Hi everyone, I'm Dave Foulkes, Brunswick's Chief Executive Officer. I'd like to welcome you to our 2021 Investor Day event. This year we're using a virtual format to present an update to the three-year 2020 through 2022 strategy that we originally presented in February of 2020, live in Miami. As we're all aware, a lot has happened in the intervening 15 months, and I'm very proud of the way Brunswick has responded to the pandemic. From a business perspective, I'm very happy to report that we're tracking significantly ahead of our stated 2022 strategic goals and guidance. We've titled the presentation today "Next Wave." As we'll explain, we see 2019 and 2020 as years in which we established our new marine-focused platform and launching pad, and 2021 and 2022 as years in which we will use that launching pad to accelerate away from our competition.
You know that we have a new and very dynamic leadership team, and you'll see and hear from some of the key members today, including our division presidents, Chris Drees, Brenna Preisser, Brett Dibkey, and Aine Denari, and our CFO, Ryan Gwillim. Before we begin the presentation, I'd like to remind everyone that our comments will include certain forward-looking statements about future results. Please keep in mind that our actual results could differ materially from these expectations. For details on the factors to consider, please refer to our recent SEC filings. All these documents are available on our website at brunswick.com. During our presentation, we'll be referring to certain non-GAAP financial information. Reconciliations of GAAP to non-GAAP financial measures are provided in previously issued current reports on 8-K, all of which are available at brunswick.com. Now, let's get started with a strategic overview.
As you know, Brunswick has the broadest and deepest foundations of any recreational marine company, with the greatest brands, the largest scale, and the most extensive capabilities. But as we entered 2019, we knew we needed to modify our operating model and take some major actions to establish the complete lean platform we needed to maintain and advance our industry leadership in the future. Having successfully completed that set of actions, we were ready to execute on the next wave. Brunswick's next wave, which is already in flight, will be defined by distinctive new products and technology-enabled experiences, accompanying the broadening consumer appeal of the marine lifestyle and the unlocking of new and profound synergies across our enterprise. We'll be sharing some of these concepts with you in detail for the first time today.
Our purpose statement continues to guide our path and reflect our desire to use innovative technology and business models to deliver inspired, elevated experiences that democratize boating through expanded opportunities for participation. I always like to begin our strategy presentations by reflecting on Brunswick's unique and foundational competitive position in the industry, which we often refer to as authentic leadership. Roughly one out of every two boats in the U.S. recreational boat fleet of around 10-12 million boats is powered by Mercury. That's the unique foundation for our annuity engine P&A business. Our boat portfolio includes three of the four best-known boat brands.
We operate the world's largest marine parts, accessories, and systems business that is very profitable and non-cyclical and now accounts for roughly 50% of our enterprise earnings, and the world's largest marine distribution business that provides same-day, next-day service to our global dealers and other customers, and we're widely recognized as the world's most innovative marine company with over 300 patents granted since 2017. In 2019 and 2020, we completed a series of actions which created a new integrated business platform intended to provide the launching pad for our next wave of growth. We established a new dynamic young leadership team, which includes world-class talent developed within Brunswick and recruited from other industries. We sold our fitness businesses to allow us to concentrate our focus on marine, and we returned the proceeds of that sale to our shareholders.
We further increased our investments in Mercury, funding the exceptional new products Chris will talk about and the production capacity to meet the needs of Mercury's ever-growing list of global customers. We formed Business Acceleration, run by Brenna, as a home for new non-traditional business models, and soon afterwards acquired Freedom Boat Club, the world's largest shared access boating platform, and, as we'll explain later, one of the models most conducive to marine electrification. We established a new, more efficient operating model for our boat group to drive towards double-digit operating margins. We established our ACES strategy, investing heavily in technology and digital transformation, and our industry-leading ESG and DEI strategies, which align with our ambition of further democratizing boating.
We also operated safely and efficiently and supported our communities while managing the challenges of COVID, all of which brought us wide recognition, culminating early in 2021 when we were named to the Forbes Top 10 list of best places to work in the U.S. and the number one engineering and manufacturing company to work for in the U.S., which in turn allows us to continue to attract world-class talent. As a bridge to discussing the next wave of our strategy, I want to talk to you about the start of the 2021 season and our progress against the 22 goals we set at our February 2020 Investor Day in Miami. Early 2021 retail has maintained and even built on the momentum of the latter half of the 2020 season.
Based on internal data, Brunswick U.S. Q1 new boat retail is up 38% year- over- year, causing our pipelines to still be down more than 40%. Leading indicators are very strong, with Q1 marine retail credit applications up 44% versus the same period last year, and traffic on our brand websites up 66%. Despite the extremely low field inventory levels and long quota delivery times, our sales at the Palm Beach Boat Show, the first major in-person saltwater show of this season, were up 223% over 2019. As we look at our progress against our original targets for 2022, we set at the 2020 Investor Event, we are tracking significantly ahead. Mercury U.S. market share already exceeds 45%. Our boat group segment Q1 operating margin already exceeds the 2022 target of 10%.
The Net Promoter Score for our engine and boat brands already exceeds the world-class level of 70, and we've migrated more than 90% of our IT applications to the cloud, all of which contributed to us significantly raising our 2021 revenue and EPS guidance. Our initiatives in 2019 and 2020 have been extremely successful in their own right, but as I mentioned, they also provided the necessary building blocks for the next wave of our strategy, which we expect will leave our competition in our wake. The next wave of our strategy will include the next generation of our products, the next generation of our technologies, next generation ways to connect with our customers, and our next generation of unique experiences. In early 2021, you've already begun to see the next wave taking shape. Brunswick is outperforming the industry in attracting a new demographic to boating.
We're attracting more first-time buyers than the industry overall. The average age of Brunswick boat buyers is two years younger than the average of our industry peers. The average first-time boat buyer Brunswick attracted in 2020 was three years younger than that of our industry peers, with more women buyers. The success of Freedom Boat Club in attracting more women into boating continues to be phenomenal. In 2020, more than 35% of Freedom members were women, and that trend continues in 2021. We are doing everything we can to attract a younger, more diverse demographic into boating that will secure our future and to engage new boaters how and where they want to be met. These new buyers have a powerful voice, so let's hear from them.
We are the next generation of boaters, both the young and the experienced. There is no voice of this generation. Our actions speak for themselves. We are connected, active, mindful, resilient, and ready for whatever's next. We're overscheduled and under your radar, but just like the water, we wash away all the barriers. We are the ripple that becomes the wave, and we will define the future of boating. It's sustainable. It's fluid. It's always on, always in the moment, and it's for everyone. We are the next wave.
The next generation of boaters plays a powerful role in our growth strategy so understanding their needs and interests is very important. In 2020, we launched a consumer advisory board called Ripple, an online community of marine enthusiasts to inspire Brunswick innovation and help us create the future of marine. Feedback from the Ripple community shaped the video we just shared. Data from our Ripple online boater community shows that more than 90% of forum members rated their 2020 boating season as four stars plus out of five. In other words, they had a great time. We also saw more flexible working practices, allowing people to boat more during the week and even to work from their boats, a trend that we expect to persist long past the pandemic.
