Good morning everyone, and welcome to the Thule Group Interim Report Q3 2021. My name is Emily and I'll be coordinating the call today. During the presentation, you will have the opportunity to ask a question by pressing star followed by one on your telephone keypads. I now hand the call over to our host, Magnus Welander, CEO. Magnus, please go ahead.
Thank you very much. Good morning everybody, and welcome to another fantastic quarter from the Thule Group. We can really say that we had another very strong quarter across the board. We can go to the first slide in the presentation, and on that you can see that we had a total sales of SEK 2,772,000,000 , which was a 16% currency adjusted growth versus 2020. I think it's very important immediately, and we'll talk more about that on a coming slide later on in regards to what it means in reality, because we also have to remember we had a very specific comparable period in 2020. As you will remember, in 2020, the second quarter was stifled in terms of sales due to lockdown measures and people not being able to go ahead and do their activities, so to speak.
That meant that we last year we really had a much stronger Q3 when we caught up with that in the season. We had a very tough comp period. Despite that, we grew FX adjusted with 16%, which actually means then that versus 2019, the last normal year, so to speak, it is a 75% currency adjusted growth. Fantastic efforts being able to capture the majority of the demand that was out there. At the same time, as you all are very aware, we have seen increasing costs across the board in the world. Also for the Thule Group, raw material costs have increased dramatically, freight costs have increased even more dramatically. On top of that, of course, when you're running to cope with a fantastic demand increase, you do have some challenges in running your plants as efficiently as you would normally do.
We have in our own assembly plants had more temporary staff, we've had more shift work, and with suppliers not being able to fully fulfill orders, we've had to do many more switch over between various products on our assembly lines, thereby losing some efficiencies. Therefore, in total, those things were partly compensated by the mid-year price increases that we did and of course, some production overhead assumption. As you can see, our gross margins was 40.6% versus 42.9%. As we wrote in the quarterly report, we are feeling very good about that with our January price increases, we will have fully compensated for those cost increases, and therefore we will see some of those negative effects also in the quarter four. The EBIT margin was the fantastic 24.2%, and which leaves us at the rolling 12 or latest trailing period of 23.6% EBIT margin.
We had an EBIT of SEK 670 million, which was clearly above the SEK 596 million we had previous year. Our scalability in our back end was proven once again where we, with fantastic teams and good systems in the background, could maintain very efficient cost controls while growing significantly as a business. Overall, our operational cash flow grew, was positive of SEK 525 million, which was less than the same period last year, and that is really attributed to two major effects. One is that we are spending more money on investments in capacity, so SEK 113 million this quarter. Another one is that we finally, especially in Europe, are starting to be able to build up some more inventory than we were capable of doing at the same time last year. If we go to the next slide, we can see a little bit, as I mentioned, about quarterly performances.
As for most businesses, you see a reality of a very weird quarterly reality in going on in the business. We see that we have comparative periods that are different, that means that you should focus on the year-to-date numbers. Year-to-date, we have shown a 44% currency adjusted growth. Year-to-date, we have also then managed to grow our EBIT with 64%. Don't be too fixated in comparing separate quarters. Look at the totality of the numbers. That has meant also that of course we've seen a significant pickup in EBIT margin as the year-to-date, the first nine months have delivered a really strong performance. Don't be too focused on quarters, look at the more rolling month period.
If you go to the next slide, you can see why, because then when actually looking at the quarters, you can see some very strange things going on in 2020. Our comparable period was strange in terms of performance in 2020. You see our track record from 2018 - 2021 there, and therefore you can see this effect, as I mentioned in the beginning of the call, that the second quarter 2020 was challenged due to lockdowns and people not being allowed to go out and do their activities. That meant a bigger pickup in quarter three in 2020, and even actually some of the seasonality that normally would be considered late spring, early summer products being sold as far as into quarter four due to backlogs in our business and still a demand that maintained.
When we therefore look at the business in 2021, it has a more normal seasonality. Strong start in quarter one, a very big season push in quarter two, and a continued strong season in quarter three is a more normal pattern, at a much higher level. Versus 2019, the growth has been 45%, 48%, and 75% respectively. When we now look forward to how are we coping with that demand situation, we first have to look at a very demanding comp period in quarter four, we also feel that despite having done a great job in catching up with some of the backlog, we haven't been fully able to meet demand, especially in North America, which showed a very good growth in the third quarter.
Also in 2021, we will see some spillover effect of a late season happening in the fourth quarter, meaning that we are feeling very comfortable in what also 2021 quarter four will be delivering. Once again, versus a very tough comp period. A strong continued performance versus 2019 is something I am very sure about that we will show also in quarter four this year. We then go to the next page and talk a bit about the regions, starting with the biggest region Europe and rest of the world, we can see once again here that you need to be cautious in too much focusing on the growth on specific quarters, and I would actually say more looking at this very strong growth year-to-date. In the third quarter, we showed 7% growth versus 2019, it was a 59% currency adjusted growth.
