Good morning. I'm Sam Darkatsh. On behalf of Raymond James, we'd like to welcome you to the Whirlpool Corporation presentation for this morning. With us today from Whirlpool is Jim Peters, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, as well as Korey Thomas, Head of Investor Relations. Jim, I think you mentioned that you're prepared. Your remarks might take the whole 30 minutes-
Yep.
which is fine. We do have a breakout session that will immediately follow. So with that, Jim, welcome back.
Thank you, Sam. And welcome, everybody, and for those of you who might have caught our Investor Day last week, I don't mean to disappoint you, but I'm going to probably cover some similar areas, and some similar topics, and most of the slides will look very familiar from that. We did just have our Investor Day Tuesday of last week, where we really rolled out what I'll call our midterm targets, looking out to 2026. So real quick, let me just get to for those of you who aren't familiar with Whirlpool, which I see many familiar faces within the room, but you can see right now, in terms of this year, our sales, as reported, are approximately, or as of last year, about $19 billion.
As we divest of our EMEA business, our sales will be closer to $17 billion on a go-forward basis. Globally, we have about 59,000 employees, and we have 55 manufacturing and technology centers. We manufacture close to where we sell appliances in all parts of the world, and that's what you'll hear me talk about, too, is we made a decision around transforming our portfolio. We really looked at what parts of our business really, truly were global and what parts are more regionally or locally operated, and that led us down the road of making certain decisions in that transformation process. Additionally, you can just see by categories that, you know, we sell appliances within dishwashing, cooking, laundry, and refrigeration, all relatively similar.
The reason that laundry and refrigeration are larger is that there are many countries outside the U.S. where those are the big products you sell, and cooking is not as big of a business in those. But if you really break it down within the U.S., or more mature markets, then it is a very similar split of percentage across all product categories. You know, also then, you know, I just go through real quick here some of the strong reasons why Whirlpool is a good company. We've got a number one share position in the U.S., in Canada, in Brazil. We're number two in Mexico. We're number three in India. All strong markets for us.
We have a strong track record of launching innovative products, and if you look at the brand portfolio that we have, we have significant brands that are used both globally and locally in many countries. So you can see that we have certain brands that are large in, say, Brazil as a Brastemp or a Consul, which give us number one market share position there. We have Whirlpool, which is a global brand. We have KitchenAid, which is a global countertop brand. Also, we do major domestic appliances globally with that, but most of that is within the U.S. And then from a best cost position, you'll hear me as I talk about the future, we intend to continue to improve our cost position.
So, you know, if you really look at the, you know, where do we say the, the value sits here, and, and what's the, the value creation thesis go forward? Big part of this is about unlocking value through our portfolio transformation, and I'm gonna walk you through here. Biggest thing that we, we thought about when we did that is we really want to invest more in our high-margin and high-growth businesses. That's what led us down the road of deciding that we would divest of the EMEA business. As we looked at it, and we looked at that market, we didn't see the growth, and the margins have always been under pressure. So one, we're refocusing on three pillars, and I'll talk about those in a second.
2, the MDA business in the Americas and the SDA business, as you'll see me walk through, are really positioned well at this point in time. 3, our India and commercial businesses we see as strong growth opportunities go forward. And, you know, as I said, we really wanna focus on these parts of the portfolio. So now, as I talked about earlier, the 3 pillars for us of what we see as our business go forward. The first pillar there that you see is small appliances, and I'm gonna talk a little bit more about that in a second, but that's our KitchenAid, countertop, or small domestic appliance business. We operate it on a global basis. 2 strongest markets for it are North America and EMEA, but it is in Latin America and Asia.
