The purpose of today is that we want to give you all an introduction to what is Humble Group. What is our subsidiaries? What are we doing? What are we selling? To what markets? And after I'm finished with that, we're going to have a business strategy session with Marcus, and after that, I think it's due for a break, so you can have a coffee, or if you're like me, an energy drink. There are cold ones in the fridge over there. And after the break, we will do a deep dive into our different business segments, where we will also have some case presentations of our subsidiaries. And to round things up, we're gonna talk about financials and our new targets. And after that, it's gonna be some Q&A and mingle. I urge you all to take some products here and try them.
There are goody bag boxes there, loaded with some of our best products, so feel free and taste them, and also, I want to highlight, it's us, only us on the stage here today from Humble Group, so if you look around the room, everybody from the group can please rise. Here in the back, you have some of our other subsidiary CEOs, business managers, and other people from the operations, so I ask you, if you want to talk to them, do that. They are the experts in our different products that you can find here in our sort of pop-up store in here.
Now you're really teasing the online audience. I hope you get the chance to meet them at another time. So of course, this is going to be the main attraction, whether to hear the presentations or talk to the group representatives here today. I kinda consider myself as the chief order officer to make sure that we stay on time and that we can facilitate the discussion, either between you and the room and the people on stage, or for you online as well. You can submit questions digitally to me, and I will receive them. I can bring them up as we may go along during today, where we have two mini Q&A sessions before the extended one at the end.
So just below where you see me and/or Simon, below the video frame, there's a questionnaire that you can fill in and submit your questions digitally. You in the room, you can do the same if you want to. Otherwise, at the end, at the extended Q&A, just raise your hand, a microphone will be brought to you, and we can start to talk from stage to audience and back again. Okay, we hope that we'll get this ready until around 4:00 P.M., when we go to the product table. Simon, please kick us off.
Thank you, Emily. First of all, we're gonna talk about what is Humble Group. What are we doing? We are a modern and entrepreneurial-driven FMCG group. We specialize in driving value and accelerating growth in small and medium-sized FMCG companies. Our group today almost have SEC 7.5 billion in net sales. With solid profitability, we have more than 1,000 employees in our group, and we sell globally to 80 markets. Our objective is to lead the transformation for better for you products in the consumer market. What is FMCG, some people may ask? It's fast-moving consumer goods. It's one of the world's biggest industries, comprising more than $15 trillion. This is a huge industry. The problem is, this market is lacking behind.
It has been predominantly dominated by a lot of the FMCG conglomerates across the globe for many, many years, and they don't want to change because they're not good at changing. With that said, consumers today are more aware than ever with what they consume. Thanks to the smartphone, I mean, everybody here in, I guess, have a smartphone, right? With a smartphone, you can get instant communication from Australia to U.S. to Europe, and people today are influenced totally different than we were fifty years ago. This has led to that consumers today are more aware than ever with what they consume and what they want and how that resonates with their persona. Not only that, we have two trends here, which I don't think trend is the right word for it.
I would rather say forces, because we're not gonna care less in five, ten, or fifty years down the line about our health and about our planet, and if you look at this industry, where it is today, it's moving so slow, and the companies that actually change is the challengers, challengers like us, and that is our testament to you. We are committed to be one of the leaders in transforming this industry and bringing healthier products to consumers, so how do we do that? Innovation is driven by change, entrepreneurship, and creativity, and this is an inherent part of our DNA. We are an entrepreneurial-driven group. We have a decentralized decision model, where our entrepreneurs and the experts in our subsidiaries work with the daily operations to maximize their company
But we also have an active governance structure, where we, as owners, try to be the best supporter for our companies to really facilitate their maximum potential. We love innovation, we love entrepreneurship, and we're very data-driven. This is driving value at our core, and we want to empower our companies with strategic support to really enhance their market success and help them conquer the globe. Our group has four different business segments. We have three product segments, where the first one, Future Snacking, is all about snacking, confectionery, and on-the-go products. Here we focus on transforming our products and existing products into healthier versions of themselves. This is a really exciting segment, and the market is huge. Our second segment is Sustainable Care .
Here we have personal care and home care products, products that you have in your everyday life, at home or in your bathroom, and here we focus on, mainly on the sustainability angle, with better ingredients, better packaging, and better supply chain. Our third segment is Quality Nutrition, and I've personally been a fan of protein bars probably for the last 15 years. If you have eaten protein bars for 15 years, you know it has changed from being a bodybuilder product to an everyday consumption product. Even my grandma eats protein bars today. We are the leading Nordic contract manufacturer when it comes to sport nutrition, and we also now have the number one brand in Australia, Body Science, our sport nutrition brand. So these are our three product segments, and we have a fourth segment, which is Nordic Distribution.
We consider Nordic Distribution as a market accelerator for ourselves, driving innovation, having direct access to stores in the Nordics. We have a unique setup with direct access to more than two thousand five hundred stores. Let's rewind the tape a bit and look into our history. What have actually happened over the years? My dream and ambition when we started this is that, you know, building Pändy from the ground up was really, really hard. It's hard to find the right supplier, it's hard to have the resources to invest in product development, and it's hard to get it out in stores in Sweden, but it's even harder to get it out globally. Our ambition has been to acquire companies that we feel will be the part of building a platform where we can help companies, products, and brands to scale.
For the first two and a half years, we did 47 acquisitions. What we have done since then is, that last one and a half year, we have really been focusing on our companies. We have really got to know our companies, and we have really started to integrate them and see how can we maximize their value potential. Not only that, last year, we fixed our balance sheet, we redeemed the bonds. We now have a really solid debt structure in place with some of the Nordic and leading banks. And just recently, we also announced that we have outgrown the First North market. We're going into Nasdaq Mid Cap. Enough talking about the history. That's not why you're here. Let's talk about the future instead. We are gonna continue to expand our FMCG powerhouse.
We will continue to consolidate and build on our already established platforms that we will talk a lot about today. We will continue to act on the opportunities that we meet every day in the market, and we will continue to focus on strong cash flow, so we're able to invest in assets and strategic bolt-on acquisitions to really facilitate on all of the different opportunities. So what is it that we actually do? Some may think that we only sell healthy candy and toothbrushes. We sell more than forty thousand unique SKUs in Humble Group. And just to give you an idea of how much that is, in a hypermarket today, it's around forty thousand products. We could fill an entire hypermarket with unique products only provided by Humble Group.
We also have just below half of our sales with our own brands, but on top of that, we're a fantastic contract manufacturer, serving the leading FMCG companies and brands and retailers with their own products. And then we have distribution, mainly positioned in the Nordics, where we really are able to drive sales directly to stores, try innovation, adapt, and improve. So let's talk a bit about our brands. We have something that we call hero brands. These are purpose-led brands where we feel there is a global potential to become champions. And if we manage to do so, to grow these brands, there is an exceptional value potential. There are hundreds of transactions in the market where you can see clearly that if we're able to do this, we have created a lot of value for our company.
But not only our hero brands, we also have a diverse portfolio and history and track record of managing long-term brands. Hockeypulver, for instance, is... was one of my favorites when I was growing up, and it's still thriving. I think we have some over there if you want to try. So our entrepreneurs and companies, they know how to build brands for a long period of time. But if you have a brand, the most important part is you need a way to sell it to a consumer, right? And this is one of the things that we have been focusing on as a group, to establish a strong distribution platform in our key markets.
We have more than 17 countries where we have our own people on the ground, with direct access to retailers, where they can talk directly with the retailers about our products and bring it to them and sell it. On top of that, we have 82 markets where we have strong, long-standing relationships with distributors. We have been working with some of them for 20 years, and they trust our brand. Like, they know working with Humble Group is a safe partner. They will deliver products, and they have the resources to grow the brand together with us. We reach more than 150,000 points of sales, and I can tell you all, building a brand like this from the start is. It's a dream to have access to this, because this takes time, and it's really hard.
Talking about retailers and our customer base, if you look at our customer base today, our top 15 customers is 44% of our total revenue. Not only do we have a lot of customers, but actually our biggest customers, they really like working with us. In the last 12 months, we have grown these customers on average by 18%. They see Humble as a strategic partner where they want to grow their offer and relationship with. Another part of driving value in FMCG is a great product. We will talk a lot about product today. But in our group today, we have built an industrial platform with our 18 own sites. These sites are available for our companies to develop and produce products within a broad capability portfolio.
On top of that, we have more than four hundred contract manufacturers that we work with and also have long-standing relationships with. We can help our entrepreneurs and companies to get the right product at the right price, with the right volume, and generally good terms. And this is tremendously hard, and I dare say there is no CPG packaged goods in a food retail store that we don't know how to produce or have the connection or network with producing ourselves. But production can also be a challenge. And as for those who have read our latest quarterly reports, I have been talking about capacity. Our manufacturers are really great at producing, and we have such a high demand from new customers that wants to work with us.
Twelve months ago, we started to hit the capacity constraint in most of our factories because all of them were running on one shift. So for the last twelve months, we have really been focusing on how can we take these manufacturers to two and three shifts? And that is something we have invested in, and with this slide, we also want to showcase that just the twelve months, we probably lost SEK 320 million in revenue just by not being able to keep up the momentum that our manufacturers have. And talking about growth, Humble Group is a different unit than the general market. The FMCG market 2023 had a negative volume growth of 13%. More than 100% of the growth was price.
But looking at our history, we have actually been driving a lot higher volume growth, and for the last three quarters, it's basically all volume. This is because we want to take market shares. We want to grow long term, and this is also something that we believe will create a higher resilience in the down trading market when it comes to pricing. I mentioned earlier that our group is fueled by entrepreneurs. + 25% of the shares in Humble Group is owned by entrepreneurs. The average longevity of a business in our group is 27 years, and the key employees running these companies has been doing this for 23 years. So even if I have almost done it for 10 years, I consider myself a newbie talking to some of my colleagues here today.
With our acquisitions, from the outside, it might have seemed like we have been buying a lot of companies. How will this fit together? We had a plan. Most of our acquisitions that we have done is based on referrals, where we have acquired one company with an entrepreneur and asked them: "What are the best companies that woul fit really well together?" So out of the 47 acquisitions, and starting with this structure, we have done this. We have gone from 47 companies down to 26 directly reporting. We have built several platforms, industrial platforms, where we will scale with synergies. And this is a way for us to really find the maximum value potential in our companies, helping them working together and utilizing the synergies there are by similar companies being close to each other.
We're not done here, and we see a lot of future potential in consolidation and integration as well. So to round things off, and the key takeaways that I want to share with you from this first session of our Capital Market Day, Humble Group is fantastically well-positioned to facilitate long-term growth. Our companies are long-term growth companies, and we are here to support them and make them grow even faster for a long period of time. I also want to emphasize that the FMCG market is quite stable in general, but our mix of private label, contract manufacturing, distribution, combined with premium and challenger brands that could have explosive growth, is a fantastic combination in a high market and a low market. And most importantly, this industry needs to change, it will change, and our governance model fits that transition.
We run this company entrepreneurially, and that's what you need if you want to drive innovation and change in a market. With that being said, I want to thank you all for listening in on this first session and bring Marcus Stenkil up to the stage.
Thank you, Simon, for that introduction. As Simon said, my name is Marcus Stenkil, and I'm the group COO. I've been working at Humble for a little bit more than three and a half years. I started my career at Humble, running our M&A department, and since one and a half years back, I transformed into becoming the group COO. Today, I'm going to talk about our business strategy and how we work with our companies. Humble consists of many companies. This structure gives us a lot of opportunities to work with our companies and have a lot of collaborations. What type of synergies do we see within Humble Group? We have identified three different layers of synergies. Layer one is what we call group level synergies. These synergies relates to services within legal, HR, sustainability, to name a few.
