Hello, everyone. My name is Max Strandwitz, and I am the CEO of Mips. Welcome to the Capital Markets Day of 2022. Before we go into the presentation, first a note from our legal team, so our disclaimer. Anyone that wants to read through the whole or need to know more about the content, we also have that in our presentation. Before we actually start the presentation, just a short inspiration movie from one of our athletes, Kate Courtney.
A sports psychologist of mine once said that motivation is an emotion, not a muscle, and I think that's a really smart way to think about it. It's often not the case that using your motivation, being really dedicated, makes you more motivated. It often just makes you tired.
When I'm rested, when I'm having fun on the bike, when I'm able to just enjoy mountain biking and remember why I started doing it in the first place, I usually also find myself most motivated to perform. I think, for me, it's all about trying to just stay in the moment, you know, as I'm preparing for the race, really focusing on being calm, being confident, being, like, focused in my body and prepared for what's to come. And when it comes, being in that moment as well.
Really easy to say, and hard to actually do in practice. I think we often like to separate out the mental and physical, but when it comes to head injuries, and really, in my mind, performance, they're so intertwined. Technology innovation has the ability not only to make our athletes faster, but also to keep them safer in our sports.
One of the technologies I'm really excited about is Mips, which is doing a great job of innovating in the space of head injuries. A concussion really is an injury to your brain, but because it's your brain, it has so many other kind of broad impacts. It can impact your emotions, it impacts your vision, the way you feel, the way you think.
I love to see that hard work pays off in incremental gains, no matter how small, and to see myself getting better as an athlete year over year.
Kate Courtney, a great inspiration to all of us. Before going into the agenda and the presentation, I first want to introduce the team of Mips that we have with us today that also will present. First of all, our CFO, Karin Rosenthal. We also have our CMO, Fredrik Kjellberg, with us today, and our Head of Sales, Johan Sauer. With us today, we also have the Chairman of Mips, Magnus Welander, who will also be available for questions -and -answer session after the presentations, and so on.
Really, before we go into the presentation, a short agenda point. First of all, we will talk a bit on our performance so far against the previous target, and actually what has changed on the market. Karin will talk about our sustainability commitment. Fredrik will talk about all the great work we have done with the brand and also our product. Johan will talk about our sales priorities. Karin will then explain what does this actually mean in terms of numbers. I will do a wrap-up, and then we will also have time for a Q&A.
Of course, to understand the future, you also need to understand your history. First of all, a recap of our old financial targets. We did announce them in September 2019, and the first one was to reach net sales of SEK 1 billion. At that point, it meant that we would need to grow with an average of a little bit more than 20%.
We also had a very ambitious EBIT margin target that most company would be very impressed of. That would be to achieve an EBIT margin above 40%. Despite being a growth company, we still wanted to distribute dividend. We had an ambition of distributing dividend of more than 50% per year of the net earnings.
How have we then been doing against those targets? First of all, the performance has been a lot stronger than we planned. If we look at the net sales development in the last three-year period, we actually managed to deliver a CAGR of 47%. If we look at our EBIT margin and our EBIT margin development, we did manage in 2019 to deliver an EBIT margin of 41%. In 2020, we managed to deliver an EBIT margin of 46%, and for last year, we did almost achieve an EBIT margin of 54%. We did tick also that box.
Then when we look at the dividend distribution, we have slowly been growing into our own dividend model of distributing 50% by distributing 92% for the financial year of 2019, 71% for the financial year of 2020, and 51% for the financial year of 2021. Of course, really strong numbers, and we managed to tick all those boxes, and that's one of the reasons why we are here today.
For me, of course, that's only numbers. For me, it's much more important what you actually manage to achieve, and we did a couple of things that I'm very proud of during the last three years. First of all, we managed to establish ourself in a new category that basically didn't exist three years ago, our safety category. There, we already have some great partners that we can start to build the momentum with. We have had quite a slow-moving animal that we call Moto. There, we're now actually starting to win.
For us, it has also been very important to win in the U.S. market. That's by far, by far our biggest market. There, you can really see that the consumers, they go into a store, they ask for Mips, and then they pick the brand and the model, and sometimes something that even match the color of their jacket. There, we have gone really far when it comes to becoming the expected safety solution in a helmet. We, of course, like that success story, so we want to replicate the same thing in Europe. There is no reason why they should be different in penetration, and that's also starting to work, and I will come back to that also a bit later in the presentation.
For us, we always consider ourselves to be very brave, and for us, it's also important to believe in our business model. Despite going through a pandemic situation, we have actually managed to double the amount of resources that worked at Mips. For the average of 2019, we were 43 people, and if you look at Mips today, we have 90 people working at Mips. Of course, all of this during a pandemic situation.
Again, we are here to talk about the future and why did we actually call for this Capital Markets Day? What's the key reason? First of all, we are ahead of our plan. We have outgrown our plan, and if you look at the performance that we need to do the coming years to achieve the old plan, it would have been around 10% on average per year, which both we and most investors have a significantly higher ambition than that.
Of course, we have also done a lot of innovation. We know more about the market than we know three years ago, so the market opportunity has also increased. We also seen that the market has grown. When we presented our last market snapshot, we didn't include any growth because, for us, this is very much a penetration story. If the market grows, it's great, but that's not really what matters. What matters is how fast can you actually penetrate your customers' assortment, and that is really what the story is about. Of course, all of this in isolation would probably be enough to update your financial targets.
Of course, we have all of the three of them working in our favor, and valid reasons to change our plan going forward. Of course, if you look at the new long-term targets that we announced yesterday night, and they are to, first of all, achieve a net sales of SEK 2 billion by 2027, which means that we need to grow with an average of 22% per year. We have increased our ambition on the EBIT margin target, and we now have an EBIT margin target of more than 50% per year. We kept our distribution rate ratio of having a payout of 50% per year.
Really ambitious but realistic targets, and the coming part of the presentation would really be about what underpins those targets. First of all, when we look at our world, we always start with the big picture. There is a couple of very strong macro trends that supports our growth story. First of all, there is a lot of ESG focus in the world. There is not one big construction company that doesn't have safety top of mind, and of course, that is something that we can capitalize on.
We also see that the helmet use is increasing all over the world, first of all by law, and it also starts to become mandatory for some of the vehicles that people are transporting themselves in. We also see that people start caring much more about their own wellbeing and personal protection, and that's also one of the factors of increasing the helmet use around the world.
We have also seen a very strong outdoor trend. A lot of people think that, given that the American interest rate is more than 3% at the moment, that no one will use a bike anymore. We don't see that. We see a very strong trend. There is a lot of confusion today about inventory levels versus the long-term consumer demand in bike. We still see a very strong demand in bike. It's driven by a couple of different reasons. The first one being the e-bike trend.
There is a very strong e-bike trend in the world. There is a consultancy report indicating that somewhere between 2025 and 2030, there will actually be more e-bikes sold than traditional bikes. Of course, you travel at a different velocity, you normally spend more money on your bike, and then having a helmet on becomes very, very natural.