EBIT margins above 15%, and you'll see, we see it as something that can grow at a 10% rate as we begin to expand the product portfolio in there. Major appliances, that's our core business. As you can see from there, we really wanna strengthen and focus that business. We're gonna focus it very much on the Americas, but we do intend to continue to drive our business within Asia and especially within India, 'cause we do see that as a very positive growth area for us in the future. Commercial appliances is probably the smallest part of our business today. We're in the commercial laundry space. We do see that as an opportunity to continue to grow in some higher-margin areas we could participate, but I'd say of the three, that's probably the one that's furthest out.
If you look at then the additions and the subtractions, and you can see the moves we've made over recent years, you can see we added InSinkErator, we added Elica, which is a hood and cooktop business. We added the Elica India business, and so Elica operates as a separate company within Europe, but that India business has been a significant benefit for us within India. You can see the things then that we've divested of or exited out of, and now we're exiting out of all of EMEA, but before that, it was Russia, Turkey, South Africa. We sold our compressor business in Brazil, which is Embraco, and then China also. As we've looked at where do we wanna focus, as I mentioned earlier, we're focusing in the Americas and certain parts of Asia.
So now you kind of get to hear and, and, you know, as I mentioned, and you look at the different big markets around the world. North America, already talked about, number one share position, over $11 billion in sales last year. Latin America, number one sales position, over $3.5 billion or almost $3.5 billion in sales. And India, which is just below $1 billion, and number three share position there. All significant markets for us, all good growth opportunities in the future, but it gives you just an idea of the size and scale of these. So now, you know, what we talk about here is we've gone through this portfolio transformation. We've also had to look at the segments and how we report our business. And historically, we reported our business in four segments, and they were four geographic segments.
Included within those segments was both the major domestic appliance business for that location, but the small domestic appliance business for that location. Now, as I talked about earlier, when we stepped back and looked at our business, and said: Boy, how do we really run this business? Is it truly global? Is it regional? Where does it sit? We realized that the small domestic appliance business is a truly global business. It operates that way. The products are very similar, if not identical, across the globe. The Stand Mixer is made in one location in Greenville, Ohio, in the U.S., and sold in all other countries around the world that we sell it in. So, you know, we identified that as a truly global business. We looked at our major domestic appliance businesses and said: Boy, those operate on a much more regional basis.
While they get a benefit of a global engineering organization, and they have some common architectures, most of the time, the product is produced very close to where it is sold. We've always talked about in the U.S., 80% of what we sell in the U.S., we manufacture in the U.S. You know, I would say today that it's probably closer to at least 80% is made within North America because there's always a balance between Mexico and the U.S. in terms of production. If you looked at our Latin America business, almost the entire amount is made either in Brazil or Mexico. That is for that business. And if we look at our India business, almost the entire amount of sales within India are produced within India. So as we started to look at the new segments, we said: You know what?
We'll break this into three different major domestic appliance businesses by geographies, North America, Asia, and Latin America, and then we would have a separate global SDA business that we'll report out on. That's the way we run the business, that's the way we invest in it, and we do think that helps provide the transparency to see how well this business performs and how well it's historically performed. So now I'm going to talk a little bit about the major domestic appliance business in North America. Obviously, this is one of our most profitable businesses. It's the one that generates a significant amount of free cash flow for us, and it's the one that many of you, as investors, tend to focus on a lot when you bring questions to us.
So I want to spend a little bit of time here just to help you understand further. So if we really look at North America right now, and if you take 2023, we were just under $11 billion in sales, about a 9%-9.5% EBIT margin. As we've talked about for 2024, we expect sales to be relatively flat, you know, very close here. We expect margins to be approximately 9%, and this is as we look at the market right now and we look at the appliance industry right now. What we would see is the biggest drivers right now that are affecting us, obviously, as many of you are aware, with higher mortgage rates, we're seeing existing home sales lower, which drive our discretionary demand lower, which is about a third of our business in the US.
