Wow! It just got eerily quiet. I'll take that as a good sign. Hi, everyone. Welcome. Thanks for coming to the 2024 Investor Day for Zimmer Biomet. We're happy to have you here in New York at NYSE, and we're happy to share updates and information with you today. So I'm Keri Mattox, the Chief Administration and Communications Officer, and I'm just going to give you a little bit of level setting and agenda to start off our day so that we can get into the content that you've all come for. Our legal department loves this slide. As you know, I'm not going to read it to you, I promise, but we do want to put it up and just remind everyone that the appendix includes non-GAAP reconciliations that you may want to look at later, and we will be making forward-looking statements.
In terms of today's agenda, we're going to be spending time with our executive team. They're going to be walking you through some different sections of content to really orient you to our long-range plan. We're going to start off with Ivan Tornos, who's going to talk about the strategy and taking Zimmer Biomet to the next level. You'll then hear from Rachel Ellingson, who's going to talk more about active portfolio management. And then Ivan will come back on the stage to talk more about business and markets. After that time, we are going to have a built-in break. We'll do some setup on the stage before our world-class surgeon panel, which is wonderful. You'll have a chance to ask questions of the surgeons and of Dr. Nitin Goyal, and then we'll have another break as we build in the flow for the day.
After that, Suky is going to come up, our EVP and CFO, and talk about financial outlook and expectations. I should mention that Suky Upadhyay, I didn't not say the last name because I couldn't. It was just shorthand. After that, we are going to have a full, interactive Q&A. So you get the full team up here, you'll be able to ask your questions. We want to make sure to really dig in and spend that time and go through the content and questions you may have after hearing it. After that, we're going to end the day down the hall in the Siebert room. We've got a product showcase set up for you. We're excited to walk you through some of the new products, and we're going to have a cocktail reception where you can talk to other members of the team. All right.
With that, I get to do the fun intro video, and then I'll bring Ivan up on the stage. All right, everyone, please join me in welcoming to the stage our President and CEO, Ivan Tornos. You're welcome. You're welcome.
Good afternoon. What a video! What a video. I've seen that video countless times. Countless times. And I tell you, to this day, I still get, goosebumps watching the video. It's very inspiring. In less than two minutes, you can get a sense of what we do each and every day here at Zimmer Biomet. We alleviate pain and improve the quality of life for people around the world. And I tell you, on a bad day, that is a great video to watch, and we have had a few bad days here at Zimmer Biomet, but it's beyond inspiring. And I got to tell you, I don't know of a better job than the one that I get to have along with my colleagues here.
At Zimmer Biomet, we've been doing this for almost 100 years, since May 2nd, 1927, and as I tell my team each and every day, we're just getting started. We're going to have a lot of fun today. This is the very first Investor Day in the history of the company. At Zimmer Biomet, we've never had an Investor Day. So go back to June 24th, 2015, we merged two iconic companies, and since that day, that's 3,262 days ago, I got a lot of free time in my hands, we've never hosted an Investor Day. So the temptation is to give you all kinds of information around strategy, operations, culture, innovation, capital allocation. We're going to try to keep it very, very focused on the things that you told us that you want to hear about....
So we're going to have a full agenda, 3.5 hours. But before we get the show going, as I typically do, I like to show some gratitude. I like to start with some thank yous while you're still paying attention, because I think it's important to show some gratitude. And I'm going to start with you, Keri, so don't go anywhere. Keri, we announced that Keri Mattox was going to be leaving Zimmer Biomet at the end of May. That's why she's got that beautiful smile going on. Try to keep it low, please. Right? In 48 hours, she's no longer going to be working directly with the Spaniard. So again, there's a lot of cameras here. Keep your smile to a minimum. Keri's done an amazing job for us. She joined the company 4.5 years ago. We've gone through a lot together.
You're leaving the company better than you encountered the company, so thank you very much, Keri. Thank you. I want to, I want to thank Zach Weiner. Zach is a senior member of IR team. He's done a lot of heavy lifting over the last 7, 8 months for this event, but for over a year, when he joined the company about 1 year or 2, 1 year and 2 months ago. So thank you for everything you do. He's a great partner, a workaholic, sending a slice at 3 in the morning, and a great coach as well. You know, last night, you know, Zach came to me and he said, "Look, this is your first ID, Investor Day, as the CEO of Zimmer Biomet. I want to give you some counsel here. First of all, don't try to sound too smart.
Second of all, don't try to be too funny. In a nutshell, just be you." I love that counsel. All right, so thank you. I want to thank the employees of Zimmer Biomet, my colleagues, team members, who are listening to this presentation. I've been told we got about 400 of them listening to the webcast, and I want to say thank you in the most sincere way. I'm inspired by what you do each and every day. This is not an easy job. We've gone through a lot together. I love what you do, I respect what you do. The mission will move forward at the right speed with people like you. If we have any sales reps listening to the event, I'm going to ask you to disconnect right now because we got to close the month and the quarter. I want to thank the customers that trust us.
We got a few of them here, Charlie DeCook, Atul Kamath... Where is Michael Ast? Dr. Ast, anyone here? Not yet. He better show up. So we have Cleveland Clinic, Mayo Clinic, we got the world's busiest, arguably, the lawyers told me to say arguably, Charlie DeCook, the world's busiest surgeon, who are going to be in a panel with Nitin Goyal and John Sperling from Mayo Clinic. So a small representation of a large group of people that each and every day trust Zimmer Biomet. They think of us as their trusted partner to alleviate pain and improve the quality of life for their patients. And it's this trust that also energizes me. It is this trust that has enabled for Zimmer Biomet to remain today the number one company in the world in hip surgery, the number one company in the world in knee surgery.
We don't take your trust lightly. We appreciate you being here. Thank you very much. I know this feels like an Oscar speech. I'm almost done, Suky wants to pull me off the stage already. I want to thank the investor community. Thank you for your feedback. Thank you for the direction you gave us to prepare for this meeting. Thank you for your trust. That's the end of the gratitude, and with that, we'll get going with the show. I'm Ivan Tornos, I'm the President and CEO of Zimmer Biomet. I've been in healthcare, med tech, my entire life. That's almost 30 years. I was the CEO of a startup early in my career. I worked at Johnson & Johnson, including DePuy, for over a decade. Spent time at Baxter in business development, Covidien, which became Medtronic.
I worked at C. R. Bard, which became Becton Dickinson, and 5.5 years ago, I joined Zimmer Biomet. I believe the photo behind me is from 5.5 years ago, when I actually had no gray hair and a permanent smile. I don't know of a better job. I love what we do, I love with who I do it, and I love what we got going on ahead of ourselves. 3.5 hours, we're going to cover a lot of material, but this may be the most important slide. I'm going to try to recap all the messages. We got customers, surgeons, we got finance, we got business development, we got all kinds of things happening here today. I want to leave you with the 3 key takeaways. The end of the movie, at the very beginning of the show.
