of those? Oskar, please.
Oskar Lindström with Danske Bank.
So I'd like to ask a question about the market growth ambitions in the U.S. Inco retail market, which you mentioned. You talked about sort of having made some changes to that business and also sort of having adapted the strategy a bit. Could you provide some more detail as to what has changed and what is the strategy specifically?
A lot of things have changed during the last couple of years. As I said before, we have established a new organization and we are bringing new capabilities to act as challengers in this market, retail capabilities, consumer-oriented talents. But also we were operating this market under a B2B umbrella. And now we are operating this market under a B2C umbrella. And that's a big change for us. The second big change is that we are making a strong bet on e-commerce.
E-commerce is the fastest-growing channel in the U.S., okay? So even though in the U.S., e-commerce is still 15% of the sales, it's the one that is growing the most, okay? So that is why we are making a big bet on that channel. But at the same time, we are escaping of this peanut-butter approach. We don't want to win everywhere. We are making choices in the U.S. So we are making choices about portfolio. We are making choices about the regions we want to focus. We are making choices about the retailers we want to approach. And from there, we are just growing in a different way. Because we used to have a peanut-butter strategy, and it's quite difficult just to embrace this market as a single market. It's massive. This is a massive market.
So we are super choosy about the way, and we are acting as challengers. That's super important. We cannot act in this market as leaders yet. So we need to run like a startup mindset inside the organization, and we are operating in that way.
Just to follow up on this, I mean, you mentioned you already started this new strategy. In what timeframe do you expect to see some sort of results to know that, okay, this has been a success and we have achieved, I don't know, a target market share or something similar?
This is a long-term bet. This comprehensive program that I just mentioned is a program designed for 10 years. Our goal is to get 15% of market share in 10 years from now with this strategy.
Thank you. Oskar, now you stole the two questions.
Patrick, I know you have a question, but we need to just move forward. But we will have a final Q&A, so pin your questions and we'll come back to that, okay? Thank you, Andres and Volker. Now it's time for our last presentation for today. We're going to Professional Hygiene business has contributed very strongly with good margin improvements last years. Here to tell us about how they have done that and what the plans are moving ahead are Professional Hygiene, and Matthew Urmanski, Vice President, Sales and Marketing, North America. Please.
Thank you, Sandra. Now we're going to see our B2B hygiene business. As you know, it's 26% of the company's sales. Let's start with an introduction video.
We believe in the fundamental importance of hygiene that's good for people and the planet, committed to giving all people equal access to sustainable hygiene when away from home. That's why we see the world in a different way. Where some see napkins, we see an opportunity to provide guests with a cleaner and safer dining experience. When some see soap and sanitizers, we see possibilities to improve hand hygiene compliance for a healthier society. When some see another round of cleaning, we see ways to empower staff for greater well-being. Where some see a bin full of paper waste, we see sustainability efforts to reduce carbon footprint. And when some see dispensers with paper towels, we see equal access to new hygiene standards for all. We use our expertise in sustainable hygiene management to improve businesses and society, creating sustainable hygiene for all.
I hope you liked the video. Those of us Professional Hygiene and in Tork, we like to say that we are in the business of improving business performance for our customers. Here you can see some actually quite good, powerful proof points. 73% of customers who go to a restaurant will never go back to the same restaurant if the washroom is not a good experience for them. 44% of guests in a sports stadium will not buy food and beverage if the washroom is not working efficiently in halftime. We actually have a big impact in our customer business with Tork. This is our business. 86% is our tissue systems, our tissue solutions like Tork Vision Cleaning that I hope you managed to see over lunch. 11% wiping cleaning, 3% soap, sanitizer. We are having a global presence.
This is some of our great end customer accounts. I'm sure you recognize some of the places. I hope that when you are back after these meetings, when you are in the airport going back home, you will see Tork more in the different places you visit: in hotels, stadiums, museums, universities, hospitals. We are everywhere, actually. We are the number one leading brand. As I was saying, a big part of our business is tissue solutions. So here, for example, you see our hand towel system, which is a dispenser that has refills that work with a dispenser. We have a toilet paper system as well, a napkin, Xpressnap for food service industry. We have actually a technology and a connected dispenser that actually provides data and insights to facility management that is called Tork Vision Cleaning.