Next up is value chain synergies, and as the name state, it's when companies within our group work together within the value chain. So for example, we take a brand, we bring that production in-house to our own manufacturing sites, and by doing so, we retain and keep that margin within Humble Group. Next up is what we call platform synergies. This synergies has appeared for us at the later stage in our corporate journey. Simon talked earlier about our phase two, our consolidation and integration phase. So here, we built platform, and one example is Arena Confectionery. Under this umbrella, we've gathered all our candy producers. It's similar businesses, and they have similar products historically that they have produced. So what we've done here is that we've combined the purchasing power to get better prices on raw materials. We've also reallocated volumes between the sites.
For example, Franssons Konfektyr in Gränna, they are rock stars in producing foam and chocolate-dipped foam. But they've also been producing hard-boiled candy and jelly. So we took those products out and put them at Grahns. And Grahns, they are rock stars in producing hard-boiled and jelly candy. By doing so, we get a better efficiency in our production, we can have longer production runs, and we grow the business and reduce the costs. So how do we work with our companies? We have, during the years, learned how to work with our companies. We've learned how to work with our local management and entrepreneurs. And based on this knowledge, we have created our own model that consists of seven building blocks. I will go through all of these building blocks in today's presentation, one by one, so you better understand how we work with our companies.
But our objective is to make it easier and more fun for our entrepreneurs to build companies under our umbrella. So first out, strategic framework. So our entrepreneurs, they're very good at running their day-to-day operations. However, we have noted that they have a tactical approach sometimes, which means that they look at the next three or six or 12 months ahead of them. We ask questions such as: What is the full potential for your company? What opportunities do you see? And what resources do you need to be able to capitalize on these opportunities? So what we're doing, we're building a three to five-year strategic business plan for all our subsidiaries, and this have unlocked a lot of potential. We have shifted the mindset for entrepreneurs to look at the full potential and the long-term vision. Next up is trend transformation.
Simon talked earlier about that the whole FMCG industry is rapidly changing. Our companies need to change. We have companies within our group that successfully transformed into becoming a more sustainable company or provide better-for-you type of products to the market. We have companies that have been through the process of becoming B Corp certified. So we have the best practices within the group, and we share that knowledge with our entrepreneurs and subsidiaries. If we look here to the graph, in 2022, we had 43% of better-for-you or sustainable product of our total sales. Now, two years later, we have increased that percentage up to 50%. So we are part of this journey, and going forward, we'll continue to growing this percentage as we continue to grow as a company. So next up, new product development. Product, product, and product. I can't say it enough.
It's so important that you have the right type of product. We have great entrepreneurs within our companies that have the innovation, they have the creativity, and driving a lot of new ideas and concepts. But it's costly and time-consuming to go from an idea to actually translate that into a ready product. We help them in that journey, and our ambition is that within six months, to be able to go from idea to an actual ready product to be launched in the market. And this is not only an ambition, we're actually doing this. Jacob, our CEO from Chewigem or Chewo, he will go through this a little bit more in detail in his case presentation. But here, we have a USP. We act as a small player in the market, but we have the resources as a big one.
We have USP towards the big players. So next up, supplier leverage. Simon talked about it earlier. It's hard to find the right partner. You need to find a partner that you can trust, that will deliver on time, and keep the quality that you need. We have 18 production units globally with broad capabilities, and if we cannot produce internally, we have a vast network of external producers of more than 440 of them, where we've built relationship over time, and we know that we can trust these partners. This is very powerful for our companies to be able to connect to a platform like that. So next one is distribution leverage. So for many small or mid-sized enterprises, this is hard to gain the right market access.
You need to find the right distributor, the right agent, that will support you in your journey in your market. We have access to 82 markets globally where we sell to. We have 13 distribution units. We have 17 local offices around the world with sales presence. In the Nordics and Sweden, we have a very unique position. We built a platform that we call Nordic Distribution. Under this platform, we have full channel coverage. We can sell to pharmacies, we can sell to convenience trade, grocery trade, discount, to name a few. This is powerful because we can push out our products efficiently in the market, but also test our innovations. What's flying? What's not flying? Next up is investment resources. The hard truth is that it's costly to grow a company.
You either need to invest in machinery and CapEx, you need to negotiate with the banks for various financial solutions if you are on your own, or you tie up your capital in AR and inventory. We help our companies with this. As a group, we get better financial solutions and terms that we can provide to our companies. We build robust business cases and invest in where we see the demand. I would like to highlight two of our investments lately. So in bars production in Sweden, we have invested in the 5th and the 6th production line. This will give us an additional 30 million-40 million bars on an annual basis. We've invested in Natumin Pharma in Habo, in a fully automated drinking line. This will give us around 70 million cans on a yearly basis.
These investments would not have been possible if these companies wouldn't been part of Humble Group. They would have been possible, but not in such a short time period. So HQ services, last but not least. We provide a lot of services to our companies. So we help out with reporting, sustainability, and make sure that our companies are in compliance with local rules and regulations. Finance, we can help out with complex tax transactions, bringing accounting in-house to our finance team. Legal, legal is just a must. We need to have a very robust legal infrastructure. Framework agreements. We just procured a freight agreement in Sweden for all in and outbound freight. So here we combined the volumes for all our Swedish subsidiaries, and we have an estimated cost saving of 15%-18% on a yearly basis on our Swedish freight.
IT, this can be a maze. Some of our companies have had inefficient systems and costly IT support. We help them with this, let them migrate into the right systems and reduce the costs, and business insights, this is something that we are very proud of. We have built a state-of-the-art data platform. Today, we have 97% of all our financial data in real time. We can identify trends up or downwards in a swift manner and act on them. We can also have better discussions with our local management, and we have better oversight. We know what's going on out there based on the financial transactions in our companies. And our local management, they have this data, too. They are more well-informed and can make better business decisions in the day-to-day operations, so Humble Incubator, this is our innovation catalyst or hub.
Here, we gather all different ideas and concepts, and translate and transform this into new products, and then we produce it ourselves, or we produce it externally, we launch it under our own brand, a new brand, and we distribute it through our own channels. This hub, we have an ambition to launch more than 25 innovations on a yearly basis, and two of these innovations should have a material impact of a revenue potential exceeding SEK 100 million. Today, I would also like to highlight two of the great initiatives under this hub. Swedishcandy.com, we purchased this domain quite recently, and why did we do so? 'Cause as we speak, there is a huge boom or trend globally of Swedish-produced candy and the Swedish concept of pick and mix. We want to capitalize on this opportunity.
What we're going to do, we're going to launch a product of pick and mix already packed in a bag. So you will be able to get your top five favorites in sweet, in sour, in chocolate, in licorice, to name a few. In addition to that, we're also going to push our brands in sugar-reduced and sugar-free candy. So this will be very interesting to follow going forward. Next up, Babblarna. We entered into a joint venture agreement with them, so we have the exclusive rights to launch products branded with Babblarna within the FMCG market. And for you in this room who doesn't know what Babblarna is, Babblarna is one of Sweden's most popular kids' TV show, and it's for kids ranging from zero to four or five years old. If you go into Spotify top 100 songs in Sweden, yesterday they were at top 16.
That's how popular they are, and I have a three-year-old son at home, so I can tell you, I've been looking a lot at Babblarna lately. But, today, we want to show you, the newest product that we're going to launch under this initiative. So here's a video showcasing that.
You know it's Ba Ba. Ba Ba, Ba Ba, Ba, Ba, Ba. And this is Bi Bi. Bi, Bi, Bi. And here comes Bo Bo. Bo, Bo, Bo, Bo, Bo. This is Da Da. Da, Da, Da, Da, Da, Da. And this is Di Di. Di, Di, Di, Di, Di, Di, Di, Di, Di. And here comes Do Do. Do, Do, Do, Do, Do. Just shout it out! Get up and shake it, hands up in the air. And get 'em clapping, one, two, three. Romping and stomping and spinning and swinging. If you know the lyrics, sing with me. Ba Ba and Da Da and Bi Bi and Di Di and Bo Bo and Do Do, the Babblarna. Come on, everybody! Put your hands up and dance. Romping and stomping and spinning and swinging. If you know the lyrics, sing with me.
Ba Ba and Da Da and Bi Bi and Di Di and Bo Bo and Do Do, the Babblarna.
Yeah, I always get so happy when I see this video. I don't know if it's about the figures Babblarna or if it's about the products that we're gonna launch, but have to think about that. But to round things up and to summarize my session today, the more we work and learn our companies, the more synergies that we can utilize and drive value in those companies. We've also developed a model that works for us, and this model enables us to reach the full potential for many of our companies. And I think it's quite clear: product is everything, and we like innovation and driving innovation, so we will continue with our product development to find the next big thing. So thank you so much for listening to my session. So, Emily?
Yes. Thank you, Marcus. I feel like I wanna dance when I hear that video. I don't know if it's only me. Thank you for introducing that and kind of setting the tone for today. Let's bring up Simon, too, for just a short Q&A session before we take a break, and we're actually ahead of time. I don't know if that ever happens, so good job on your part.
That's good.
Okay, so Marcus, let me start with asking you the synergy levels that you mentioned. Can you quantify them in any way? How often do you use layer one, two, three, for example?
Yes. So, as I explained, level one is for all our companies, so all of them can use them. Layer two, I would say 90% of our companies can utilize those type of synergies. And layer three, one-third. That's the platforms where we have those type of synergies.
This is always a standing question when it comes to integrating acquisitions or portfolio companies. I mean, a general standard for, I think, throughout every sector is, like, it take 18 months to fully integrate or something like that. Is that applicable to you, too, since you acquired 47, like, two years ago?
As we are a decentralized organization, we do not fully integrate all our companies, but once we've decided when we want to integrate, I can make sure that it doesn't take 18 months. I would say three to six months from start to finish, and we have a very clear picture of what we want to do, because in the due diligence phase, we connect all of the companies to our BI system, so at that stage, we have a very kind of robust data inflow to understand the businesses better.
Mm-hmm, and Simon, in your presentation, you talked about 40,000 products. I'm guessing that SKU is a sector term for product or brand?
Single consumer unit.
There you go, and why so many? Is there a risk in widening the product portfolio too much, or is there rationale between them?
I mean, when it comes to products, it's all about if we can... That's 40,000, if you look at the change from the last two years, that's the net change. So of course, we have developed a lot of new products and also discontinued some products. So it's all about finding products that has a great fit and traction in the market, where we have enough sales velocity to start scaling with new retailers. And that's also some part of the stability in our model. We create new products, we bring them out to stores, and they continue to sell and grow in new stores.
With that in mind then, what criteria does a company have to meet to make you be interested in having them in your group?
I mean, for us, it's all about the long-term vision. Like, we want to find companies and entrepreneurs that wants to be part of our journey, where they see the upside of becoming part of Humble Group. They share the same mindset of where this industry needs to go. And also, I mean, of course, it has to be a nice company. We're very selective when we look at companies, strong, solid growth profile, historically, profitability, and most importantly, what can we do with this company together? But I think it's, in the end, it's all about people. Like, I have so many great people in our, in our group, and I really enjoy just talking to them and trying to be there and see what can we do. So great entrepreneurs having the same vision, I would say that's the most important criteria for us.
So nice, this nice business model, as well as nice people or culture.
I think nice people usually do good things.
Okay, sounds good. Happy that you have the experience, and you know how to do this. But what is your biggest challenge when it comes to managing so many portfolio companies, integrating them?
I would say to kind of do your best picks, because there's so much opportunities out there, and we really need to make sure that we capitalize on the right one, 'cause we can't do all of them. So that's a big challenge, and especially because of our entrepreneurs, they have a lot of passion and come up with a lot of new ideas, so we need to brainstorm a lot together with them.
Simon?
Yeah, I would agree. I mean, there are so many opportunities. Every day, we have new opportunities, but to really find, you know, the low-hanging fruits, what is the highest certainty of execution and value growth? So, I think that's also the challenge, but the opportunity.