These three points answer the question of why, why should you believe that Zimmer Biomet is a different company? These three points that I have behind me answer the question of why should you buy the stock of Zimmer Biomet? The three points that you have right there on that slide answer the question of why this is truly a company that has a meaningful pathway for value creation. Number one, and this is very fancy that I'm going to simplify it, better markets, better company. Healthier end markets, stronger company. And in a data-centric way, I'm going to attempt to demonstrate that this is not the same company that we had in 2018, 2019, 2020 and even 2021. Not the same company, not the same markets. WAMGR, weighted average market growth rate back in 2018 was around 3%.
Orthopedics within the market was low growth for us. We didn't have a robot, we didn't have cementless knees, we're not in anti-infective platforms, we're not playing in the higher growth segments within orthopedics. But all combined, including dental and spine, it was 3%. In 2018, we had a lot of challenges we're going to talk about, and I'm going to spend some time talking about those challenges. I'm going to talk about why those challenges are no longer here. Better markets, better company. Number two, innovation is the competitive advantage for Zimmer Biomet. We've gone from being a competitive-centric organization to having innovation being the competitive advantage. I'll say that again. We've gone from reacting to what our competitors were doing, being competitive-centric. We're late into the robotics world, no surprises there. We're late in cementless knees. We're late in surgical impactors. We're late in sports medicine.
So a lot of areas where we didn't do our homework, because quite candidly, we're working on solving problems that we'll talk about.... And now with all that behind, with not a single gap in the portfolio, we're going to talk about three products that we're lacking in hips. Today, I can tell you that the company's moved from being competitive-centric to having innovation as their competitive advantage for Zimmer Biomet. It's not just the quantity of products that we're launching, it's the quality. It's how this product will shape the standard of care in musculoskeletal care. So that's the second key takeaway. And the third key takeaway is that now with remediation behind, now with our commitment to grow revenue above market, EPS faster than revenue, and free cash flow faster than EPS.
With that commitment, with the strength of the long-range plan, which we're going to talk about, we have the optionality of creating value, thinking about capital allocation in different ways. And I'm tempted to spoil Suky's thunder and tell you all about it right now, but he'll talk about it later. But I want to leave you with that. This is not the same company as we used to run. All right, now that I gave you the end of the movie, let's go back to the beginning. This slide answers the why, the where, and the how. Why do my colleagues and I get to show up each and every day? And it's 13 words. Our mission statement is alleviating pain and improving the quality of life for people around the world, and we get to do this every eight seconds.
Every eight seconds, somebody around the world benefits from the work that we do here at Zimmer Biomet. In the mission statement, I love the tenth word, people. Unlike other companies, and you read a lot of mission statements, we don't use the word patient because we believe that what we do, as you saw in the video, not only restores the mobility of the patient, it improves the life of those stakeholders around the patient. It's an ecosystem of people that get happier because of the work that we do. So that's what we do here at Zimmer Biomet. This is the why. The where is our vision statement. We want to be the boldest company in medtech, solving the most meaningful healthcare challenges. And notice that we're not talking about orthopedics. Notice that we're using the word medtech very intentionally.
Today, we have an orthopedic business, we have a craniomaxillofacial thoracic business, we have a surgical business, and we want to solve problems in those areas. But we have the optionality of diversifying, and when we do, we'll make sure that we have a pathway to solve problems in a way that others cannot. Our strategy, the how, I call it a purpose-powered strategy. It is the mission and the vision of the company that dictate the strategy of the organization. We want to be a customer-centric solutions leader. We always start with the customer, the patient, the physician, the provider, and the payer. We identify those problems, and three that we're focusing on today: safety, efficiency, best-in-class outcomes. We focus on those problems, and unlike our competitors, we solve those problems in different sites of care.
We're going to repeat this over and over today and down the road, but it's important for you to realize that when it comes to the strategy, we're very focused in terms of the problems that we solve and how we solve those problems. This dictates how we do R&D. This dictates how we allocate resources globally for Zimmer Biomet. This slide is about the who. Who are we? And hopefully by now everybody knows us, but if you don't know us, five data points that you can read better than I can pronounce. We've been around for 100 years. We're a Fortune 500 company. One data point there that I don't really love is the sales in 100 countries, and that's something that we are reconfiguring. We don't want to be mediocre in 100+ countries.
We want to be best in class in solving customer problems in those countries that make a difference. And others may take over the other countries. Now, don't read into my statement, don't read into my statement, thinking we're going to exit a bunch of countries tomorrow, but we are going to treat different countries differently. 15 countries account for 93% of the $50 billion orthopedic market, and we got to be the greatest when it comes to those countries. And the other markets, we'll figure out different ways to treat the customers, the patients, or exit those markets. In the background, we've been doing a lot of that stuff. Every single data point you'll hear today already reflects the reality that we're not going to be in all the countries where we've been before.
With the same $0.4 billion in 2023, and our guidance for 2024 is 5%-6% growth. All right, these two slides, I'm going to take my time because it answers the one of the most frequent questions that I get from investors ever since we gave guidance at the very beginning of 2024. Why should I believe you? Why should I believe you? You're telling me that you're going to grow 5%-6% in 2024. Why should I believe you? You've never done it before. First of all, that's inaccurate. That's inaccurate. We did grow 10% in 2021, but some of you think, well, that's the COVID comps, and you're right. We did grow 6.5% in 2022. Some of you probably think partially backlog, partially still comps.
We did deliver 7.5% top-line growth, constant currency in 2023, with a nice 200 basis points of EPS expansion of 9.5 in 2023. But still, some of you think, well, that's not a normalized environment. So first of all, it's not true that we not delivered mid-single-digit growth or above, but maybe the environment wasn't that normal. Well, let me give you a set of reasons of why we're confident that we can be a mid-single-digit grower sustainably over the long range plan. And again, I'm going to break every rule of public speaking by reading every data point in that slide. Let's start with the upper right corner. That is the book of business at Zimmer Biomet in 2018. So there you can see that 59% of our business was in recon, knees and hips.
Now, as I stated earlier, that's not the same recon market that we have today... Why not? In 2018, Zimmer Biomet didn't have a robot, didn't have a revision platform, we didn't have surgical impactors, we didn't have navigation, anti-infective, I can go on and on. So that 59% is us competing in bare metal and plastic devices, 59%. 22% in 2018 was SET, but it was a bunch of stuff. We're treating all businesses within SET equally. We're not making choices, which we're making today. Nonetheless, 22% was there. 15% was dental and spine, very low growth markets, no right to win. We obviously divested that, a couple of years ago. And then you have other, and at some point, we got to come up with a different terminology for other because it sounds like it's not important.