Replacement is much stronger than it's been historically and doing very well, and we did think the replacement industry would do well based on just looking at periods of time that we comp against and looking back 10 years, because the average appliance has a life of about 10 years. That's giving us a window that says, boy, we should see some growth in the replacement demand. So, you know, we look at that, and then we look out to 2026, and we say: Okay, in 2026, and I'll walk through a little bit more of this in a second, but in 2026, we do see sales should grow at about 2%-3%. If you just look at the GDP, if you look at some of our expectations, you look at where we think we can gain a couple points of share.
And then, you know, we do believe that our margins can get back to the 11%-12% range. Now, you're going to see, as I talk about that, it's really driven by cost, and that's the biggest driver in terms of margin expansion right now as we look at it, because as we all know, we're not banking on mortgage rates changing anytime soon. We're not banking on the housing industry shifting significantly anytime soon. So that's not what's factored in. This is more about just the cost opportunities we see within our business today. So you really take the North America journey, and, you know, I've lived through this over the years and all that, but prior to COVID, we were in a period from 2017 to 2019, where our margins were improving, where we were seeing a very stable business.
We were seeing housing was in a very stable state, and you saw some ups and downs, but we continued to really invest in our products and drive a lot of innovation. You then saw during COVID in 2020 through about 2022, 2021, what you saw is disruption to the supply chains. Everybody experienced this globally. You couldn't get components, you couldn't get parts. Your factories were impacted. It shifted, and demand rose, so it shifted the industry significantly. And what happened, though, to us at that time, because we were disproportionately affected based on our footprint and where we were located, our market share did drop to about 26% in the U.S. But you know what we did? We took a lot of pricing to offset some of the inflation we saw then.
Now, you get into a post-COVID period. This. We are seeing more inflation now than we've seen probably in any period of time within our company. Multiple years of raw material inflation curbing them down a little bit in 2023. A promotional environment that's come back to what we saw pre-COVID, but we were able to gain back some share within this environment. And so if you look at the things that overall impact that North America margin, these are some of the big drivers. Now, as we look at 2024 to 2026, and I'll talk a little bit more about, we do feel we're well-positioned for the future here. We do feel good about where the housing market could head.
We do feel that we've got the right amount of product innovation, and, you know, as I talked about already, we do believe we can expand margins by reducing our cost, and there are a lot of opportunities. Especially we get in a more stabilized supply chain environment that we're in today. This will really help us from an overall manufacturing and supply chain cost perspective. So, you know, talked about this just briefly before, but if you take the U.S. appliance industry, there's three drivers of demand we always talk about: replacement, discretionary, and new construction. As you can see here, historically, at one point in time, it was closer to a third, third, third.
Then, as you got into the period coming out of what I would say is, is when you had the housing crunch and the financial crisis and the industry began to grow back, we saw a significant amount of increase in replacement, with discretionary and new housing stabilizing around 30% for discretionary and 15% for new housing. In this market today, where existing home sales are on a multi-decade low, that's the driver of discretionary purchases. So you really see that space has contracted down to about 25% of the business. What happens? When people buy an existing home, one of the first things they think about upgrading and changing is the appliances, and that's why that's such a big driver for us. And it's not just that they do that, they typically look at the entire kitchen suite.
So it's a very profitable segment for us. That's been under pressure. As mortgage rates would start to come down or as existing home sales would pick up at some point, that's the driver that benefits us. New construction, we do see that as a positive, and I'll talk a little bit more here. But if you were to look at our Investor Day presentation, we talked about we're over 50% of the largest home builders in the U.S. today, and we're targeting getting to 60% of that business, which also is a significant benefit for us because, again, we're selling kitchen suites through that channel. So now, talk a little bit about the innovation.
As I said, these are many of the same slides we would have used in our Investor Day presentation, but you can really see just examples of some of the innovation we've been launching in recent years. I start with the Maytag Pet, and, you know, washer and dryer. And again, even Lowe's highlighted this in one of their earnings call at one point. Think about the pandemic, COVID. Think about what a lot of the population did. They went and got pets. People all of a sudden brought pets into their home. We saw this as an opportunity that now they were having pet hair, let's launch a product which has been very successful, limited amount of engineering resources, because it's a filter, effectively, but works very, very well. The flexible third-rack dishwasher, that's one of the best-selling products for us out there.