If we look a little bit on the smaller picture, we talk about our markets and what do we actually expect. First of all, we expect all our markets to price up. We see that the consumers are prepared to pay more for their gear, and they're also prepared to pay more for added safety. If we look at bike, we see a very strong bike trend, and that it will continue.
A lot of people happen to talk about what happens in 2022. For us, when we talk to all the major bicycle brands and also the gear brands around the world, everyone has a very strong expectations on bike going forward, that there will be a strong consumer demand for many years to come. We see the same.
Snow, even though Snow is growing fantastic for us at the moment, we have a little bit, a more gloomy picture. We believe that over time, winter sport will be more for the selective few. It will become a lot more expensive, there will be less Snow around the world, and we don't believe that market will continue to grow like it has done before. A lot of people talk about the Chinese ski resorts industry that will open up. They have been doing that for 10 years. We try to be realistic. For us, Snow, we will continue the penetration, but we don't expect the market to grow.
If we, then, look at equestrian, there has been a lot of new riders recruited. They are prepared to spend quite a lot of equipment and on horses. We also see that the motor category will continue to grow. Not so much the U.S. market, not so much the European market, but more if you look at the developing markets. There, we see a very steep increase in terms of sales.
We see a very strong market growth because there is a lot of new helmet regulations, and also starts to become mandatory to wear helmets, and helmets are improving. We see the same in China. 20th of June 2020, became mandatory to wear a helmet when driving a scooter in China. We see the same thing happening in India also. These are two really, really big markets.
If we, then, look at our own categories, what do we actually expect from them? First of all, we continue to see very strong consumer demand in all our three different categories. Despite going through a pandemic situation, we haven't stopped one single day. Our office has been open all the time. We have actually not decelerated our investment. We actually accelerated our investment because we had the opportunity, and we had an opportunity to grow faster and do a lot more than we planned.
We do expect that the world will remain unpredictable. We know that there is a lot of things that happens around us that we don't have control over. For us, what we can do is really focus on what we do, and that is, of course, to implement as many projects as possible, grow with our customers as fast as possible. Whatever happens in the world, we don't have any control of.
During this time, we have, of course, invested quite a lot of time in our capabilities, and this might look like a little bit geeky, and it probably is. For us, it's really a big step forward. It's about our virtual test lab. Some people that follow us might have seen this on LinkedIn or at other forums and so on. What it really about is computer simulation. It's about FE modeling. This is how to predict how helmets will test even before they exist.
Inspiration comes from the car industry. No one would build a car today without knowing that they are developing a safe car. That's where we got the inspiration from. Mips has been doing this for internal use, for research purpose, for quite a lot of years, because, for us, we couldn't actually afford to do it because we didn't have the money.
Now, we bring this to our customers. We will bring that into their customer or helmet development projects. What we can do is two things that we haven't seen anyone else doing. First of all, we can test helmets for rotational motion, so the more complex things in the helmet, and we can also predict where cracks will occur in the helmet.
Traditionally, when someone did the helmet, what happened was that they develop the helmet and they go for certification. If the helmet didn't pass that certification, then they need to go back to the drawing board. We want them to skip that step, speed up the process because, in the end, if our customers sell, we sell because we are an ingredient brand.
One thing that is very important for us, and Fredrik will come back to that, we know that if the consumers are aware about what we do, they also buy Mips. They are prepared to spend a little bit more. That's why you always hear us being very obsessed when it comes to the Mips brand. We want to drive the awareness around the world, because we know if we have the consumer with us, we will win.
In the North American market now, we are at awareness level of 45%, so it has really increased during the last years. You know that I talked about that we want to replicate the same success in Europe, and it starts to happen. Also here, we see a big change, and just to give you a reference base, when we had our Capital Markets Day the last time, our awareness in Europe was around 10%. If you would go to south of Europe, you will probably be at single -digit, low single -digit awareness. Now, also the European consumers is waking up.
Then if we look at the total market-- and this is, of course, what a lot of you are probably very excited about. You saw the press release yesterday. We talked that the total helmet market has grown. Yes, it has grown, it has grown significantly by SEK 140 million to SEK 550 million. It doesn't mean that the market growth, our market growth has been 20% or 30%.
There are two things that have happened. We know more helmets than we knew before. There is never, like, official data. You always need to create your own helmet universe. We have also included much more helmets into our helmet universe that we didn't include before. The biggest change is, of course, scooter and motorcycle helmets. When we look at our total helmet market, it has increased significantly.
It's always good to have a big market, but if you can't address it, it makes no difference. What has then happened to the addressable market? An addressable market with our naming, and definition to that is helmets that Mips can address with the technology, either from a technology point of view or from a price point of view.
First of all, the very interesting safety market. There, we see an addressable market that has increased with 40 million helmets per year. It doesn't mean that the market for that type of helmet has increased with that amount.
Before, and also when we announced this number last time, we can only address what we call Type II helmets. The little bit more advanced helmets that cost a little bit more, and that's why you saw a smaller scale or a smaller addressable market. Now, we have actually launched and can address also Type I helmet, and then, of course, it also becomes logical to include some of them in our addressable market.
Moto, we talked about the scooter market, fantastic. Even though it's a big market to go for, the consumer awareness there is very low. We know that if the consumers are aware about Mips, they will pay for Mips. We also know if they are not aware about Mips, they don't, will not pay for Mips. Of course, we need to be a little bit more realistic in our assumption, and that's why we included another 10 million of scooter helmets in our addressable market. In sports, we see an increase of 15 million.
There is some swings between the different helmet types, but the main driver is that we have seen that the market opportunity, especially in bike, has increased. Johan will come back to that a bit later in his presentation. Of course, quite a lot of big untapped potential if you look at the numbers in 2021, despite being the world leader in what we do.
If you add the total amount of previous competition that we had, they are not even at 10% of what we do. We still only have 2% of the market. 98% of the total market to go for. If we then look at maybe a little bit more realistic number, then of course we still can go for another 94%, because if you would translate these new numbers into the new total, it means that we have 6% of our addressable market.
When it comes to our vision, this is actually the best vision I ever had for a company that I ever worked in, and that is, of course, to reduce head injuries and save more lives. Most often, when people start working at Mips, they start working at Mips because it's a cool company. We are in the outdoor industry. People like what we do, ingredient brand, a bit exciting, but that quickly transformed into something else. To actually be able to make a difference for people, that quickly becomes quite addictive.
When we look at our mission, then of course with the wealth of knowledge that we have, we believe that it's our responsibility to really start leading the world to safer helmets. We have tested more helmets than anyone else in the world. We sit in all the regulatory bodies around the world. Of course, we want to make sure that all the helmets in the world that are certified are testing in the best possible way. That, of course, is our mission.