In 2018, it wasn't. It was bone cement, there were some surgical products, there were some leftover stuff, if you will. In 2024, when you see our double-digit growth in other, think robotics, because that's the main source of growth in the category of other. So that's the book of biz, the book of business that mix in 2018. Now, going box by box. In 2018, we're number one in hips and knees globally and here in the U.S., but we're losing market share. From 2015 through 2018, we lost a ton of market share. Why? We missed the boat on robotics, we missed the boat on cementless. In 2018, we launched 8 new products. I've been in this business for 30 years.
The one thing that drives winning is having innovation that is indispensable for your customers, and launching 8 products is not the way to be labeled an innovative company. Why did we launch only 8 products? We had all kinds of quality issues, we had FDA remediation, we had to shut down a couple of factories from an innovation standpoint. We can talk about that later. Our Vitality Index, that is the percentage of gross sales coming from new products, was the lowest of the low, somewhere in the low single digit. 3-year pipeline, new product introductions, low single digit. Our supply chain, a disaster. A disaster. We had 3-4 days of sales on backorder. So what does that mean? We do $40 million, $50 million per day in sales when you put all the entities together.
On average, we're carrying three days of sales, $150 million in backorder, if not $200 million at some point. Now, it's not just that you have the backorder and you lose those sales, you lose customers along the way, and we got a few of them here that can tell you that in 2018, we were not a trusted partner. Remediation, three, a 1.4 FDA warning letters. When you have the FDA at home giving you warning letters, you're spending a lot of money, a lot of time doing remediation, you're not launching innovation, and that's directly correlated to the lack of innovation that we had. We also had a Department of Justice monitorship. That's no joke. I've only worked at one company where you had a monitor from the Department of Justice monitoring everything that we did commercially.
Do we do medical education the right way? Are we moving in the right direction when it comes to how we engage development agreements? Are we doing things properly in those different areas? That obviously created a situation where we had to shut down a lot of things that we're doing. Rightly, many of them, others, you could argue that we're doing the same as our competitors. Nonetheless, that took a lot of time, that took a lot of effort. Philipp and Weingart already spoke about that. $9 billion in total debt. We did obviously the acquisition of Biomet, close to $14 billion that closed in June of 2015. So our capital allocation strategy was about paying down debt, and this, by the way, is before COVID. Then I'm sure that you're not surprised about the very last box.
People were not happy here at Zimmer Biomet. How can you be when every day you're showing up to work, if you're in sales, you don't have products? Literally, you don't have products, new products, or the products that you need to bring in front of your customers. How can you be happy when 3/4 of your time is about remediating problems? We're losing north of 20% in the U.S. sales organization. We're losing people in double-digit rates. Our attrition was very high, and our engagement was very low. As I promised, I read every single number on that slide because it's important for you to reflect on where do we come from. Now, fast-forward to today, May 29th, 2024, we still are the number one company in both hips and knees. And yes, in the U.S., we've given market share in the area of hips.
We stayed afloat in knees, launched ROSA in 2019, caught up with first generation cementless 3-4 years ago. We have now a best-in-class cementless platform with Persona OsseoTi that is growing far above our expectations. We remain the number one company, hips and knees, and we are consistently performing above market. Some hiccups quarter-to-quarter, but consistently above market. We've gone from launching 8 products in 2018 to close to 30 in the year 2024, and this is not just the quantity, it's the quality of the products. These are products that are shaping the standard of care, as I mentioned earlier. Our Vitality Index is now in the teens, and we have an aspiration to get into the 20% range. Again, the percentage of sales coming, gross sales coming from new products, is now category leading, sector leading.
Along with Vitality Index, there's a box that we don't put in there that we call the innovation profitability index, which is the gross margin dollars coming from new products, and 90% of the time, this is an accretive figure to sales, to revenue. In plain English, our gross margin dollars for new products are accretive to the existing baseline. Supply chain, less than one day in supply issues, no warning letters. We're a trusted partner to the FDA. I'm in and out of Baltimore, the D.C. area, and I can tell you that when Admiral Pitt talks about Zimmer Biomet, she's talking about Zimmer Biomet in the context of, "You guys do the right thing for the patient each and every day. Keep doing what you're doing."...
Our margin has moved up 50 basis points because the divestiture of dental and spine, and 50 basis points accretion because of the organic work we've done around getting to the high growth categories that I mentioned. Kudos to finance for bringing the debt profile down to best in class. We have investment ratings BBB, our net debt to EBITDA ratio today is 2.2x. We pay debt down at a very healthy, healthy pace, given the free cash flow generation of this business. Again, Suky will talk about that. We're in a position we haven't been in a while, to be able to do a smart M&A that continues to move the margin, to rethink about how we reallocate cash to shareholders, and again, Suky will talk about that, but that's best in class.
And today, our engagement rates are comparable, if not better, to anything that I've seen in any of the world's best leading companies, best-led companies. Low single-digit attrition rate, 80% engagement scores, the highest engagement scores in the history of the company. I close with the upper right again. Our book of business today, 68% knee and hip, but this is not bare metal and plastic knees and hips, or SET 24%, so that's 200 basis points more than in 2018, is in the right categories. Sports medicine, upper extremities, CMFT, craniomaxillofacial thoracic. And then our other category is primarily ROSA, which obviously is a platform that will deliver growth, knees, hips, and now shoulders. All right, so just wanted to go slowly here to validate the first statement that I made. Better markets, stronger company.
This data will suggest that the next time you ask me a question, have you never done it before, we should probably think forward-looking or present-looking versus 2015 through 2024. Innovation is the competitive advantage of Zimmer Biomet. Customer-centric innovation is the competitive advantage of Zimmer Biomet. We're moving on catching up with our peers to now leading, shaping where innovation is going. To the right of the slide, you see the three principles of how we do innovation. Got to have the right quantity, that's the fuller pipeline. Has to be the right quality, customer-centric, anchored on the problems we're trying to solve. Safety. People will die. People will die after a hip or knee surgery if it is an infection. That's one problem worth solving. It's mission-centric, and it's also very expensive, $3 billion or above here in the U.S.
Infection rates remain low in the 1% range, but when it happens, it's a big problem. Zimmer Biomet is committed to being the company that eliminates infection from orthopedic surgeries and other areas. Efficiency. Surgeons are getting busier and busier and busier. They don't have the luxury of spending 1 hour, 1.5 hours, 2 hours doing a knee procedure. You're going to hear today from Dr. Charlie DeCook on how he thinks about best-in-class outcomes while remaining efficient. Zimmer Biomet, through the combination of technology, best-in-class surgical techniques, and best-in-class leading products, will be the trusted partner in driving efficiency in an operating room and across the entire episode of care. Word number one0, people. We want patients to get back to being people. That means reducing the episode of care. How do we prepare patients for surgeries? How do we do the surgery?