What does that do? It's actually a third rack that you can use to put more than just silverware or cutlery on. You can put glasses, you can put bowls, something that the consumer really values. Microwave hood, you know, again, this is about aesthetics, about how it fits in the kitchen. And SlimTech Refrigeration is something we talked about recently here and launched. SlimTech Refrigeration is using vacuum-sealed panels on a refrigerator rather than foam-filled panels. That allows you to actually make the panels, the outside, much thinner. And this is something that nobody's really brought significantly to the market. So it increases capacity, helps with energy usage. So these are the kind of things that we're really looking to launch right now into the marketplace and drive innovation.
So, you know, I did say, you know, we've got something in here about the builder business also. You know, you can kinda see here that, you know, we've got eight of the top 10 builders, we've got strong delivery capabilities, but you can see, as I've said, we're over 50% of that business, and right now we expect to get that closer to 60% over time. So again, you kind of go through, but what makes us so good in that space, it is, it's our logistics capabilities, it's the product portfolio that we have, and it's the brand portfolio that we have. We have brands that you can use in homes at every price point, from things that are starter homes, through step-up homes, through luxury homes, etc.
We have products and brands that will work in anything, and that's why builders like to work with us. You know, the other thing then, real quick, just kind of closing on North America, is in 2022, we acquired InSinkErator from Emerson. This is a food waste disposal business, sits under your counter, attaches many a times to the dishwasher via the hose and how the water flows, but it is the neighbor of the dishwasher. We saw it as a very good fit for our product portfolio, a very good fit with our placement in the builder industry, very good fit as many of the retailers that sell our appliances sell InSinkErator product also. And again, as I said, it's the next door neighbor of the dishwasher.
Strong market share, strong install base, strong replacement base, and as housing begins to recover and grow at some point, we see this as something that will take off well with that too. Very, very strong margins. Margins, EBIT margins over 20%. Along with that generates very solid free cash flow. So that's why we're very excited about this business. So real quick, you know, as I said, I'm running through what we kind of covered in Investor Day in a matter of about 30 minutes. I'll talk briefly about our global small domestic appliance business, our KitchenAid business. So if you really look at, and you would have heard, Ludo Beaufils, who's running this for us globally, when he talked about this the other day, he talked about the strength of this brand and the history of this brand.
You know, just so you know, the Stand Mixer is an iconic brand, or the Stand Mixer is an iconic product, but the brand is one of the most widely recognized brands throughout the world. As he talked about, you know, according to Prophet, it's the second brand behind Apple, which just gives you a feel for how well this is recognized, but how many consumers have these within their home. The biggest problem with the product we talk about is it lasts forever. So people don't. It doesn't have a big replacement industry. The good thing is people continuously get married and have other types of events that you celebrate, and it's one of the number one items on a wedding registry.
This has got maybe some slightly different drivers than some of the other businesses do, but still has a very strong performance over a period of time. What we've talked about here is now it's about expanding that brand to other products that we can bring to the marketplace. You know, if you really just look at it today, and we've talked about this, this is about a billion-dollar brand for us or a billion-dollar business for us. Margins at over 15%. Talked about the strong presence we have globally, also does very well in a direct-to-consumer type of space. And the ratings in terms of the product are some of the highest that we see on any of our products.
As I said, the quality on this is so good that the one thing you never see is a consumer complaining, "Hey, my Stand Mixer doesn't really work anymore. I've had a problem." So, you know, just to give you some perspective on where that business is. Now, as we look out, we don't think the industry will grow at 10%. The driver for us is new product introductions. And you can see the different categories that I've just really tried to lay out here for you to understand, you know, why do we think we can grow this business at an above-average rate? Stand Mixer today is a space where we do very, very well, and we're a leading producer in the world. Food processors, we do food processors today, but we see that as an opportunity to grow.