Okay, so like I said, we're very much ahead of time. Yes, I see, mister, you have a question, but we'll wait for that at the end. But thank you for being passionate about joining in. So, and you online, I would like to just remind you how you submit your questions. You do it just underneath the video frame. I will see them. I can ask them as we go along. But for now, that actually concludes the first part. Thank you so much for now, Marcus and Simon-
Thank you
... for kicking us off. We're gonna have a short break. I'm thinking maybe start at 2:10 P.M. again, if that is possible. So for you online as well, start a little bit earlier than it says on the agenda, 2:10 P.M., and help yourself to coffee or energy drinks. I'll see you then. Okay, welcome back. For you watching online for this next segment, and for all of you who is here in the room, I hope you have you feel refreshed after a coffee or energy drink or whatever you may have provided yourself with during the break. So far, we have listened to what Humble is and how Humble works with their companies. Now, we intend to give you some more detail into the four different business segments.
So you're gonna hear from Simon again, CEO, to kind of run you through the different segments. There will also be a couple of portfolio companies presenting their case for you as well. So take it away, Simon.
Thank you, Emily, and thank you, everyone. Hope you had a nice snack or drink. To kick things off, we're gonna start talking about future snacking. So our future snacking segment consists of all types of candy you can imagine. We have everything from gummies, foam-coated chocolate, and then we also have additional products in terms of spreads. We have bakery product without sugar, we have plastic-free chewing gums, and you can see some of our products over here to the left. A really interesting KPI is that we actually produce more than 8,000 tons of candy in Sweden within Humble Group. And talking about candy, I mean, the candy industry is huge. It has a long history of strong CAGR, and if you look at this, it's clear that the sugar-reduced part of the candy industry is lagging behind.
In Sweden today, we have more than 50% sales of cola zero versus traditional cola, but the sugar-reduced market for candy is far behind the original market, and there is a good reason for that. Historically, there hasn't been any really good replacement for sugar. Companies have been doing sugar-free candy since the 1970s, and they have been using maltitol. Maltitol is a good sweetener to replace sugar taste-wise and texture. But if we would have maltitol in the candy, there would be a queue to the toilet downstairs, I can tell you that, because it ruins your stomach. So we have a patented process of Eureba, where we combine different sweeteners. We create a homogeneous molecule that actually tastes and behaves like sugar in production, and without the same laxative problems you get from maltitol, and this is what we have done with that.
In 2019, the Swedish market was around 0.5% with the biggest retailer, brands using maltitol. In the last four years, we have not only killed the competition, we have more than 90% market share, we have also grown it to 3%. I don't know if I should be proud of that or disappointed, because when we look at what we have done in Norway since launch in Q1 this year, with Kiwi, we have 12.5% of the packed candy sales goods in value. We have the number one selling SKU of all candy, 27% higher than the second product. So the transition from traditional candy to sugar-reduced candy is going faster in Norway than in Sweden. But Sweden is a market where the pricing is tough.
But this gives me a feeling that I think we're gonna have a really interesting time when we expand into new international markets. And mind you all, in the beginning of this week, we launched Pändy in the U.S. And Marcus earlier talked about what we have done in Arena Confectionery. I think it's fantastic, and it's better quality than ever. We have increased the output, and to the left here, you can actually see that the second part of our value creation model is working. In 2020, Grahns had 2% sugar-free candy, which is more than most candy manufacturers. On an LTM base, we're up to 20%, and in the second quarter this year, we were doing 30%. So we actually transform our companies. We make a difference. We have an impact.
This is also interesting from a profitability perspective, because the earnings per produced ton, when you look at the machine hours, is higher on this sort of value-add product with a higher pricing to the consumer. We have also been talking about the Swedish Candy phenomenon. I'm so excited about this, and I urge you all to go in to see for yourself the hashtag Swedish Candy. That's what everybody is using. We own the IP on that. So today, we also want to share a bit about strategic initiatives that we are driving, specifically in our different segments. And this is an illustration of what we currently deem as the revenue potential of a few of our selected initiatives that we are working on execution.
We have the scaling to check on second shift with Grahns and Franssons, which is currently up and running, and we have the True Co. and Pändy, where we're focusing on international expansion. Very exciting. We also have the Swedish Candy international launch that is due for the coming months. We have the Fancystage that I mentioned earlier, where we have just invested in a new line for bakery products, chocolate products, muffins, croissants. And then we are also, as we have communicated before, we acquired a lot, you see, because we knew that even if we increase the capacity in our candy facilities, the demand is huge. We haven't been able to take in new customers in a long period of time, and our brands are starting to take up all the capacity because they're growing so quickly.
So we are evaluating options to see, okay, we might need another bigger factory as well. So now it's time for the first case presentation of today, True Co. And it was called True Gum when we acquired them. Now it's True Co., and we acquired them in November 2021. This is a fantastic company and brand, looking at the growth they've had historically and also what we have in store for us in the future. But I'm not gonna talk more about, about that. I will bring the star of True Co. up on stage. Welcome, Jacob, the CEO and founder of True Co.
Thanks a lot for inviting me on stage, Simon. I'll quickly switch over to my slides on this day. So, on the screen here, you can see our three hero products in True Co. It's plastic-free chewing gum, True Gum, it's plant-based mint pastilles, True Mints, and it's candy-flavored dates under the brand True Dates. True Co. started as True Gum back in two thousand and seventeen. We were four friends who realized that all the chewing gum that we had grown up with was partially made with plastic, plastics as we know it from our everyday products. And that's why we wanted to develop a plastic-free chewing gum, and out of that grew True Gum. It took us a year to develop a plastic-free chewing gum, setting up our own small factory at the time, and launched in two thousand and eighteen.
It has gone well since then. Our journey has developed successfully, and today we are 40 employees. We have our own factory, we have our own product development, we have our own internal sales and marketing function, selling to +3 0,000 stores internationally and in around 30 countries. Our mission about doing good, where on health and on sustainability with our products, is rooted in our DNA since we started from plastic-free chewing gum. Today, we are on a mission to make mouth refreshments and candy replacements healthier and more sustainable, and what is that market opportunity that we have seen that made us able to live out that mission? Well, oh, sorry. Can I-- Yeah, here. That is a market opportunity that Simon also described in his introduction slides.
In our product categories, we have like a classic innovation deadlock situation in FMCG. You have big companies in big categories with large market shares and large sales to protect. At the same time, their machinery and supply chain is geared for producing their existing products. But also at the same time, sometimes big trends and consumer pressures are emerging, actually, requiring big brands to turn maybe their products upside down or launch bold innovation. But the big companies, they're just so locked into their existing products, that they have a limited ability and incentive to deliver on the big market trends. And that's the market opportunity that we acted on. Consumers, they want innovation on health and sustainability, and they want it from brands that genuinely mean it.
That's how we emerged as True Company, and is now today the category captain within mouth refreshments and also starting up in candy replacements. How do we then do it in True Company? Operations first, we have always forced ourselves to be realistic about the requirements to succeed internationally and long term. For us, that has forced us to set up a mega setup where we have ability to move fast on innovation and launch bold innovation, and at the same time produce quality with agility and cost competitively. Therefore, we have set up our own factory, producing in a suburb to Copenhagen, where we produce our three products, and we source directly from suppliers. We have our own internal product development, and that enables us to stay competitive and on the forefront of innovation in the long term.
We then sell our products with our internal sales and marketing function, which leads me to my next slide. Because, as mentioned, we have three brands. We started with True Gum back in two thousand and eighteen, launched True Mints in 2020, and this year we launched our candy flavor dates. Although they are a little bit different, but also a little bit similar, they share the same company purpose or brand purpose. And that's a promise we make to consumers, that this, regardless of which product we launch, we try to avoid plastic as much as we can. We try to pack in the most sustainable packaging. We only use natural flavors. We use plant-based sweeteners when we need sweeteners. We don't add sugar. We produce in our own factory in Denmark, and it's produced by us, a B Corp certified company.
That's a brand promise that we all inwardly believe in, and that's also a lot of our customers. They also believe in it, and that's why they don't just consume our True Gum. They also buy into True Mints and True Dates because they believe in the company behind it. So about sales, we are a company that we are active, as I mentioned, in around thirty countries, but we're also active across segments, selling in everyday low price retailers, in supermarkets, in health stores, in travel retail, in non-food retailers, and more. And, as on this slide, you can see some of our big customers, especially in Europe, and this is distribution that we built up over time with True Gum and True Mints.
But having those existing customer relationships enabled us to launch True Dates fast because they believed in our ability to build great products and launch them successfully. And that is the type of cross-selling that we believe has huge potential for us going forward. Like True Dates benefited from True Gum and True Mints having good customer relationships, we expect to see the same the other way around. True Dates has opened up our everyday low price segment, a segment that we have historically not been great in with True Gum and True Mints. Now, True Dates is a great success in there, and we believe that we can now also get the mints and gums in there on the success of True Dates.
Speaking about those candy flavored dates, this is a project that we, that actually the idea came to life in November last year, and we launched the product on the market already seven months after. In fact, or six months, if we count from the day that we delivered to the customers. That is an extremely fast development that wouldn't be possible if we weren't part of Humble Group. I just want to reflect a bit on how we managed to get an idea and launch a product on the market in such a short time. The idea actually came in a meeting that we had together with the Humble Group management. It wasn't our idea; it was actually an idea that came from Humble Group. They are active in a lot of markets.
They get inspirations from that, that we don't get, and that's a benefit of being in the group. More ideas to the table, and that was an idea that we believed in. Then we believed in the idea, and we wanted to develop the product, and we needed to create the recipes, set up the supply network, and establish the production line. Especially on the latter part, establishing the production line, it was also a huge benefit being a part of Humble Group. We consulted with other Humble Group subsidiaries that have their own production, asked them how they would address different challenges, and with their help, we managed to set up the factory and do it all in five months. In May this year, we launched them, and we launched broadly from the first month, and that's due to also working together with Humble Group subsidiaries on distribution.
We all know each other, and we have been in dialogue throughout the development of the project. So in due time, we were presenting it to retailers, we were giving them samples, and we had built a strategy together on how to launch it broadly in Scandinavia together. And we did it successfully, thanks to good collaboration on distribution within Humble Group. And double-clicking on that distribution, an example is that we have in True Co., we have sold more than one million bags of True Dates in less than four months to the Norwegian market. That is a fantastic start. It's actually a tremendous start that we are very happy about, we are encouraged about it, and we're also proud of it. But it's not just us who did it.
It's actually also, we have launched with and through another Humble Group subsidiary, Vitalkost, and we actually have Toto, the CEO of the Vitalkost here in the room. And Toto, we have been a lot in dialogue about this project, and we have launched it together, which is a, which is a really great start. But Toto and his team, they presented the product to the trades in April, and within four months, we now have listings nationally across Norway, in Rema 1000, in 7-Eleven, in Narvesen, in Sunkost, and Life. And the launch has been going really great. Consumers are buying the products. They are taking them home, recommending friends and family to buy it.
The latter part is something that really makes me believe that the great start here with one million bags is just a start of something really great with True Dates in Norway. We have now been part of Humble Group for almost three years, and I also wanted to take this opportunity to share some of the experiences that we had from being part of Humble Group for three years. First and foremost, on paper, we sold our ownership for the company, but we continue to feel as entrepreneurs, and we continue to feel a sense of ownership. They don't micromanage us. They don't control us. They support us, they work with us, and we build the company with their support. That is a really energizing thing to feel for everybody in True Co.
Secondly, what we saw with the True Dates project is that by being part of a larger group with direct access on a lot of markets, we get more ideas and more inspiration to the table. It brings more innovation out in the end, and when we then have those ideas, we can quicker develop the products, and that is also exemplified through our True Dates experience. Also, what we've seen, and we knew that from the beginning, that being part of Humble Group can enable us to scale distribution faster, especially in the Nordics part, also beyond, and that's also something we've seen with True Dates, but also with our other products. Finally, looking ahead, it's really nice to be part of a company where we are not just reporting quarterly numbers or having quarterly meetings, we actually have a frequent dialogue.