How do we make sure that physical therapy is not what it used to be? And then the third problem we're trying to solve in this target innovation environment is outcomes. 100 years doing this, you still have high dissatisfaction rates in some categories. One of every 5 patients is dissatisfied with her or his knee procedure. We have a moral obligation to be the company, as the world leader in orthopedics, to make sure that we reach as close as possible, if not 100%. And as we have the quantity and the quality, we got to make sure we're efficient. We've not done our homework in this regard. At one point, too much quantity, inefficient, or ROIC in R&D was not where it needed to be. Today is less projects at the right efficiency, delivering on those solutions.
We need to do search and development instead of research and development, we'll do that. So those are the three guiding principles of how we do R&D innovation here. And then you can read through the stats there, and, you'll see more of that later. The past 2018 through 2023, we launched 60 new products. I call that the catching up with the neighbors. And the future, the next 3 years, is the leaving the neighbors behind. We will launch 50 meaningful products between today and the end of the long range plan, long range plan. And as I alluded to, these are new to the world. We are the only company with a smart knee technology that we can amplify in other areas. We will be, early 2025, will be the only company in the U.S. with a PMA-approved partial cementless knee.
That's Oxford, which has been in Europe for 10 years and commands a 60% market share. We're going to lead in anti-infection, 3 different compounds, whether it's iodine, whether it's gold, silver, palladium. We will be the company, in partnership with our customers, that solves infection challenges. And again, you can read all the other stuff. We'll talk about it later. These are new to the world products that will change how Zimmer Biomet does business around the world. Customer-centric innovation. The third thing that I had in my opening remarks, number one, better markets, better company. Number two, innovation as the competitive advantage. The third point is that this is a focused company. Right customer, right market, right business segments, right activities each and every day.
And from day one, August 2023, as the new CEO, I've been talking about these three strategic imperatives: people and culture, operational excellence, diversification, innovation, and those are not going to change. In the area of people and culture, it's about having the right people in the right job within the right culture. Notice I don't use the word, we don't use the word best. Sometimes very talented people cannot win here at Zimmer Biomet. It, it is a unique company. It is a company. It's a company where we like to move fast. We try to eliminate bureaucracy. We like to stay close to the customer. I travel 220 days a year. Many of those days are in front of customers. This is a company where we require people to take things to the next level.
We got a few employees here, maybe over a drink later on tonight, asking the question: What it's like to work at Zimmer Biomet? You better be customer-centric. You better want to move in a bold, agile, insightful, proactive, and collaborative fashion. We believe this is a competitive advantage, and when we get the right people, our engagement score is high. We pay people for the same things, and I know this sounds like a very simple concept. That was not how we ran the company back in the 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, even 2022 periods. Some country managers, general managers around the world, they didn't know how to spell f ree cash flow. Some of them didn't know how free cash flow will get generated. From a commercial standpoint, we're not paying people on quarterly growth. It was about a year.
I can tell you sitting here today, we changed the incentive plan for the company so that all the commitments, all the goals that we're stating today, get shared across the 18,000 employees of the company. Then lastly, we want to have leaders here at Zimmer Biomet that lead from the front. It's all about protecting the company, acting with integrity, so we don't go back to the days when we had challenges. It's about protecting the company, doing the right thing first, leading from the front. Everybody talks about people and culture. You guys go through a lot of investor days. I can tell you, people and culture is another key competitive advantage of Zimmer Biomet. And when you put great people and great products together, things happen. Operational excellence is not a Six Sigma complex strategy that we are going on.
It really is about thinking as an operator, thinking as an owner of the business. I started my career, as I mentioned earlier, as the CEO of a small start-up, and the one thing that I learned when I was running the company is time, money, and people matter. And you, as the CEO of the company, better be thinking each and every day, where do you allocate your time? Where do you allocate your capital? And where do you deploy your people? And every single conversation we have as a management team today is about how do we allocate time, money, and people to deliver revenue, mid-single digit or above, EPS growth. I want to have leverage, so if a midpoint, we're growing 5%, that EPS better be growing 7.5%.
Free cash flow, that needs to deliver growth of at least 100 basis points above EPS growth. So again, using this example, you're delivering 7.5%, you better be growing your free cash flow by at least 8.5%. That's every conversation. We break it down on what we need to do on the revenue line, on the EPS line, and then on the free cash flow line. Two things that we are laser-focused on when it comes to revenue, new product launches. If we're going to be launching 50, 60 new products, we better do it right. And in the past, we've done a lot of product releases, but very few product launches. On day one, customers need to be trained. Obviously, employees need to be trained. On day one, we have to have the right quantity of sets.
On day one, we have to have clinical evidence. On day one, we have to be really ready to gain market share. It's about having bold product launches. Second thing we need to do on the revenue line is making sure that we have best-in-class commercial execution. In the U.S., we changed 2/3 of our general managers. We changed a large portion of the GMs in Asia Pacific, Europe, Middle East, and Africa. We're making sure that we have the best people, the right people rather, running these entities. People that know how to lead, people that know how to manage, people that think like investors. That's commercial execution. On EPS, about gross margin, and Suky is going to go into a lot of details here, but, we got to continue the trend that we have with pricing.
We're not going back to the old days of losing 200, 300, sometimes 400 basis points of price erosion. This year, we're committing already to, it's at 100 basis points. We got to make those trends sustainable. It's about excess and obsolescence. Cannot have write-offs of inventory at a rate of $100 million plus, at one point in 2018, a $250 m illion We have to make sure that we think about mix. Geographic mix, not going to be in 100 countries, product mix, customer mix. We need to think about costs. We cannot run a company where every year our manufacturing cost is going up. And I love the work that Suky is doing in that, in that regard. The focus strategy he has, how we think about site manufacturing optimization, how we think about artificial intelligence and other areas.
We're going to be much better when it comes to OpEx. In business for 100 years, our OpEx today is 42.6%. That is not where it belongs, and we've done some things around business services, we've done some things around the PNL, but Suki calls it a rich target environment, and there are things that we can continue to do on our OpEx line without compromising the quality of the products that we deliver to you, the customer. And then free cash flow is about inventory management. Cannot run a company with 400+ days on hand of inventory, days on hand.
So again, every single leader here at Zimmer Biomet is thinking revenue, EPS, free cash flow, and the two things we got to do on the revenue line, the two things we got to do in the EPS line, and the one thing we got to do to make sure that we continue to increase our free cash flow conversion rates, and we continue to do the things that we need to do to deploy the capital to the right constituents in the right fashion. And the last thing, and I'm almost done with my presentation here, is innovation and diversification. It's exciting that we moved from 3% WAMGR to 4%, but I don't want to be trading bullets in lower growth markets. We have an ambition to get that number to 5%, and there are organic and inorganic ways to get there... and Rachel will talk about those.