What happened in 2020 was we had some very big sales period of delayed orders from the spring that truly made a fantastic third quarter in Europe in 2020. Although the growth doesn't seem so big, if you really compare it on a pre-pandemic normal seasonality, as you can see, we had a fantastic period actually in quarter three. That was across markets. Strong performance across all the markets. We have a very strong bike category that continues to perform well, and it is clearly aided by a strong momentum in general in more biking, both by commuting and active holidaying and active weekends with bikes.
We also saw a very strong period in terms of roof racks, roof boxes, and rooftop tents across our Sport&Cargo Carriers category with a number of people that is growing all the time, taking those short breaks and those short weekend trips closer to their homes. In the RV Products category, which for our case, is very focused almost solely on the European market with only a little bit of niche sales in North America, we saw a strong momentum and a strong performance of the team as motor home manufacturers did increase their production capacity.
As we mentioned a few times before, it's clear that these motorhome manufacturers would have liked to be able to manufacture even more vehicles because demand is very strong, but they are struggling to get enough chassis from the large chassis manufacturers, mostly Fiat and Mercedes, as they are having similar problems as you've been hearing from the truck industry and the car industry with components coming into this type of assembly, especially semiconductors, but also other things. What is also good to note in this region is that we continue to have a very good pace of growth on our stroller sales, and we're becoming a stronger and stronger brand in that product category. It was nice to see, yes, against a very weak comp period, but it was nice to see a solid growth in the bags business.
In this case, as would be assumed, driven more by sport and outdoor packs than luggage or everyday bags. More and more people are returning to work. Ourselves, at the Thule facilities, have all staff back as of 1st of October in our offices. That means that we didn't see the normal August, September returning to work, I buy a new bag situation. The same applies to universities and high schools around the world. Having two daughters myself at university, I know that both these two Swedish universities had different dates and different realities when they returned fully. Most of them are coming back to the school, so to speak, later this year, meaning that the normal business of normal backpack sales in the back to campus period was definitely less. Overall, nice to see a very strong performance in our sport and outdoor packs.
We go to Region Americas on the next slide. Here, very positive to note a strong growth across all markets. You are reading daily about the big challenges in some of the Latin American markets with later COVID pandemic effects and a challenged economy. I can assure you we've had very strong growth in both the major market, U.S., and the second very large market, Canada. Also in all our Latin American markets. A very strong performance. You also see that our comparable numbers for Q3 looks much better in Region Americas. That was partly because we caught up earlier in 2020 with demand and meeting demand in Europe. The growth was strong in Europe in Q3 in 2020 and less strong in Region Americas. That is part of it.
It is also the case, which is very nice to see, that year to date we have a 57% growth. Very strong demand and the team is doing their utmost to meet that demand. We are, at the moment, still a little bit more behind in region Americas in capacity and coping with the fantastic demand we have. We have, as you can see on the numbers, never produced as many products as we are producing also in region Americas. As I mentioned, a strong growth across all markets, but it was also nice to see it's a growth across all categories. Very strong performance in Sport&Cargo Carriers, bike carriers of course, but also all the other products with roof boxes, roof racks, roof top tents, fishing rod carriers, water sport carriers. It is truly across a very strong performance.
What is also very nice to see is that within Active with Kids, we've had for many years a very strong performance with our jogging strollers, but we are also seeing growth with other strollers like the one on the image there, our Thule Spring stroller, which is a more city, urban, everyday stroller. Also a very solid growth in the bike trailer category in North America, which is nice to see, which has been a relatively seen smaller category in that region than it has been in Europe, but now has picked up very nicely in a reality with more bike commuting and more bike weekend being done by parents. Also in this region, a bag sales growth. Once again, we did have a weak comp last year, but it is nice to see the performance growth here.
The team is doing a very good job in winning a number of contracts in terms of supplying to large companies for their returning staff. We're also seeing a very clear, strong performance in terms of a larger pickup of air travel in North America than you see in other parts of the world. It's clear that the U.S. domestic travel has picked up faster than any other part of the world, and that has meant, of course, that there is a little bit more of logic to buy new bags and luggage in that region. Overall, we're very happy with the performance from a sales point of view, and I leave it to Jonas to, on next slide, speak a little bit more about the rest of the finances.
Thank you, Magnus. I will concentrate on the third quarter. The sales for the third quarter amounted to SEK 2,772,000,000. This is an increase of 14%. Excluding FX effect, the increase is 16%. When looking at the third quarter this year, please bear in mind, like Magnus said, that last year there was a big shift in seasonality. Many of the lockdowns were lifted in the latter part of the second quarter. There was both a pent-up demand as well as a strong growth in sales for staycation and outdoor products. The inventories helped us to satisfy a large part of the demand increase in the third quarter last year. That is the first quarter of really tough comps for us.