They contact us proactively. We can get hold of them on short notice when we need it. That's a really important thing for us to always stay innovative and fast-moving as an entrepreneurial company. My final slide here is about the plan ahead, and I'm really excited for the period ahead because if we just stay true to our impact-driven mission, our high ambitions, if we continue to focus on innovation, having that muscle to bring our products fast, producing quality at good price, being a reliable partner for the retail, and scaling and building brands, then I think we can... or I firmly believe that we can continue or even accelerate the growth journey that we've been on.
Specifically on the dates, since I've been talking a lot about those, I believe that we can, over the next year, sell SEK 150 million of True Dates, which would be a really big also boost for our company and help us take us to the next level. So thanks for listening in to me, and I'll give the floor to Simon again.
Thank you, Jacob. I mean, it's truly an inspirational journey to follow and be part of this, and I'm so amazed with what the team in True Co. has done, and we're all really very excited about the future. Next up, we're gonna go through the Sustainable Care segment, and Sustainable Care is, as I mentioned earlier, personal care and home care product. In this segment, we have a vast assortment of everything from candles to diapers to cleaning products, shampoo, and even reusable bags. A funny note here is that we actually sell more than 15 million toothbrushes per year. That's almost twice the size of Swedish population. The natural care market is an interesting market. It has strong CAGR historically, and we have a few of our hero brands within this segment covered.
In general, this is a part of the segment that have had a quite tough market with the consumer price sensitivity, with all the inflation, higher interest costs, and less to spend in their wallet. We are, for the first time in two years, starting to see an increased sales velocity out from stores in these brands. I firmly believe that we have a bounce back in the cards for us in this segment. In the rest of the segment, we have a great setup of different production capabilities. We have both wet and dry production for personal care and home care products, and we also produce our own candles. I think it's really interesting to see also the journey that Diószeghy Candle has done here over the last few years, looking at their total CO2 emissions from oil in relation to net sales.
Then the middle part of this slide, we have our setup of private label solutions and distribution. Here we have three companies that provide retailers and consumers with great products every day, from manufacturing to store. In this segment, we also have some really interesting initiatives going on. We have already elaborated on Babblarna, and the products are due for launch in short. Naty has one of the biggest launches since inception up and coming in the coming months. We acquired a company in Germany called Marabu, and we are now looking to see how we can expand their offer from only personal care products to a wider assortment, helping all of our Humble brands into the Central European market. Natumin Pharma is a great facility, and there is a lot of capacity left.
So what we have done here is to really start working proactively with sales, and we have a lot of interesting customers ahead of us. And then last, we have the Solent business model. Solent has been really, really strong in executing on taking their business model from U.K. and doing it so successfully into South Africa and Australia. And their business model would work really well here in the Nordics and Central Europe. So this is something that we're gonna work with together with Solent and some of our subsidiaries to take their business model, their fantastic assortment, and that great sourcing and bringing it into our key markets. And speaking of Solent, this is our next case presentation coming up. Solent is the group's biggest company, and I'm happy it is, because look at that history.
Fantastic organic growth, high cash conversion, and it represents 30% of our EBITDA. With that said, I've been speaking enough about Solent. We have the stars of the show coming up. Welcome, Ashley and David.
Thank you, Simon, and thanks to Simon and the executive board for inviting myself and David here today, so my name's Ashley Simmons. I'm the CEO for Solent Group, and I've been with the business for 20 years.
My name is David Ralph. I'm the Chief Financial Officer of Solent, and I've been at the company for 23 years.
So mine and David's hope today is to give you an insight into who Solent are, our infrastructure, how we do what we do, and the scale that we believe and the potential we have now that we're part of Humble Group. So first and foremost, our mission as Solent is to inspire, manufacture, and deliver products that make people feel better in a sustainable way. We do that across four key categories: personal care and beauty, where our in-house product development and laboratory teams develop and manufacture all kinds of personal care and beauty products, everything from hair care, skin care, body care. Across home care, we manufacture and develop cleaning products, washing, laundry, and reusable bags, as Simon mentioned.
Across food and snacks, we specialize in ambient grocery and across nutrition and wellness, which is actually a new division for the business, with the integration of the Go Superfoods business, which has been part of Humble for around three years. And they specialize in superfood ingredients and also bulk powders for several of the sports nutrition brands and some of the biggest brands globally. As Simon mentioned, we're SEK 1.4 billion in terms of turnover, but our infrastructure is about 200 people globally across our 8 offices, 4 of which are based in the U.K., where we have warehouse and distribution facilities. We've got an office in Cape Town, which services our South Africa market, and also in Hong Kong, Shanghai, and Vietnam. And we service over 400 customers, but I'm gonna mention that briefly in a second.
And we work with 125 manufacturing sites globally. And we work predominantly across private label, but we also work with licensed products, with tertiary brands developed in-house, and also own brands by Solent. In terms of our customer split, I think you can see from this slide, this scale of Solent, and we work with everybody from premium grocery retailers, the likes of Marks and Spencer, Woolworths South Africa, Spinneys in the UAE, core grocery, so the likes of Tesco, Morrisons, Sainsbury's, Asda, Aldi, et cetera, the Coles and Woolworths Australia. But also we work with the value retailers, which, with the economic climate over the last few years, has become ever more important, the likes of Poundland, Home Bargains, B&M, Savers, et cetera. And with the Go Superfoods business, we also now have an incredibly large presence on direct-to-customer.
We're actually doing around GBP 10 million with Amazon, for example, and Ocado, who go direct to consumers.
...One of the most exciting parts about this scale is actually the breadth and depth helps us to have an incredible resilience against some of the economic factors in the market. But also, we haven't really yet untapped the potential of not only the synergies between the Go Superfoods businesses and Solent, where Solent have quite a small presence direct to customer, and vice versa, Go Superfoods into retail. But also, we haven't yet really untapped fully the potential of the customers which are within the Humble Group, which Solent don't serve. So I think it gives us huge future potential in terms of our scale and reach.
So just talking now about some of the sales development and a bit more about the business in terms of its scale.
As we can see on here, the turnover development's gone from SEK 905 million in FY 2021, to just over SEK 1.4 billion in our last financial year, FY 2023. While that represents a CAGR of 25%, so we're very pleased with that, the number that particularly pleases us is the SEK 1.4 billion . In our home currency of GBP, that took us over 100 million GBP turnover for the first time in our company's history, so we're very proud of that milestone achievement. That turnover growth has come across all the sectors in our business, but it's been particularly strong in our health and beauty and our bags divisions. In terms of scale, our COGS that we spend is just under SEK 1 billion per annum.
About 65% of that spend is in Asia, primarily in China and Vietnam, with the bulk of the remaining purchases coming from the U.K. and European supply. We ship about 1,800 TEUs per year, so that equates to about 900 forty-foot containers. So we've got quite a large shipping footprint, which we can talk about in some of the future slides. About 25% of our turnover are on FOB terms at the port of origin. So that not only helps protect us against the volatility of some of the shipping that we've seen, but it also provides natural hedging for our other major currency pairing, which is U.S. dollar.
In terms of reach, our products are available in at least 60 countries, but I'm sure if we kind of went on a bit of a road trip, I'm sure we could find them in a few more. Leaning back to some of the earlier points, we've always not only had a focus at Solent for delivering high turnover growth at profitable levels, but for turning that into profit into cash. As we can see here, we've been able to, since joining Humble in 2021, we've been able to distribute some significant amount of money back via dividends and loan repayments. This continues to remain a key focus for us and our teams, 'cause we recognize the importance of that cash generation of profit to support the other activities that we looked at earlier regards to investments and M&A activity.
Having given you a little bit of an insight around kind of how Solent in terms of our infrastructure, we wanted to give you a bit more of a flavor of how we do business as entrepreneurs. I think as Solent, we operate in what could be classed as commodity categories, which gives us the high volume, but we take a very, very different approach to private label and to the brands that we manufacture. We like to inject value into these categories. We like to utilize innovation, development, and market disruption to really stretch private label categories and drive mutual value for not only us and Humble, but for our customer partners.
I think in terms of the how we do business and how we spot the trends and personalize these proposals for our customer partners and execute them, before I give you a bit more detail, I wanted to show you a very short video as to some of the innovations that we've launched over the past two to three months and we're gonna be launching just before Christmas this year.
... I hope you all agree that gives a real flavor of how we as Solent look differently at private label and the products that we produce. Our in-house teams do a tremendous job of adding that value and that innovation, whether it's microbiome-friendly skincare, whether it's click bag technology, which disrupts the bag market, or finding new manufacturing technologies to bring healthier snacking to consumers. To give you a real live example and a bit of a deeper understanding of how we do this with our customer partners and how our partners trust us to deliver this for them, I wanted to give you an example around Marks and Spencer's. So, hopefully most of you have been into a Marks and Spencer store or certainly heard of them, one of the best premium grocers on the planet.
One of their biggest challenges was that they're known as a top-up shop. People will go in with a basket, but they won't really do a full, complete shop. They'll go to a different supermarket to perhaps buy their baby products or buy their household products. They came to us as a strategic partner and said, "How can we solve this problem?" So we developed a team, which then deployed essentially some bespoke market insights, and we use our teams. We do use Kantar, IRI, but we actually do personalized focus groups, where we talk to customers in store, understand why they're shopping, where they're shopping. We then put that together in a tailored presentation, and we actually then develop around that customer needs state.
So in this particular example, where we developed products which were very similar to what you would find in the brands, we completely changed that. We put essential oils into the fragrances, developed with French perfumers. We designed a new bottle and tooled it bespoke that nobody else in the market could copy, with 50% post-consumer plastic. And we then put together a totally new range architecture. So not just the products or the manufacturing, but then actually taking that to doing the planograms for the retailers. So we're essentially making ourselves an extension of the retailer buying team. We then, on launch, do bespoke marketing plans with press packs to influencers, targeted to those key markets and customers that we want.
And I'm really pleased to say that the work we did on this particular case study, which launched in January of this year, not only did we win three global awards for the products themselves, but the sales and market share, most importantly, is up 105%. So it shows that this approach to strategic partnerships really drives mutual value and long-term relationships with our customer partners. So I'll hand over to Dave to talk a little bit more about how do we take this model, and where's the opportunities within the Humble Group?
So this slide here shows the Humble Group company structures across the board. I think we've seen from the earlier slides about the size and the scale of Solent, which leading back to some of the earlier slides, where we can support that platform. We've already got an established platform. We've got the established structure to allow us to kick on and help support into those activities. Earlier this year, the board of Humble entrusted us with Go Superfoods, as the founder was transitioning out of the business. We're pleased to say that's really started very successfully, and we're seeing some strong year-on-year performance there.
Highlighted in yellow is the companies within the Humble Group that we're already either trading with, we've got advanced dialogue with, or where we've seen really key opportunities where we can trade with in the future. We'll talk about those in the next couple of slides, but what I find really interesting and exciting from here is all the companies that are not currently marked, because undoubtedly, when we start digging into those, there is gonna be a huge amount of opportunity as well there we can leverage.
I think, you know, the Humble brand distribution and consolidation is just the start. So actually bringing the best brands from the Humble Group into our key markets in the U.K. and South Africa and Australia, which not only accelerates the growth of those brands, but also means where we have external distribution relationships and added cost, we can save that cost and put that back into profitability or reinvest that into the brands. Solent private label model, that market disruptive model of driving value in private label, is one that we firmly believe is relevant for the Humble Group markets, such as Scandinavia and helping with Body Science team in Australia as well. So that's definitely something that we plan in the next 6- 12 months, of how do we roll that out across the Humble markets where Solent aren't operating?
Vertically integrated manufacturing. Marcus mentioned it earlier today, and we have an opportunity as an example with, say, Fancystage, one of the group manufacturing plants based in Portugal, where they are world-class at manufacturing liquid fill and beauty products. Can we move some of that from our external partners into their business? Just an easy win for the business, shorter lead times, and enhanced profitability. Joint purchasing, as David said, we're purchasing around SEK 1 billion at the moment, which is a considerable spend, and if you put that together with the rest of the group, how do we leverage that to ensure that we're buying as best as possible and utilizing that to drive our price competitiveness for our customers, but also improve our bottom line margins?