We're going to continue to innovate the right quantity and the right quality, always in partnership with our customers. So again, the focus on people and culture, operational excellence, revenue, EPS, free cash flow, and then innovation and diversification. My last slide, I believe, based on all of the above, today, we're presenting an expectation over the next 3 years to deliver revenue at mid-single-digit growth rates. So that's 4%-6%. Second expectation is that our EPS growth is going to have a leverage of 1.5%. So again, I use the example at midpoint 5%, that's 7.5% point of entry on EPS growth. And then free cash flow, growing 100 basis points faster than EPS, so the 8.5%, 8.5% that I mentioned earlier.
Suki will break down free cash flow strategy, how we go from being somewhere in the mid-60s when it comes to free cash flow conversion to a much healthier number. And again, what are we going to do with that cash that we're projecting, $4 billion-$5 billion over the long range plan? We're very confident this is realizable because it's a different company. Better markets, stronger company, very well run. Innovation has a competitive advantage. And then lastly, a pathway to make sure that we're delivering on financial commitments, creating optionality to allocate the capital in a different way. Today, you're going to hear from five of my direct reports: Rachel, Suki, Dr. Goyal, Jim, and Nnamdi. Two key takeaways from this slide. Key takeaway number one, combined, it's about 155 years of med tech expertise.
And then key takeaway number two, undeniably, Rachel and I have the best hair in the leadership team. So you may challenge some other facts from my presentation, but Rachel, you and I have the absolute best hair. Speaking of Rachel, it's my privilege to introduce our Chief Administrative Officer. Long title. She's doing amazing things for the company. Privileged to work with you, Rachel. Thank you.
Thanks very much, and I am very excited to be here to talk to you about active portfolio management. They don't always let me have an opportunity to talk about that with audiences like this, so I'm extremely excited. But I do want to start with the fact that I think there's a lot of people in here I know, some familiar faces, but definitely not everybody. So I want to talk a little bit about my background. I, similar to Ivan, spent most of my time, actually the vast majority, in healthcare and then inside of that medical technology, but a little bit differently, I spent the first 15 years as an investment banker, serving clients in those areas.
After I left investment banking, 15 years in, I did move over to work with one of my clients, AGA Medical, small, new public company at the time, and I was there until they were acquired by St. Jude Medical. Stayed with St. Jude Medical for 7 years, leading a number of different functions, and then stayed there through the acquisition of St. Jude Medical by Abbott, where I ran that integration into Abbott. Then following that, after those 7 years, joined Zimmer Biomet. I joined Zimmer Biomet because I was really excited about the opportunity to help accelerate the growth by the opportunity to reshape the portfolio, because a big part of how we were going to accelerate growth was around reshaping the portfolio. In addition, I had the opportunity to really build an entirely new strategy and business development team.
We didn't have a dedicated function at Zimmer Biomet before I joined. So, fast-forward 6 years, I've been there now 6 years, and I'm incredibly proud of the work we've done, but very excited about where we go from here. So again, starting with the end, if you listen to nothing else or you remember nothing else, I say I'm really hoping that you remember these key takeaways. Active portfolio management has increased our weighted average market growth rate, WAMGR, as we call it. We're in a really good financial position right now, and with that position, we have financial flexibility to continue to do M&A, both tuck-in M&A, as well as what we'll talk about a little bit, we call it mid-size M&A. I'll talk more about that. And then we are committed to continuing to do M&A, value-creating, smart M&A.
We know that it's very, very important for us to be good stewards of our capital. So with that, I'm going to talk a little bit about active portfolio management, but before I do, we use this acronym WAMGR a lot at Zimmer Biomet. It is a very key measure for us in terms of how we measure our progress. So I want to make sure everyone knows what that is. So weighted average market growth rate is really just taking the growth rates of the markets that we play in and weighting it by our revenue. And the reason we care about that is because we know that the more revenue we have in higher growth markets, the easier it is to sustainably increase our revenue growth. Just a really key need for you to understand that. So let's talk about where we've been.
Active portfolio management, as Ivan said, has increased our WAMGR from 3%-4%, and about half of that actually came from tuck-in M&A and divestitures. Maybe 100 basis points doesn't sound like a lot to people, you might get this in the room, but for a company of our size, that's a pretty big move in 5 years, and something we feel really good about. Start with the tuck-in M&A. You see some logos up here. We've actually acquired a number of companies over the last 5 years. They've generally all been in larger growth markets, right? So again, if you think about trying to increase your WAMGR, we're very focused on high growth markets. So you can see we've been successful there. But what I would want to point out, because this is probably some of the stuff you don't see-...
is that we've been very, very focused on building integration capabilities inside of Zimmer Biomet. So we've gotten very good at identifying targets, and we've gotten very good at integrating targets. We have an integration management office that's dedicated to all of our acquisitions. We have playbooks, we have training. I think the proof point of all of that, so we've built these capabilities, but I can say that to you, it doesn't necessarily mean you should believe me. But what we have-- we can say is that with all of the tuck-in deals we've done, we're actually above our expectations, our initial deal model, in terms of top and bottom line. So that should give you some confidence in the integration, our abilities that we have built, as well as our ability to find the right targets. So that's tuck-in M&A.
Divestitures, I think people here are aware, we did exit our lower growth, lower margin spine and dental businesses through the spin-off of ZimVie. Another example, by the way, not integration, but separation, ran a separation management office, and again, I think a very successful transaction for us in that regard. We initially, when we told you, The Street, we were announcing this deal, we said it would deliver about 50 basis points of revenue growth and about 125 basis points of operating profit margin and increase. In fact, we've over-delivered on both of those metrics. So again, my takeaway here, not only are we doing the right portfolio management moves, we're doing them quite well.
So now maybe take a slightly different approach, and I want to talk about something else that you probably don't get a chance to often see because this is a smaller area of our business. But I want to give you a case example about how we're increasing our WAMGR within our SET portfolio. And I'm going to focus on a business you probably don't really think about that much when you think about us. It's pretty small, but it has been an area of focus for us, and that's our CMFT business. So you can see here that CMFT actually has three categories inside of it. We've got the craniomaxillofacial component. We actually have ROSA ONE Robotics, which is our focus on neuro and with a specific focus on epilepsy. And then we have this business that's in thoracic.
Some people will ask me, "Why are you in the thoracic business?" Well, the way we got into that was actually leveraging products and technologies that we had inside of orthopedics, and actually then realizing we could use them for chest wall stabilization. So actually taking advantage of some of the synergies that we could get from a technology perspective. As that started, the team continued to do more work and realized, wow, there's really incredible opportunity to change the standard of care and build new markets inside of thoracic, sternal closure and rib repair. You can see here, through that work, we've actually gotten market leadership positions. But from my perspective, it's a great example of how we find opportunities, higher growth opportunities inside of our SET portfolio, and then we invest in them. We invest in them organically and inorganically.