The gross margin in the quarter this year was 40.6% compared with 42.9% for the same quarter last year, which was a high number. The reason for the decrease is higher cost for purchased materials and transportation of incoming goods. In addition, we still run our production at high levels, which are expensive to maintain, and we do it among other things, with the help of extra shifts and hiring of agency workers. The higher volumes that we have seen have on the positive side also led to good absorption of production overhead costs, which counters part of the increased costs. The EBIT margin in the quarter was 24.2% compared with 24.4% in Q3 last year, which means that we are on the same level this year.
It's primarily the economies of scale that come into play here since the gross profit was SEK 80 million higher and the SG&A costs only showed a slight increase compared with the same period previous year. The financial net of SEK -12 million in the quarter is lower than last year's SEK -15 million, It is the lower utilization of our credit facilities that explains the difference. Tax cost in the quarter amounts to SEK 142 million, which as a percentage is slightly lower than what I estimate for the full year, where I expect us to be very close to the middle of our guidance of 22%-25%. If we please move to slide eight and look at the working capital and cash flow. Operating working capital was SEK 1,947,000,000 at the end of Q3 this year, which is about SEK 500 million higher than last year.
As a percentage of sales, however, we are at the same level, just above 19%. The net increase in working capital consists of an increase in stocks from a very low level at the same time last year, a moderate increase in accounts receivables and countering that, an increase in accounts payables. The increase in inventory must be seen compared to a strange situation with very low level at the same time last year. When many countries came out of the lockdowns, as mentioned, the demand for outdoor products soared. Even though we canceled furloughs and even holidays, we were not able to meet the demand with our production, and the inventories were dramatically reduced during Q3 last year as our products flew off the shelves.
Since then, we have increased the production, but encountered and solved other problems such as shortages in some components and materials, as well as shortage of containers to transport goods coming from Asia. In view of this, we have decided to make sure now in the slightly low period of the year, that we will not go into a new season without the good capability to meet the demand of our customers. This means that we are now in the process of stocking up ahead of the new season, which we didn't get a chance to do last year. We get an offsetting effect on working capital from increased accounts payables, and this increase reflects the current high activity in our production. The development in working capital, and the fact that we are investing in increased production capacity have, of course, had an impact on the cash flow.
The operational cash flow of SEK 525 million in the period is lower than the same period last year when it was SEK 777 million. The main reasons for the lower cash flow are, as I mentioned, the stock buildup and also increased investments in production capacity. Capital expenditure in the quarter amounted to SEK 113 million to be compared with SEK 32 million in the third quarter last year. As I mentioned, the investments relate to increased production capacity.
Thank you, Jonas. We go to page nine, we can then look a little bit forward at what you can say for Q4, but also, of course, leading into 2022. It is clear that we have a strong operational focus to prepare for what we are convinced will be a very good season in 2022. We have clearly proven that our growth strategy with great products, but also high on time in full availability for our retail customers and our consumers buying direct to consumer is key to our growth. To be sure that we can improve and come back to the very high and market-leading levels of on-time in full delivery performance, we are pushing a lot of growth investments earlier than we would have planned two years ago before the pandemic.
The reason we're doing that is we are convinced, as many are, when you look at the trends in the market, that a lot of the behavior that you've seen over the last 18 months is here to stay. We simply will have a bigger base business. What we are doing is significant expansion of capacity at all the main plants. We are continuing our very aggressive product development push for future product launches and future growth. We will be finalizing our expansion in our global test facility to cope with all the testing of all the new products, and we are also continuing to invest in our own online and direct-to-consumer sales tools.
We need to get back to serving both consumers and retailers at the level they should be served, and that means that there is both a short-term focus then to meet these demand increases, but also a structured long-term plan. That structured long-term plan means, as we noted in the report, actually, that we will see the most aggressive CapEx since I became a CEO in the company with a few years of clearly higher than our average and prior guidance. We will be around the 5% type of CapEx for a period of time and might even be above that. The simple matter is, it's because we are convinced that we need to be at the service levels and the production efficiencies that will ensure a highly profitable business for us going forward with big growth ambitions.
In the short term, it's a lot about handling mitigation of various smaller issues. It can be anything from the Chinese government deciding that electricity are closed down for certain days of the week at Chinese sub-suppliers to a complete lack of containers somewhere, as Jonas mentioned. It can be the fact that there is in Vietnam, still significant COVID lockdowns of some of our technical backpack manufacturers, et cetera. There is a constant daily challenge. As biking category is our biggest, I like to do a biking similarity here. I don't know how much biking fans there is on the call, but if you saw this year's Paris-Roubaix one-day classic, it was a brilliant reality of what the life looks like in the supply chain today. Paris-Roubaix is always a tough race.
