All right. Hello, everyone. Good morning. Welcome to the Hayward presentation. Sorry I'm late. A little snafu with the schedule. I'm Ryan Merkel. I cover building products with William Blair. Before we begin, I need to remind you that a complete list of disclosures and conflicts of interest is available on our website. With us today is Kevin Holleran, President and CEO; Eifion Jones, CFO; and Stuart Baker, Vice President of Business Development. For those that don't know Hayward, Hayward is a leading pool equipment OEM known for pumps, filters, heaters, and control systems. Roughly 75% of sales is tied to the aftermarket, which, in my opinion, allows for consistent earnings growth across a cycle. Hayward has done a nice job on margins despite pressures on discretionary sales. And with that, let me turn it over to Kevin.
Yeah. Thanks, Ryan.
Morning, everyone. Thanks, Ryan, and the William Blair team for having us today. I know some in the room are new to the Hayward story, so we're going to spend time giving a high level of what the company is and the market, the pool market that we participate in. Here on the first slide, you can see we are a global but heavily concentrated in North America. Full line OEM, that's the bottom right-hand pie chart. And we're a pure play. When I say pure play, 95% of our net sales is generated from the pool industry, primarily residential with 5% commercial, and then an industrial flow control business as well. We have two segments. North America, U.S. and Canada, is about 85% of our revenue, and Europe, rest of the world, represents the balance of 15%. We serve all pool types from in-ground, commercial, and above-ground pools.
There's a number of stats along the right-hand, sorry, left-hand panel there on the slide. I'll just draw your attention to a few. We are just north of a billion dollars. Over the last five years, we've had a CAGR of 7.5%, not necessarily linear through the COVID experience, but still 7.5% over that five-year period. Our margins last year crested on a full-year basis, north of 50% gross margins. From an adjusted EBITDA standpoint, over that same five-year period, we've posted a 10% CAGR. We spend quite a bit of money on engineering and innovation, and we protect that IP. I would inch up the percent that Ryan had in his intro. We're actually closer, based upon new construction being down the last couple of years, we're actually closer to 85% of our net sales is derived from an existing pool.
A pool, whether it's break fix, a full-scale remodel, or some form of upgrade. We'll talk more about that. Next slide. I just want to spend a moment. We are celebrating our 100-year anniversary. We're very proud of that. It is a rare feat. Research would indicate that less than 1% of companies reach that milestone. We are sharing it with a couple of household names this year, namely Delta Air Lines, Caterpillar, and Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company. As we celebrate, we reflect with great pride on what the last 100 years has represented, from the founding by a Scottish immigrant as a tool and die maker in Brooklyn to Oscar Davis buying it in the 1960s, who really charted the current course that we're on by entering the pool market back after he bought it in 1964 to the global public company that we are.
For all of our accomplishments in the first 100 years, I'm confident that our best days and greater days lie in the second century of our existence. Next slide. Where do we sit? We really sit right here as an anchor in the backyard. We believe that this desire for healthy outdoor living is a sustainable trend. Homeowners continue investing in their homes, both in and outside. Oftentimes, the pool is the center investment in that outdoor living. Things like the outdoor kitchen, the decking, the landscaping, the lighting are frequently put in around the pool there. Additionally, we're also seeing increased demand for smart connected products in the home. That applies to the pool as well. We find that there really is a high adoption rate at time of new construction, but there's very low representation in the installed base around smart connected capabilities.
It's a huge opportunity for the industry, as well as Hayward. Stuart will spend a couple of minutes talking about that shortly. Next slide. Let me just talk about some of the long-term dynamics around the industry. There are a couple of other secular trends beyond just the two that I mentioned on the prior slide. Migration patterns are generally to warmer climates where pools are more prevalent. There is this ever-growing demand for environmentally sustainable products, which our portfolio participates in very well. More specific to the pool industry, there is a large installed base. In the United States alone, there's 5.5 million in-ground pools in existence. Today, globally, there's nearly 25 million pools. That increases every year. Every year, there are more pools that are built than there are decommissioned or taken offline. It's an ever-growing aftermarket.