So here what you can see, the outcome of all of that, is that we've actually doubled the size of this business. Again, smaller, but inside of ZB, doubled the size and increased the growth rate. It was a mid-single-digit growth rate business and now is actually over 20% growth. And it's gotten to the point where it's actually impacting the overall Zimmer Biomet enterprise WAMGR, right? Which is really incredible, but you could see that of that 100 basis points increase, over 10% of that came from this business. So again, I think a really great example of how we can continue to find businesses inside of our SET portfolio and really build them and continue to increase our WAMGR. So that's kind of where we've been.
Now I'm going to talk about where we are today for a brief minute because I know Suky going to spend more time on this, and Ivan talked about it a little bit, but we're in a really good financial position, right? We have paid down over $2 billion of debt, and we have very strong free cash flow, and that combination gives us meaningful M&A firepower with which we can execute tuck-in M&A, and we can actually start to do something even bigger. And when I talk about this, I just... I'm going to frame it out a little bit more, but I want to make sure you know that we know when we talk about M&A, we talk about smart M&A, right? I like to talk about it as right target, right time, right value.
Really important that, to us, that you understand, that you understand that we know that this is critically important. So let's talk about what we call mid-size M&A, and I'm going to start with the fact that we talking about it as mid-size, I think that's not really a known term, but we were asked by a lot of investors, "You know, when you talk about larger M&A, what do you mean? About how big would a deal be?" And so we said we size that at about $2 billion of transaction value. So mid-size M&A, when I talk about it, about, think about $2 billion of transaction value. So what are some of the other financial criteria that you're interested in? Is another question we get. We know that revenue growth continues to be highly correlated to driving total shareholder returns.
In fact, that's why we're talking so much about WAMGR, right? We're very focused on revenue growth, and so anything, of course, would be immediately accretive to revenue growth. After that, we do know that to do that, we might need to take some dilution, but what we have very clear as a goal is that we're willing to take it for a small period of time, and certainly by the end of the second year, we would expect that to be at least neutral. And then, obviously, ROIC is a very important metric for us, and we would expect to be high single digit by year five. So that's on the financial side of the criteria. Now, let's talk about strategically. So strategically, shouldn't be a surprise, we've talked about the attractive higher growth areas inside of our SET portfolio.
That's where we would think about a mid-size deal. So think extremities, sports med, and as I just shared with you, our CMFT business. In addition, probably also no surprise to this room, the ASC area is something that we spend a lot of time thinking about strategically, and road mapping and thinking about different ways to accelerate our exposure there. So that would be another area that we look in. Other key considerations, probably not a surprise, but worth reiterating, path to category leadership, differentiated, protected technology, and what I mean by that is IP or other competitive barriers aligned to our strategy around safety, efficiency, and outcomes. That's obviously important. And then ability to integrate. I actually think this is a bit of a competitive advantage for us at this point.
We've done such a great job of building our capabilities, that we can now look at potential deals through that lens. So coming to my conclusion here at the end, Ivan already shared with you our aspirational goal of 5%, but what I'm excited about is that we've already delivered on incredible proof points to get us from here to there. So we've increased our WAMGR by 100 basis points, half of which from tuck-in and divestitures, and we have a very clear path to continue to shift our portfolio, and we are very, I am personally very excited about the ambitious goal of 5%. So with that, I'm going to turn it back over to Ivan.
Nicely done. Thank you. Nicely done. All right, I was able to drink 2 Diet Cokes in 9 minutes. So if you thought that I was speaking fast earlier, watch out now. Maybe we need to put, like, subtitles here now, Keri, so people can track here. All right, the next 10, 15 slides have a lot of data, and I'm going to try to go quickly. You're going to get a copy of the presentation, but we're going to break down markets, categories, growth expectations, and whatnot. But, I'll, I'll do this somewhat quickly. Three key takeaways, we operate in compelling markets, right? We spoke about the 4% WAMGR, but within the 4% orthopedics, higher growth segments, instead, let me slow down, in the right categories.
So compelling markets with an ambition to move from 4%-5%. The second key takeaway is that, we are going to be growing above market. We are going to be growing above market. Combination of gaining share, we lost some share in hips. I want to talk about what we're going to do about that. Continue to increase our leading position in both hips and knees through different ways, but market share is one of them. Share a wallet. How do we get more revenue from existing cases, which again, is a play that we couldn't do in the past when we didn't have cementless, when we didn't have robotics. So different ways to grow above market, direct-to-patient. We're launching some very targeted, direct-to-patient engagement campaigns, multiple millions of patients in the sidelines, so we'll talk about those as well.
And then the third key takeaway is that we need to continue to diversify into higher growth segments. So those are your three key takeaways. All right, bit of a boring slide, but I think by now everybody gets it. This is a different market, patient demographics. Every day here in the U.S., 12,000 people will turn 65 years of age. So that's one data point that we repeated a few times. 11,000-12,000 people per day turn 65 in the U.S. Patients are getting more active. I didn't quite realize when I was asked to sponsor pickleball in the U.S., that it would be such a huge deal. The fastest-growing sport in the U.S., and many of these players are 65 or above.
That obviously creates a situation where the injury rate in the category or in the age group of 65 or above is exponentially higher. Data point that I registered was a 123% growth in injuries in that segment. Site of care, we're going to talk about this migration in the U.S. into the ASC. Picking a number, picking a number. Working with McKinsey, data suggests 40%-60% of cases moving to an ASC. Other data point that we read is around the ASC space, which is already close to $10 billion, is going to grow by another $2 billion. Picking a number, the truth is nobody really knows, but a lot of cases are moving to the ASC, and we have a very, very competitive strategy in that, in that space. And then pricing.
Pricing, when I joined this company in 2018, you know, it was 300-400 basis points of price erosion in the U.S., globally, 200-300. We've seen some quarters where price was neutral. This year, our expectation is to be below 100 basis points. We don't think we're going backwards because you have innovation, because customers understanding that the way to save money is not just negotiating on the implant, but by thinking of the entire episode of care. So we don't believe that we're going to see these markets going back to 200-300 basis points of price erosion. If we had more real estate on this slide, I would add a fifth column, which is technology and innovation.
One of the drivers of this market is the disruptive innovation and technology that all of us have brought to orthopedics. When I say all of us, I'm talking Stryker, Smith & Nephew, my friends at Johnson & Johnson, and obviously us here at Zimmer Biomet. The innovation disruption you're seeing today in orthopedics is analogous to what I saw in 2002, 2003 when I was in cardio. Drug-eluting stents, drug-eluting balloons, atherectomy. I mean, every six months there was something new. All this innovation, all this technology meant that a lot of patients were more willing to go see their cardiologist. We've seen that level of disruption here in orthopedics.