You have the famous pavé sections with cobblestones that make it incredibly hard to bike fast, mixed up with pretty straight and easy road bits. That's the reality we have today, a constant intermingling of some production lines, some products being quite smooth and at a very high pace with somebody at the lead of their peloton really pushing and pulling. Then all of a sudden you turn into one of these pavé sections and it starts to get difficult even in easy years. This year at Paris-Roubaix, it was pouring down. On those pavé sections you had mud, so it was the slipperiest anybody's ever seen. There's never been as many falls. Not only, you were also getting sprayed with mud from other people around you. Then there was people in the way, so people were falling and having to pick themselves up.
The great bikers like the Italian Sonny Colbrelli, who won in a fantastic fashion, is a little bit what Thule is. We're better than most, definitely better than our competitors, at avoiding those obstacles on the pavé, taking that slippery road, keeping our legs moving, and just pulling ahead when the flatter sections come. That's what we will be doing also in the coming six to 12 months, because life will not be easy in supply chain in 2022 either. All of the people that hope for that are already realizing and smelling the roses, it will be a hugely challenged 2022. Why we feel so good is we've taken capacity expansion decisions much earlier than most. We have a fantastic supply chain team that has shown their flexibility to handle obstacles better than most. We had a brilliant product portfolio, so we feel very comfortable when we look ahead.
It is clearly the case, there are some bigger challenges. There is the cost challenges. I've never seen price increases like the ones I'm seeing on raw materials at the moment. I've never heard about increases like some of the freight cost increases, which therefore forces our hand to pass on those costs to our customers, and in the long term, to our consumers. We decided, as we communicated before, to do that in two steps, and with the price increases that are being implemented in January, we feel comfortable that we will have mitigated those cost increases. In closing, it is a little bit like the race on Paris-Roubaix. Don't take your eyes off the road. Keep pedaling. You will fall down. You need to get up quickly, and we will do that better than most. With that, I open up for Q&A.
Thank you very much. If you have a question, please register these now by pressing star followed by one on your telephone keypads. When preparing to ask your question, please ensure that your microphone is unmuted locally. Our first question today comes from Daniel Schmidt from Danske Bank. Daniel, your line is now open.
Thank you. Good morning, Jonas and Magnus, and thanks for the bike race analogy. It was very good. Couple of questions from me, then. Magnus, you said that you're still not able to fully meet demand during the third quarter, and you said the same thing in the second quarter. Am I right in believing that this is more related just to the Americas rather than both Europe and Americas, if we start there?
You're right that it's mostly Americas, but we've had during the quarter, especially in the beginning of the quarter, we did have some challenges still also in Europe as we have for every month been catching up stronger in Europe. I feel pretty good in Europe now. Still not at the level in terms of on time in full that I would have wanted, but we're close to that, and we will be at good levels when we now enter 2022. While we will see some challenges in region Americas still for a few months, even if we are actually building a new plant and opening up a new plant as we speak in the early parts of next year to further add space for some of those assemblies.
Just looking back to Q3 last year, this problem was maybe more widespread than you talked about the prolonged sort of biking season. Is there a little bit less of that in Europe now this year?
The interesting thing is, from a consumer perspective, the prolonged season is still there. You have never seen on the mountain bike trails this late in the year, so many new bikers and so many bikers. You've not seen on the roads as so many bikers, and you're seeing more bike commuters, even if it's pouring down in the Malmö city most days of the week. The last week, there are more bike commuters as well. From a consumer perspective, demand has not decreased. What has changed is we've been better at supplying, so we didn't have the same bottleneck and a backlog of orders. The actual new orders with bikers is very strong still as a trend.
The biking season is longer from a consumer perspective, not with the same we need to fill the backlog slipping into Q4, aside from then the U.S., where we do still have some of those backlogs to fill.
Is it fair to assume that the product mix is normalizing a little bit in Europe in Q4? Is that impacting in any way the profitability mix?
I would argue that if you see it's a very similar structure in what we sell versus 2020, which has done some skewing versus 2019 because historically, bags had its one big quarter in Q4 and still very small in Europe. Otherwise, I would say it's a relatively similar performance. You in Americas then have more biking product and some other products coming into quarter four than we historically had.
Yeah. Okay. Talking about mix, and you said pushing the direct to consumer channel is of course high on the agenda, and you've said that for some time. Do you have any numbers you can update us on where you are in terms of how much of your sales is going through direct to consumer now compared to a year ago?