We have a very strong wiping and cleaning portfolio, mostly working in food service in industry for surface object cleaning, and then we have a soap, sanitizer business that is a great complement to our tissue systems in washrooms. So we sell a bundle, a full bundle washroom experience to our customers, but we actually sell across very different segments, and if you think about it, each of these segments has a very different business model. Actually, they have very different KPIs. The way of buying and selling is very different, and one of our key competitive advantages is that we are really good at understanding deeply each of these different segments and providing customized value with our product portfolio. This is super important. Our common denominator is the washroom. We are very strong in the washroom all across the different segments.
But outside of the washroom, as I was saying, we have, for example, withX pressnap, a very strong presence in the food service, in the tabletops of restaurants, for example, or in industries outside of the washroom with the wipers that have very customized solutions for that industry. In terms of the trends that we see today in the industry, there are segments that are growing faster, like, for example, commercial and industry. We see high growth in emerging markets. As these markets formalize, Professional Hygiene grows. and we see robust growth in emerging markets. Sustainability is another key topic that we see with our customers, with our distributors, with regulations. That's another key trending, very important topic. And we, same as in B2C, our customers and our distributors expect not only an offline relationship. They also more and more expect an online engagement with Tork.
This is a big change also in the industry. We've had a nice long-term journey, and we can now confidently say we have structurally improved the profitability of this business, as Fredrik presented before. Comparing to the historical average, now we have a higher margin, while we have been growing in a good way. We also see this short term. As you know, we implemented our structure where we exited low profitability business, underperforming assets at the same time, but then the underlying part of the business kept growing in a very good way, and this good combination actually allowed to have a good also short-term gross margin and EBIT margin improvement for the business. What has been some of these critical success factors in this success journey? A very well-designed and, more importantly, a very well-executed restructuring plan.
We are out of that, and we keep growing strategic premium business. We have been investing behind the brand. It's the most important brand in the company. And by investing in the brand, by investing in innovation, as you presented, Tuomas, we have more price power in the market. Also, internally, we have invested in tools, in systems that allow us to implement price changes in a more agile way, which is very important. Omnichannel flexibility. There is a clear channel shift in this industry, and it creates a threat, but an opportunity at the same time for a leading brand like us to engage more in e-commerce and in different digital aspects of the business. And then emerging markets for us are profitable. So profitably growing emerging markets actually has a very good contribution in our results. We are well-positioned to shape the market.
Not only are we the Professional Hygiene business and brand, we are number one in Europe, number one in Latin America, and a very strong number two player in North America. Strategic system is the focus of our strategy. Our strategic systems, as Tuomas presented, is where we have clear product superiority, where we have a competitive advantage, where we have patents, where we have a very clear value proposition for our customers, and a good value creation for Essity, of course. This strategic system now represents more than 60% of the sales. And we have been growing, as you can see, in a very good way in the past. And our ambition is to grow twice the market with these great products and systems. How do we do this? A key pillar is innovation. And here you can see a couple of examples.
Tuomas, you presented one very good innovation. This is PeakServe, our high-traffic dispenser that has been super successful, as you can see, and creates very unique value in high-traffic areas like stadiums, airports. Perhaps the next time in an airport, you will see one of these nice PeakServe dispensers. Expressnap that has been 20 years running, and we keep innovating on top of this fantastic franchise, and it's the world's favorite napkin dispenser. We are also expanding for more. Wipers, soap, sanitizer is a smaller part of the business, but we are over-investing in the different resources because we think we have the right to continue growing also faster than the market in this very Professional Hygiene segments, and then, of course, Tork Vision Cleaning.
By creating data insights with digitally connected dispensers, we actually now have half of the top 10 airports in the world. Half of the top 10 airports in the world have Tork Vision Cleaning, and are providing today insights to facility management companies that take care of the washrooms in the airports. It reduces up to 20% the workload. Imagine for a facility management that labor is a big part in their P&L, reducing 20% of the workload for them. This is very powerful, and this speaks about the benefits of digital integration in our business. As I said, we are number one in Europe, and we will continue growing faster than the market in Europe, leveraging our cross-European scale, upselling and cross-selling with existing customers. There are also some segments like industry where we will continue to expand and grow in a successful way in Europe.