When we look at our position, again, with all the knowledge we have, it's really to become the leader in helmet safety. It doesn't mean that we will start producing our own helmets, but we will take more responsibility of the helmet. We have a wealth of knowledge. We have done so much tests, like I said. We know more about helmet testing than anyone else, and now we will start opening up that also to our customers. They will get access to our virtual testing.
We will advise them on how to design helmets, and of course, that creates a very unique opportunity for us and a great opportunity to really become the leader in helmet safety. If we look at our strategy in three key pillars, because of course, we talk a lot about growth, but what will it really come from? For us, organic growth with existing business is key. That's the biggest building block of our plan.
We have the customers on board already. If you look at the bicycle category or industry, we have nine out of the 10 biggest brands in the world. Snow, we have all the six biggest brands. In Moto, we really start to get momentum. In the safety category, also a lot of brands. There, and this is by far the biggest part of the plan, like I said, it's about growing with existing customers.
We talk about the other parts and the other pillar of our strategy. It's to open up new channels and new markets. I say open up because it's not that we didn't have the request, but we were still building a brand. We were still focusing on a lot of other things, and focus is very important at Mips. Now, we believe it's the right time to also start focusing a little bit more on the lower price points, but also on other geographies. Johan will explain also a bit more on that.
We have the third one, and probably the one that most people were most interested in. W hat does that actually mean? To capture new opportunities within helmet safety. There, we also have three pillars. The first one is really about bringing our helmet development capabilities to our customers, open up virtual testing. The second part is to go into much more aftermarket products.
If you look at the whole safety industry, and especially the U.S. market, normally the big construction companies refurbish their helmets every year. That means that if you have an installed base, you can sell up to 3x to 4 x to the same helmets. Of course, we want to have that opportunity. When they change the inner content of the helmet, they will actually have an opportunity to buy Mips again, which is, of course, a great opportunity.
A lot of our helmet partners are also doing performance helmet when it comes to cycling and so on. They sweat and the padding becomes a little bit teared or weird, and of course, at one point, they want to change it. Now, we also have technologies which means that you can exchange the padding in your helmet, and you get the opportunity to sell the padding to that helmet once again. Really hope that the helmet is still okay, but the Mips functionality is there, and we get an opportunity to get license fee another time.
Then the last one is really about doing some new technology, doing other things in the helmets that we are not doing now. We did announce a very small acquisition in January. We will now start capitalizing on that, but also do other things in helmet when it comes to comfort, ventilation, and design.
What does that actually mean? Because it doesn't sound maybe like a big step, but for Mips it is, and we call it a paradigm shift. It's really about focus for Mips will not only be on rotational protection, we will actually focus on the total performance of the helmet. Of course, optimizing everything that has to do with the helmet when it comes to ventilation, when it comes to comfort, when it comes to design and fit, and of course, bringing that capability to all our brand partners.
I will hand over to Karin, who will talk about our sustainability journey.
Thank you, Max. Hi, everyone. I'm Karin Rosenthal. I'm the CFO of Mips, and also responsible for the sustainability program at Mips. I feel really proud to be here today to talk about our sustainability commitment and our journey to a more sustainable Mips.
At Mips, safety always comes first, and second is sustainability. That means that sometimes the sustainable option might not be as cost efficient, but still the right thing to do. We have divided our work in Mips into three different pillars. The first one, our employees; the second one, our product; and the third one, our supply chain. The environment runs through all of these three pillars.
First, if we look at our employees, we want to foster a strong culture where we have people who are curious, humble, and want to innovate and make the best and safest products. We also want a workplace that is free from discrimination and where we have gender equality and diversity top of mind. We also want the sustainability to be integrated into our business agenda and included in every decision. A lot of people at Mips go to work every day with the mission to reduce head injuries and save more lives.
Looking at our product, if we look at helmet safety, we believe that our technology can help and might reduce the risk of injuries and sick leave. We also believe and want the customer to file as few complaints for us as possible because we want them to see us as the safer option. Also, of course, we want our products to be more sustainable. We have already started offering more sustainable products to our brands.
The third pillar, our supply chain. We currently use over 80 different subcontractors. We don't have any own manufacturing or production. All of these we audit at least bi-yearly. We also have a strong quality assurance program because we have a safety product. All of these also need to sign our Code of Conduct.
If we look at our environmental impact, we are a fast-growing company. That means if we take no action at all, we will actually increase our emissions around four times. What we have done is that we have signed up for the Science Based Targets Initiative. That means that we will be audited, that we will actually decrease our emissions, and that is the same as the Paris Agreement that has the ambition of global warming of not exceeding 1.5 degrees.
Looking at our total carbon footprint, we did the mapping in 2021, where you can see that our total emissions for both Scope 1, 2, and 3 was 9,400 tons. T he manufacturing was the main part of that, and only about 5% or 500 tons was related to our own operations. We are an ingredient brand, so what we need to do is impact more in the supply chain and support them because 95% of our emissions comes from producing our products.
If we then divide this 95%, we can see that it comes from two different things. First, the material when producing our products. Here, we have started to change to a more environmentally friendly products. Then, the energy source. That means while producing our helmets, you have the electricity in the supply chain, so we need them to change to a more renewable energy source.
If we look at our commitments. First commitment, we have signed up for the Science Based Target, so we will be audited that we are decreasing our environmental impact. Second, we have signed up and will incorporate UN Global Compact, meaning we will consider and take responsibility for labor, human rights, anti-corruption, and also environmentally-friendly alternatives. This will be incorporated in the business and also added to the Code of Conduct, both for suppliers and for our employees.
The third commitments is about the circular product offering. As I said, we have started with a new product that is made from pre-industrial or waste material that has less impact on the environment. We also have only recycled packaging material, and all of our products are recyclable up to 90%. To summarize, we want to lead the world to safer and more sustainable helmets.
Now, it's time for Fredrik to talk a bit about our brand.
Thank you, Karin. A lot of really nice and great initiatives and actions going on in the sustainability field. Sustainable products also needs to be backed by a sustainable brand, and for that reason, we have invested quite heavily over the past two years in the brand. We have built the marketing department from one person to 11, soon 12 people. We have invested a lot in our brand platform, new communication platform, a new visual look, new product identity, and all of these are together building the brand in a very strong way.
To become the leader in helmet safety, we of course need to make the consumer associate us with safety and helmets. When people see our logo, it needs to be loaded with the message of safety for helmets. When you pick up a helmet that you want to pick for yourself or for your loved one, you should really feel that this product meets the requirements that I need. That's what we need to get known for.
We can also see in our research that consumers, just like Max said before, when they understand this, they are actually very willing to both choose and pay for Mips. Being a science-based company, we of course incorporate a lot of science also in our marketing. When doing the research, we can see that we have this volume premium of 36%. That's a really good number, but without any direct competitors to compare with, it's a bit out of context.