We will do that when we summarize the full year. I can also say that in general, we decided in 2021, which we've been very clear with our retail customers. Some companies chose to aggressively pursue their own direct to consumer because that is a nice way if you have limited demand that you allocate more to yourself. We actually did the opposite. We took a conscious decision knowing that we have very strong retailers that we are convinced we will grow very well with in the coming years, and having prided ourselves historically to have a very high on time in full, and now not having it, we decided to not penalize retailers, but rather actually penalize ourselves in 2021. Our bigger push will be in 2022, when we will have strong availability.
That's where we will clearly see, from our point of view, a likely higher, bigger pickup in direct to consumer. It is still around double-digit in the U.S. That hasn't changed on an overall picture what we have. Still low single-digits in Europe because the big markets have just come on board. In terms of truly picking up more significant, it's from 2022 and beyond, we see that picking up.
Okay. What is reasonable to reach, you think? Maybe that's not a goal in itself or have you thought about that?
Of course. I don't think a goal in itself is the logic. We will sell where consumers think it's right to buy. We will be very profitable in all channels, and we will clearly have a hugely dominant share via retail for a very long time.
Yeah. Maybe finally on the gross margin, you alluded to that, or you're writing and stating that it will take until maybe the start of January till you get full compensation for the raw material and the freight cost. I think you said some effect in Q4. Is that insinuating a slightly less impact in Q4 versus what we saw in Q3 given the price increases in Q3?
Yeah, we've been clear that if you look at the price increase that we communicated as of Q3, we also were clear in communicating also to you as analysts and investors that we did not push that through on existing orders. Since we had a backlog in existing orders at the beginning of quarter three, there were quite a lot of products sent out with prices before the mid-year 2021 price increases. As those orders now have been fulfilled, all the orders we are now towards the end of the third quarter and the beginning of, as we will do in the fourth quarter, they are with the prices as we have them from mid-year, which are higher prices than we had before. There will be, in that sense, a little bit or more of the price clearly affect.
At the same time, we have to say that the costs are also continuing in the wrong direction. That will depend very much on the cost part. The prices are now fully rolled out at the mid-year. We already anticipated that we would need. There is also a clear price increase of 1st of January, which is where we are feeling comfortable that we will be in the right space.
Yeah. All right. Good. Maybe just a final one. There's been two announcements that I think I've seen, at least when it comes to the RV side and RV producers saying that they're forced to have unplanned production stops on the back of the shortage of components during Q4. Is that something that you have experienced, or do you have any insight into that, or how you will fare in that particular environment in the European market?
The RV business in Europe is booming. They're manufacturing more than they ever did, and sometimes you're missing out the logic because it's clear they will have issues, no doubt. As I mentioned, the chassis manufacturers are having issues, then the RV home manufacturers that need those chassis have issues. It's a little bit of a misconception if you believe that means that they will do less than they did same quarter last year. It's just that they're producing so much more that the issues are coming on a higher platform. Therefore, the RV business is doing great for us. If you don't grow in the European RV business at the moment, you're doing something wrong because there's a fantastic momentum in it. I'm sure we will have a very good momentum in Q4 as well, but it could have been even better.
I think that's what they are saying. What they're alluding to is the demand is even higher than their increased output, and due to that, they're running to capture the demand. Some of these components don't show up, they will have a little bit like the truck companies, and for Swedes, that's easy to think about when we hear so much about Scania and Volvo. Same issue. They're pumping out vehicles, but sometimes when they're pumping out that much and there are limitations, they will have weeks of closure. Same thing for the RV manufacturers.
Yeah. Thanks. Makes sense. Thank you. That's all for me.
Our next question comes from Gustav Hagéus from SEB. Gustav, your line is now open.
Thank you. Good morning, guys. Thanks for taking my questions.
Good morning.
Morning. I'm a bit curious on Americas. It's quite an extraordinary growth you post there. Organically, you almost doubled the business in two years then. Looking into next quarter then, just for the past three years, you've been averaging 14% lower sales sequentially in Q4 versus Q3 in U.S. or in Americas. You now allude to that there might be a shift of seasonality into Q4. Is that a good rule of thumb also this year, you think, in terms of the sequencing for the U.S. business?
I think in the U.S. business, you have to realize also, as you know, we have a significantly higher chunk of Packs, Bags, & Luggage historically, right? It's been almost 20% of the business, and Packs, Bags, & Luggage is normally very big in the fourth quarter. There are some negatives for that for us, because Packs, Bags, & Luggage is the category doing least well if you look at pace-wise. I am convinced that Region America will do very well. I'm not going to say, because there are so many uncertainties still around on what exact that percentage will be. It will be a strong quarter in fourth quarter as well.