And then for North America, we'll let the expert Matt talk about this fantastic geography.
Thank you, Pablo. I'm really glad to be here and to spend a few moments on North America. Two areas of focus. One, what have we been working on to create a much more profitable outcome? And two, where is our ultimate focus every single day? So when you walk away from here, that's what you'll know is our focus. As Pablo mentioned, we work in a very large market in North America, around EUR 6 billion, of which the market's growing 1%-2%, and we have a firm 24% share in that space. And as you saw by the earlier graph, this represents about 43% Professional Hygiene overall.
As we came through COVID and we started having a good, strong recovery in our business, as we were doing our 2023 planning, we had tremendous confidence in our ability to create the highest revenue we've ever had in North America. And it was in that moment, once all those things have settled down with things like inflation and supply chain pressure, we took a very deliberate review, a very purposeful review of our portfolio. Where are we making our money? Which systems, which customers, which contracts, what machines provide that value? So looking at our lowest profitable business against our lowest performing asset, we looked at that in that greater level of detail, and we saw opportunity. Opportunity that we simply couldn't fix further by just raising the price, but ultimately some structural changes that we needed to make.
So we did a restructuring, as Pablo indicated, with our asset base. At the same time as we did that restructuring, preserving some of the best assets that we had in the facility, we started looking at those contracts and ultimately which contracts are not performing. With marketing, we look at lifecycle management, which products have exceeded their lifetime and don't have that same oomph that they used to, and which customers truly value what we bring at Essity with Tork, with innovation, and our people. So we made some choices on that portfolio to really and ultimately strengthen that business as we match those two. In that time, we never lost focus of where we create value. That is on our strategic products, our strategic systems that we drive. If you had an opportunity to go to the Tork showcase, you would see some of the innovation.
The picture here in the backdrop, this is actually the Tesla Gigafactory in Nevada. They have leveraged our capability within Tork Vision Cleaning, our digital capability for cleaning, and ultimately PeakServe. This is a great advantage to us because these are our profitable products, but it's a great advantage to them as they're focusing on operational efficiency every single day, and they have very, very strong sustainability goals, which our offering and our capability fit right into. So that strategic focus is there, and at the same time, we partner very, very closely with Tuomas and his team relative to continuing to build our brand and our brand awareness in North America, and in some respects, we're a little bit newer to the family, although it's been over 30 years.
Ultimately, continue to make sure that brand is top of mind every single day is a very, very big thing for us. So when you look at the next slide, you look at the momentum of these strategic systems over the last four years. Overall, that has been growth of 65%. These are absolute numbers, not a CAGR in that time, but tremendous improvement within the strategic systems. And I'll point back to the two systems that Pablo mentioned. In this same timeframe, after PeakServe launched in 2019, from 2020 to 2023, it grew over 400% in absolute terms. And ultimately, a franchise like Xpressnap, one of every two napkins in North America comes from us. That same franchise grew over 75% over that relative period. So ultimately, that's where our focus is, Pablo,a nd thank you for sharing a few moments with me.
Thank you, Matt.
Now we continue with emerging markets, and as I said, our emerging market position is profitable, and we want to actually double the sales in the next five years. We are Professional Hygiene brand in latin America, which is very powerful. We are also expanding in a very choiceful way in Middle East, India, and Africa, and of course, leveraging our global know-how, our global portfolio into this high-growth opportunity for us, so we will double the sales in the next five years in emerging markets. Sustainability is another key topic in our commercial discussions with our distributors and customers. We focus, of course, on materials and packaging, the carbon footprint that we work with Donato on the factories, and very importantly, most of our systems actually provide a saving use that delivers a positive sustainability impact for our customers and for our distributors.