If you actually take one and go look at one of our food processors, we've simplified the way that you actually interact with it and the way that it opens and closes to make it much easier than many of the competition out there. Traditional blending. We actually have some very good blending products, but this is a matter of now growing that segment for us. Espresso machine, we are launching in the near future, the fully automatic KitchenAid espresso maker, which will compete with the likes of Jura, some of the products that De'Longhi has, and other folks out there. So we're very excited about that. It's something that will be in price points that are, you know, at or above $2,000. It's something that you're seeing the market grow around the world, but especially within the U.S.
And then you've got countertop cooking, and that can include everything from countertop ovens to toasters, et cetera. Another space that we participate in, but see as very, very good growth potential in the future. So with that, just kind of get to what I said, or talking more about what are our midterm targets here, and what do we see by 2026 for this business? And this is what we would have rolled out the other day. We really believe that, you know, in terms of where the business will be, is right now, you know, just below in the $16+ billion, as you can see, around $16.2 billion, just above $17 billion in 2026, assuming about a, you know, 3%-4% growth rate when you blend all these businesses together.
Ongoing overall EBIT of 9%, and I'm gonna walk you through the building blocks of that in a second. Free cash flow, that's really driven by that increase in margins, but also by divesting of our EMEA business, which gives us about a $200 million-$300 million per year free cash flow benefit. That business consumed, whether it was through restructuring, through operating costs or whatever, about $200 million-$300 million of cash per year for us. And then obviously, that will improve our return on invested capital. Our guidance for the year is at, you know, you see on the bottom line there, and that just gives you the perspective, as we do believe will be around 7% for this year, and those are the numbers I'll kind of start to walk to and from here.
And that free cash flow this year, as I said, is still impacted by EMEA, as we will divest of that, and complete that transaction at the beginning of the second quarter. So real quick, what are the drivers on our margin? As I said the other day, this is focused on things we can control. This margin improvement plan is focused very much on cost. We already took out approximately $800 million of cost last year, as we've been faced with significant amounts of inflation.
We've identified opportunities within this year to drive another $300 million-$400 million of cost out of our business through things such as just simplifying our structure as we divest of EMEA, through actions we already implemented in 2023, through improvements within our factory and simplification of many of our processes there, uses of automation, making changes to our logistics network. So numerous opportunities that we feel very good about. Then as we look forward, we do believe that there's a further $300 million-$400 million opportunity over the coming years. Some of that will be a carry forward from the things we're putting in place today. Every time we do something like this, there's always a benefit that starts to accumulate in the next year.
Additionally, we do see some opportunities to take further complexity out of our business as we simplify, as we have fewer product architectures. You would have heard Marc talk in our Investor Day about reducing the number of SKUs we produce. That's a big thing for us. It takes multiple years to do it. We've been very successful in driving it so far. We do believe there are continued benefits that will come from it. So then, what does this mean from a free cash flow perspective? If you look at that, you know, what you see here is I already told you about building off of the 2023 numbers, $200 million-$300 million of just free cash flow benefits that come from exiting EMEA. Another $300 million that would come further from just margin expansion.
You just take, you know, 2 points or, or 200 basis points of margin expansion and really do the math. It gets you there. We do believe that we've got working capital opportunities of at least $100 million in inventories. We ended 2023 with higher inventories than we probably would have wanted to see. We see that as something we'll take out in 2024 and beyond. We'll continue to focus on lowering, especially as you simplify your product structure. That does drive a benefit there. And then interest and tax, the $100 million-$200 million we talk about. As we bring our debt levels down, obviously, interest will be less of a factor for us. But also, we've talked about. You've seen all the tax benefits we've had over the last few years.