Looking at the stacked growth, adding last year's growth on top of this year's, it's quite extraordinary. Do you anticipate that trend to continue? I guess it's quite interesting now that you analyze that trend. I think myself and others had expected a bit of a drop-down in the growth now that you're facing much tougher comps in U.S.
We are very comfortable in both regions with all the largest macro trends underlying in various activities that we deal with, that we have a higher platform with continued growth. The pace will not, of course, be the type of pace we've had in the last 18 months, but it is clearly the case that we are convinced that we will continue to grow. It won't be stagnating or flattening out. We feel very good about 2022 and beyond.
I guess you had probably put a lot of effort into thinking about CapEx and so forth, and it seems like you now had to accelerate those plans, if I understand your communication correctly. I'm just curious about all the other assumptions going into your targets that you released not that long ago, because you're hitting quite a big base now in 2021. Looking at your target now, it's shrinking to below 5% CAGR, it seems like, since the base for 2021 is so big going forward.
Given that you're also running on a much higher margin than the 20% floor that you anticipated, the implicit EBIT CAGR for your target is now, I think, 3% or something going forward. Magnus , I'm sure that can't be your internal goal. Will you care to update us on what your actual plan is going forward?
Yeah, I think in general, you shouldn't do a financial target update in the midst of a quarterly report in the third quarter. You are absolutely right, the two logics there, Gustav, no doubt. We've said all along, it's more the 7% CAGR you should focus on than the doubling of sales. If you look at how we presented the sales growth, it was like we should at least be doing 7% CAGR. I would focus on that aspect rather than the doubling of sales by a certain year. Of course, if you look at EBIT performance, we've clearly said for us, the biggest focus is true EBIT growth on the bottom line rather than an exact margin percentage. That doesn't mean, as we also clearly said, that we want to give away a hard-earned, nice EBIT margin at a higher level.
We will focus on ensuring that it's this above 7% CAGR that happens rather than being too focused on an exact decimal point in the EBIT.
All right. By the assumption of CAGR, you're referring to revenue CAGR or also EBIT CAGR?
Yeah. If you looked at when we presented the financial targets.
We said, if you do at least 7% top-line growth every year, we will hit a double of sales by this year.
Yeah.
You can keep that, if we do at least 7% CAGR every year, part in that equation.
Okay. With the 5% CapEx then to sales, it's a bit higher than I had in my assumptions, but I recognize that you want to grow and capture this opportunity. You haven't talked about R&D to sales. How's that looking, you think, going forward?
If you look at it this year, as we mentioned, the top-line growth has been beyond our expectation. We never throw money at product development. It is, of course, the right development projects, the right people, and we have hired more people than ever, but we won't be at the 5% level this year. In the rest of the coming years in the strategic near few years, we believe we'll be back at that 5% level.
Where are you running, you think, this year?
We will end at a high 4% this year rather than a 5%, so to speak. We were at 6%. We said we would be around 5% and a half-ish, and we will instead be high 4s in the end, but we will be running around 5% in the period. You need to also remember, if you look at the 5% CapEx that we're talking about, we will see a few years of a limited period with a higher spend. Our strong belief, after catching up with the capacity, you have to remember that we are currently not as efficient as we would like to be because we're having to run shifts and weekends that are less cost efficient, and we're not being able to be as flexible to capture upsides.
What we're doing in the CapEx spend is partly to catch up with the capacity we should have already had because the growth was faster than we expected. We're anticipating plans, spending more to catch up, and then we're also spending to prepare for the next step. If you looked, I would say it's a three-year period of a higher than average spend, and then we hope and expect that we have caught up as well as prepared for the future, and we will return back to a more previous guidance in terms of CapEx.
Right. Finally, you highlight quite clearly in the report that it's tough for you to fully compensate for external inflation now in this year, you also highlighted with the ordinary pricing increases next year, from January next year, if I read it correctly, you're going to be back. Is that basically guiding for Q4, that margins in Q4 probably should be a bit lower than it would've been? Is that what you're trying to say?
Yeah. No, I think we're being very clear, and as I also answered Daniel just before, is that we said all along that we would be seeing some of the pricing effects, price increases that we implemented during Q3, all of them in Q4, clearly what has happened is that raw material prices have gone up more than most people believed. Definitely a little bit more than we thought. Freights are continuing to increase. We're not at the level I would've liked to be, but that's why we're confident that our price increases for January will make us at the level we want to be.
Yes, there is some effects on Q4, and the total margin will be more related then to a lot of other, will there be those intermediate frustrating stops and frustrating effects from suppliers that are forcing us to do more production shift overs. Because one of the underestimated things, aside from huge material increases and freight, is that if you want to run efficient plants, you don't want to have to do switch overs because certain components don't show up. Switch overs between different product, different things, always is cost inefficient. Therefore, these constant small interruptions, which are very difficult at the moment to foresee, are one of the impacts also on our gross margin in our own assembly plant. That one is a little bit of an uncertain, but yes, we are saying there is some challenges on gross margin in 2021 Q4.