There's not only the commercial benefits that we can see from leveraging with the group, but there's a lot of operational synergies we can see, and this leans into Marcus's presentation earlier. From a logistics perspective, as I said earlier, we purchase about 1,800 containers a year. We're currently working with Marcus and his team to collect and to consolidate shipping activity from all the rest of the subsidiary group companies, who are maybe shipping smaller volumes on a bit more of an ad hoc scale. There's a clear opportunity here to consolidate and negotiate this contract centrally for freight and manage these centrally.
This not only uses the group leverage to ensure that we've got that best buying power and that we've got the certainty behind cost, but also as well, gives us the availability of equipment and the reliability of service, and again, with the growth aspirations, that's gonna be essential as well. In terms of back office functions, when there's growth, there's always an opportunity to look at consolidate functions such as accounting and legal. We look at this not just in terms of head count, but making sure these departments are fit for future, that they're able to service the business and the growth, and getting information to the teams accurately and as quickly as possible. So we've looked to this.
Our approach to this is generally through looking at the ERP system, optimizing the ways that these are being used, automation of processes, standardization of reporting, and also the standardization with KPIs and metrics and measurements of these tools. And again, we started implementing this in Go Superfoods. It's early days, but we're seeing some really strong benefits from that already. And there's undoubtedly huge amount of expertise across the business and skills in all of these functions that we've got up here.
By creating centers of excellence, I think this will give the platform for those departments to really knowledge share, accelerate that R&D and that knowledge across the group, to reset the standards group-wide of policies and systems, and also to ensure they coordinate activities across each of those functions to really maximize the impact of each of those, and I think that would create a real step change in the growth of the business. So in summary, I think you've heard today around Solent, you know, we're a SEK 1.4 billion , including Go Superfoods, around SEK 1.6 billion business. We have a maturity in the key markets, and we believe a formula of entrepreneurship that is applied in a way in which we can really drive value and disrupt value for our customers and jointly drive profitability for our group.
By utilizing our over thirty-year reputation to be trusted to be the strategic partner for our customers, we believe that we can leverage that reputation to really capitalize on the scale that you've heard from Simon and the executive team today in the broader Humble Group. So thank you for listening to myself and David, and I'll hand back to Simon.
Well, thank you, guys. I think it's clear that with a fantastic team in Solent and their history of delivering, it's one of the key things that make me sleep good at night, so thank you. Next up, we have the segment of Quality Nutritio n. In Quality Nutrition , we are the leading Nordic manufacturer of sport nutrition products. We also have the leading Australian brand in sport nutrition, and as you can see, we have a vast range of products here, everything from powders, protein bars, capsules, tablets, energy drinks, you name it. And one key KPI that I think is really cool to show here is that we actually produce 3,500 tons worth of protein powder in Sweden. The sport nutrition market, in general, is strong, 16.6% CAGR the last years, and we're just getting started.
People are understanding that sport nutrition as supplements is a great way for you to have as a complement to your daily intake, and as Marcus explained about Arena Confectionery, this is one of the other platforms that we're really proud about. We acquire different companies with different capabilities, and we have now combined forces here together under one umbrella. We are a one-stop shop of really premium quality products produced in the Nordics. To the left here, we exhibited Vitafoods in May this year with a lot of really interesting leads from customers that want to use Arena Nutrition as their full service provider. One of the initiatives I want to highlight specifically in this segment is our bars production in Sweden.
When we acquired this company, it was doing less than SEK 100 million in sales, and we saw a huge opportunity to scale this because the demand is so strong that they have, despite our efforts to scale this and scaling the production line significantly, totaling a potential of plus 500 million in revenue once we have line five and six. We have already sold the available capacity we're gonna scale with next year, and we have a lot of customers waiting. We even have some of our brands fighting to get space in that really, really tight capacity that we have today. This is also one of the segments where we have so many interesting initiatives. Ewalco, our powder producer, they have had a hard time keeping up with the demand on their existing customers. Mind you, they provide powders to all the leading Nordic protein brands.
But we moved the candy production this summer to a separate site, which will enable them to step into a second shift. In the candy site, we have also invested in the capability to do dates. So we are gonna support the True Co. to keep up with the demand, but also not only that, we will continue to deliver private label flavor dates to the market because nobody else has it. In Natumin Pharma, we started our project with acquisition of a drink line last summer, and we have now invested into fully automate the drink line, which is currently doing the trials and will be fully up and running in Q4 to start scaling contract manufacture to external customers, but also bringing in several million counts that we produce externally today in-house and keep that full profitability margin.
We have some really interesting scaling initiatives with Body Science and Swc arb internationally, and we also acquired a bar line in Australia that we have vertically integrated and launched the first soft bar in Australia, the best-selling bar in Australia, and we're really excited to scale that continuously. And next up, we have our third case presentation. This is Body Science. We acquired the company in August 2022, and as you can see, the trajectory here is fantastic. They were number three in the market. Now, I'm proud to say we are the number one sports nutrition brand in Australia... That is a trophy to have and to continue to have. So I want to show you what did we do to do that, and we have a video coming up next from the Body Science team to demonstrate their full capability and what they're doing across the globe.
Hey, I'm Sheree Young. I'm one of the founding partners and current CEO for the Australian group for Humble Group, which is Body Science International. BSc is in our 25th year of trading in Australia. We are one of Australia's oldest and most successful sports nutrition brands, which we're really proud to lead.
Dances one way-
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-ducks back the other, Teddy's there!
One of the success pieces in our business is the tenure of our staff. We have got a really solid, capable team that have been with us for so many years. The average tenure in our business is 12 years. 50% of our staff have been with us 12 years. For a 25-year-old business, we're really, really proud of that. A lot of our team have grown with us, and we've grown with them. One of the promises that we made to the team when Humble Group acquired us a couple of years ago was that it would be business as usual, and we're really impressed to see that the Humble Group structure has delivered on that, and it really is business as usual.
We've been able to provide a lot of safe and secure pathways for our staff, which is ongoing, and as importantly, we've been able to deliver our brand promise in a very consistent way.
Hey, team, Greg Young here, founder of Body Science. Twenty-five years ago, I saw something missing in the marketplace when it came to sports nutrition. Very much a bodybuilding-based environment here in Australia, and I could see the world was changing, and we're probably the original brand that went sport and fitness. Back in the late 1990s, the fitness industry was vastly different to what it is today. The internet was still in infancy. Access to information about nutrition and supplementation was limited. Bodybuilding and fitness enthusiasts relied on magazines, word of mouth, trial and error to navigate their fitness journeys. It was during this time I recognized a significant gap in the market, a need for high-quality, scientifically backed supplements that could enhance athletic performance and overall wellness.
In 1999, I founded BSc Supplements with a clear vision: to create products that not only met the needs of athletes but also reflected the values of integrity, innovation, and excellence. Our mission was simple: to provide the best nutritional supplements and empower individuals to push and pursue their fitness goals with confidence. If you want to talk about success metrics at BSc, two people come to mind, Sheree and Nathan. Nathan joined the brand in the early 2000s in a sales role, and we've never looked back from that day.
The company I was working for in 2002 had a sponsors cruise on Sydney Harbor, where I met Greg Young, the founder of BSC. Greg and I got to talking about how passionate we were about sport and Greg's ambition to make BSC the number one sports nutrition brand in Australia. In the early years, the cornerstone of BSC's marketing strategy had been its commitment to elite-level athletes and teams, which began in 2002 when we partnered with our first official team, the Sydney Roosters. We joined them halfway through the year, and they went on to win the grand final that year. The victory put sports nutrition on the map, prompting many teams and other codes to take notice of the brands and the benefits we provided. Partnerships with the elite-level teams underscored the trust the athletes had in BSC, especially regarding safety and efficacy of the products.
We're the first brand to be selected to launch in Informed Sport in Australia and the first brand to launch HASTA, both leading drug testing companies, providing banned-substance-free and rigorous testing of the products. Today, BSc remains the leading sports nutrition brand in Australia, the number one choice for elite-level athletes, Olympians, and teams.
As we moved into the 2000s, the fitness landscape began to evolve rapidly. The rise of social media transformed the way we connected with our community, and it became easier for fitness enthusiasts to share their journeys, challenges, and successes. BSc grew alongside this boom.
Hi, I'm Chloe Green. I'm the head of marketing, and I look after the marketing team here. So we have a fairly substantial in-house team who looks after everything from creative concepting and development through to dispatching out to media houses and retailers. We have a team here that look after all of our social and digital media, as well as engaging with influencers, athletes, and elite sports teams. In any given year, we launch a variety of products across protein bars, powders, supplements, and drinks. So my team looks after the launch and support of all of those products, as well as maintaining general marketing across our entire brand to ensure we're supporting the brand awareness and conversion across the board.
Here we go. Callum Robson digs into this one, drops in, trains through this section, spit and the exit for Callum Robson.
Are you kidding me? You know what I'm here for. It's not small, where I'm placing bets, but I'm not keeping score.
Our commitment to innovation quality has always been at the forefront of what we do. We invest heavily in research and development, collaborating with the top sports scientists and nutritionists to ensure that our products deliver real results on and off the field of play. We are proud to have developed cutting-edge formulations that cater to diversity, from energy and recovery to weight management and overall health.
Hi, I'm Mark Robinson, in-house Body Science dietician.
... former fitness model, world champion, cover of multiple magazines, and now the dietician over here at Body Science, working in compliance and regulatory. So I make sure that our products are according to food law, supplement law, and therapeutic guidelines. I'm also involved in the new product development side, so we get to bring out heaps of new products and ensure that they are scientifically formulated and up to trend.
Winning means persistence, purpose, and the reason why I fight. Losing is always an option, I just don't want to choose it. I'm Tyson Pedro, UFC light heavyweight.
One of the really exciting things that we've been able to be a part of the last 12 months is the acquisition of a manufacturing facility, so Bars Production Australia, which forms part of the group here in Australia, it's actually based in Sydney. There was an acquisition of an existing plant, and we were able to keep the staff and the infrastructure in that business, so it's now fully operational, and the really great thing is it's now pumping out tens of thousands of BSc bars, enables us to take our brand to a whole new space, so the technology for those bars was brought in from Bars Production in Sweden.
Some of the secret ingredients and everything were able to be shared among the group, and we're able to deliver on what's now become a industry-winning, and in fact, our highest-selling bar in the country at the moment.
That was a big bite, and it was so worth it.
Body Science protein bar, first time I've had one, so let's see how it goes. Couldn't ask for better. Mm, that actually is really good.
The size and scale of our business has enabled us to attract international attention from other collaboration parties as well, and this year we were fortunate to formalize a collaboration with Violet Crumble, which is an Australian iconic confectionery brand. So we have a range of Violet Crumble-inspired protein bars and protein powders, and that's just enabled us to be more diverse in our marketplace and bring something new and exciting to our customers, and they are selling incredibly well. And that's really great to see the strength of our business and brand, how we're able to attract other global companies to us to be able to take our business further in Australia and New Zealand. This is Woolworths. It's Australia's biggest grocery partner and the biggest retail partner that we have in our business.
We get lots of opportunities to win together with Woolworths, and they've just posted a AUD 70 billion revenue score for the year, so they're a big growth partner for us. One of the great things that being part of Humble Group has been is utilization of resources, and we've been able to really lean into shared resources in our group with the acquisition of the bars facility. So my team here, who are very experienced and capable, are able to provide all the finance and payroll services to the bars factory, so we're looking at efficiencies continuously, and that will lead into HR policies, health and safety, all those sorts of things, so that we're utilizing our structure and efficiencies really well, as best we can.