Not a hyperbolic statement to say that we're at the forefront of disruptive innovation in this space, and I love the fact that all of us are doing it. It's better for the patient. More patients will come into the funnel. All right, so these are the numbers. So we think, reading from left to right, knees globally is about $10 billion. Hips is $8.5 billion, upper extremities and sports is $10 billion, and craniomaxillofacial and thoracic is $5 billion. So the market overall is $50 billion, but in these categories right there, you get a chunk of that, of that market. So north of $30 billion right there, $33.5 billion. We're number one in knees and hips. I won't get tired of saying that. We're number one in hips and knees.
We're number two in shoulder, used to be number one, and, and obviously the merger of Wright or the acquisition of Wright Medical by Stryker put them as number one. And then in the categories of thoracic that are the fastest growing and the most mission-centric, if you ask me, we're number one and number two within CMFT. That's a sternal closure and rib trauma. We believe the market in knees is growing 3%-5%. Some of you may think of that being conservative, but again, given the volatility you're seeing, 3.5 is the right range when you think about growth in knees, and again, some categories in knees are growing faster than that. Hips is 2%-4%, upper extremities and sports is mid- to low-single-digit, and then CMFT, 5%-7% growth.
Again, these are compound annual growth rates over the next three years. So those are the markets. That's the external view. This is how we think about our portfolio here at Zimmer Biomet, and it's very simple, and you can quiz the salespeople later in the product demo. Everybody remembers this model. We call it a 3D model. It's patented by Ivan Tornos. Don't try to steal it. It's drive, recon above market, defend the core, and diversify into high growth spaces. Drive above market, 68%-69% of our book of business is in recon, in the right categories of recon, at the right price, solution selling, we need to be growing above market. That's knees and hips. Diversify means reallocate, continue to reallocate time, money, and people to the higher growth categories within SET. Those being sports medicine, upper extremities, and cranio-maxillofacial, thoracic.
By the way, this last one, we got to do a better job in telling you what we do in this business. Most of you don't realize that we have 300 sales reps calling on cardiac surgery. Until probably 10 minutes ago, most of you didn't realize the great work we've done around acquisitions in this space and the scalability of this platform. So really, really excited about CMFT. And then the other businesses. At some point, we'll come out with a better terminology than other, but for right now, other. That's, that's a lot of, a lot of potential. That's a lot of revenue in those four categories. We don't treat them the same. So you got trauma foot and ankle, surgical and restorative therapies, those are the HA injections. We don't treat them the same. I'll focus on that later.
But again, drive recon above market, diversifying to higher growth spaces, defend the core, and we do that in different sites of care. Let's go back to knees and the breakdown of the $10 billion market. Partials are growing upper single digit. We are a market leader, if not the market leader in partial knees, for sure in EMEA and still here in the US. Those procedures are going to continue to grow at a pretty healthy pace, considering the shift into the ASC. So excited about Oxford partial cementless. Primary grows mid-single digit, and then revision grows upper single digit. We launched in late 2019, Persona Revision. That's a product that commands an ASP of around $20,000-$21,000, growing a upper single digit category.
We got other exciting technology innovation coming in that area, so revision, by all means, given infection rates, continues to be a focus area within knees. In the lower part of the slide, you have the hip category. Partial is about $1 billion, growing somewhere in the 2%-4%, primary also 2%-4%, and then revision in the mid- to upper-single-digit growth rate. So again, $8.5 billion in hips growing 2%-4%. So how are we going to make... How are we going to continue to lead in knees? The way to read this slide, very busy, start with the right. That is our expectation, goal, ambition. We will deliver growth that is 100-150 basis points above market. And how are we going to do that? Three drivers.
Number one is new product introductions, number two is share of wallet, and number three is direct to patient. On the new product introductions, Persona OsseoTi, early innings, and again, I'm not a baseball fan, so don't ask me which inning, but really early in the journey when it comes to adoption rates. We're converting accounts, we are transitioning cemented users to cementless through Persona OsseoTi. So just a great product. Oxford cementless partial knee, at some point in early 2025, they'll probably be market, and we remain committed to smart technology, Persona IQ. Value proposition is ready. We got the 510(k) for the study configuration approved, so we are at a point now where we can run at a faster pace when it comes to smart technology.
We'll continue to invest in revision, and yes, we're going to continue to look for robotic categories or robotic knee categories or platforms that can deliver a better solution. Committed to ROSA and looking at other optionality. Share of wallet is about driving more revenue from existing procedures. And we're making or we're stating two goals right there in that slide. Number one is that Zimmer Biomet, via Persona OsseoTi, will exit their long-range plan with a cementless knee penetration of at least 50%. You can read right there, we're going to go from somewhere near 20% cementless penetration, and this is US, to 50%, at least 50% over the life of the long-range plan. Why is this a compelling data point? We're gaining anywhere between 10%-15% uplift in ASP every time we move into cementless knees.
The second share of wallet play that everybody's laser focused upon, we're going to drive our penetration of robotics somewhere in the upper teens to twice that rate by the time we exit 2027. So again, new product launches that are very meaningful by getting more revenue from existing procedures with two commitments right there on that slide. Then the third strategy or driver of our growth is direct to patient. 500 million people around the world suffer from some form of osteoarthritis, 32.5 million right here in the U.S. Not every single one of these patients obviously needs a knee or a hip implant, but many could benefit from that. So we're going to continue to do the targeted DTP.
We'll be announcing some things at, at some point, and that's another strategy to drive 100-150 basis points of growth above market. That's our new strategy as part of our drive focus. In hips, I was very honest earlier. This is one area where we lost, what are you going to call it? We lost our edge at, at one point. We lost market share in the U.S., we're late in some innovation categories, and I've been saying for a while that three products were needed for us to get back to growing in hips and remain number one. Those three products are already in the selling bag, in the sales bag. A surgical impactor, we call it a HAMMR. You're going to see it today, which can compete with Johnson & Johnson.
I leave it up to the folks in the product demo to tell you all about it, but it drives efficiency, it's got gradual force, it's a more innovative solution to drive efficiency and accuracy in the operating room. That product is already in market as of six weeks ago, and we love what we're seeing with HAMMR. The second product that we needed was a triple tapered stem. This is a product in the direct anterior category, which is about 40%-50% of all cases in the U.S. Again, we could not compete with the likes of Johnson & Johnson and Stryker. That product is FDA approved, and at some point, late summer, early Q4, we're going to be, we're going to be moving at a different pace when it comes to this one.
And then the third product gap that we had was intelligent or smart navigation. We brought two solutions to market, ROSA Hip, and via a partnership with HipInsight, we're the only company in the U.S. that is FDA approved for hip navigation use mixed reality with Microsoft HoloLens. So again, you'll see this product later. So those three products, surgical impactors, triple tapered stems, and smart navigation, remediate the portfolio gaps that we had. We are back to growth, and I'm excited because it's been a while since we had such a portfolio. Learning from the mistakes of the past, not being competitive-centric, but being customer-centric, our ambition is to lead when it comes to next-generation revision devices and next-generation anti-infective coatings. That's iodine and that's other areas. And again, committed to continue to improve and innovate around ROSA and look at other optionalities.