We have a great sustainability story when we engage with distributors and customers. I was also mentioning the big channel shift that is happening in this industry towards digital. So B2C is not the only one. Also in B2B, there is a big shift, and we are investing heavily to win in this. And one great example is our partnership with Amazon in North America, Matt. And Amazon has explicitly disclosed that they want to grow and win in B2B as well. And then they picked leading brands, including Tork, to partner with. And we have been having a tremendous growth journey, learning together with them. And actually here, you can see an actual and real demonstration of how our Tork webpage or webshop looks like within Amazon. It looks like a very B2C kind of experience, but it's actually a B2B.
Buyers expect to buy now in the same way they buy B2C and B2B. This is a good, seamless way of buying for our customers with Amazon. This is our growth model. We want to grow more than 2%, as Sahil presented before. How we grow, perhaps in this category, is more important because we want to grow with our strategic differentiated products, as Magnus mentioned also before, growing twice the market there. Then we expand and grow fast also with wiper and cleaning, with soap, sanitizer, and then, of course, doubling the size of our business in emerging markets in the next five years, which is a great, great ambition. Finally, we will continue strengthening our global number one position. We will continue growing with our strategic systems, wipers, soap, sanitizers, continue together with Tuomas innovating, creating product superiority.
We are very passionate about this. Win in omnichannel with this big channel shift that is happening in B2B. And then, of course, continue growing and accelerating in emerging markets. So that's it Professional Hygiene, sandra.
Thank you, Pablo. Thank you, Matt, for sharing that with us. So let's see if you want to move here. Let's see if we have any questions from the audience. Niklas, please. Over here.
Thank you. Niklas Professional Hygiene obviously struggled a bit during COVID, but one of the key takes from COVID as well was that hand dryers would be phased out or at least would drop, and that you'd see sustainable strong growth in hand sanitizing. Now, a few years after COVID, are you seeing those trends continuing and actually driving the category?
Yeah, I think one of the trends that has continued is there's more awareness around hygiene, around hand hygiene. However, some of the big growth that happened in certain categories, as you mentioned, now it's normalizing more towards more long-term trends. But we definitely see more awareness in hygiene, which is Professional Hygiene, of course.
And same thing on hand dryers. Are those the phase-out that you're seeing? Has that continued, or was that more temporary?
Yeah, we see growth overall in hand hygiene, and we're constantly evaluating the different segments around hand hygiene.
Okay. Thank you.
Any more questions? Okay. Well, thank you.
Thank you. Perfect.
That actually concludes today's presentations. I hope that you have found this day interesting and that you feel inspired to be a growing part of Essity's profitable growth journey ahead.
And I now invite the presenters from the executive management team for the final Q&A. And while they make their way up here, please reflect on your first question to them. No. No, just give a hug. I'm going to stand. You want to go?
Wow. What a team. The chair's challenge.
Okay, perfect. Patrick, I promised you to have the first question. I was like, so question over here.
Hi, Patrick Folan from Barclays. Just on the tissue segment, going back to that, it was quite interesting talking about moist tissues. I was just hoping to get a bit of color on maybe what the raw material basket does, that differ versus the rest of the tissue portfolio?
Second of all, maybe what a good performance in five to six years of moist tissues looks like, or what is the representation of the tissue portfolio would be like good progress? And then, maybe lastly, just the profitability of that segment. I know it's relatively new, but over the last four years, you've had very good growth. So three questions: raw material basket, growth aspirations, and profitability.
The raw material basis is a substrate close to a non-woven. So this is nothing we are producing ourselves. It's basically outsourced. We do not have, let's say, market share targets or growth, but our ambition is to continue to grow double-digit every year, what we are doing at the moment, and this is also how we believe it.
We are not commenting on the profitability of the segment, but it's definitely a significantly higher gross profit margin, and we are also relatively over-investing in A&P. EBITDA is better than the rest of the business. What's the sales in four years? In four years, you take what we do today, what we are not allowed to talk about, and then we will + 10%,+ 10%,+ now he's good.
Now I ask.
This is my target setting now. You have seen it. It's really the growth is enormous, the market growth. We are only with a brand there, and we have a very strong market position, and we expand them every year. So I mean, I don't want to say the sky is the limit , but it's a fantastic business.
What markets have you rolled out the product in?
We are in Germany, U.K., France, Italy, Netherlands, more or less in all our core European tissue markets.