As we look ahead to the future, I'm excited about the endless possibilities that lie before us. The world of fitness and nutrition is constantly evolving, and we're committed to staying at the forefront of this dynamic landscape. Our goal is to continue empowering individuals to embrace a healthier lifestyle, to challenge themselves, and to achieve greatness, whatever that may look like for them.
Body Science is really proud to be the first acquisition for Humble Group in Australia and New Zealand. It's just been a really natural transition. We've been happy to host some of the Humble executives here. They've had the opportunity to visit Humble Group in Sweden, and the whole transaction and ongoing process has been really incredibly successful. So we, we really look forward to seeing the way that this group can continue to expand, both here and, and around the world. At 25 years, BSC is still such a young company. We've achieved so much, and we just know there's so much left in our future. We can't wait to do this together.
This is your BSc.
Wow! So if you ever go to Australia, please go into some stores and look at Body Science. I think it was amazing when me and Marcus and Tobias were there last year, and really astonishing to see what they have done with the market and also leading the transformation with their products. With that being said, we have the last business segment coming up, Nordic Distribution. Initially, I spoke about Nordic Distribution and how this is an accelerator of growth and access to the market for us. Our distribution platform today covers all the different channels of trade. We dispatch more than 185,000 pallets annually from our warehouses, and one key objective when we started this segment is that we wanted to acquire companies that together could cover all the different channels of trade.
And today, we have companies that handles the grocery trade, specialty trade, discount, fitness, and pharma. And with the combined force of our companies, we are able to take new products, the True Dates being a great example of that, we bring them to our companies, they take their channel, and they get it out in the key retailers. During the last two years, we have also acquired five companies of Privab. And the reason for doing so is that we firmly believe that by combining these companies, we will reach a sufficient scale with Privab, which will make us an attractive partner as a wholesale and distribution partner to key retailers.
We have now combined the different entities, and under the leadership of Niklas, who's here today, the CEO of Privab, the previous seller of Trollhättan, we are now started to work together as one, consolidating the procurement, consolidating economy, and making sure we maximize the output to our customers. In Privab today, we also have three different concepts. The first concept is Energy Food. Energy Food is a shop-in-shop concept in gyms in Sweden, so this really taps well into our sports nutrition segment, where we are able to actually determine the concept. We own a part of the infrastructure of sports nutrition in Sweden. The second concept is Gottmix, and if you ask me, it is the best pick and mix concept in Sweden. Like, when I go into a store and see Gottmix, I get happy. I mean, I do eat regular candy sometimes as well.
We have more than 500 stores in Sweden, where we handle everything from product to the positioning and the merchandising with Gottmix, so we actually control part of the candy infrastructure in Sweden. We also have a shop concept, a franchise with MyWay, which serves a couple of hundred convenience stores, where we also determine the concept and are able to influence the franchisee with what products they should have in their assortment. But not only that, Privab is one of the exclusive suppliers, for instance, with Filmstaden, so if you want to go to the cinema and eat some candy or have a drink, that is distributed by Privab.
This is also something that we believe is really exciting, because with the scale we have now with this group of companies, we are actually able to act on bigger distribution and wholesale contracts. This really leads into our strategic growth initiatives for Nordic Distribution. Like we have mentioned earlier today, Swedish candy is booming globally, and we currently have more export demand inbound with Privab than we can handle. We are now starting to figure out, okay, how can we scale it externally outside of Sweden and supply other companies with the bulk product or pick and mix? We also have an ongoing, really exciting consolidation with GSD that is gonna start in a couple of months, where we will help more of our companies to scale their sales.
GSD is a fantastic company, started from 200 million, now + 500 million three years later. They are really good at selling, and they will help some of our companies with that. And then last but not least, Privab in Privab, we have several really interesting initiatives ongoing. Exclusive distribution contracts with key retailers upcoming, scaling the pick and mix to more stores. Currently, we're doing mainly ICA, and then also strategic partnerships with similar companies and scaling that together to cover more stores. With that said, we are done with the business segments, and we're heading in for a quick Q&A with me and the team that has been presenting them for you today. We also have Tobias Levin, who will answer some of the questions regarding Body Science, since Sheree is not here.
You are excused if you're based in Australia. I think so. It's fair enough. Okay, so all presenters today, I'd like to start with you, Simon, even though I think there's some curiosity to add colors to your companies as well. When you've presented the business segments today, if we look at net share of sales, for example, you have Nordic Distribution as the biggest one, Sustainable Care as the second. Sustainable Care, though, the largest one when it comes to gross profit or adjusted EBITDA. Does that also display or convey some kind of prioritization order for you or maturity in the different markets?
I mean, I think it's clear, looking at the initiatives, we're really excited with what we can do in terms of big things, adding to the already strong underlying growth in Future Snacking and Quality Nutrition. So I think these are the two segments that will have the absolute fastest growth going forward. That being said, I mean, we have several great companies in Sustainable Care, Solent being a powerhouse, and it's also our biggest segment, so it's gonna come down to mix and execution. Nordic Distribution, we have some really interesting growth opportunities, but the distribution and wholesale business naturally leads to high sales, and we needed to reach a sufficient size with that segment to be that strategic partner that we are today with the retailers. So it is really gonna come down to mix, but I'm really excited about all of our segments.
But I would say Quality Nutrition and Future Snacking is where we have some really, really exciting initiatives ahead of us that we also have already invested in.
Tobias, can I ask you to take a little bit step forward, just so everybody can see you? There we go. And let me continue with a question to you then, because in the video with Sheree Young from Body Science, she said they've recently done acquisition of a bars production site. What is the rationale of having that kind of asset for you that far away?
Yeah, I think this is a good result of what both Simon and Marcus has been talking about today. We always look at opportunities to gain more of the value chain within Humble Group, and at one side of this, we obviously have Body Science, a bestselling bar in Australia, close to 20 million sold on an annual basis, and then other side, this opportunity came up. Basically, we had this bars manufacturer that was in administration, that we, with a quick turnaround, could actually pick up. And with utilizing the infrastructure of Humble Group, we can take out the knowledge, since we already have bars production in Sweden. So sharing the knowledge in technology, know-how, recipes, and innovation, bringing that over, and also from Body Science. Oh, sorry, Simon.
From Body Science, utilizing the financials and HR into the site, we can actually, in a quick way, get that operation going. After six months in operations, we can definitely see that it's profitable.
Is bars the product category with the highest boom, since Simon also said with bars production in Sweden was sold out?
Yeah, I mean, it's definitely a big demand for bars right now, and I think that's globally. I also think we're up in the Nordics, but also in Northern Europe, has a really, really high quality of bars. So we can actually use that going into Australia, but Australia also have some really, really interesting innovations that we're looking to bringing here. So it's definitely a share of that, and I think the demand will still increase because there's definitely a high increase in that, in that category.
Mm-hmm. That was some about quality nutrition. Thank you, Tobias. A question from the audience here to Solent, David and Ash, how should we think about the stickiness of Solent's relationships with its customers? So maintaining long-standing relationships.
Yeah, I think there's probably a few elements to that. I think firstly, probably if you look at our top 10 customers, we've enjoyed probably, I think, over a 10-year relationship, so we have quite a long heritage, and probably our top three, over 25 years. So we're, you know, very well known strategically to them, and I think have that long-term heritage. I think there's also, as I mentioned earlier, I think, you know, economically, a lot of these bigger retailers are having to reduce their teams, not just across buying and commercial, but across product development, across technical supply chain. And I think they look to businesses like Solent that have a reputation to deliver, to be the extension.
So actually, what we're seeing at the moment is more of a trend of our customers wanting to consolidate smaller suppliers or maybe younger suppliers into Solent. And then the third is probably being masters of our own destiny, is actually protecting our own development. So where we develop formulations or packaging, we actually design register that, we actually trademark formulations, so that we have an element of ownership around that IP, to protect our interests jointly, but also to protect our contracts as well. I think there's... Anything else you'd like to add?
Do you have something to add, David, or did Ash extract everything?
Yeah, no, I think everything. Yeah, no, I think Ash has, as always, covered it very eloquently. I think it's- we've got a very, long-term, long-standing relationship with our customers, and, and we're across our, our product categories. We, as we saw in that customer wheel, we're with those customers in, in various different segments of our business, so we're not just exposed to any one particular area with our key customers.
Jacob, let me ask you then, with you said you were, well, just recently you were a one or a two-product company, but have now evolved up to three. Does that mean also that the relationship between you and Humble Group changed in any way? Does your needs change?
Yeah. No, I don't think it changed, but we came into Humble Group with two products, and now we have developed a third product, but in close collaboration with not just the Humble Group management, but also with other subsidiaries on recipe, on ingredients, on production machinery, on distribution. So we are just more intertwined, I would say, but the way that we're working with Humble Group is the same, but we are more well connected and intertwined into the group, which is really nice.
Simon, do you have a different perspective from your horizon?
No, I mean, I'm really passionate about product and innovation, and, me and Jacob almost speaks every day. So I think it's intensified a little bit since the date, and, I mean, it's such a huge opportunity, so we need to really, you know, allocate all the resources we can to maximum the potential of the, of this, this product range going forward.
All right, let's stop there for now, since we have more presentations following. Simon, you're going to remain on stage, but Tobias, David, Ashley, Jacob, thank you for today, for your contributions. And so to conclude, today's presentations before the extended Q&A, the maybe heaviest, but also the vital part, the numbers. So joining you, Simon, for this segment, is the CFO, Johan Leonnartsson, as well. Please, Johan.
Thank you, Emily, for that introduction. My name is Johan Leonnartsson, and I work as Group CFO. I started back in 2020, and been part of the Humble journey since then. And also, thanks to all of you for being here and listening to this presentation today. After listening to my colleagues, what you can expect from an operational perspective, we thought it was a good time to also share some thoughts on what you can expect from a financial perspective. While it's important to have an operational strategy, it's of course also important to have a financial strategy. These two goes well hand in hand, and together they form our overall business strategy. That is what we rely on in order to work towards our recently updated financial targets.
Speaking of financial targets, I'm gonna just go through them very quickly here, and then we will use this session to deep dive a little bit more on how we think of them and how we will achieve them. We will grow net sales annually by at least 15% year- by- year. This shall be done mainly by organic growth, but we will talk about that a little bit later as well. We will significantly increase the underlying profitability, and our updated financial target is that we shall have an EBIT margin of at least 10% in the midterm horizon.
Looking at the capital structure target, this is more or less unchanged, but we have updated the definition, and that's saying that we shall have a net debt in relation to EBITDA that is less than 2.5 times to EBITDA. And this is where we see that we have a sweet spot in the capital structure, where we get a good leverage on the capital employed. In terms of the dividend policy, this one is unchanged, and that is because we see so much good opportunities that the cash generated in the group would be reinvested in future strategic initiatives in the near future. Now, many of you know that we have, over the past, driven an ambitious M&A agenda. In the past two years, we have shifted focus towards more in-house value-creating activities.
We have done so because we see good opportunities for our subsidiaries to act on different opportunities as opportunities that arise. Looking in the past two years, we have invested SEK 139 million in capital expenditures and growth initiatives across the group. For example, we have invested in automation and robotics in order to increase efficiency of our production. We have acquired machinery and equipment in order to increase the capacity to meet the increased consumer demand. We have acquired packaging lines in order to help one of our, or several of our subsidiaries, but especially Pändy, for example, rapidly growing, to help them to pack their very popular sugar-reduced candy bags.
We've also, as you saw in the video from Body Science, acquired protein bar manufacturing equipment in Australia to help and support Body Science, which is one of our Humble hero brands, to gain a competitive advantage on that market that you get when you have the in-house production facility and being able to act more swiftly on changing consumer trends and put new product development to the market, which would be much, much more difficult to achieve if you would be in the hands of an external provider or producer. Now, with that said, we have invested SEK 139 million and we have talked about strategic initiatives going forward. So we have taken a big chunk of that investment has already been taken.