The average age is at a high. We estimate it to be about 23 years. Both the size of the aftermarket and the installed base really do provide great tailwinds for an opportunity around aftermarket upgrade, conversion, modernization to increase the enjoyment, the ease of use, and the cost of ownership around the pool. I think it is important to note the pricing power that our company and our industry has. Equipment, in general, is a pretty low % of the overall construction cost, somewhere between 10-15%. When product fails, you're on the clock. You need to get the water circulating. You need to be treating and filtering the water. The industry is accustomed to annual price increases to at least offset inflation.
We have shown during the inflation post-COVID and more recently around tariffs that we have the ability to pass through off-cycle price increases to preserve margins. Specifically around Hayward, on the far right-hand side of the slide, would be some deep-rooted competitive advantages that I think strengthen our market position and drive long-term growth. We have an incredibly strong and trusted brand. Again, 100 years in the making. One of the largest installed bases out there. We do have a reputation in the industry as an innovation leader. Again, Stuart will talk on some of the more recent innovations that we have brought to the marketplace. During COVID and since, our operational excellence and our supply chain capabilities were on full display as we were able to satisfy that demand surge and even more recently drive margin increases as the industry has normalized around lower volumes more recently.
We do employ a more multi-prong, multi-channel go-to-market strategy, which I'll touch on in just a moment. Next slide. Around our strategy, it really is driven around three main themes of organic growth, margin expansion, and disciplined capital deployment. Initially, around organic growth, it really is around products and customer experience and customer service levels. Our product roadmaps are really geared towards delivering solutions that transform the experience of water and make for more enjoyable pool ownership. We're spending quite a bit of effort around driving customer experience both at the channel level as well as at the dealer, servicer, builder level. Around margins, we've, again, proven we've really shown the ability to drive margin expansion from already robust levels.
I would mention that our gross margins have expanded 600 basis points the last five years to 50.5% year-ending 2024 and up nearly 400 basis points since 2021, despite reduced volumes, again, as the industry normalized post-COVID. We do see opportunity to increase margin expansion around four key pillars: productivity gains around operational excellence and automation in our facilities, a higher mix of higher margin technology products, operational leverage and supply chain capabilities as we increase our capacity utilization in our manufacturing facilities, and then proactive price-cost management. I'll close on the slide really around disciplined capital allocation, which really emphasizes investment in organic growth and balancing that with some strategic acquisition opportunities. We did one last year. We're about to anniversary Chlor King, which was a great bolt-on addition to augment our organic growth strategy around growing in the commercial segment.
In summary, I'm very confident that we have the right strategy in place to continue to drive growth and shareholder value creation. With that, I'll turn it over to Eifion to walk through a couple of slides.
Yeah, next slide. I mean, Kevin mentioned it earlier on in the conversation. The strength of our industry is the resilience of the end market and is predicated on this tremendous aftermarket that we have today of around about 5.5 million in-ground pools inside the United States. I get asked, we get asked a lot about new construction, but the fact of the matter is the majority of our financial earnings come from the installed base, which is growing every single year and has grown through each of the economic cycles represented on that slide in the yellow bars. Even in the post-pandemic period here, more pools were added. Approximately 300,000 pools have been added to the installed base from 2019 to where we are today. That is driving the recurring revenue stream that this industry has become accustomed to.
What I would say, again, in terms of new construction, it's important, but the majority of the earnings around equipment sales come from the lifetime annuity that's created once that new equipment is installed on the pool pad. Think almost a ratio of three to one. One time at new construction, three times sales opportunity across the lifetime of that pool ownership. Most of that annuity is either semi or fully non-discretionary. Once you own a pool, if we have any pool owners in the room, you know you're managing that pool environment consistently and avoiding any breakage in the management of that pool. That's the engine of our industry. New construction is good, but this is the annuity factor that drives us as an organization. Next slide, please. In terms of exactly how that aftermarket breaks down, today we would say that we don't have precise data.
Approximately 55% of the overall sales profile of Hayward is directed towards the aftermarket repair and replace. I can't emphasize how critical it is as a pool owner that you make sure that your pool is operating on a continuous basis. You have very little time from the breakage of a filtration or a pump to saving that environment. Think in terms of 24-72 hours, after which time, if you haven't made that repair, you have a compromised pool environment. The other elements of the pinwheel in terms of upgrading. Upgrading for us, we define upgrading as additive to the pool pad. If you're a pool owner and you decide to put a heater onto your pool pad, that's what we classify as an upgrade. Or if you have tab chlorination that you now switch to an inline salt chlorination system, that would be an upgrade.