Okay. Got it. Thank you.
Good. Molly, please, you can just pass on Patrick the microphone there. Thank you. I was Consumer Goods seems to play a bigger role in your core and particularly the more strategy for growth. How do you balance that against the positive mix you have as a building block in your EBITDA bridge?
I'll start, Fredrik. And yeah, the reason is because, of course, it's a bigger part of the overall business. So the basis is higher. Most of the growth should come from the higher margin Consumer Goods. so in incontinence care, retail, and Feminine Care. Actually, Baby Care is also now having really good margins.
So that's how we aim to combine kind of the growth with the margin development. And I think there was also a bit showing that we're not expecting to grow much in consumer tissue going forward. However, of course, in the margin bridge, it's not only the mix. I mean, that was only one of the three or four boxes. The others were very much, of course, efficiency, where we see a lot of efficiency in cost of goods sold in consumer tissue also. And then, of course, the operating leverage also.
Okay. Charles, yes.
Hi, two questions for me. First, probably for you, Fredrik. Obviously, today you've given us a lot of numbers on growth by division. I see you refrain from giving us margin targets by division.
But if I obviously listen to all the presentations and thank you for those, it's a clear message that there's margin upside to different degrees, but in each of the three divisions. So I guess when I look at where you were nine months or 14-ish% EBITDA margin, 15% doesn't look that far off if everyone's going to contribute to margin expansion. So is it fair to say that 15% is the target and then not the ceiling in terms of margin for this business? That's the first question. And second question, just shifting slightly on M&A, but it may also be for you, Fredrik. In the past, you've talked about M&A opportunities, but equally, given where the Essity share price was, the value was sort of buying back shares, and obviously, you've bought back shares. Does that still hold? And I guess medical solutions typically higher multiples businesses.
Is it difficult to justify that where the current multiple is on Essity, or has that changed? Thank you.
Yeah, maybe I can answer the last question first, Charles. So obviously, with our valuation, if you just look at the EBITDA multiple, it's quite low, we think. And so obviously, the targets we tend to look at are typically higher valued in terms of multiples. So what we have clearly stated is when we buy companies, we don't rely on a revaluation of the Essity share post-acquisition. It's rather so that we need to bridge that gap with synergies that we have. And of course, that limits the spectrum or limits the number of potential targets a bit, but we believe that there are such targets.
And so if you take the example here of Health & Medical, then clearly there are examples where we believe that the synergies are so strong that it may compensate or would compensate that gap in the multiples, basically. So the first question was margin is by 15%. Yeah. And so I already alluded to it, actually, because if you look at where we are, you're right. It's not very far from 15%. Let me just first say one thing. The target is more than 15%, obviously, so just to be perfectly clear on that. And there are scenarios where we could actually expand margins higher than 15%, but we don't believe that we could do that with the aspiration that we have for growth. So it's a combination you've got to look at.
You've got to look at the more than 3% of organic sales growth and, of course, the margin target of more than 15%. So in theory, I think what we are saying with the return we now have, the return on our capital that we generate, growth is incredibly profitable. So of course, it is a priority for us to grow, perhaps a bigger priority in the short term rather than to expand the margin. Maybe just to remind, I mean, we've set several targets in the past. We've reached all of them, and this is now the targets that we are working towards. We think it's a really value-creating journey, but of course, we always aspire to do better. But the combination, we think, brings significant shareholder value.
Perfect. Niklas, yes.
Thank you. Niklas from Carnegie.
Not sure exactly who this question is for, but when you talk about growth of at least 3%, and we look historically, and you've delivered 3% organic growth with Vinda. Now you're going to do without Vinda. Can you just clarify that? Because you mentioned that this is supposed to be driven by volume and mix, not price. But I mean, even historically, there has been a price element even before the superinflation period. So can you just help clarify? Is it only volume and mix that's going to drive the 3%, or are you just talking about normal inflation rate? Just to clarify. Yeah, just to clarify,
it's excluding price because, of course, there's some price component in mix, but we call it higher prices due to mix. Then that's part of the 1% mix. And then pricing is just to compensate inflation going forward.
So that's how it should be interpreted.