If you look at other industries, successful brands typically are at this level. It's not a unique number, but what is unique, however, is our price premium. The volume premium indicates the willingness to choose a product. The price premium indicates the willingness to pay for the very same product. It's quite usual that you have a high volume premium, yes, I want that brand, but then when it comes to paying for it, the will is not really there in the same way.
As you see here, we are at a very, very even level between these two. What this indicates is that consumers who know about Mips, they also want to choose it, and they want to pay for it. The funnel from awareness to consideration to actually becoming a customer or consumer is very watertight. That's why we say that if you know Mips, you buy Mips. This means that awareness is key for us. It's our most important KPI.
T o set ourselves up for success, we have, for that reason, organized our marketing department and our marketing spend in four main areas. First one being PR, and that's also what has been longest running for us. We have a very, very good track record in PR. We have been increasing our reach and our mentions year-over-year, and we continue to invest to go into new markets, and maybe most important, we also go wider than we have done before. We have been very strong in endemic media, in specialist magazines and websites, but we are now going broader, focusing on broader media to reach even more people.
It's really nice to do PR work when you get classy publications like Forbes writing a statement like, "The Mips label usually adds $20-$40 to the price, but simply do not buy a helmet that does not have it. There's no sense in that, and every major manufacturer offers Mips." PR, really strong, really important area for us, but you unfortunately don't reach everyone through PR.
For that reason, our second area is paid media. In year-end this year, we, for the first time, actually went into a really, really big media campaign targeting our focus markets, Germany and U.S., making sure we continue to build the awareness also with the people who we don't reach through our extensive PR work.
The third area is a bit closer to purchase, and it's about our new in-store concept and our new educational platform. We are typically, if you go into a bike store, for example, or another of our main areas like snow or motocross, we will typically be somewhere between 60%-100% of the assortment, but that has not really been clearly visible.
To make sure to highlight that, we have built this in-store concept ranging from small signage to, as you see here, full shop-in-shop solutions. That is to really claim that space and get our fair share of attention on the helmet wall. This also gives the staff in the stores a good talking point when selling a helmet to talk about this added safety feature.
To make sure that all staff people are properly educated, we have developed an app and an academy platform where we educate people on how to talk about the product, how to pick up a helmet, talk about the benefits of Mips, and what difference it does for the wearer. We are sold through probably somewhere around 40,000 doors, so you can imagine there's a ton of people out there who we need to educate. A digital tool such as this becomes absolutely necessary.
Fourth base is also very close to purchase because it's e-tail. Same thing as in physical retail, we have usually a very big part of the assortment, and we need to make that seen, and we need to communicate in a coherent way across all different e-tail platforms and also the brand's own e-commerce. We have developed assets, and we are investing into getting these out into the e-tailers to make sure we are seen in the way we want and that the product is properly explained to the consumer.
Tying all this communication together, we have our Team Mips. There are, of course, very many people using Mips helmets out on the big pro circuits in different sports every day, but we have selected a few that we see as great ambassadors for our brand. We want to be the leaders in helmet safety, so of course, we need the leading personalities out there.
These athletes are, as you see, engaging in quite dangerous activities. They are prepared to take that risk, but of course, they also want to minimize that risk as much as they can. They are a fantastic spokesperson for our brand. Of course, as you see, they give us pretty nice content as well.
On this team, we have, you see here, Mr. Brandon Semenuk, by far the most decorated, big mountain mountain bike rider in the world. We have Kate Courtney, who you saw earlier, world champion and World Cup winner. We also have Tim Gajser on motocross, who has already four world championship titles, going for a fifth this season. We have Henrik Harlaut, the Swedish freestyle skier, who is the most decorated freestyle skier in the world, actually. Marion Haerty, four-time winner of the Freeride World Tour.
A fantastic bunch of athletes, all with their own safety story. Some of these guys, they grew up watching their idols actually perform these activities, even without the helmet. They want to be better role models than themselves had. They want to promote helmet wearing in general, and Mips in particular.
Last thing I wanted to talk to you about here today is our products. We, of course, are a safety product. We have, last year alone, we sold more than 12.5 million helmets. The product itself is a big contact area to the consumer. In every helmet, we of course, need to look as best as we can because that gives confidence in a safety product.
We also have a huge challenge of having more than 140 brands that we need to either fit into or stand out. It depends a bit on the price hierarchy. We need to provide a toolbox where the brands can really work with our concept to make sure that they get the right look of our product in their helmet.
We have many different solutions, and some of our more exclusive ones, they are really stealthy and tucked away in the helmet. That means that the better job we do, the less visible we actually are. We need to make sure that the small visible technologies we have really becomes highlighted and pops out and adds value to that product.
With great product design, we of course need also a matching level of our marketing assets. This is the kind of level where we want to show ourselves in the future. This is how nicely we need to portray our product to make sure that the consumer understands what they are paying for and the benefits that it brings with it. All in all, nicely -designed, sustainable products, neatly -packaged, heavily- marketed, everything set up to back up the very ambitious sales plan we have.
Here to talk more about the sales plan, I give you our Head of Sales, Johan.
Thank you, Fredrik. Very exciting to go- to market with products, a platform, and marketing assets that look like this. I'm Johan Sauer. I'm Head of Sales here at Mips, and I'm gonna walk you through our sales priorities in a little bit more detail.
Let's start with the market opportunity. As Max already shared, the market has increased quite a bit. We now see a total market of 550 million helmets annually, and in turn, also our addressable market has increased to 195 million annually from 130 million previously. In sports, 45 million. The biggest change is bike, where we both have seen a strong underlying growth, but in addition, adding additional price points as well.
On the moto side, we see a market of 40 million, up from 30 million. The biggest chunk of that is in the on-road subcategory. If you have been paying attention in the past, you recognize that we have changed the terminology of the motor market a little bit. We used to talk about motocross, or MX, and street.
The reality is that the type of helmets and how they're used is much broader than that. Now that we're also including scooter helmets in our moto category, a much more relevant way of talking and explaining our two subcategories is on-road and off-road, and this is what we'll be using going forward.
On the safety side, that's the biggest increase, up to 110 million units. The biggest change is on the construction or industry, where we see a market of 100 million units. The big change there is that we're no longer just addressing the Type II helmets, but also a share of the much larger Type I helmet market.
For those of you who have been following us, obviously, our business is doing very, very well. Despite the market growing at a very high rate across the helmet categories over the past years, we have managed to outperform the market, both by adding more and more models in more brands' product ranges. A lso in previous white spots like the European markets, where we see an increase in momentum, and more and more brands coming on board, adding more models.
Secondly, we see an increase in brand awareness across our categories and across our markets. Like Fredrik already explained, an increase in Mips brand awareness is directly sales driving. Thirdly, independent testing and helmet certification. Across our categories, we see a continuous movement towards inclusion of rotational motion in standards and independent testing. Obviously, also a factor helping us grow.
Over the years, we've also built a quite amazing customer base. Over 130 brands in sports, 30 motor brands, and now 10 brands in safety. Together, these provide us a very solid platform for continuously growing our existing business, and that is the top priority of our first strategic pillar.