Finally, remodels. Like anything in the home environment, you go through a cycle of remodel, whether it be your bathroom, your kitchen. Similarly, with the pool environment, every eight to 10 years, you'll be going through a cycle of remodel, the decking, and most likely a full sweep of the pool equipment pad itself. The residual is the new construction, which you can see in the pie chart. Important, but it only represents approximately 15% today. We fight hard for the new construction because it creates that 30-year annuity, that three lifetime turnover in the pool equipment. We're focused in the aftermarket progressively as an organization through our product technology platforms. We have an opportunity around moving technology in there at higher margin levels. It's a rich environment for us as a revenue driver for the organization. Next slide.
I'll finally close with just maybe quantifying exactly what that technology opportunity is. On the top left-hand side, most pools that are in existence today are around 23 years old. Most of them, nearly two-thirds of them, are what we call mechanically operated. So they're switches. They often require the homeowner to actually physically go out to the pool pad and make that switch change. I have to turn on the light or adjust the pump situation. You fast forward to today, nearly 2/3 of pools are being installed with smart controls. The differential in value to us as an OEM seller is significant. We're talking about a mechanical pool in real pricing terms today around $4,000. A fully smart suited pool, probably closer to around $16,000. A quantumly larger sales opportunity for us as an organization.
You extrapolate that over the lifetime of pool ownership, it creates a tremendous amount of incremental revenue for us as an organization.
Okay. I'm going to build on that theme a little bit and just explain to you what we mean about the opportunity in the aftermarket. I've really just chosen three things here: digital conversion, which is automation and IoT controls; chemical conversion, which is salt chlorination as opposed to liquid or chlorine tablets; and energy conversion. The way to read the chart is the two gray columns. The first one, I'll just use digital first. New construction take rate for digital controls, IoT controls. If you're building a new pool, 70% of people will elect to get automation put onto the pool. In the aftermarket, it's only 35% penetrated. As Kevin was saying, we look at that and think, well, any pool owner, if they're educated to the same level as they are during the new construction phase, why wouldn't they want to have automation?
Why wouldn't they want to be able to run their pool from their phone and their app? There is a huge discrepancy between new and aftermarket. That opportunity gap, we are really working hard to monetize that. Chemical conversion, swimming in a salt chlorine-generated pool is like swimming in a big water softener. Again, similarly, just over a third of the aftermarket is penetrated. Variable speed pumps have become mandated. You see a pretty high take rate on new construction. The aftermarket is growing because as your single speed pumps come up for replacement, they have to be replaced with a variable speed. This is a nice tailwind for the business. In total, it is around a $6.5 billion opportunity if we can get the installed base to the same level of automation and control as new construction.
I don't have a lot of time, so I'm just going to briefly mention three pivotal products that we launched last year. On the left, a new heat pump, which also has the ability to chill water. A lot of people, you may all be, many of you may have pools today, so you're familiar with the benefits of heating a pool. If you live in the Sunbelt, there's also benefits of cooling the pool in the height of summer. There's a new trend around plunge pools, so you can actually turn your spa into a plunge pool. You can actually drop the temperature down to about 40 degrees if you so wish. This micro-channel technology heat pump is a bit of a breakthrough in the industry. It was only introduced last year, and now 80% of the units we sell today are of this technology.
In the middle is talking about our app system for Omni. Omni is our automation platform. The Omni app for consumers has been a big differentiator for us. It has been a great success for us. We launched the Pro app, which is a system for a special version of the app for our big service and builder customers so that they can see all of their clients' Omnis. The whole concept of who's watching your water, they can actually see proactively whose pool may be in distress, see what pools are in alarm status, so they can proactively go out and make a service call and fix the pool often before the homeowner even knows they have a problem. They can also do remote configuration, over-the-air updates, and that sort of thing. It is a great convenience for the service company.
Lastly, on the right, our new lighting platform, which has directional lighting, also detachable cord, makes it super easy to install, super easy to service. Finally, I'm just going to close on a breakthrough product that you may have heard Kevin talking about on the recent earnings call around a new Omni derivative called Omni X. On the left-hand side is a typical diagram of what we call a centralized control system. If you were starting with a brand new pool, there would be a control panel on the wall with a breaker box and all of the various components hardwired into the control, and you have IoT control. That's perfect for brand new construction or a full remodel. What about the aftermarket? What about all the installed pools out there that have no automation?