All right. Those were all my questions. Thank you.
Thank you.
Before we take our next question, as a reminder, if you would like to ask any further questions, please register these now by pressing star, followed by one on your telephone keypads. Our next question comes from Mats Liss from Kepler Cheuvreux. Your line is now open.
Yeah. Hi. Thank you. Congrats on a solid quarter. I just had a few questions there. First, you implement price increases and so on, and I guess you are the premium brand in many segments. Do you sort of see that you benefit from more budget-related competitors that while they need to increase prices more?
I think in many of our categories, we have very strong local, smaller competitors that sell good product. We are the only really big global player in Sport&Cargo Carriers. If you, for example, take Active with Kids, there's some very strong brands as well. We're definitely not saying that we are that different from the rest. We're just much bigger in Sport&Cargo Carriers than all the others. If you look at it, everybody's pushing through price increases. It's clearly not just us. Everybody is clearly pushing through price increases. Then there are different levels of percentages, et cetera. We are not standing out in any shape or form in the market with our price increases. They're relatively in line with most people, what they're doing.
Great. The margin. I mean the margin is good, I guess, but you indicate that it could have been even better if you were able to balance all the cost increases. What's the difference there? How much did it affect your margin?
If you look at it, you can see the reduction we had versus last year, last year we had a fantastic one for being that quarter. I think it's always logical to more look at year to date reality. If you look at it, we were about 2 percentage points down in the quarter. Part of that is, of course, raw material cost. Part of it, as I mentioned, is also the inability to be super efficient in your plants as you're getting constant stop issues while you're trying to desperately catch up with fantastic demand and outputting much more than you've ever done when you don't have all the capacity you need.
What that means is you're paying people overtime, you're paying people for weekend work, you're taking in agency workers to complement your own staff. All of those lead to inefficiencies. There are roughly those 2 percentage points, so to speak, is a combination of those two factors.
Great. We have a question on RVs and so on. I guess the fleet of used RVs is growing quite considerably also. Is this market for you, or is it more sort of new RVs that are sort of, that's when you equip them with your accessories.
I think the key logic to understand the RV industry is that almost all RVs, when you talk about not caravans, which is a small part, and the big part is motor homes. If you look at motor homes, it's almost always triggered by somebody buying a new home and selling their old motor home, which means if you look at our products in the RV products category, which is why we have always said from the beginning that they are more cyclical to a large financial investment, is it's products that you do not put yourself on the vehicle. You would be afraid that you would drill into the toilet from Dometic or the van from the fridge or something. You wouldn't do it yourself.
When you then don't do it yourself, it's going to be at the time when you go to a dealership, especially if it's a used vehicle or actually when you order it new from the manufacturer. It's at the time of purchasing the vehicle. It's change of ownership is good. If it's change of ownership of an old one, it can be equally good. They say, "Oh, I like that motor home. Wait, there isn't all those cool Thule products I want on it. Please, dealership, before you give it to me, put that on." We are helped by the fact of ownership changes, so to speak, both new or used, then we benefit equally.
Great. Yeah, I was disconnected. I'm sorry if you answered my question now. We have talked a lot about the increasing the offering with some sort of new product launch. Is this the plan for next year?
In the spring next year, we will announce our new category. We haven't changed that. We will definitely announce what the new category is in the spring next year.
Great. You don't want to talk more about that, I get it.
I'm surprisingly consistent, as I often joke with Daniel, who tried to trap me with some very intricate question. No, we will tell you when we tell everybody.
Great. I guess one final one is you grow very well and organic growth seem to work well for you, but you seems to generate a lot of cash now, and I guess the acquisitions is still the bolt-on small ones.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
Yeah, absolutely. We are convinced that you can win playing many different ways. We have, I think proven with our growth and top-line growth and our very nice EBIT margins and our very sustainable performance as a company that this way that we are doing it works very well for us. We will definitely continue that way, and in that way, we've had some minor bolt-on acquisitions, and I'm sure we will have some in the future as well.
Looking at next year, I guess, final time, it will be a tough comps, and I guess, should we expect you to be able to reach those 7% CAGR targets you have, or is it more like a long-term 2030 target? Could you say something more there?
I feel very good about 2022.
Okay. Thanks a lot.
Thank you.
We now have a follow-up question from Daniel Schmidt from Danske Bank. Daniel, please go ahead.
Thank you.
Is it one of the tricky ones, Daniel?