Let's see how this looks in our different categories. In sports, it's about winning with the existing partners, and it comes down to two things. One, continue winning in the U.S. It's still our biggest market and our strongest presence. There, it is about reaching specific price points and specific retail channels to close the gap. In Europe, it's about replicating the success that we are having in the U.S., and the momentum has picked up quite a bit. We're adding more brands, and now it's about to make sure that we stay on the same trajectory that we've had in the U.S.
One very, very clear opportunity in sports is to focus more on our kids. In the past, kids' helmets have been a little bit out of our addressable market, but we're a little bit ashamed of that because kids are the most important asset that we have. We are now in a position to address more of those helmets, and we will actively make sure to close the gap and provide added protection to more children.
Let's look at our second category, moto. In any category that we enter, we strive to become leaders in helmet safety. On the moto side, we are well on our way, especially if you look at the off-road category. There, we have a strong presence in brands, a lot of models in the market.
I f you look at the professional racing circuit in motocross, the majority of the top riders are wearing Mips-equipped helmets from one of our brand partners. They're basically winning every race in Supercross and Pro Motocross, and of course, this helps to create additional momentum, more motocross brands coming on board and adding more models. For us in moto, two of the priorities are same as in sports. It's about keeping winning in the U.S. and replicating that success in Europe.
The third priority is about convincing the on-road brands. They've been a little bit slower to the game, but we are seeing an increased momentum and a pickup in interest, and for us it starts with racing. The rotational parameters are being added and are included in the ECE R22.06 helmet certification.
We are seeing a spillover from other helmet categories now, especially in motocross, so more moto brands on the on-road side are showing a strong interest in Mips. For us, it starts with racing. Racing is the place where you build credibility in the on-road category, and our strong objective is to create a relevant presence for Mips there.
Thirdly, our safety category. That's our latest addition, and when we presented at the Capital Markets Day in September 2019, we had one brand on board. Today, we have established a fantastic base of 10 announced brands, with the latest addition being the top international brand, uvex safety group. More than that, we're also seeing a strong progress and momentum on the construction company side, where now two, sorry, three out of five Nordic construction companies are offering safety helmets with Mips integrated to their workers.
With that base, it's now about generating volumes. As I said, we have the brands, and we have the foundation to build that growth. To make sure that we create the biggest possible impact on each of our markets, we're making sure that we are working with the key partners, distributors, education providers to ensure that Mips gets the best possible impact. To make sure that we can manage and create the growth that we want in the category, we're also building the right organization.
We are building a team of educators and product specialists locally in our focus markets. In Scandinavia and in the U.K., we have that already in place. For the U.S. market and the German market, we have resources starting July first. We believe with this setup, we have what it needs to start ramping up the volumes.
Of course, we also need to do things that support our sales. Despite that we're slightly in different phases and on different categories, for us, it comes down to three things. Firstly, supporting sell-through. We're an ingredient brand, and it's quite easy. If our partners sell, we sell. This is about helping our partners succeed, and we do that through key retailers and e-tailers, education campaigns and sales campaigns to help our partners succeed.
Secondly, it's about educating the crowd. Fredrik already shared the famous words, "If you know Mips, you buy Mips," and that's what it comes down to. We are working with our partners, retailers, e-tailers, with the help of our amazing assets, Mips Academy, continued PR efforts to educate the crowd on Mips.
Thirdly, making sure that we keep growing our penetration. This is about constantly making sure that we improve our value proposition so that we can keep growing in our partners' product ranges. This is how we will grow our existing business.
The second pillar is about opening up new markets and new channels. It's about three things, basically. New channels, it's about reaching down in price points in specific retail channels to access additional volumes. Secondly, it's about new markets. Opening up emerging markets that are now showing a real interest in Mips. Thirdly, new helmet opportunities, basically offering Mips to completely new helmet categories.
The first opportunity is about opening up new channels, reaching down to the volume price points that we previously have considered been too low. This goes back to the founding idea of Mips. It's about offering improved and better protection to as many people as possible. It should not be about the size of your wallet that decides if you can improve, afford that protection or not.
We've been asked over the years, quite often in fact, to enter these price points and enter these channels. We have said, for the most part, no. We have felt that our product, our brand, and our position in the market has not been ready for it. Things have changed. The interest, both from the brands, from the retailers, and the Mips position in the market in general, is completely different today. Our ambition is to actively enter volume price point and related channels in order to win.
Second opportunity is about new markets. Looking at emerging markets, it offers quite a bit of potential in volume. Motor market, for example, more than 60% of the global market is in India, China, and Southeast Asia. Of course, we won't be able to address all of these. Historically, emerging markets have been completely out of our focus because of low helmet use, extremely low price points, a low general awareness around safety, but this is changing.
People are now willing to spend more on helmets. New helmet laws and regulations are coming into place, and there is a quite big increase in interest for Mips. With this in mind, we will enter some of these markets and offer our technology to improve protection where we can.
The third pillar is about, like Max said, capturing new opportunities in helmet safety. It's about taking a complete helmet performance focus, looking at the whole helmet. The first thing that we will capitalize on is competence. Over the years, where we have worked very hard to become leaders in rotational protection, we've also built up a quite unique know-how, understanding, and capabilities related to much more than rotational. This is about offering this unique competence and capabilities to our customers and the helmet industry.
Secondly, aftermarket and add-ons. With Mips becoming a more integrated solution, taking more parts of the helmet into consideration. O bviously this opens up opportunities to provide padding, but also in safety aftermarket products and basically prolonging the lifetime of our products and the perceived value.
The last one, and thirdly, is new innovation. This is about looking outside rotation. People, when they think about safety in helmets, it's impact. Fit, comfort, ventilation, aerodynamics are all factors that make a customer decide if they want or do not want to buy a helmet. If we can't even make a customer buy a helmet, doesn't matter how safe it is. Looking at the whole helmet, it's about doing things that we don't do today. As you see, very interesting opportunities for our future growth, and we have a unique position to capitalize on those.
Thank you very much. I'll hand over to Karin, who will explain how that looks in the numbers.
Yes. Thank you, Johan. If we go into the financials, and also tell you a bit more about the numbers. First, as Max said, our previous targets was to reach SEK 1 billion in net sales by 2025, and have an EBIT margin over 40% and payout dividend of more than 50%.
Our new financial targets, which we communicated last night, is to reach SEK 2 billion in net sales by 2027, to have an EBIT margin of over 50%, and to continue payout dividend of more than 50%. If we look at net sales, if we compare to last year, 2021, we need to grow on average by 22% to reach the SEK 2 billion target.
If we look into what that actually mean, we are saying that around 2/3 of this will come from growing existing business. The last 1/3, 1/2 of that will come from opening up new channels and markets, and the other 1/2 will come from capturing new opportunities within helmet safety.