We see that the pandemic is driving more people to set up home in the suburbs, where there is often more access to water and boating, which leads us to believe that trends from the pandemic will have long-lasting and positive implications for boating far into the future. You've heard before, but you'll hear much more in detail today about how we've positioned ourselves to meet the needs of these new consumers, with more value product entry points for new buyers, with connected products and personalized experiences, with new and enhanced digital platforms and consumer-focused technologies, and with new modes of participation for every lifestyle and life stage. We believe that smart products live best within smart experiences, and this is the foundation of our ACES strategy.
We introduced ACES, which is an acronym for Autonomous, Connected, Electrified, and Shared, in 2019 as a unifying framework for many of our initiatives. But it's no longer just a framework or a concept. In 2021, we'll have more than 700 Brunswick employees working directly on the commercialization of ACES, and we are making rapid progress. You will have seen a few weeks ago that we entered into a new exclusive partnership with Carnegie Robotics, a leading autonomous technology company, to develop and commercialize advanced driver assistance systems, or ADAS, and autonomy products in the recreational marine space. This new partnership is complementary to our long-term partnership with Sea Machines, and Brunswick is planning to launch its first true ADAS product later this year. Brunswick has already made tremendous strides in connectivity with some of the strongest connected products in the industry.
To date, more than 100,000 people have downloaded Brunswick and Mercury connectivity apps. Chris will tell you more about Mercury's suite of unique industry-leading connected products, and Brett will introduce you to a game-changing new connected product. Though electrifying marine applications often present more challenges than on-road applications, we believe that no company is better positioned to make a transformational impact on marine electrification than Brunswick because of our suite of technologies, brands, and businesses, some of which you see at the foot of this slide. We're using this presentation to put down some markers. By 2023, Mercury and ASG together will launch five electric propulsion products, with the first products launching in 2022. Over the same period, ASG expects to have installed 15,000 advanced battery systems replacing internal combustion engine generators, and Brunswick Boat Group will have launched electric boats in four different categories.
We also believe that Freedom Boat Club, with its centrally managed fleets and well-understood use cases, is the ideal operating model to support the introduction of electric marine products, making us the owners of a unique marine electrification puzzle piece, which nicely connects the S in ACES to the more technological components of the strategy. As you know, Freedom is a very exciting asset that is growing very rapidly, and Brenna will provide more details on our build-out of additional U.S. locations and our plans for international expansion, as well as our plans for new businesses adjacent to Freedom. As you'll hear shortly from our division presidents, Brunswick is making large investments in digital transformation across all businesses. Digital capability is fundamental to a unified consumer experience across the marine landscape and is core to Brunswick's cross-business synergy strategy.
Through digital, we'll move the customer along the path of maximum lifetime value via the most contemporary suite of digital assets in the industry. To support our ACES and digital transformation strategy, we're hiring the best talent in the market. Just recently, we've hired 40 specialists in electrification and autonomy and 35 new specialists in digital marketing, e-commerce, and data analytics. You may have also seen that we recently announced the major expansion of our i-Jet Lab at the University of Illinois, and we're rapidly facilitating ASG and Mercury for the development of high-voltage battery electric propulsion. In addition to our work on consumer-facing digital transformation, our IT team is migrating our business applications to the cloud, consolidating ERP systems across the enterprise, implementing common application platforms, and continually enhancing our cyber capabilities.
Brunswick recently published our second enterprise-wide sustainability report, which has been very well received by all stakeholders. ESG and DEI are core to our strategy, and our employees are excited and engaged. Some key sustainability achievements in 2020 were a 14% reduction in the greenhouse gas emissions from our facilities on an energy intensity basis, the replacement of balsa wood in some of our boats as a filler material with an alternative material manufactured from recycled plastic bottles, and achieving the lowest total recordable incident rate in our history across our facilities. We continue to be very proud of the extensive recognition we received for our ESG and DEI efforts. As I mentioned earlier, and as our division presidents will explain, the synergies across our marine platform are being progressively unlocked and becoming more and more profound.
As you know, Mercury provides propulsion product and technology leadership across multiple segments, but is also the source of our unique propulsion P&A annuity. Advanced Systems is also around 60% aftermarket, providing more annuity opportunity and the opportunity for integration with Mercury propulsion systems. Our portfolio of boat brands is 100% powered by Mercury and pulls a lot of P&A from Mercury and ASG, and Freedom Boat Club pulls Brunswick boats, Mercury engines, and our P&A. But as we'll explain later, that's not the end of the unfolding synergy story. Our new operating model also provides increased opportunity to hire and promote dynamic talent. And as I mentioned earlier, we have a talented new leadership team across our divisions and core functions.
In addition to Ryan Gwillim, our CFO since the middle of 2020, you'll shortly hear from Chris Drees, the president of our Mercury Marine business, who has spearheaded the rapid advancement of Mercury's market share since he assumed his role roughly two years ago. Brett Dibkey, the president of our new Advanced Systems Group, who joined Brunswick just over a year ago, but has already made a tremendous impact on our business, establishing a new vision, operating model, and leadership team for ASG. Aine Denari, the newest member of our leadership team, who joined us with a background in ADAS technology and, as you've already seen, has already made a mark on Boat Group operating margins.
And Brenna Preisser, the President of Business Acceleration and also our Chief People and Strategy Officer, who's been instrumental in setting the vision not only for Business Acceleration, but also for the enterprise, and who's worked closely with me to hire many of the new leadership team members and our new management and technical talent. Now it's my pleasure to hand over to Chris to talk about the unprecedented momentum of the Mercury business. Chris.
Hi, I'm Chris Drees, President of Mercury Marine. This is a dynamic time for Mercury and our partners. Boating participation is soaring. Our recent and future investments in capacity and our continued focus on innovation have positioned Mercury to capitalize on industry growth more than any other engine brand. Mercury is the clear leader in marine propulsion, and we're going to continue to drive the industry forward. 2018 was a foundational year for Mercury with the launch of our award-winning line of V6 and V8 four-stroke outboards. That launch included 13 engine models adapted to service multiple markets, including commercial and performance applications. Early demand for the new engines exceeded our most aggressive forecasts. The strength of that launch set up Mercury for the first wave of success we enjoyed in 2019 and 2020.
Once the foundation was in place, we focused on building success through three key areas: product leadership with a focus on innovation and product integration, operational excellence, which ensures we're delivering reliable, quality products, and customer experience with an emphasis on supporting boaters and our partners with better tools and resources. Mercury is currently enjoying tremendous momentum in several product applications. Following the initial launch of our V6 and V8 outboards, we added the 450R Mercury Racing engine. We also invested in capacity and will continue to do so in order to meet unprecedented demand and deliver more product to the market. Our high-horsepower outboard portfolio is now the most popular in the marine space. Sales of SeaPro outboards are up 62% since 2017, and nearly 70% of high-end fiberglass bass and walleye boats are powered by Pro XS outboards.