It's quite a heavy barrier for a homeowner to maybe invest $3,000, $3,500 to retroactively put a control box in. Also, there's a barrier from the trade professionals. Services don't do a great job of going out trying to educate homeowners at the art of the possible. We have actually started to, with Omni X, started to embed controls automation onto individual pieces of equipment. As your pump breaks, you buy a new pump, and it comes with Omni X controls automatically embedded in the system. As you replace other pieces of equipment, they can be added to that Omni X ecosystem, a bit like a ring doorbell strategy where you buy the doorbell, the security camera, and so on and so on. You can build a controls platform. In the interest of time, I'm going to move on.
Okay. So we bring these industry-leading products to market through multiple channels. Three quarters of our product is sold through distribution, names like POOLCORP, SRS, Heritage, and then the regional network of distributors out there. The remaining one quarter is split between direct sales to either retailers, to e-sellers, or to some builders and buying groups that have scale and inventory planning capabilities. So we really employ both a push, working with our channel partners to ensure we got the right product, right location, right time, as well as a pull strategy, working with the professionals, the builders, the servicers to pull product through the distribution channel and out into the backyard. Next slide. One key strategy that we kicked off last year to pull more product through the channel are what we call Hayward Hubs. They're really targeting high-volume U.S. markets.
Really the first of the kind, no one else has launched a concept like this, is to really put in-market dedicated training, service, and support centers to support that local high-volume region. It's very hands-on where our trade professionals can learn about the features, the setup, the programming, the troubleshooting of any of the equipment that they may encounter in the backyard. The feedback out of our initial pilot in Dallas-Fort Worth has encouraged us to expand this model to where we now have two additional ones open in North Carolina and the greater Phoenix-Scottsdale area. You can see with the crosshairs there a couple of other markets that I would anticipate opening facilities in SoCal, in the Atlanta metro area, as well as Florida in the coming quarters. Next slide, we really touch on our manufacturing and our distribution capabilities.
We do have a long history, proud history around lean manufacturing, and it's resulted in a very agile and very efficient manufacturing distribution footprint that services sales into over 100 countries. We're very vertically integrated with shorter supply chains than many others that we compete against, highly automated facilities with a proven ability to flex production up and down as market demands and be able to deliver margins with very limited incremental capital investment. We build approximately 85% of our product in the U.S., and that's increasing as we accelerate the supply chain repositioning in the wake of the tariff disruption. This has all really given us a competitive advantage relative to other OEMs that rely more on Asia or outsourcing private labeling of their product. Final slide, just to culminate why to invest in Hayward is really centered around a couple key themes here.
Our leadership in a very attractive pool industry known for recurring aftermarket model and proven pricing power. Secondly, really these durable competitive advantages that we feel Hayward has centered around brand awareness, installed base, investing in innovation and technology, our lean manufacturing, vertically integrated operations and distribution footprint, and our multiple-channel go-to-market strategy. Strong financial profile with historic sales, CAGR in the mid to high single digits, and strong gross margins at or over 50%, and a commitment to sustainability with many energy-efficient, environmentally responsible products. With that, I do not know if, well, we have 30 seconds left.
Thirty seconds. I'll ask one question. There are not many industrial companies with 50% gross margins, Kevin. Talk about some of the factors as to why you get that kind of margin.
Yeah. I think it starts with the innovative products that we bring to the marketplace. We have pricing power, the durability and the reliability of the aftermarket. The break fix is over 50% of our revenue, which year-round the clock, when something fails, you've got somewhere between two and four days to kind of get that product. And you're not replacing that equipment annually, so you don't necessarily remember what you paid for the pump six years previously, and you know that you have to get it. There is pricing power there. I mean, I don't mean to leave it till last, but our supply chain and our operations team do a fantastic job of driving cost out on an annual basis to address the cost of goods sold.
Obviously, we're in a very dynamic environment around tariffs, but that's on the heels of some hyperinflation not that long ago. The ability to price that into the marketplace and our operations team taking the challenge annually to drive cost of goods lower is really the yin and the yang that's been allowing us to drive 50+% gross margins.
All right. We're out of time. Thanks so much.
Thanks.
We'll have a breakout session on the other side.
We're upstairs. Richardson, I think it is.