If we look at our EBIT margin, we operate as an ingredient brand. We have a highly scalable business model, and we will continue our strong growth and have a gross margin of over 70%. We want to fuel our brand awareness and continue build our brand platform. We will increase our marketing spend to 7% of net sales. The last plan was to have in between 5% to 7%.
If we look at R&D, we are born from science, so of course, we need to continue our research and development, and the product is the key. We will continue to invest heavily in this with ambition of 5% of net sales. We also have a really scalable business model for the rest of the OpEx, so this will enable an EBIT margin of over 50%.
If we look at our cash generation, we have really strong cash generation capabilities. We have an asset-light business model, we only have outsourced production, and we also only hold limited finished goods inventory. We invoice at delivery of our products, and we will continue to invest in our intellectual property and our own testing facilities, but we don't need to invest in our manufacturing. This will enable a dividend payout of 50% of net earnings.
If we look at the granularity of the reporting going forward, so we will continue on a quarterly basis, report net sales per category, both in safety, moto, and sports. We will continue on a quarterly basis, report net sales per region. Since we are changing or increasing our whole value proposition per sold helmets, we have 1,000 different helmet models on the market. We will no longer report yearly volume and no longer report number of brands or models. This reporting will be applied now from Q2 2022.
Thank you. Max, no w it's time for you to wrap up.
Okay. Thank you, Karin. If we then summarize what you have seen today, our strategy is really about three key pillars. One is to grow existing business. We are good at delivering organic growth. Our plan going forward is also about organic growth. It's also about opening up new markets and channels, really capture the opportunities in those markets. And the last one, to capture new opportunities within helmet safety.
First of all, we have the vision. We have the best vision I ever had in a company that I ever worked on, to reduce head injuries and save lives. That really becomes addictive. We have the opportunity. We have-- the market wants our product, the consumer want our product, and we have the products to win in the market. We also have the capabilities.
Our investment in the last years has really been about creating a winning strategies for the years to come. We have invested heavily in marketing. We have never looked as good as we do today. We have developed a lot of new products to also win in the market. The whole after-market concept is completely new, and that's something that we created in the last two years. We also have the resources to do it. We doubled our competence in the last years. For us, it's about get going and really become the true leaders in helmet safety.
We now open up for questions. Carl, Berenberg.
Yes. Carl-Oscar Bredengen from Berenberg here. Just, first question on the lower price segment.
Yeah.
Should we assume that it's actually lower revenue for you as well within that segment, so you're actually lowering prices with the customer?
Yes. If you look at the average ASP, that will go down for that specific market. We have, of course, done innovation. For us, we have the products that can play in these different price points. Margin-wise, and then I'm talking about gross margins, you will not see a difference. In terms of ASP, yes.
Okay. Just to follow up on that, 'cause I assume it's the same customer, in some of these models, do you see a risk that you will have to lower prices further within the higher end?
Yeah.
It's across the whole.
No.
No.
It will not cannibalize on the rest of our assortment. Those customers we are talking about on those market is not the same as we have today in the other markets. It will not cannibalize on each other.
Okay. Within the scooter segment, this is obviously quite an interesting angle.
Mm-hmm.
What kind of brands? Is this the same brands that you're currently working with? How did this kind of come about? Was it coming from the customer that they-
Yeah.
wanted to implement this?
Of course, the big change that happened on the market was really the regulatory change that we saw in China, where they started to request a lot of new helmets or mandatory helmet rules in China. We have seen that the market demand increased quite a lot. The bigger helmet manufacturers within that category is the e-scooter brands. So you have the Xiaomi, you have the NIU, and all of that. So that's where you find the big partners in that area. You have also a couple of very big players in India and so on, but they are not the same brands as we have in other markets.
All right. Thank you. Maybe also could you give some more color on safety?
Mm-hmm.
Perhaps, I mean, something related to the models you're launching with uvex this year-
Yeah.
... which is quite interesting.
Yeah.
When you expect to see some real volumes-
Yeah.
... sort of moving the needle for the group?
Yeah.
Perhaps just broader, with regards to safety, how you actually work with educating the industry, in a bit more detail?
Yeah.
That'd be great.
I mean, if we take the first one, we did announce our partnership with uvex end of April. We said that there will be two launches throughout the year. The first one is a forestry type of helmet, smaller volume. In August, we also talked that they will launch their pronamic helmets, which is their flagship helmet. With that flagship helmet, you will also see that the volumes will start to increase.
All right. Thank you.
When it comes to education, of course, the safety category is a very specific animal. What we do there is normally we team up with the helmet brands, and we talk to the industry to explain how it works. We have a lot of round table events where we invite the bigger construction companies in the industry and the bigger safety players in the industry and have an elevated discussion about safety. What does injury statistics look like? What is the different relevant injury criteria that you need to address?
We also show them a lot of the modeling and the testing that we have done, and why Mips is a relevant option also in that industry. Because still, we're almost three years down the road, every discussion starts the same. "Great that you have Mips, but I don't need it. My workers, the only time they get hurt is when they get a falling object in their head." Okay. I say, "How do you actually back that story up? Because if you look at the relevant injury statistics, it doesn't show that." They said that, "No, it's true."
Okay. Let's look at your data. First of all, they don't have a lot of data. Even the bigger construction companies today, they don't have a lot of data. They know that an accident happened. They normally know the result of the accident, whether it was an MTC, a RWC, so a medical treatment case, a restricted work case, and if the worker couldn't come back to work. They normally don't know what actually was the injury scenario that the worker went through.
Already there, we need to start the discussion. If you look at injury statistic, and you can take the U.S. market, the falling objects is about 16% of the accidents. You get something into your head. If you get it directly on the crown, then there might not be a tangential force. Most often, you get it actually on the side of the helmet, and you can have exactly the same impact.
You look at 60% of the accidents. You go into the slips, the trips, and the falls, and there you normally have a tangential force if you fall with some kind of angle to the ground or you hit some kind of angled object. Of course, there, it makes a lot more sense. Then you also take the second biggest relevant injury criteria at the site, you have the moving objects. Either you're hit by a forklift or you're hit by a steel bar moving across the site.
When they see, I will not explain the last 4%. When they see that, of course, they realize that we are actually addressing most type of their injury scenarios that they have in their site. When we also backed up what we do with science, normally there is very few of them that talk about price points. They, of course, want us to partner up with their key helmet partners, and that's what we're doing at the moment.
All right. Thank you.
Okay, thanks. I continue. Daniel Thorsson from ABG. Sorry. First, a question on the visibility on the sales target here.
Yeah.
In the previous Capital Markets Days, your targets have been based on current customers-
Yeah.
... and growing with them. Is this the case this time as well? Because when I try to back calculate the penetration in 2027, it looks like in the 25% range of the new TAM.
Yeah.
The TAM has increased heavily here.
Yeah.
Not the sales target to the same extent.