We're also making gains on our MerCruiser Stern Drive and inboard product lines. Last summer, we launched MerCruiser Bravo Four S forward-facing drive. This product satisfies the growing wakesurfing and tow sports market. Bravo Four S is an example of complete systems integration. It combines MerCruiser engine and drive technology with integrated Smart Tow controls and makes it simple for boaters to create the perfect wake for surfing at a touch of a button. Mercury's industry-leading manufacturing capabilities tie together all of our investments in product development. Our investments in the industrial Internet of Things and Lean Six Sigma are driving remarkable results. Propulsion warranty rates have dipped below 1.5% for the first time, and that's incredible for these complex engines. We're also making headway on our ACES goal. We invested in infrastructure and research into electrification and now employ more than 100 engineers that are working on advancing our ACES capabilities.
We continue to hit major milestones in our energy efficiency campaign. In 2020, we installed a solar array at our warehouse operation in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, which helps us towards achieving our goal of driving 50% of the company's electricity from renewable sources by the end of 2030. At Mercury, our product leadership is fueled by a consumer-centric approach to new product development. We start with extensive consumer research to design products that deliver the right boating experience. For instance, ease of maintenance is a high priority for today's boat owners. So we created features like a top cowl service door, which makes it faster and simpler to service our outboards. We're also undergoing a major digital transformation to better interact and support our customers. Because of our focus on the customer, we also lead all competitors in the top five drivers of brand commitment.
Consumers see Mercury as a brand that inspires them to go boating, improves the boating experience they're proud to own, has consistently high quality, and they can trust. Our overall brand health is a powerful tool that's going to help us advance our industry leadership and technologies. Recent investments in product launches have enabled Mercury to achieve its all-time highest market share, now more than 45% in the U.S. We've seen particularly strong growth in the saltwater segment, where our share is up 300 basis points over the last two years. In 2020 alone, we added 70 new OEM partnerships and saw key competitors, BRP and Seven Marine, exit the segment. We're now partnering on a strategic supply agreement to be the engine brand of choice for BRP-owned boat brands.
Mercury is in an unrivaled position of strength in the industry, which sets us up for the next wave of innovation. The next wave at Mercury has already begun. In February, our teams collaborated on the biggest product launch in company history. We unveiled the all-new V12, 600-horsepower Verado outboard at an exclusive event at our legendary Lake X facility. Then we announced the new engine to the world in a product video that instantly went viral. The video has already been viewed more than 3 million times. The new Verado is our most advanced outboard. It's a complete propulsion system designed from prop to helm. At 600 horsepower, it gives builders a superior solution for powering large luxury boats. The V12 Verado created an entirely new class of marine propulsion. It combines sensational power with luxury refinements that have never been available before. It's smooth and quiet.
It's efficient and easy to maintain, and it's a thrill to drive thanks to the industry's first V12 powerhead, the first two-speed automatic transmission, and the first steerable gear case. All of those advancements help drive up to a 35% fuel economy advantage over other high-horsepower engine configurations. This engine cements Mercury's leadership within the high-horsepower outboard segment. We're already seeing many of our builder partners design new boat models around the V12 engine. It's already creating excitement and new opportunities for growth. And the next wave continues with our controls and rigging systems. Our products allow boaters to customize their engine performance through integrated systems. That includes everything from propellers to advanced controls like our Joystick Piloting system. The biggest launch in this category is the next-generation Digital Throttle and Shift, which we announced this spring.
It's simple to use and up to 30% faster to install because all the connected technologies are built into the controls. This includes our popular Active Trim feature. We're also making big strides in connectivity to improve the user interface. Our VesselView Mobile engine monitoring system allows boaters to track engine data on a mobile app. More than 34,000 Mercury engines are now connected to VesselView Mobile, and the app has been downloaded more than 112,000 times. Another new innovation is the FirstMate Marine Safety and Security System. FirstMate is an approved wireless alternative to the corded engine cutoff device that can be used to set up theft deterrence and wireless overboard alerts. By offering complete prop to helm rigging solutions, we're able to help boaters better enjoy their time on the water. Our objectives are clear at Mercury. Innovation drives our business.
We invested heavily in talent and manufacturing capabilities to bring exciting new products to the market. As a result, nearly 40% of sales in this segment come from products launched within the last three years. We expect U.S. share to approach 50% by the end of the planning cycle, which is well ahead of the stated targets. But we're not done yet. Our engineering teams are constantly evolving and updating their capabilities to excel in all areas in the ACES model. I'm really excited to announce a bold vision for the future of Mercury. We'll launch five new electric outboard models by 2023, and we intend for Mercury to be the market leader in both conventional and electric marine propulsion by the end of that year. Mercury won't be slowing down anytime soon.
Next, my colleague Brett Dibkey at Advanced Systems Group and I will walk through the incredible momentum we're experiencing within our parts and accessories business. As you might recall, in 2020, we formed a new division with ASG. This was a strategic move to help set up new opportunities for growth. The operating model provides additional focus on Brunswick's ACES platform by aligning brands that are already industry leaders in key product segments. Overall, this new reporting segment highlights the attractiveness of these businesses. 2020 showed explosive growth in the P&A segment, especially in the second half of the year, where sales grew by over 25%. Growth was driven by increased boat usage and by new boaters entering the market. The Recreational Boating and Fishing Foundation reports that millions of consumers came to or came back to boating in 2020.
We're talking close to 10 million people on the water who weren't in 2019. We're also working closely with our dealer network and our content teams to support new buyers with education and information. And we're confident that when they experience the latest Mercury products, they'll understand how enjoyable boating can be. Parts and accessories is more than a $6 billion market and continues to be a key focus area for growth moving forward. Our parts and accessory offerings are extremely broad, as highlighted on this Lund fishing boat. We can outfit a consumer's boat with products from bow to stern. The overall range and strength of our product lines is outstanding. Our current business is approximately 75% aftermarket focus, making it less cyclical. And over the last two years, P&A sales growth CAGR is up 13%.
Mercury's success on the propulsion side gives us a real advantage in this segment. Current estimates show there are nearly 12 million boats on the water in the U.S. Half are powered by Mercury. No one else in the industry can match that share. The scale of our propulsion business drives demand for Mercury's proprietary products, and it generates strong revenue streams across many of our P&A product lines. Our global distribution footprint through Land 'N' Sea, Paynes, BLA, and Lankhorst reinforces our P&A strength because it gives us unprecedented reach for our products. We're currently servicing almost 27,000 outlets globally. This allows us to supply more boaters with everything they need to enjoy their time on the water. As consumer buying habits shift from traditional retail channels to e-commerce, we're continuing to advance our capabilities.