But for the coming two years, we estimate that we have approximately 85 million to spend in these strategic initiatives that we have mentioned. And then on top of this, you have approximately SEK 15 million that will be used in order to keep the machinery running and ensure that they are not stopping. Now, with that said, we are confident that the initiatives taken and the investments taken are of a high value additive to the group. As you can see in the graph, we have a proven track record and ability to generate strong underlying cash flows from the operations. And all in all, we are certain that we are well-positioned to continue to accelerate the total value of Humble Group.
Yes, and I can only add to that. I mean, what we have seen throughout the last two years, it takes time to get machinery. We have ordered them in advance, so like the capacity constraint we've been talking about today, it's not news to us. We knew that that's gonna happen. We have made our due diligence in our companies. What do we need to go from one to potentially two or three shifts? And a lot of those investments have already been taken. We have some left, and of course, there will be a lot of new initiatives in the future, but this is what we see today. But talking about capital allocation, we will continue to invest in attractive growth assets.
I think the investments we have seen and that are actually up and running have proven themselves to be really profitable and high return on investment, and that's the sort of opportunities we will look for. I also get the question about acquisitions, and we are gonna do acquisitions in the future, but we are also gonna wait for the opportunity. We have been waiting for two years. We have a long line of great companies, but we want to make sure that we are on a debt level where we are comfortable with, "Okay, now we organically can start to acquire again." The companies we will look for, we have found our sweet spot, 15 million-100 million SEK in Enterprise Value. That's where we really believe that we will be able to accelerate the growth and the profitability the most.
We will also buy companies that really fits well into our strategy, that can tap into our existing platform and really flourish with being part of Humble Group, but not only that, we are looking for companies that will contribute to our profitability and growth going forward, helping the already existing companies. In terms of the margin, we are generally looking at an 8% margin. It's slightly below our new financial target, but we also want to find companies where we see the potential to improve them, increase the profitability margin. In terms of the multiple, we also wanna see that there is a good synergy, which actually makes the average multiple in a 12-month period lower than on the inception of the acquisition. All in all, we will invest in assets, and we may invest in acquisitions when we feel the opportunity is right.
But first, we need to continue to work with our capital structure.
Let's talk a little bit about the balance sheet then, and the updated capital structure target that we have finally, recently published. I mean, last year, our debt was a little bit too high for us to be comfortable with in relation to our financial targets. That was the reason why we completed the refinance of the capital structure last summer. We replaced the existing bonds with a much, much, much more healthy and long-term sustainable bank financing structure instead. That exercise did not only helped us to reduce the interest expense and the future interest expenses of the group by nearly 50%, we have also, since then, been working actively by delevering the group and the debt ratio of the group.
To mention an example, earlier this summer we completed a sale of ten properties through a structured sale and leaseback transaction. And we have also increased our internal focus on how we can be more efficient with the resources employed of the group, such as net working capital, and other assets. With that said, earlier this year, we came in with a debt ratio of three point one times in Q2 this year. So we are not fully there yet, but we are certain that this target is highly achievable for us as we have a good underlying profitability growth, and we have also strong cash generation in the group. And these two parameters combined makes us comfortable to feel that this target is highly achievable in the near future.
Thank you, Johan. Let's talk a bit about growth. We've been talking a lot about initiatives, but I want to share this with all of you. This, to the left, is how the group would have looked like if we would have acquired all of our companies in 2016, and the pro forma growth actually combined is 14.3% CAGR, many times higher than the general FMCG market. We have acquired inherently growing companies. What's even more interesting to see is that they are actually growing faster for the last few years. This is something that we monitor closely because once they become part of Humble Group, I want to see that they're growing faster and they're delivering better. If they do that, we are good owners.
All of this combined, we have a net sales target of minimum 15% year- over- year, and just with the strong underlying growth, we are almost there. But then we also have been showing you today what are the specific initiatives that we are focusing on in each segment. Combined, those initiatives have a revenue potential in our assessment of SEK 3.8 billion. Of course, there are gonna be new initiatives coming, and there may be some of them not happening, but that's the daily work for us to execute on the best opportunity that we see in the market. And the third lever to add to our growth strategy is to reinvest our cash flow into growth opportunities, assets, and strategic bolt-on acquisitions. So let's continue digging into the profitability.
Talking about profitability, one of our key metrics here is the gross profit and the gross margin development. As you can see in the graph to, on my left side here, we had a negative development on gross margin LTM up until Q3 last year. Here we see a turning point, a clear turning point. That doesn't happen just for a reason. We've had a strong focus internally on how we can support our subsidiaries to help them face the challenges that they have in their day-to-day operations. In Q2 this year, we came in on a gross margin on nearly 31%. But that is not near the historical levels that we have seen across the group. Back in 2021, we had a gross margin pro forma of around 35%.
We've set an internal target for ourselves that we shall do as much as possible for us to regain some of that lost gross margin. Now, this is a question that many of you may ask: Why have we lost so much gross margin, and what have the challenges been? I think everybody sitting in the room here today can relate to the turbulent macroeconomic headwinds we have faced during the past years. I mean, last year, we faced a severe inflation with price increases throughout the full value chain, and there is a natural lag in the value chain. When you have a price increase in the beginning of the value chain, it takes time before it has been fully transferred to the end customer.
And that has been our challenge, but now we're starting to see the prices starting to stabilize, and in some occasions, they are also decreasing. And now we can turn this natural lag to our benefit instead, maintaining the prices to our customers, but pushing our suppliers for better prices. And then secondly, as you are now aware of, that we're shipping a lot of containers from Asia to Europe. And I mean, the freight expenses and freight costs have been a rollercoaster over the past years, and this has been a challenge for our subsidiaries, and how they should handle this rollercoaster, and how they should navigate and plan the total cost for us to deliver our supplier agreement with our customers to continuously deliver goods on a daily basis. Not to mention the supply chain disruption that we've seen over the past years.
I think all of you can remember when Evergreen parked a ship in the Suez Canal back in 2021 , or when, Russia invaded Ukraine back in 2022 . Or not to mention this year, when pirates have been forcing ships to take the long route around Africa to deliver goods up to Europe, instead of having a smooth sailing through the Red Sea and the Suez Canal. Now, all of these are just some examples of, disruptions in the global trade flows, and this applies to us as well. But the challenge have been there for our subsidiaries. For example, when they have seen, due to these disruptions, if they've seen price increases, we have centralized some of the procurement in the group and bundle up volumes in order to help our subsidiaries to get a better leverage when we negotiate with the suppliers.
There's also been shortages in the supply chain, meaning that it's difficult to get, get hold of the raw materials and the necessities need in order to keep up with the production that we see. And here we have shared our broad supply network across the group. We usually talk about the distribution network, but there's also good benefits to have a broad supply network. Subsidiaries have raised their hand and said, "I have difficulties to find this raw material that's needed for my production." And we have shared contacts with each other and helped out.
Last but not least, I mean to mention the central freight contracts that we have, Marcus and his team been working hard on, helps our subsidiaries in order to get a better predictability what the total cost will be, so we can now be more proactive in the dialogue with our customers. And all in all, these are initiatives, and these are actions that we haven't seen the full effect of yet, but we are confident that these are circumstances that helps us and gives us a good opportunity to regain some of this lost gross margin over the past. And in terms of profitability, there is other drivers as well, and two key drivers here is how we monitor our overhead or the operational cost base. And the two key drivers here is the other external expenses and the personnel expenses.
As you can see in the graph, there is a natural lag or natural development of the personnel net sales going down when you drive sales up, if you maintain the same amount of people in the group. But as we have communicated today, we haven't only invested in machinery and equipment in the factories, but they don't do the work themselves. We have also invested heavily in people, meaning that we have invested in people adding personnel expenses to this graph that we haven't seen the full output of yet. All in all, that makes us comfortable that there is more efficiency to gain from the resources that we have put in the business today. Secondly, you can see the other external expenses, and here you can see a negative development over the past three quarters.
Why is this, you may ask yourselves? This is due to strategic decisions that we have taken in some of our humble hero brands in sales and marketing activities, in order to support them to get a stronger market position today. These initiatives are taken as we firmly believe that this will help us to drive value and profitability in the future. Now, it's very important to bear in mind, talking about these initiatives and the investments in sales and marketing activities, these investments are within our own control. If we, for any reason, we see that the investments are not returning or yielding as requested, or if the profitability is not developing as requested, it's easy for us to turn down these investments and regain profitability.
We've also talked a lot about integration, consolidation projects of the group and the factory automation, for example. These are all investments and initiatives in the group that we are working on closely on a day-to-day basis in order to being more efficient with the resources employed in all kinds of levels of the group. Altogether, these initiatives makes us comfortable that we have a good opportunity to significantly, significantly increase the underlying profitability of Humble Group and accelerate the value of Humble Group.
Yes, and to summarize things a bit on the profitability target, we have a target to reach minimum an EBIT margin of 10%. I'm confident that we will get there over time. There are so many opportunities on how we can improve our profitability. First of all, the gross margin, like Johan explained here, there is a lot of gross margin for us to regain. And I think we've really proven ourselves that consecutively, not only for the three last quarter, but every month, we have strengthened the gross margin, so we are on the right path to get there. The second part here is our cost base. We are gonna grow the net sales significantly over time, but we're not gonna have to nearly spend as much into personnel or other external expenses. We are increasing our investments into marketing.
That is what we have done, but that's also because we have such a good traction with our brands, and when you have traction, that's when you put money into it to scale. And I think U.S. is a great example, launching there with Pändy. The profitability possibilities are fantastic. But we're starting small, and if we're starting to see that traction that we want to see from a brand or a product in a store, we will start putting some money into that. That's how we work. We think long-term about our growth and profitability. So both of these factors combined is something that make me and the team comfortable that we are on a way to margin expansion over time. With that said, we're gonna round things off in the financials, and just to have some key takeaways. We have invested in our companies for the future.
As I said, historically, a lot of them has been on one shift. Now we're in the phase of scaling that up. And as Johan said also, it costs to increase the personnel, train them, and we're yet to reap the full reward from that. I really look forward to it. We also have strategic initiatives ongoing that I'm so excited about. Marcus and his capable team, we will execute on that, and I'm so excited to see what's gonna happen with them. And then on top of that, we have a strong underlying growth in our companies for many, many years. So this is a growth company, and our objective is to continue to stay one. And lastly, we are gonna regain the gross margin. That's a high priority internally.
It's gonna remain a high priority, and we feel that until we feel that we are, you know, on the levels where we could be, and we are gonna maintain our cost base and monitor it closely, so with that said, thank you, Johan, for presenting this to us today.
Thank you.
And before we dig into the Q&A, I just want to take the opportunity to share the five key highlights from this day and this presentation, that I want you to remember from the several hours in this quite warm room, and yes. First one, we are gonna continue to maximize the value extraction in our companies. We have learned to work with our companies, and we know what we have ahead of us. Second one, we are gonna continue to invest the cash flow we generate into new, exciting opportunities. We meet new opportunities every day, and we have really started to know, okay, what sort of opportunities are the best one for us to act upon? The third one, our high priority is to execute on these strategic initiatives.
Our companies are growing, but if we can help them grow with major initiatives, that's really gonna change the tide. The fourth one, we are gonna continue to increase our profitability by strong cost control, and then the last, but I would say the most important one, the one key message: this industry is huge. It needs to change, and it's going to change. That's just the way it is, and we are a bigger company than all of our smaller companies have been historically. We are a challenger, and we are gonna continue to drive transformation towards healthier products. We have the right governance model, we are run by entrepreneurs, and I'm confident that we are gonna be one of the leaders in changing this industry. Thank you.
Thank you, Simon. So we made it through the day.
Yay!
Now it's time for questions. Marcus, please join us again, CEO of Humble Group, to be able to answer some questions. I feel like you all been listening very patiently throughout the day, so I'm thinking we're starting with the floor. Raise your hand if you have a question. I know there are some. Yes?