That will now flow through our cash tax rate over a period of multiple years, and we will see cash benefits of that. They don't all come in one year because it's applied against income that we will make in the U.S., these benefits that we've been able to set up so that as we divest of EMEA, we can realize the losses that we incurred in EMEA that were funded by the U.S., they will now flow through, and that's where we'll see the cash benefits. So again, we see things that really drive cash flow to a much better place and over $1 billion. I think I got about five minutes left here, so I'm gonna jump. Capital allocation, and this is also something that, as we discussed with many of you, has been a topic, and always is.
The thing I would say, and you would have heard me say in Investor Day, we're very consistent here. We look at it, one, we want to fund our business and our organic growth, and we continue to invest in our products, showed you by those new product launches, but also in products that will be coming down the line, both capital and engineering costs. Fund our dividend. We continue. We've talked about 69 straight years of paying a dividend. We've always either kept it constant or raised it. We fully intend, and looking at it on a multi-year period, we're comfortable with the guideline that we've established. Debt service, also talked about that. We really want to bring our net leverage down to about 2x EBITDA. And then share buyback and value creating M&A.
M&A will not be a focus in 2024 for us because we're still digesting InSinkErator. But we do see go forward, we'll continue to look at opportunities, but we are beginning with the $2.5 billion of share repurchase authorization that we have, beginning to at least buy back dilution that's created by some of our comp programs and starting there to reengage on buying back shares. So that really brings us to the last slide here. That brings it home. And, you know, why do we think this is a attractive investment? You know, if you look go forward, the opportunity for profitable growth, I really walked you through here. The margin expansion, as I said, our margin expansion plans are focused on things we control. We're focused on costs we control. It does not assume material costs get better.
It does not assume inflation gets better. It assumes we take cost out of our business at significant levels that we've done in the past, but even probably more significant, especially as we simplify in a post-EMEA world. Our ability to convert that to free cash. Now that we don't have EMEA consuming cash every year, it will increase our ability to convert our earnings to free cash flow. You know, I already talked about how we'll continue to fund our business, especially through engineering and through capital expenditures. And then, you know, right now, also talked about returning cash to shareholders, whether it be via dividend or be via share repurchases. So with that, I think I'll kind of bring it to closure here, and probably got, like, two minutes left.
Probably, probably got time for perhaps one question, one or two quick ones. Anyone from the room? Jim, you've you indicated that you're looking to take at least a point of your growth or point of your share from the builder side and then also another point from the retail side. Talk about the cadence, 'cause it would imply that the new product introduction is pretty critical to the achieving of that goal. You've talked about the SlimTech, the new dishwasher lines and what have you. But going forward, what's the timing and cadence of platforms to be introduced in 2024 and 2025 that we can track?
Yeah. So I'd say, Sam, I mean, really, if you look, we launch, you know, hundreds of new products every year. And as you really look forward, some of the areas that we're investing significantly right now is in some of our refrigeration platforms at the higher end, because we do see the opportunity there where we do think we can bring some new product to the market that will be extremely competitive, and representative of the, of the strong brands we have. Laundry will be an area where we always continue to invest in things like the Maytag Pet, as I highlighted. Those are the types of innovations you can drive within a shorter period of time and bring to the marketplace.
You know, something like a SlimTech is something that actually runs over a period of years as you expand it to more and more products. You know, I think if you look at the dishwasher and what we talked about with the third rack, that's about now bringing that to all the price points that we possibly can. And that's the other opportunity that we have. You start anything like that at a certain price point on certain products, and then we begin to push it more to the mass because it's something that every consumer really, you know, wants to have and wants to have access to. So I think there's an exciting cadence of continuous product launches that we'll do.
I think that if you look at, to your point, half of our share gain will just come as the builder industry and new homes begin to come back, but the other half comes through new product launches, or leveraging existing products that we have in the market today. So I think with that, we're probably there.
Sounds good. All right, we'll continue this at a more granular level in the breakout. Thank you, everybody.
Thank you.