We already have a strong foundation of digital platforms in place and are seeing positive results. E-commerce sales for P&A products grew by over 40% in 2020. Our distribution businesses have also grown globally. Land 'N' Sea has shown significant growth, nearly doubling the growth rates compared to the industry in the U.S. We're going to continue to win in this segment by investing in digital platforms that reach consumers where they prefer to shop. And we're going to continue to meet demand by leveraging our extensive distribution footprint. Now, to take you through some of the great new innovations coming from the Advanced Systems Group, I want to introduce Brett Dibkey, President of ASG.
Thank you, Chris. As Chris shared, my name is Brett Dibkey, and I am President of Brunswick's Advanced Systems Group, or ASG.
On behalf of my nearly 1,500 global ASG colleagues, I'm excited to share a little bit more about our organization and the exciting future in front of us. The first wave of ASG was marked by the acquisition of Power Products in 2018. A short time later, Power Products, Attwood, and Nautic-On were consolidated under a single organizational umbrella, which ultimately led to the formation of ASG. Late in 2020, we fully integrated these previously independent business units into a single operating structure. This integration allowed us to refocus our new product innovation efforts on developing products and solutions that work seamlessly together to improve the consumer experience. What's more, this integration enabled us to streamline our go-to-market engine. We now show up to our customers as a single organization rather than three independent ones.
This change allows us to be a more efficient and effective partner for our many valued customers. Net, by integrating under a single operating model, we tore down silos. ASG is now in position to fully unlock the power of our industry-leading brand and product portfolio. We are emerging from this first formative chapter of ASG, our first wave, in an extraordinarily strong position. We hold the number one or two share position in virtually all categories in which we compete. We have an asset-light, highly profitable business model that yields strong returns for the enterprise. Our product portfolio is extremely well-positioned to capitalize on clear emerging trends related to electrification and migration to digital on- and offboard experiences. And finally, our combination of OEM and aftermarket sales, coupled with access to multiple industry verticals, makes for a highly resilient, anti-cyclical business model.
What's most exciting, despite all these strengths, we have significant untapped growth and value creation potential in front of us. We see this growth coming from four key sources. Let me walk you through each at a high level. First, we see growth coming not only from a marine industry that is experiencing structural global expansion, but from a marine industry that is changing in a way that presents tremendous opportunity for ASG. Boat builders are shifting from providing analog onboard control to providing more immersive, digitally powered on- and offboard experiences. In addition, we are on the front edge of increased adoption of lithium-ion battery technology to power both propulsion and onboard house systems. ASG is extremely well-positioned to capitalize on these trends through our existing brand and product portfolio.
Our second growth lever entails leveraging our already strong presence to drive over-index growth in the RV and specialty vehicle industries. Many of the same trends that are occurring in marine are also occurring here. And again, we are very well-positioned to capitalize on these trends. Our third growth lever relates to driving growth globally, particularly in those markets where we are underrepresented. A good example here relates to our Mastervolt brand. The Mastervolt brand leads the European marine market in power storage and delivery, but is underrepresented in other global markets like the U.S. With our new operating model now in place, we see significant opportunity to drive growth of the Mastervolt brand and many others like it in the U.S. and other global markets. Finally, our fourth growth lever relates to inorganic growth.
We are very active in this space and expect to drive M&A in the months and years ahead that advance our strategies and deliver growth and value creation for ASG and Brunswick. While I won't spend time today on this growth lever, I'd like to provide a deeper overview of our first two growth strategies, driving growth in marine and also in the RV and specialty vehicle industries. On the marine front, and as I shared earlier, we have an unmatched brand portfolio that spans the entire vessel bow to stern. This slide captures many, but not all, of the industry-leading brands that we go to market with. Each of these brands is highly regarded as leading the way for both performance and quality in the industry. From a go-to-market perspective, we have global access to virtually all market endpoints across balanced aftermarket and OEM distribution.
From an aftermarket perspective, we have strong reach with the world's leading marine retailers. Examples in the U.S. include Amazon, Bass Pro Shops, Walmart, and West Marine. We also sell directly to virtually all major OEMs and OEM buy groups around the world, including the ABA, Beneteau, IBBI, and of course, the Brunswick Boat Group. On this note, while BBG is an important customer, they represent only 6% of our global sales. We have a very broad product portfolio ranging from general marine products like anchors and table and seating hardware to power management solutions like lithium-ion batteries and chargers, to integrated systems for water, fuel, and comfort management, to digital switching systems, and finally, to on- and offboard user experience platforms. I will bring to life a couple of examples of products in our portfolio in just a moment.
But before I do, I wanted to highlight a unique capability that can help speed adoption of new electrification and digital technologies for many of our OEM customers. Through our ASG Connect organization, we have a robust team of application engineers that work side by side with OEMs throughout the entire design and manufacturing process. This helps deliver seamless end-to-end integration of our full product portfolio. Okay, now let me bring to life the integrated nature of our product offering through a couple of quick illustrative videos. This first video shares the power of our Fathom system. In order to do something very simple onboard a boat today, like make a cup of coffee, the boater needs to stop what they're doing to start a noisy generator.
Fathom eliminates the need for a generator and is powered by Mastervolt lithium-ion batteries, but works seamlessly with other products in our portfolio like Blue Sea switches, Ancor wire for power delivery, Mastervolt inverters to convert DC to AC power, and BEP panels for intuitive control. This behind-the-scenes integration helps deliver a frictionless, much more enjoyable consumer experience with no onboard noise or vibration. The next video shows the power of our onboard digital experience platform, CZone. With CZone onboard, user control is simple and intuitive and delivers an experience that today's consumers increasingly expect. CZone integrates seamlessly with our existing product portfolio. Here you can see integration with Mastervolt batteries for power monitoring and tracking. Also shown is integration with Attwood bilge pumps to help simplify onboard water management.
And finally, CZone not only integrates with our own products, but also those of other manufacturers via our Works with CZone program. Here you can see an example of integration with lighting packages supplied from other manufacturers. Again, this is all designed and delivered to provide boaters with simple and intuitive onboard experiences. Now let me shift from highlighting onboard experiences to talking a bit more about our new offboard platform. Today, we are announcing the launch of a new mobile app platform, CZone Mobile, that we believe will help dramatically improve the boat ownership experience for consumers. What's more, we are confident that the new platform establishes Brunswick as the clear leader in the rapidly maturing marine app marketplace. The new CZone Mobile platform is aimed at reducing friction across the entire journey, from taking delivery and onboarding on day one to spending time on the water to servicing.
Let me give you a sneak peek of some of the new exciting functionality that will be coming as part of the new CZone Mobile platform. Before I do, I should point out that the new CZone Mobile platform will be rolled out early this summer for all Sea Ray and Boston Whaler owners. And beginning early in 2022, we will make the platform available to other OEM partners. The screens I'm sharing here are from the Sea Ray app that is powered by CZone, but all subsequent versions will provide an immersive branded experience tailored to that particular OEM. One of the first experiences in the app is a highly engaging onboarding flow where consumers share their boating experience level and how they like to spend time on the water. This enables a tailored and personalized experience over time.