Thank you very much for this day. Viktor Hansen from Carnegie, Equity Research Analyst. First question to Marcus, actually, so I'm happy to see you on the stage. You mentioned the cost synergies from various projects, such as consolidating procurement. I was hoping that you could help us by quantifying it a bit, the cost savings potential.
So this is nothing that we will go out with, in today's presentation, unfortunately.
Okay. Any nice examples or anything to help us?
I gave you a teaser of the-
Yeah
... 15%-18% cost saving on the freight, but that's what I can give you.
Okay, okay. I had to try. Second question here. Maybe to Simon, then. I was wondering, would you consider partnering up with a giant consumer goods company? And if so, how would a partnership look like?
I think that's a very good question, and there are some really tangible examples of, I would say, especially our hero brands. When you have an FMCG giant, they like what we do, and they see the potential with the brand, like Pepsi did with Celsius, for instance. They partnered up to set us... I mean, we've been talking about our strong distribution, but these big giants are on the next level. So I wouldn't be hesitant to do that if, you know, the structure is right, and we feel that, you know, this is something that will make it even better than us doing it ourselves.
Exciting. And Simon, you briefly, very briefly mentioned perhaps a greenfield candy factory, a new one. Could you tell us more about that?
I mean, what I can tell is that we have been planning it for many years, and we have already communicated we bought a lot to look into that. So it's not a decision made, but it's obvious there is so much demand for Swedish candy, and I mean, I think our production we're making here in Sweden is great, and it's not gonna be less demand in the future. So of course, if the opportunity is right, and we feel that the structure is right, that may be something that we will act upon, but if we do so, we will make sure to communicate it to the market in detail.
Okay, exciting.
I think we have to pass the mic on there and get back to you... in that case, I'm sorry. So anyone else have a question? Yes, in the back.
... Product question about Body Science. Do you have any initiatives? You spoke about innovation around vegan protein. I know this category is growing fast, and there are not too many solutions. Thank you.
Yeah, so I mean, Body Science, they have a great range of products. I think they already have some vegan versions of the protein powders. I'm not the expert here, so I think you would have to ask Tobias if we do. But, what I can tell you is the Body Science have a team of fantastic people developing products. So if there is a trend like in the U.S. or Europe, they are really quick to act on that trend and say, "Okay, can we make a formulation with that?" I know they have sort of an AG1 challenger, for instance, so I think that's a fantastic product and formula, and, we've tried to ship it over here, so we will see. But, they are really quick at adapting, so, so yeah. But I do think they have some vegan products in their assortment already.
No follow-up question. Anyone else? And I saw you, mister, in the beginning of the day. Have you forgot your question? Well, I got your answer. Okay, you got your answer. Yes. Well, then we can pass it back to the gentleman in the front row in that case. If you had more questions?
Yes, thank you. I had one more. Perfect. So, we have all these business leaders here in the room today from within Humble. And I was curious, perhaps to Simon, and also if any of those business leaders would all want to answer as well, about how you choose to allocate capital within the group. Because I guess that your companies, they have a lot of ideas, and then you have to decide together on which to execute on.
That's another great question. I mean, all of our entrepreneurs, they're really competitive, but, I mean, we don't have unlimited capital. I wish we had, because then we could do a much longer list of initiatives here.
Everybody wants to have unlimited capital.
Yes, but, best case wins. I mean, we have a plan ahead of us with, you know, all the great opportunities, but in the end, it comes down to: What is the opportunity? How do we review that business case, and what's the likelihood on the execution? What I'm really happy to say is, I mean, the bar manufacturing facility in Australia, we had one week to take the decision. It was a bankruptcy, pennies on the dollar. And we're already exceeding our high case. So we have some strong track record of doing these sort of investments, but in the end, it's all comes down to, you know, balancing that opportunity with, you know, risk/reward scenario. So yeah, I don't know if that answered your question.
Yeah. Thank you. And I saw the 30% internal ROIC requirement also, so-
Yes
... That gives some details as well. Thank you.
So anyone else on the floor? Otherwise, I'm gonna go online instead. We have one question saying: "Could you develop a bit more on the FX headwinds, so currency headwinds, and the impact on the margins and the potential of currency moving forward?
Yes.
Sorry, moving favorably.
This is also something that has really hit us hard. I mean, we procure around 70%-80% in euro and dollar. Mind you, well, more than 50% of our sales is in SEK. So of course, the development with SEK for the last two years has really hit the gross margin hard. And that is something that hit the COGS immediately, and then we transfer the prices out to the retailers, which sometimes can take up to nine months. So we have some positive things ahead of us in terms of the margin, just by not ... just by getting stability.
Another question: "How is the sales in Asia? Have you started to penetrate that market?
Yeah.
Not really, to be fully honest. We have some sales, but it's not a key market as we speak now. But-
Not a key market for you or for, like, talking to the sector in general?
For Humble Group, as we speak.
Yeah, and I would also like to add to that. I mean, as we mentioned earlier, what's the challenge? There is so many opportunities. We have invested a lot into our expansion into Europe. There are so many great things coming. But also, I mean, we have a country manager in place for U.S.. We're launching three product lines into the U.S. market. So I mean, Asia is really exciting, but we are not gonna prioritize that right now because we think European market, U.S., and Australian market, that's really where we have such a strong consumer behavior and where they love our products.
I'd like to kind of continue on that level, not in Asia, but the international expansions, because you've mentioned throughout the day the U.S. market and the potential of the U.S. market. There are... Of course, it could be a Klondike. However, many different companies of different sizes and with throughout sectors have tried and failed because it could be a great opportunity, but it's also very, very hard. How do you approach the U.S. market?
I think... Yeah.
Go ahead.
I mean, I think in general, we tread lightly. We do that in all of our markets. Some people may think, "Oh, why isn't going faster in Germany or U.K. or U.S.?" But if you're experienced in FMCG, you know that the right way is to do it slowly. You start with some niche retailers that's perfectly fitted for your product. Once you have them in there, you know the sales velocity and the brand awareness is starting to grow, that's when you add new retailers, and then after that, we go to mass retail. But not only that, I mean, that's to make sure that the products sell out of the stores, but you have to also be really mindful about the supply chain, and U.S. is quite far away from here. So I'm not, like, questioning that our products will sell.
If you taste our candy and the U.S. sugar-reduced candy, you wouldn't question that either. But, I mean, if we put it in, let's say, Walmart, for instance, and it sells out in a month, and we have six weeks waiting for containers, you know, they're not gonna be happy. So we have to be mindful and cautious about scaling distribution, doing it with longevity. But if you do that, you can have some really nice incremental sales growth over a long period of time. So I think that is also something we're very cautious about when we scale into new markets. Pändy, for instance, we have big plans to scale internationally, but we have a hard time only supplying Sweden and Norway because they're growing so much.
So if we would have added U.K. big time, you know, that would have been a problem for us, a luxury problem.
And also, in addition to that, we have our own distribution site with Humble Co., and they've grown that brand there locally with the team. So we have experience on how to drive growth and businesses locally in the U.S. And I think you mentioned it earlier as well, like, we've just recently invested in a new country manager for the U.S. expansion that will slowly or solely focus on our, like, hero SKUs, like Pändy, True Dates, and the Swedish Pick & Mix concept that I talked about earlier. So we're taking it slow, but we're taking our best sellers or the best opportunities and push it out there.
Anyone in the room wants to ask something? Otherwise, I'll go online. A question about the future, how the future looks for Eureba. Is there any plans to launch it as a product directly sold to consumers? And please elaborate on Eureba.
Yeah, I think it's going really well. I mean, it's an inherent product in our candy manufacturers.
It's a sweetener substitute.
Yeah, so it's actually a process. Like, Eureba is a process. We have 30 different versions of it today. And, I mean, there is a lot of opportunity to scale into bakery, dairy product, products, ice cream, et cetera. And we're actually doing a big project with, you know, Eureba to scale it now internationally, but I think we've done it quite well. When we started, it was around SEK 5 million, and now we're +SEK 35 million in revenue organically. So it's really appreciated by our manufacturers that use it today, but there is a huge opportunity to scale it over time as well.
Anyone else in the room? No, you're all happy today. Good to hear. So let me continue then. I was actually kind of wanting to go back a little bit from the beginning, because Simon, you said in the beginning, in the introduction, you said, "Well, people think we do bamboo toothbrushes and candy, basically. But no, we do... Yes, but we do a lot more." Do you feel like, and it's a question to both of you, do you feel like there's a misconception about your profile and your operations?
Yeah, I think, I mean, that's also the reason why we have this capital market here today. I understand it, it's just looking from the outside with all the acquisitions we have done, it is a complex story to understand. We have so many fantastic bits and pieces, and our objective today is to really make it easier to understand what is Humble Group. And naturally, I mean, as a consumer, you come in contact with our, like, most hero brands, but we do so much more, and my hope is that we have really shown that today, and that you have learned a lot about what we are doing, but not only that, but what we're gonna do in the future, what we have ahead of us.
Yeah, I hope that it's been an eye-opener today to what we do. So, I think we have a complex story, but we've tried our best to really explain it in an easy way.
I'd like to continue touching upon the previous question when it comes to these giants, the global giants in the sector. And given that it is such a huge sector, with these giants, Nestlé, Orkla, Procter & Gamble, if they would decide to compete with similar products to you, wouldn't they be able, by sheer size and resources, to compete you out, basically?
Yeah, I mean, it's not their thing to develop products because they're really bad at it. Like, I haven't seen a brand or product developed by one of the giants successfully for many years. So what they typically do is they buy brands once they reach sufficient scale, as I showed earlier, at some fantastic multiples. But actually, I mean, I think many of them are seeing us as a partner. We develop concepts and products for them as well, and I think that's also part of the resilience when we look at future snacking. I mean, we are so dominant with 90% market share in Sweden, but over time, I think this market is gonna be much bigger.
I think we are gonna have some of the leading brands, but my ambition is that we should also be the supplier of the products to other players out there, and with combined forces, the transition is gonna go faster, so we're not only the brands of the future, we're also gonna try to be the supplier of the future to potential competitors.
Marcus, do you have an additional view?
Yeah, I think also we have an advantage in speed. You know, we are entrepreneur-led, so we are good at innovation, and we can do it swiftly. So even if they would start competing with us on that, I think we're quicker and more adaptable.
Mm-hmm. So we're coming up on 4:00 P.M. Since everybody seems happy, both online and in the room, let me know. We have one over there.
Hi, since you have 90% market in Sweden, I was wondering if you currently are thinking of any lobbying for, on the Swedish government to put a sugar tax also in Sweden, like they sort of did in Norway?
Yeah, I might be wrong here, but I actually think we're still paying sugar tax on a sugar-free candy to Norway. So, I mean, tax can be great if you make it right, but I think the sugar tax is based on an HS code, and our candy is sold on the same HS code as traditional candy. So even if it's sugar-free, we're still paying the same amount of sugar tax per gram as traditional sugar. But sure, if they make it for actually sugar content, I couldn't be happier.
Follow-up? No.
Thank you.
Okay. So let's round things off then. I have a final question for you both. What's the main message or key takeaway that you wish that the audience, having listened in here today, takes with them, brings with them about you from now on?
You wanna start?
The main message today, I think it's our kind of the platform that we've built, and that we're just in the beginning of what we're doing. There's so much potential out there still within our group and within our companies, but also with new strategic initiatives, new partnership with new M&A or strategic bolt-on acquisitions. So I think the message here is that we just started this journey, and we're really, really hopeful and optimistic about the future.
Yeah, and I can only add to that. I think it's clear how passionate we are. We love what we're doing. It's a really strong energy in our group. And, I mean, we've done a lot since the inception four and a half years ago, but we're only getting started. Now, we actually have the tools to change things and do big things quicker. So I'm so excited, I know many of my colleagues are, about the future, and I hope you are as well. So yeah, that, that's it for me.
I like that positive note to end the day. We all look forward to the future. So thank you so much, Simon, Marcus, and everyone presenting today.
Thank you.
Thank you, Emily. Thank you.