Okay.
Yeah.
Yeah. Clear. Thank you. While I have the mic, can I ask a second question? You mentioned before that you have closed a dozen plants in the last, I don't remember the timeframe for that, and now you're down to 72 plants. Sorry, the timeframe was
10 years.
10 years. Yeah. Where do you see that the next 5 to 10 years? Are you happy at where you are, or do you see a continued path of optimization?
Already at the beginning of this year, we clearly stated that the time of major restructuring is over. Some of you remember that 10 years ago, we started the big tissue roadmap program, and we actually said this would knock off 2% of top-line growth every year because we were closing down operations and discontinuing businesses. And then that over time became lower.
The last big restructuring Professional Hygiene, as pablo has spoken about. Of course, going forward, we will probably now and then close a plant, but also maybe now and then also buy or establish a new facility somewhere, but not in the kind of rather aggressive restructuring mode that we have seen over the last 10 years. Now it will be more business as usual going forward.
Thank you.
Oscar, you have a question here.
Thank you. You've talked a little bit about some of the geographic, not white spots, but areas you'd like to grow in, which are sort of adjacent to your business.
Do you also see product categories or segments which are adjacent to your business, but where you're not present today that you'd like to grow in, in a similar fashion to the way that you grew into wound care quite a number of years ago now, but still?
Say, you want to? You should ask the other guys now. We answer questions. I'll stop answering questions.
Yeah. So as you've seen in the plants, we at the moment believe that when it comes to expanding into more, we believe that the adjacent categories that we have picked there, like for example, absorbent apparel and also the incontinence segment, particularly in incontinence, will give us enough to do and also provide us with enough profitable growth for the time to come.
This is not to say that we don't explore Consumer Goods categories that are in the vicinity, let's say, of where we play, because of course, if you're holding number one and number two market positions in many of the places where you play, you're also looking into expanding into additional categories. But there's nothing that we can disclose on this as it stands today. But you can think about that as explore for now.
Super. Thank you.
Any more questions from the back? I think I missed a question earlier. Yes, please.
Thank you. Could you touch a little bit more on how branded, private label, and contract manufacturing factor into the overall strategy? We haven't heard a lot of specifics on that. Could you give a little bit more color on how those three components factor into the overall growth strategy that Essity has presented today?
Yeah. So contract manufacturing, so basically outsourcing the production, we're only doing a few instances. And I guess the biggest share of that we see in the medical space. So maybe, Ulrika, you want to talk to that. And then in leak-proof apparel or the washable underwear, that we don't make ourselves, that we buy. And the substrates like the wet wipes, we convert them, but we don't make them ourselves. But I think the biggest part is in medical, Ulrika.
Yeah, this is true. We do some contract manufacturing in medical. As we talked about, both myself and Anand, we have some really superior technologies that actually can be used beyond the products that we produce today. So we do have some contract manufacturing where we offer that, of course, then in areas that are not competitive to us.
This is a small part of our business and a small part of the growth. This is not where we have the biggest growth aspirations, obviously. But it's a good scale benefit that we get from that. So we will continue to do it on that basis.
But then we also had in our bus here during the tour, the discussion about brand versus private label because there was, you could see the toilet tissue that was produced for Mercadona here in the plant, also our own brand, Colhogar, and also Tork. And just to make that distinction clear again for everyone, basically, when it comes to, and this relates then mostly or Consumer Goods, we actually have three types of customers. We have the normal retailers that buy our brands, basically. And that's where we put much of our effort.
Then we have the pure hard discounters that only buy a basic product according to the specification at the lowest price. And that's what we call private label. And this part of the business, which is then all in consumer tissue, we have separated out in a completely freestanding entity that we call the Consumer Tissue Private Label Division Europe. So it's a long name, but that's running completely separately. But then actually, we also have a handful of contracts with retailers that we worked with for decades, where we worked very, very closely together to develop both their brands and our brands in some cases. And the biggest is actually Mercadona. So we have developed together with them for 30 years. We typically say we met them in Valencia last week, Volker, that we're married for life with them. And we invest together.