For example, if the user shares that she is an experienced boater, she won't later be pushed boating basics how-to content. Next, learning about operation of a boat is often a pain point for many new consumers. Rather than having to wade through dense user manuals, the new CZone Mobile app provides easy access to answers to consumers' most common questions. A key part of the onboarding journey for a new consumer is securing all the new gear they need for their boating lifestyle, things like dock lines, fenders, and U.S. Coast Guard safety equipment. The CZone Mobile app will eventually walk consumers through a contextual shopping experience that is tailored to their specific boat type and needs, and finally, the new CZone Mobile app will enable remote monitoring of all onboard house and propulsion systems with installed hardware.
This allows users to remotely track things like battery levels and bilge status to ensure that their boat is ready for action on boating day. As you can see from some of the Fathom and the CZone examples, innovation is at the core of ASG's growth strategy in the marine industry. Our passion for consumer-led innovation, coupled with our unmatched brand and product portfolio, put us in an outstanding position to drive marine industry growth in the years ahead. On the connectivity front, you saw with CZone some of our current innovation that is already in market or soon will be. Our next wave of innovation here will focus on leveraging this connectivity backbone as the platform to build increasingly autonomous experiences. And in electrification, we are already leading the way with low-voltage applications. Fathom is a good example here.
But in the years ahead, we will continue innovating to deliver higher-voltage solutions to support more power-hungry applications for onboard systems and high-horsepower propulsion. Let me shift now briefly to our growth strategy in the RV and specialty vehicle markets. Like in marine, we have a very strong brand and product portfolio that covers a wide array of onboard systems. And again, our product portfolio is very well-positioned to capitalize on emerging trends in electrification and digital user experience. What's more, we're redoubling on growing in RV and specialty vehicle with a solid foundation already in place. In 2020, more than a quarter of our sales came from these verticals. And finally, just like in marine, we're not just riding the industry wave to drive growth here. We're also innovating to deliver meaningfully better consumer experiences and to create over-index growth opportunities for ASG.
As I begin to wrap up, I wanted to reassert something that Dave said earlier. ASG is not intending to simply lead the industries we participate in. We have every intention of redefining these industries, all in a way that yields a meaningfully better consumer experience and creates value for Brunswick. As evidence of this, we will replace 15,000 internal combustion engine generators with Fathom-like systems by 2023. We will deliver well over 5 million digital-branded engagements through our CZone Mobile platform. And we will deliver a 20% revenue CAGR for Brunswick between 2020 and 2023. In summary, ASG is exceptionally well-positioned for an exciting and value-creating next wave. We have and will build on an industry-leading brand and product portfolio. We have unparalleled reach into virtually all global channels.
We have a team of professionals that wake up every morning and go to bed at night focused on innovating to improve the consumer experience. And for all those reasons, we are extremely well-positioned to capitalize on structural trends in the industries in which we participate. And with that, I'd now like to turn it over to Aine Denari, President of Brunswick Boat Group.
Hello, my name is Aine Denari. I joined Brunswick last October as President of the Boat Group, and I'm delighted to have the opportunity to be with you here today to share some of the great achievements and exciting plans on behalf of Boat Group. Let's start with Boat Group's great foundation at this exciting time when boating is booming.
We are the largest player in the recreational marine space, and we have the most iconic portfolio in the industry, including three of the four most recognizable brands. Let me share some of the foundational elements that Boat Group has delivered over the past 18 months since Brunswick has evolved as a marine powerhouse. First, we have delivered 35 exciting new products across our brands in 2020. We established a series of world-class tech centers staffed by the world's most tenured naval engineers, including a flagship tech center in Florida and additional locations in Minnesota and Indiana. We dramatically increased our investment and built our capabilities in digital, and we delivered 20 new digital consumer experiences across the consumer journey.
We are engaging consumers in new ways, and we are proud to say we were the first boat manufacturer at CES last year, showcasing our Sea Ray SLX-R 400e with Fathom e-Power generator system. And in 2020, as demand started exploding, we focused on quickly increasing our capacity, including leveraging existing assets to relaunch boat production, such as bringing online our facility in Palm Coast. Now, as we move forward to the next wave, let's talk about where Boat Group is going. First, we are leveraging our incredible brand equity and our new digital experiences across brands to outperform the market, especially with emerging consumer segments. We will deliver sustained double-digit margins, as evidenced by our Q1 2021 results. We will continue to leverage our scale and expertise to deliver market-leading technologies across ACES, and we will launch four new electric boat platforms by 2023.
We continue to invest in delivering a best-in-class consumer experience, turning our attention to a frictionless service experience. We will deliver consistent industry-leading quality across all our products. And finally, we will continue to focus on leadership in sustainability across our manufacturing facilities. Boat Group put a stake in the ground in early 2020, committing that we would deliver double-digit operating margins by 2022. And we remain on track to do that. We closed out Q4 2020 above 9%, and we ended Q1 above 10%. The drivers of our profitability have been consistent. First is our portfolio of new products across our brands, which will include 122 new product launches over the next two years, enabling us to capture market share.
Additionally, the current unprecedented market demand is giving us strong tailwinds, and refilling the pipeline will continue to serve our business deep into 2022 to ensure sustainability of our margin position. Finally, our investment in additional capacity, as well as our focus on productivity and quality improvements, will support delivery of these goals. The core of Boat Group's strategy to win with consumers continues to focus on three key pillars, which we believe are unmatched in the marine sector. The first of these pillars is delivering an elevated consumer experience throughout the lifecycle, starting with purchase onboarding and continuing through ownership and community involvement. The second pillar is our unrivaled product leadership position across brands and our differentiated technology ecosystem. We are uniquely positioned in the industry to be able to drive and shape this position, given our size and scale and our partnerships with our sister divisions within Brunswick.
Third is our focus on operational excellence, including advanced manufacturing, continuous productivity improvements, and focus on quality and sustainability leadership. Combined, these three pillars are enabling us to be more responsive to consumer demands, provide an unmatched ownership experience, and to deliver highly reliable products with differentiated technology. It starts with our brands. For many years, we have had the most global and iconic portfolio of brands in the world, which includes three of the top four most recognized brands and five of the top ten. And we hold positions of strength in all major segments of the recreational marine space, with the number one market share position in saltwater fishing, the number one position in recreational fiberglass, and the number two position in aluminum fishing.
We are delighted that we are seeing the outcome of that brand equity translate into attracting new and emerging boating consumers, which will lead to the long-term sustainability of our growth. We over-index in the percentage of women buying boats. In 2020, our female buyers were the highest on record and outperformed the market by 7%. We are also seeing most of our brands significantly outperform their peers in attracting first-time boat buyers of new boats, and we are also seeing the youngest boat owner since 2011, with the average age of a Boat Group owner being two years younger than our industry peers. To continue to attract and retain these new boaters, who have some pretty high expectations regarding their consumer experiences, we are investing heavily in improving the purchase experience.