No. Of course, we have three different pillars, like we talked about. The first one is to grow the existing customer base. Most of those customers we already have on board. Of course, there you have a little bit more security. The second part is about opening up new price points and markets. There, we have some of the customers. We still need to win some of the customers.
The third pillar, the biggest part from a revenue point of view, is of course the aftermarket product. If we win with a customer in safety, we will have a bigger installed base, and then of course that starts to work out also. When it comes to the completely new things, that's also where the biggest unknown is.
The majority of the plan, which is more than 2/3, is growing with existing customers. Best visibility. Second best on the new markets, and then the third one is on the new opportunities.
Should we see those pillars summing up to SEK 2 billion or more than SEK 2 billion in sales, or is it just the first third of that pillar,, the existing customers making up SEK 2 billion and everything on top of that, could be everything up to SEK 3 billion or SEK 4 billion?
No. What we see at the moment, all of them adds to SEK 2 billion.
Excellent. Follow up on that, regarding the sales CAGR here.
Yeah.
22% in the next four years.
Yeah.
How should we think about the split during the years?
Okay.
Will we start off with 30% growth and then say 15% in the fourth year as all of the other growth companies, or will it be pretty much evenly split as you grow in the different segments?
Yeah. It's actually six years, but anyway, if you look at the six years, normally when you have a growth trajectory, you normally start a little bit higher, and then you can expect a little bit lower in the end. That's as much about forward-looking statements as I will do on that.
Okay. Finally, that's fair enough. Finally, on the product, new products, new technologies. How much do you think you can internally develop versus acquire?
Yeah.
The acquisitions, will they be meaningful in terms of size? Will it be mostly technologies that you can roll out?
Yeah. Yeah, for us, we like to develop technology. We have a bigger R&D team. We're also expanding our test lab and so on. We have a lot of capabilities to develop new products. We did an acquisition in the beginning of the year to optimize the structure in the helmet, and of course we would like to do that.
I would say most of the things that we have out in our plan is based on our own capabilities. If we will find a fantastic innovation out there that we could buy, of course we would do that. We have the opportunity to do that. We have the cash to do it. At the moment, we are more focusing internally rather than externally because we can do it.
Okay, great. I actually have a final one for Fredrik on the marketing side here. We have seen more and more brands launching either a new product developed by themselves or taking in another third-party product trying to address rotational motion. How does it affect your marketing strategy here? Because then you can't really rely that much on the brand, and you have to make more yourself. Or, how do you see that playing out?
Could you please repeat?
If you have a brand.
Yeah.
Take Bontrager for example.
Yep.
They have both Mips and they have WaveCel.
Yep.
They will likely not market Mips, you know, equally aggressive as a brand that has 100% Mips elements, obviously.
I get it. That's also why, as you see, all of these four main pillars that are presented is actually marketing coming from us ourselves. We see great potential winning with the brands and building our brand story through them, but we can't 100% rely on others to do the job for us.
That's why we do our own PR, we do our own in-store concept, we do our own marketing campaigns, and we take our own grip on the e-tail space to make sure that we build the brand. Because if you want to be the leader, I don't believe you can expect others to do the job for you. A leader must always lead.
Thank you.
Hi, it's Jamie.
Hi, Jamie.
From Chilton. You talk about the larger market in safety helmets-
Yeah.
... in Type I and Type II. Is this a sort of direct result of the conversations you've been having for the last 18 months?
Yeah. I think it's also a lack of knowledge when we talked about this three years ago. Because if you look at one of the first, uvex helmet that has been launched is actually a Type I helmet. At that point, we had one solution in safety. That would play at all the different price points and a lot of the different technologies.
Of course, we like to do innovation and product development. During this period, we have developed a generic solution that can play in most of the harness helmets. You can actually put those in 90% of the harness helmets on the market without any adaptation. With that opportunity, we also got the opportunity.
If you would have asked me the same question in 2019, I said, "No, we can't do it." Now, we can.
Just on the kids market, which seems, you know, no-brainer really. You know, how will this work, you know, in terms of ASPs and margins with an existing customer who does adult helmets?
Yeah.
You know, will you charge less for the kids' helmets? Will they not just say, "It's the same inlay, we want the lower price?"
Yeah. I think, of course, with our market position that we have at the moment, we still decide on the pricing. Of course, we know how much we want to charge for certain helmet and certain solutions, and that will still be the case in kids helmet. For us, when we look at the kids helmet assortment, there is a lot of different helmet opportunities out there.
We have done a huge science project together with KTH about understanding more about kids' helmet, what should we address in a kids' helmet, and so on. That's one of the reasons also why we are rolling that out now. We will, and we have also before, given a little bit of discount to kids' helmet because we think it's right to protect your kids.
They normally play at different price points and so on, and we will continue to do that, not with a massive impact on margin.
Okay, great.
Yeah, Emanuel Jansson, Danske Bank here. Coming back to the safety segment, looking at the uvex collaboration y ou just announced. W ould you say that it's more likely that you conquer the European market before the U.S.?
No, I think we will actually do them both. We started earlier in Europe, so of course Europe becomes natural to do a little bit quicker, and especially the Nordic. I mean, you also see that we are succeeding quite well in Nordic. Having three out of the biggest five construction companies is a clear evidence of that.
What we have seen for the U.S. market is the overall awareness is higher. Normally, when you talk to the construction companies, they are much more aware about Mips. I would say the runway will not be as long, and I think within a couple of years, I will be very surprised if they wouldn't be at the same level.
Okay, perfect. Could you provide us with some details about how big the U.S. market is in the safety segments compared to European?
Yeah. I think, I mean, the difference is very big in terms of the market, and there is of course a lot of numbers in terms of when it comes to the U.S. market. It's almost the same size as the European market, but the difference is that you have a much bigger retail market in the U.S. market. There, you have the Home Depots and all of them, which sell a lot of retail helmets that we don't have to the same extent in Europe.
In U.S., you have much more independent contractors that goes into Home Depots and so on, and buy their own helmets, they tend to spend quite a lot. You normally see these brim helmets and so on, and they can easily cost up to around $200.
In terms of size, they are almost the same size. If we look at the type of helmets and the type of market structure, it is very different.
Okay, perfect. Thank you. A few questions more about on the Type I helmets. What's the average price on that type of helmets?
Yeah. If you look at the Type I helmet and you go from the starting point, then you are at around $5 to $7. That's the traditional yellow plastic hard hat. If you go to the highest priced one, you will find it at somewhere around $25 to $30. It's not the perfect definition, but if you take a majority of the sales, that's how it's structured.
I can assume if you're moving into like, Type I helmets, they maybe are a little bit safer than Type II helmets.
Yeah.
You also might be able to add on other types of components like the ventilation or pads, et cetera, that you talked about.
Yeah.
Is that some kind of strategy that you might, entering cheaper models-
Yeah.
... you also can do add-on sales.
Yeah. I think already at the start, when you start looking at Type I type of helmet, a big part of those helmet, and we have already seen that, they disqualify themselves because they are not fit for the type of accidents that we normally are designed to protect against. Already there, they are not fit for purpose, and that disqualifies quite a lot of the helmets.