It's a very healthy business for us and for them and for the consumers. So it works very well. We call that retailer brand. It's a handful of customers in Europe. You could mention dm, for example. dm in Germany, Kruidvat in Holland, or two other examples.
So if I read from that correctly, there's no reason for Essity to be afraid for the improved or the continued growth in the prevalence of private labels in the U.S., for example, because you're also playing in that area.
We're not playing in tissue whatsoever in the U.S., in consumer tissue. And no. We have a good plan now for TENA, which is our kind of big retail effort in the U.S., as you heard from Andres. Okay.
If I may finish off with one last question.
We've seen a lot of healthy pricing power in two of the segments, a little bit less Consumer Goods segment. are you looking at the long-term ability to Consumer Goods and maybe increase margins that way?
That's for Andres and Volker.
Must be Andres, though.
Why not Andres?
No, our strategy is basically trying to follow prices in parallel with the cost inflation, but our strategy is based basically on mix improvement. So basically, we are not betting right now in terms of pricing because nowadays, there is not much room to increase prices. But of course, once we need to react, we will move accordingly. Thank you. Can I add there? It's a long way. Yeah.
I guess I think it's just to be clear. I think we have an extreme pricing power Consumer Goods, actually, because we have proven over and over again that we have always been able to compensate cost inflation, always. We have done this for at least the way we've looked for the last 30 years. I think we demonstrated it super well during hyperinflation. We fully compensated. So you may feel that pricing power is slightly lower. I don't think it is, actually. It's as strong there. It's just a matter of timing. That's kind of the essence of it.
Perfect. That concludes our Q&A. We will now leave the floor to you, Magnus, to summarize the day. Yes. Okay.
Thanks, everyone. Our dream team, a winning team on stage.
So to conclude very quickly, the objectives that we had today, and I hope they align with your objectives, was to give deeper insights into Essity, our people, our culture, our assets, also give a deeper insight into how we reach our new financial targets, the 15% and the 3%, and also, of course, what we will do with all that cash that we're generating, which is, again, a very, very positive situation. So I hope that they have been fulfilled from my own perspective. I hope that you can use the different waterfalls that you've seen from all the different business units, also from Sahil on growth and from Fredrik. You have the growth one here and see how we aim to add up to 15% and to 3%. So I won't go through that again. And we had some discussions and questions about it as well.
I hope that you perceived what I could see when going through the plant tour, which was the highlight for sure for today, of course, together with everyone's presentations and discussions. But what makes me really excited and very, very positive about the future and actually very, very proud is to enter a production facility like this. It's clean. It's silent. The machines are running. It's very empty. It seems to be all aligned. You move forward to the machines. You see all the digitalizations, the screens, how things are now having with automatic feedback loops that we discussed and so on. The machines are self-aligning. We get information beforehand when maintenance needs to be done and so on and so forth. So really impressive. And since I've been coming back here for 12, 13 years, I really, really see the change, and it's massive.
But that was kind of 20% of what made me very happy. What really excites me are the fantastic colleagues and employees that I hope you also experienced, the drive, the enthusiasm, the energy, the knowledge that they have and their ambition, and that they don't settle for what you buy off the shelf when it comes to digital support or so on. We develop ourselves. We do our own algorithms. We develop our own models to run machines better, more efficient, and safer than anybody else. And to listen to these process engineers that started as graduate engineers, worked their way up, how enthusiastic they are, how they then are able to convince people from other very attractive industries to come to us because we're at the forefront. That was the highlight of my day.
I'd like to leave on that note and hope that you leave with the same impression, actually. So thank you very, very much again for coming. It's been really enjoyable. I think we covered a lot of ground already last night and then throughout the day. And of course, just keep on shooting your questions or reflections or advice for that matter. We always aim to improve and do better throughout the rest of the day here. So thank you very much.
Perfect. I just want to reiterate what Magnus said. Thank you very much for your interest in Essity, for coming here to Valls, for all your questions and discussions. And now the buses are leaving no later than 3:00 P.M. Make sure that you get on the bus where your luggage is. And I hope that you have enjoyed this day. Yes.
Both buses are going to the airport. Yes, both buses are going to the airport. So thanks for today and safe travels back.