This is enabled by a contemporary digital backbone, which includes new websites across our brands, which have enhanced capabilities such as guided selling, digital configurators, and virtual tours. This is enabling us to nurture consumers earlier in the process and to deliver more educated and warmer leads to the dealers for fulfillment. We are also focused on enhancing the ongoing ownership experience of our boaters through a variety of initiatives. We are offering enhanced physical and digital training, new ways to purchase parts and accessories, and building community engagement via owners' clubs and online communities, such as our Ripple community. We are also investing in improving our consumer service experience, supported by back-end tools, as well as by working closely with our dealer base to deliver a more frictionless consumer experience. Moving to the second pillar of our overall strategy, technology and product innovations.
Our portfolio of brands offers a platform for us to deliver our differentiated technologies and enables us to drive our ACES strategy in partnership with our sister Brunswick divisions. We are delivering autonomy, connectivity, and electrified solutions across our brands and roadmaps, and we are working with our Freedom Boat Club partners to deliver best-in-class shared access solutions. Starting with autonomy, we have a clear vision for where the future of boating is going and where autonomous solutions will make consumers feel safer in challenging or complex conditions, give them confidence to execute difficult tasks, and ultimately move towards a world where the boat executes the specific tasks for them. We're leveraging external partners such as Carnegie Robotics and Sea Machines to accelerate our capability building and to help us deliver the optimal technology stacks and sensor suites to deliver advanced vessel control and advanced pilot assist functions.
Our objective is to bring specific use cases to market quickly. This starts with providing information about the boat and surroundings to our captains through intelligently connected systems. Then we move to partially automated or advanced pilot assist systems, which support the captains through situations like docking assist, and then we will deliver more fully autonomous solutions for specific use cases such as auto docking. Our first major launch will be coming up later this year, where we will be launching DockSense with our Boston Whaler 380 Realm. Electrification is another core element of our technology strategy, which also leverages the expertise, capabilities, and systems know-how from across the organization. Starting with onboard power management systems, last year, we launched our electrification efforts with Fathom One, which we introduced on our Sea Ray SLX-R 400e at CES.
Since then, we have continued to advance the Fathom system, and our next iteration will support new high-power engine charging systems that can deliver up to four times the capacity of existing systems. We have also developed an enhanced central vessel power module to better control battery management flowing through all the systems on the boat. And additionally, we are delivering an ecosystem of components that are intelligently controlled and more efficient. This would include adjustable HVAC units, water heaters, grills, and dimmable LED lighting. Of course, we aren't just advancing power systems. We are also paving the foundation for the future of an electric boat portfolio, and I'm excited to announce that by 2023, Boat Group will have launched four new electric boat applications in the marketplace.
The four applications will be focused on segments where typical use cases easily lend themselves to electric propulsion, such as low-speed cruising or shorter durations at higher speed. Stay tuned for more details on these in the near term. Considering all of these new technologies, I am delighted that we will be delivering 122 new products over the course of the next two years. This will cover all brands and segments and includes many all-new keel-up designs and whitespace products in addition to redesigns and refreshes. Let me share a few of the highlights with you here now. We are very proud of our all-new Sea Ray Sundancer 370, which we launched in February of this year to coincide with the 45th anniversary of the Sundancer family. The new design language represented here is a powerful foundation upon which the future of the Sea Ray portfolio will be built.
You will notice the elegant lines, the athletic stance, and the increase focused on premium tailored details. Another exciting recent launch was our Bayliner Element M15. With the launch of this product, we challenged our brands to think differently about product design and innovation to attract the next generation of consumers. A major innovation here was in the purchase process, where we significantly simplified how consumers choose boat options, and we included the boat trailer all at a price point that is unbeatable in the marketplace. Consistent with the theme of the M15, we have been challenging ourselves to rethink boat design and development to serve first-time boat buyers across segments more broadly. I am extremely happy to share an exciting new product launch with you here today, and with it, the creation of an all-new brand, Revo, which we will launch later this year.
The Revo brand is aimed at emerging boating consumers and will include innovations not just in how we design the product, but also in how we go to market to attract these consumers, offering retail assistance for online ordering. This new brand will be positioned around creating a recreational lifestyle to appeal to younger outdoor enthusiasts and anglers who currently do not own a boat. It will be new boater-friendly in terms of functionality, performance, ease of use, maintenance, and affordability, and it will have a strong alignment with our ACES strategy for shared access and electrification. Finally, I started this presentation by commenting on our most recognizable brands. Additionally, we are investing in a disruptive brand in the tow segment. In 2020, Heyday's growth was almost two times the already strong growth of this highly profitable segment.
Incredibly, Heyday managed this without any significant new product launches. I am now excited to tell you that we have a major new launch coming up very soon, which I cannot wait for you to see. We have only just begun with this brand. Its future is indeed bright. Switching gears to the third core element of our strategy, in addition to my deep passion for products, I am also keenly focused on the fact that the success and profitability of our business depends on our world-class operating facilities. This has been especially important in the current dynamic macro environment. We have a comprehensive production system that is delivering significant year-over-year productivity improvements, along with industry-leading safety. We are rolling out enhanced quality systems and capabilities across our facilities, and we are already seeing strong improvements in our results.
And we continue to leverage our scale to optimize our supply chain. This has been especially important over the last several months, where there have been significant cross-industry shortages and delays. And we believe that our position of strength will continue to be a key advantage for us throughout the season here, with market demand continuing at all-time highs. Speaking of unprecedented demand, as announced earlier this year, we are prioritizing investment in capacity expansions to deliver to this demand and to rebuild our historically low field inventory levels. We currently have three major facility expansions underway, as announced earlier this year. We are reopening our Palm Coast facility in Florida to serve Boston Whaler. We are expanding our facilities in Reynosa, Mexico, and we are more than doubling the output of our facility in Vila Nova, Portugal.
Overall, these expansions will increase our production capacity by an incremental 10% and will add an additional 600 jobs to our Boat Group team. Finally, from an operational efficiency perspective, sustainability remains high priority for us. We are firmly committed to leading the way in this area, just as we do in so many other areas of the recreational marine space. We are focused on a variety of activities that are delivering energy and resource conservation, as well as reducing emissions and waste. For example, in 2020, Fort Wayne became the first of our facilities to achieve Zero Waste-to-Landfill status, and we are on track to bring two more facilities to that status this year. I have shared a lot of information with you here about our exciting progress, strategy, and plans.
Let me now wrap it up by reiterating that Boat Group is an integral part of Brunswick's coherent and winning marine strategy, and that we believe we are well positioned to deliver. Our leading brands connect the enterprise to our 1.4 million boat owners and give us a platform to integrate all of our ACES technologies that we are developing with our sister divisions. We are shaping a frictionless consumer experience to attract and retain the boaters of tomorrow, and we are investing in operating improvements to be able to do all of this while driving top-line growth. There is no better time for Boat Group, and I am very excited to be a part of this journey with Brunswick. Thank you for your time, and now I would like to turn it over to Brenna Preisser, President of Business Acceleration .