They-- If you fall and/or get a bigger impact on your head, most likely, they will not sustain that type of accident. We also have a criteria and a requirement that we decided on quite early in the process. It always needs to have a chin strap. If you don't have a chin strap on, most likely, the helmet will not stay as it should on the head.
Normally, if you have a fall accident, in most of the cases, you actually fall with your butt first, then you hit your head on the ground. If you fall with your butt first, you don't have a chin strap on, the helmet will not make a lot of sense. I would say that there is an opportunity to address helmet. Some of them, we need to go back like we do in every type of helmet we do.
First of all, you don't offer enough protection. Indeed, it is also an opportunity in the second discussion to offer alternatives way, and we are doing that also in the Type II helmet. In a lot of the helmet, you see that the headband or the head part of the helmet is not strong enough. We offer a way to support that and to create a stronger headband and so on. Also, the headband is, of course, a replacement product from us.
Perfect. Excellent answer. Lastly from my side, just coming back to the virtual test lab and so on. Do I understand correctly that you will sell this kind of service to your customers?
Yeah. We can say call it a service, or we add it to the license fee. We like to have a variable business model. That's normally how you can scale up and so on. If we do a project, if they pay a certain fee at one point, and then they want us to take a much more integrated part of the development process, that costs a little bit more, and that's added to the license fee.
Perfect. Thank you very much.
Yes. Thank you. Karri from the Handelsbanken. Going back to safety, surprise, surprise. You mentioned that the discussion still starts with that, we don't need Mips in our safety helmets and when they say that our accident frequency per helmet user is so low-
Yeah.
... compared to sports, where, at least personally, it's very high. How do you argue around that? They say that we have 10,000 helmets and 10 accidents per year. How do you still make them believers?
Yeah. I think, I mean, one accident is one accident too much, and we always say that the best accident is the one that didn't happen. Of course, accidents do happen, and I think anyone that had a serious accident or a lethal accidents, which also happened at some point, probably will do everything they can to avoid it.
I will be very surprised if someone says, "Ah, I only had 10 serious accidents last year," so not that important. I haven't come across that discussion. Normally, it's actually the other way around. Most companies in the world are very safety conscious. They normally want to do everything they can to make sure that they have a better option that is designed to protect at more accidents than they are doing today.
A question about this in-store concept where you are really sort of putting the Mips brand at the forefront. Are you getting any pushback from helmet manufacturers because that's sort of making their brands maybe less visible?
Yeah. I think, I mean, first of all, we normally sometimes we make the agreement with the smaller displays and so on with the brand. It normally carries the brand logo, and they bring that to the store, and sometimes they pay for that type of exposure in store.
When we talk to the bigger stores-- and you will see some of them already is installed here in Stockholm, we are installing a couple of units also in the U.S-- there, we're taking a whole wall, and that agreement we make with the store, and we have the Mips logo and the Mips exposure, and they want to do that because if they sell Mips, normally they get a couple of bucks more for that type of helmet. It's also incentivizing them to have a better exposure.
So far, we have not got any pushback from the brands.
All right. Thank you.
Okay. Yes.
Great. Just, you know, on the, you know, the dividend policy is great. Capital allocation, have you thought of buybacks or anything like that?
Yes, we have. I mean, I am an old CFO. Karin is a great CFO. We think about that all the time, but at the same time, with all the things that we have on the agenda at the moment, growing, that is our top priority. That's what we focus on, to grow as fast as we can.
At one point, it might be that Mips need to think a little bit more on the financial mechanics or how we can optimize the balance sheet. We just feel that this is not the right moment at this point, but it might change in the future. Then probably growth is not as high on the agenda as it is today.
I don't need the mic. Just, one question. What's the reason for not reporting volumes?
Yeah.
Going forward?
Thank you, Peter. That's a very good question. First of all, we are changing the way we go to market. We will try to fill the helmet with as much value as possible. The comparison between volume will not make sense anymore. That's why we want to look at much more on how we are doing per category, And the value that we are driving in that sense.
We had a long discussion about it, and we feel that it will only distort the picture rather than to add more value. The same is when it comes to brands, number of brand wins, and so on. We will probably to still talk about it when it comes to unofficial numbers or marketing and so on when it comes to brands and safety because there it's still about brand wins.
When we look at the sport category, we have 120 brands. One of them might not bought one volume one year, the other year, they bought a bit of volume. Is it still a brand? How do you actually do that mechanic? It's the same with the number of models that we have put on the market.
Like Karin said, we are not far away from having more than 1,000 products that has been launched on the market. Some of them will be discontinued because a normal helmet life or a model life is somewhere around eight years. Given the success we have had, we start sort of got the success in 2014. Eight years down the road, that will start to happen. It's not about being less granular in the reporting.
We will not follow up volumes internally because it doesn't make sense in the same way, and then it will just be an artificial creation of something to the stock market that we anyway not addressing in the same way. Hopefully an answer to your question.
Hi. A follow-up on the TAM expansion.
Yeah.
You increased the TAM for bike quite a lot here.
Yeah.
Is it a risk that you have overstated the numbers because of the boost in the pandemic? How have you addressed the strong bike market last year?
Yeah. Thank you. That's a very good question, and we looked at not only one year, we looked at a little bit longer period of time. What we normally do with volumes is, of course, we match it also with the factories. Because if there is volume anywhere, you need to have that also produced somewhere. That's a good reference point, and then we also talk to the brands.
We might be wrong, but then we have the lowest assumption of all the key brands that we have, and they are significantly wrong or more wrong than we are. It's a careful assumption of what the market should be. If you go to bigger brands and ask for the same thing, you will probably get a slightly higher volume than we estimate.
Thank you. A short follow-up on that. The current trading now we see in the market with the consumer confidence coming down, retailers reporting pretty weak numbers, the inventory, et cetera. What do you see in your pipeline here-
Yeah.
... in 2022 that is relevant to know about?
Yeah. I think 2022 is quite a long period, and of course, we don't do any forward-looking statements. There is a couple of things that we have seen that we also talked about in the last quarterly report. First one is that we start to see inventory filling up in the U.S. market. There is quite a lot of very cheap bikes and very cheap helmets in the channel and in the key retailers at the moment.
You do not see the same thing in the European retailers. They don't have as much stock. They haven't also been as aggressive when it comes to sourcing. It's a very mixed picture on the market. We haven't seen any major slowdown yet, but of course, we are only early in the season, and there can still happen a lot.
So far, our main contribution to the growth that we have seen is in Snow helmets, where you have the exact opposite. Fantastic start of the season. Any ski resort, you don't have any inventory at all, and that's what starts to fill up now, and that's the production that is mainly running now.
Okay? Thank you, everyone. I think it's spot on. Yeah, a couple of minutes late. Thank you, everyone, for listening in.