On the shoulder market, we're going to get more revenue in existing cases through technology and revision cases. Upper extremities is $2.5 billion. CAGR growth over the next 3 years is 5%-7%. Sports medicine, we're number two in that category, and sports medicine is $7.5 billion, growing 4%-5%, and those cases continue to migrate into the ASC. Same format, you start from the right of the slide. We're committing to growing 200-400 basis points above market, revenue-wise, and we're going to do that through three different levels. Number one is new product introductions, and in the case of shoulder, I can tell you that these are really changing the standard of care.
Think ROSA Shoulder, think proprietary technology around stemless shoulders, OsseoTi, think Identity, which is a product that gives you the optionality of doing inlay and onlay surgeries, fully customizable. These are no me-too product launches. These are product launches that are going to guide where the market is going. And then in sports medicine, we got through the Embody acquisition, a couple of disruptive technologies that, again, in soft tissue, soft tissue repair, are going to provide a solution that we didn't have in the market. Continue to gain revenue from existing procedures. ROSA Shoulder carries 10%-15% uplift in ASP when we do those cases robotically. And then, Signature ONE, we've been doing navigation software, guiding, planning technology for a while.
Today, 50% of the shoulders that we do in the U.S. are using some sort of navigation, which carries more revenue per procedure. We have a fully dedicated sales force. We continue to add people to sports med and to our upper extremities business. So we are confident that the combination of bold new product introductions, share of wallet plays, and dedicated, specialized people will yield growth of 200-400 basis points over market for Zimmer Biomet. In our CMFT business, we focus on those two areas, sternal closure and rib trauma, 5%-10% compounded growth rate. And again, thoracic is less than $1 billion, but growing upper single digit, if not low double digit. This is a very exciting business in where we're shaping how cases are done.
We're moving to a more minimally invasive, type of technique with our SternaLock portfolio. You don't have to have a bunch of metal stuff. It's a much easier, closure device after the open heart surgery, and because we are innovative, because we have clinical data, we carry an ASP premium when we do cases with SternaLock. We literally are building the rib trauma market with the portfolio we have in there, and as I mentioned earlier, we have close to 300 dedicated sales reps that each and every day are just thinking CMFT and the key areas of CMFT. We're confident we can deliver 300-400 basis points above market.
Other business, $18.5 billion when you add trauma, foot and ankle, surgical, restorative therapies, all kinds of gadgets, all kinds of products, all kinds of things in those four categories. We're focusing on the things where we have the right to compete, if not the right to win. In trauma, it's mechanical stability, it's biologics, it's enabling technologies. Within foot and ankle, it's biologics and some types of fractures. When you look at surgical, we like the portfolio that can give us a point of entry into the ASC. We like the power tools that we have. We love the launch that we're doing this year around helmets and PPE, so we focus on those areas, and we still have a market-leading HA injection that is going through some challenges here in the U.S., but it's back to growth.
So again, complex way to say that in this entire book of business, we laser focus on those areas where we have the right to win. Two things to remember from this slide: we don't invest in all of those categories and countries the same way, and these businesses do deliver a lot of free cash flow. Cash flow that we can return to shareholders, and cash flow that we can reinvest on the diversify and the drive categories of Zimmer Biomet. ASC, you cannot close a presentation without talking about our commitment to the ASC, and how we believe we can continue to be the market leader when it comes to ASC. Simplifying all kinds of words here, and we'll talk about CBRE in a second. There's three things that you need to have to win in an ASC space.
You got to have dedicated people, you got to have the portfolio, the category leadership, no gaps, and then you have to have best-in-class partnerships. I will tell you that as of right now, we do have the dedicated, dedicated people. In contracts, calling in these ASCs, we have best-in-class products. That's a really bad emoji. It looks like an axe. I think it's a shoulder implant. We have the portfolio that we need when it comes to products. We did acquire technology in sports medicine. We had the full bag on recon, we had the technology in hip. We bring in all kinds of other stuff in the surgical book of business, so I'll challenge anybody to tell me you will lose a contract because you don't have a product.
Now, you may challenge me, "Well, you don't do beds, and you don't do sterilization, and you don't do whatever else." That's the third P right there. What we don't have organically, we're partnering externally. We have a partnership with Legacy Hillrom, now part of Baxter, so we need booms and lights, beds, whatever, we have that. And today, we're announcing an exclusive partnership with CBRE, so that's the world leader in commercial real estate services. And you are matching the world leader in orthopedics with the world leader in commercial real estate services. We can target how physicians, customers want to model their ASCs. We can provide guidance in terms of what is the right setup, the right combination, and how we bring the best-in-class technology of Zimmer Biomet to the configuration from an ASC standpoint to customers here in the US.
So more about that later, and then to the left of the slide, you have the growth rates that I mentioned already. So that is the ASC, and you remember anything from the last two minutes, we are market leader in ASCs. We continue to grow 10%-15%. Cases are moving there, and so has Zimmer Biomet. We got the people, we got the products, and we got the partnerships. Recapping everything, our goals for the different categories start from the right. Zimmer Biomet, over the next three years, will realize at least mid-single digit growth.
The configuration of the growth comes 100-150 basis points from knees, focusing in the categories that matter the most, driving share of wallet on cementless to 50% or above by the end of the strat plan, driving share of wallet on robotics, doubling our current penetration. We're going to deliver growth of at least 50-100 basis points in hips. We have three products missing. All three products are FDA-approved. All three products are in market in 2024. And then when it comes to SET, in the right categories of SET, shoulders, CMFT, and sports, we're going to be growing at least 2%-4% above market. And then the other category, we're going to treat it the right way, right products, right markets, delivering free cash flow that we can reinvest to the business or give it right back to you.
Recapping the last 10 minutes, our strategy is about focusing on customer problems: safety, efficiency, and that's the ASC primarily here in the U.S., best-in-class clinical outcomes. The way we think about choices is very disciplined. Drive recon above market, diversifying to the right high-growth spaces, and defend the core baseline. There's a fourth D in the background, which is divesting. At any given moment, we're going to continue to evaluate whether the portfolio makes sense the way that it does. And then our expectation, given innovation being the competitive advantage at Zimmer Biomet, the expectation is that we will deliver growth above market consistently and profitably. With that, I believe it's time for a break, and after that, we'll have Dr.
Nitin Goyal, our Chief Innovation Officer, and this amazing group of surgeons talking about innovation and why they choose Zimmer Biomet as their trusted partner. Thank you for your attention.