Hello. My name is Brenna Preisser, and I am so pleased to share with you today the tremendous progress in Business Acceleration and the opportunities that we see ahead. When we formed Business Acceleration nearly two years ago, we saw an opportunity to pursue new business models such as shared access and to expand marine participation. With the acquisition of Freedom Boat Club and new businesses, which we are now forming, we are not only tapping into new consumers. We are pursuing an era of industry participation by retaining consumers on the water longer. Most importantly, while we have made tremendous progress, we are still in the early innings of our potential. Our future plans, the next wave, will be built from a solid foundation. Our accomplishments to date include the formation of the Business Acceleration division. In 2019, we acquired Freedom Boat Club, which had 170 locations at the time.
We are now at 275 and growing. We have partnered with our franchisees to realize fleet synergies, adding an incremental $40 million in revenue since the acquisition. We've launched two new business models, including Boateka, a pre-owned boat sales platform designed with first-time boat buyers in mind. We've launched BoatClass, a contemporary on-water training program, and finally, we've built a venture ecosystem with 11 active investments through our joint venture with TechNexus. As we look to the next wave, what's important is not just the discrete opportunities to create value, but as we will cover today, we are creating a highly integrated business system that will add value for both consumers and unlock product opportunities. Our first priority is to scale freedom. Scaling the business includes pursuing whitespace opportunities.
Although we currently operate in 75% of tier one and tier two markets in the U.S., we see sufficient opportunity to scale in these markets while adding new territories. We also intend to make Freedom one of the most admired brands in the industry and the world, and we're on our way to doing this. We've had a fast start to 2021 with strong growth. In Q1, we announced the acquisition of our Chicago and New York Long Island franchise territory, and we will continue to focus on adding more value for our franchise partners. Scaling Freedom also includes European expansion. Europe is the second-largest recreational boating market with 36 million participants and similar trends in shared access as we see in the U.S. We will continue to accelerate fleet synergies through strong partnerships with our franchisees and new boat models that are designed to win with club members.
We will be scaling new businesses, launching new digital tools to win with consumers, and finally, unlocking a new wave of cross-business synergy that will further distinguish Brunswick from our competition and underpin the boating-as-a-service strategy. In addition to expanding participation, we see the opportunity to create meaningful growth platforms for Brunswick. We saw the potential for consumers to enter the industry before the pandemic, and a nationally representative sample of consumers, 50 million consumers, expressed an interest in joining a boat club or renting a boat. And importantly, as we've seen a spike in participation more recently, we know there is a network effect on boating participation. It is a social activity. So for every one new boater, we are seeding our future pipeline. We also see a large addressable market for marine services that is highly fragmented today.
As we consider expanding participation, it's notable that the average Freedom member is younger than the new boat buyer, and 35% of our memberships are held by women. However, it is not just the opportunity to expand participation. We are keeping boaters on the water longer. 57% of Freedom members previously owned a boat, and many would have otherwise exited the industry. We see a huge opportunity to capture a wave of baby boomers in the future who own today. When you consider the Brunswick portfolio of synergy, it is increasingly clear that the whole is much greater than the sum of the parts. And I'll illustrate this later. The acquisition of Freedom in 2019 changed the game in marine, and it is an accelerator for new business growth platforms. What you see on this map is unrivaled scale in shared access.
We are now up to 275 locations with reciprocal access, which means a member can access a boat at any club in our network. We have 40,000 paid memberships, which represent approximately the same number of new Boat Group sales each year, and 60,000 memberships, which include multiple members on account and highlight our powerful community. In addition, 92% of members never had an intention of buying a boat when they joined the club. So this is truly a model that lifts participation across the industry. Finally, not only is the fleet growing, but the share of BBG boats in the network is also growing. Freedom is also a platform for growth. We have two powerful models to grow the business. First is our franchise model, which provides a growth accelerator and strong operating leverage, as it is important that nearly 70 of our franchisees are growth partners.
Our company-operated locations are in tier one markets, and while they require a higher capital commitment, primarily boats, they also provide larger absolute returns. The outer rings represent new business opportunities and the role that Freedom will play as an accelerator to our technology strategy. As we move toward the consumer and consider how we unlock more value from our business, we launched two new business models in 2020. Boateka is a pre-owned boat sales platform developed to assist franchisees with fleet retirement. However, we have designed the business with deep customer insight and the first-time boat buyer in mind. BoatClass is an on-water training program that is being piloted at select Freedom locations, and we are excited with the early results. These two businesses are underpinned by a contemporary digital experience. Dave said this earlier.
Smart products live within smart services, and this is another example of where Brunswick is differentiated, first in our ability to leverage our portfolio to scale and commercialize opportunities, and second, through our innovation centers, which we also consider each Freedom location. Boating as a service is the future, and we have a competitive advantage across the spectrum. In exploration, 77 million consumers are interested in boating and yet never participated. Many of them are entering the industry for the first time now. In subscription models, we are the leader, and this is a good time to mention that 75% of our revenue in Freedom is subscription-based. Also, 57% of our members previously owned a boat, highlighting the opportunity for Freedom to retain boaters on the water longer, and then finally, in ownership, there is a tremendous opportunity to create synergies with new boat buyers.
One example of this is Tom and Sandy Robertson, who were Freedom Boat Club members of our club location in Michigan and Indiana. Importantly, they found their dream home while on a club exploring Lake Michigan, and then having experienced a Sea Ray bow rider in the club after the acquisition, they are now Sea Ray owners. This is an example of the synergy that Brunswick can bring, but the other interesting part of Tom and Sandy's story is that 35 years ago, they owned a boat, and then life changed, and they rented a boat, and then they joined a club. Now they're new boat owners, and one day they may be club members again. This is boating as a service, and no one is better positioned than Brunswick to retain our consumers and our portfolio over their lifetime.
Finally, my favorite part of the discussion with Tom was him describing his two grandsons, age seven, and his granddaughter, age five. Every time they're on Lake Michigan, they go by this nearby lighthouse and they give it a thumbs up. And what Tom said is that the boat is front and center in their experience, not just their boating experience, but their life experience. We have so many incredible customers like Tom who provide our confidence and an outlook. The next big milestone for Business Acceleration is to achieve $100 million in club and synergy revenue through Freedom. This does not include Boateka or other new business ventures, which we intend to scale based on early insights. In summary, Brunswick has created a differentiated business system that maximizes the profit from our assets and new business models over time.
Compared to a new boat sale to a dealer, which is very important as it establishes our brands, we will create three to five times the profitability when you consider a new boat sold to a franchisee and then sold again through Boateka, or transitioning a boat to our company-operated locations and then sold through Boateka. In closing, taking advantage of the next wave requires that you are looking ahead, and that's what we're doing in Business Acceleration, looking at trends and positioning Brunswick to win. Importantly, we are not just making boating accessible or simple. We are making boating for everyone. We are adding diverse revenue streams, including subscription-based models. Our businesses are underpinned by digital platforms, and we will maximize the life cycle profit. Thank you for your time. I'd now like to introduce Ryan Gwillim, CFO for Brunswick.