I'll leave that for later. No, I just wanted to come back to the investment pickup that you're announcing. I think you said that you're being quite forceful when it comes to product development into 2022. Could you try to shed some more light on exactly what you're doing on the CapEx side? You've been in this process of automating production in Sweden and in Poland and so on, and where are we in that process, and what are you adding now? On top of that, could you give us any examples of new ranges or new collections in different categories that you will have in the market next year?
Absolutely. If we start with the last question, what we decided to do is that with so many challenges to just be able to produce what we're producing, we've really focused on adding only products in where we were missing something in our portfolio rather than replacing a very well-selling, fast-growing category. If you look at it, we will have a number of new products in rooftop tents. We will have some new cargo solutions. We're adding some bike solutions. If you look at it, I would say very much more focused on capacity and meeting demand on very well-performing product categories is a key focus in 2022 to regain the on time in full and the confidence from retail. Mostly, there's still a lot of new product coming, but if you look at it, not any of the huge volume sellers being replaced.
The huge volume sellers, we are struggling enough to keep up with just making the ones we have. In 2022, a lot of focus on the big volume products being the same, and then nice, smart additions around in the portfolios. If you take where we're spending the CapEx money, you're absolutely right that we've had some very successful automation projects on our roof rack factory in Sweden, and that has not been a bottleneck, which proves out one of those things that if you do the right way. What you can really say is that what is happening at the moment with those big volume increases we've had is that we, at all the major plants, are anticipating previous plans of extension. We're doing building extensions at both our two Polish plants. We're doing building extensions in Sweden.
We're doing building extensions in the U.S., in Connecticut, to have more space for more production. That more production is also more automated because it's realistically the case that with big growth ambitions in the future, we need to ensure that we don't become too dependent on being able to find enough staff. It is also the case that when you have certain production lines that are more similar and you have more modular approach, as we have also in some of our new models coming out from the beginning of how they were product developed, you can marry to set up an automated production. Interestingly enough, what people seldom realize is automated productions needs much more space because you need the self-guiding robots to drive around. You need more space when you build automatic assembly lines.
Therefore, we need space in terms of new shelves, so to speak, in the plants with new roof over it. You're seeing across the board, both new building extensions and heavier automation investments with robots. To give you one example, in a near future, we will in 2022 have more robots new than we had total robots in Poland in the past, only the new ones in 2022. If you look at that, we're pushing ahead of automation and space is the two key focus.
Yeah. Okay. I don't know if you can answer this or not, but if you are currently at a situation where you can produce corresponding to SEK 10 billion in top line in a year, with these investments, what will your capacity be in terms of revenues, if that's possible to measure?
Yeah, it's a good question, actually, Daniel. I think you need to answer it in two ways. One is that if you would deploy it on a yearly basis, you can add up a lot more millions, right? What is the key for us, we want to get back in a high on time in full exactly when the consumers wanted to buy the product. That then forces us on an annualized basis to have over capacity. Otherwise, we're not going to be flexible to meet the capacity when they actually wanted it during the year. What we are dialing up now is not just a capability of adding SEK 5 billion in sales with the same capacity. It's actually, in practice, dialing it up even more to capture those months when truly there is a need for high capacity.
Because there's two ways you can serve that high on time in full in a seasonal business. One is having endless inventory. We don't want to have endless inventory because inventory for the sake of having inventory actually is not a brilliant thing. It is more cost-efficient and more flexible to have the right things going if you increase your capacity opportunity for the peak season. What we are currently doing is not only catching up with the capacity we should have had, it is adding the capacity not only to meet an annualized growth number that is big, it is actually adding capacity to handle a few months' growth capacity at much higher levels. That's a little bit to answer your question.
We're talking about SEK several billion more capacity, if you look at it from that perspective, that we want to be able to have in capacity output.
Yeah. Okay, I got you. Did you say also, I don't know if I got you right or not, but you gave this guidance for 2022 in terms of 5% of sales. I thought I heard you say something about a couple of years. Was that right?
You're right.
With elevating CapEx?
Yeah, you're right. I think in your models, so to speak, in your macro models, I think it's logical to see in front of yourselves a three-year period of a higher than historical average before we can turn back to the historical average just due to the huge sales increase we've already had and some ambitious plans of sales increases going forward, plus a new category being introduced that itself triggers quite large CapEx.
Okay. Would you say in that three-year period that 2022 is the peak year in terms of percentage?
That will all depend on how quick the top line grows as it is a percentage.
As you plan it.
I think, yeah. You could say that, actually.
Yep. Okay. Okay, good. Thanks. That was all for me.
Thank you.
At this time, we have no further questions. I'll now hand back to Magnus for any closing comments.
Thank you very much. I wish you all. I know you have incredibly busy day with loads of companies reporting. I wish you lots of fun. I hope all the other companies had equally brilliant reports as we did. I look forward to have a nice follow-up for the Q4. Thank you, everybody.
Thank you, everyone, for joining.