Thanks, Brenna, and hello, everyone. I'm Ryan Gwillim, Chief Financial Officer for Brunswick Corporation. In February of 2020, which now seems like years ago, we presented a three-year strategic and financial plan which contained certain overarching investment considerations that would serve as a baseline for success under the plan. We are now close to halfway through that plan, and these considerations remain valid, with our performance thus far supported by these focus areas. The marine market remains extremely healthy, with growth in excess of our original expectations, and we believe there is plenty of runway ahead for further growth as increased boating participation is enabled by more flexible lifestyles. Brunswick has capitalized on this market growth by leveraging and constantly adding to our industry-leading product lineup, operating efficiently throughout our manufacturing footprint and growing market share across all our businesses.
Together with smart portfolio moves in recent years that streamlined our focus and bolstered our recurring revenue base, these investment considerations have resulted in strong earnings and free cash flow generation, along with robust shareholder returns, which I'll discuss further toward the end of my section. As a result, we are raising our 2022 strategic plan targets and now anticipate 2022 earnings per share of $8.25-$8.75, operating margins of between 15% and 16%, and extremely strong free cash flow. Here you can see the progress we have made as a marine-only enterprise. We have grown revenue, margin, and EPS each year of the plan while generating significant free cash flow throughout.
Together with our expectations for the remainder of this year and 2022, our performance under this plan would produce an average of 12% top-line growth and 25% EPS growth annually, while generating close to $1.5 billion of free cash flow, with a free cash flow conversion in excess of 90%. Each segment continues to play a critical role in our success. The propulsion business is expanding and leveraging the strongest product lineup in the industry to increase its OEM customer base and grow market share. The P&A business has benefited from increased boating participation and widening product breadth, the best distribution network in the marine industry, along with additive technology to make boating more simple.
Lastly, the boat business remains focused on increasing production to satisfy retail demand and refill dealer inventories, along with attracting and retaining a younger and more diverse consumer, all while increasing operating margins across all brands. Aside from the impact of COVID on our boat business in 2020, which resulted in plant shutdowns and slower ramp-ups in the second and third quarters, each business has grown top-line and margins in each year of the plan. And as you have heard throughout the presentation today, each business has plenty of avenues to capture growth as we proceed through the coming years. Our outstanding operating performance has also driven strong ROIC levels throughout the organization. We generally think about ROIC on an operating level, which removes the impact of goodwill and intangibles from the calculation.
You can see that each segment contributes to an overall ROIC that we believe is accretive to our peer average and supports our growth initiatives. We review all capital projects, including new product programs, capacity and maintenance needs, along with M&A transactions, with a returns lens, looking at both projected ROIC and IRR calculations. Our cost of capital is approximately 10%, meaning our IRR hurdle rate for these projects is generally sitting in the low teens percentage. As a reminder, cash flow return on investment remains a significant component of our long-term incentive compensation, comprising 75% of the value of our three-year performance shares issued annually, with operating margin growth covering the remaining 25%. Moving to capital strategy, our thoughts here have not materially changed since the start of the plan.
We have generated more cash than anticipated and have ample swim lanes in which to put that capital to use. The investment story always begins with our spending on growth initiatives, including capacity, new projects, and R&D. Projects are evaluated on a financial basis, as I just discussed, with each business having sufficient access to the capital they need to grow organically. Next is retaining the strong financial position that we have worked hard over the last decade to solidify. We have an extremely healthy balance sheet, an investment-grade credit rating that allows us to remain flexible, and have removed uncertainty by satisfying our defined benefit pension obligations and transferring remaining responsibilities to a third party back in 2019. A note on M&A: our priorities here have not changed.
We are focused on spending approximately $100 million per year on acquisitions, primarily in our P&A and Freedom Boat Club businesses, along with looking for opportunities to further our ACES initiatives. We also have the ability to utilize our balance sheet for larger transactions in these areas that would quickly further our objectives. We maintain a balanced approach to returning capital to shareholders, with the ability to flex spending up or down depending on company and market performance, along with other macroeconomic factors. We have successfully managed our debt load with current gross leverage around one times EBITDA, with no near-term maturities. Note that we do not have the ability to call our 2023 or 2027 notes, but we'll have flexibility to restructure our three tranches of retail bonds, which total over $500 million starting in late 2023.
Our systematic approach to share repurchases continues to provide value to our shareholders, with $1.1 billion of shares repurchased since 2014, or about 17% of our outstanding shares. We target approximately $100 million of share repurchases each year, executed through 10b5-1 plans that are generally structured to enable us to purchase more shares when market valuations are favorable. Finally, you would have seen the recent announcement regarding our dividend increase, which is now an annualized $1.34 per share, with a payout ratio just below our targeted range of 20%-25% of EPS. Our annuity-based P&A and Freedom Boat Club businesses provide a stable earnings base, which, together with our streamlined fixed cost base, provides confidence in our ability to keep dividend levels steady throughout any economic environment. I'd like to end by taking both a retrospective and forward-looking view of our total shareholder returns and earnings growth.
Since July 1, 2019, which is when we became a marine-only powerhouse, our total shareholder return of 136% significantly exceeds our peer average and all relevant indices. This is further proof that our simplified, focused investor narrative, together with substantial growth opportunities, provides investors with what we believe to be the best investment opportunity in the leisure or consumer recreational space. As we project out to the end of this strategic plan, our operating performance and capital strategy plans should deliver exceptional growth. With the core businesses providing almost 20% annual EBIT growth and capital strategy benefits adding another 2%-4% of growth each year, we are generating strong, stable earnings that we believe will convert to shareholder returns that are accretive to the overall ma rket.
Thank you for joining me to review the updated financials for the 2022 strategic plan, and I very much look forward to seeing all of you again soon in person. I'll now pass the presentation back to Dave for his concluding remarks.
Thank you, Ryan. You've now heard about the incredible potential of our businesses and the Brunswick Enterprise and our efforts to democratize and elevate the boating experience. I'd like to close our presentation by summarizing the ways in which we'll define success in the future. We will invest to maintain an unassailable position of global product leadership. We'll expand our business model to continue to unlock unique and profound synergies across our businesses. We'll lead the industry in ACES, including with our portfolio of electrified solutions. We will engage new and current boaters with a portfolio of the most relevant, accessible, and premium brands and products.
We'll provide the industry's leading shared access experiences. We'll engage consumers with the richest, most intuitive digital experiences. We'll lead the industry with new consumer-centric integrated technical and business solutions, and we will be the acknowledged industry leader in marine sustainability. I'd like to close by thanking all of Brunswick's more than 14,000 global employees for meeting the challenges of COVID and delivering such incredible business performance, and I'd like to thank you all for watching and listening to our presentation on Brunswick's Next Wave. Brunswick's Next Wave is already exciting, but you can be sure we have a few more things up our sleeve that we look forward to sharing with you in the very near future. Goodbye for now.