Asetek A/S (A31.F) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Welcome to the Asetek Q4 2020 Capital Markets update. [Operator Instructions] Today, I'm pleased to present André Sloth Eriksen, CEO. Please begin your meeting.

So good morning, everyone, and welcome to our capital markets update. March 4, 2021. I had hoped we could meet physically. But since that's not the case, then we have to get away with the second best solution, and that's what we're trying to pull off now. So if you go to the next slide. There is a disclaimer, I suggest you go and read it. I'm not going to do it for you. So let's jump right into the next slide into the agenda. So first of all, I will be talking to you a little bit about growth and market expansion about some new business areas, what I believe for the future in terms of growth, et cetera. John is taking over, talking more about the Gaming and Enthusiast cooling business. Dipak is going to talk a little bit about the data center world, how that looks. Jim Carlton will talk about a little bit more about our expansion into the SimSports market. And then Peter will talk about the financials. And then at the end of the day, Peter and I will do a Q&A and John. So with that, let's go to the next slide. As you already know, 2020 was a great year for us, and we would like to see that continue, of course. So how do we do that? What do we see? How do we do it, et cetera, is what I'm going to focus on. So with that, let's go into the next slide. In 2020, it was our best year in many ways. It was record revenue, record gross margins, record EBITDA despite losing our biggest customer, actually. So it's never great to lose your biggest customer, of course, but it's great to see that people keep asking for your products, although you shift the channel, so to speak, and 34% revenue growth. I think we have done it before, but now once again, we have confirmed our ability to scale and the flexibility in our business and the scalability in our business. We have, like everyone else, had to deal with COVID-19. I think we have done that in a good way. We have been really busy. We launched a lot of new G&E products and on top of that, we've also been really busy on the data center side, especially with HPE coming in, of course. And in parallel to that, we are entering new markets. I'll talk more about it, obviously, but we're entering into the SimSports market, which is also a part of the Gaming and Enthusiast market for that sake. And we think it's very synergistic. We are really leveraging our core capabilities. And more importantly, I think, is that we are now adding a third leg to our business. Hopefully, it will make us even healthier, even stronger. And as a part of accelerating things, we have done a couple of M&A deals and we have added many more team members. So next slide. If we look a little bit of who we are and what good at Asetek, we are founded on innovation and extensive mechatronic capabilities. And these capabilities have pretty much made us into the market leader within liquid cooling and within Gaming and Enthusiast PC applications. So what is mechatronics? It's actually the let's say, the common denominator of software, hardware and mechanics. And if you look at our products, there is a great deal of all 3. And I think that's what we are really good at, combining the 3. Next slide. And when I say, I think we are good at it, I think I can actually prove that we are good at it because if you look at this slide on our growth rates the past decade, we have grown 17% a year, on average. And that's something I'm proud of, and it's something that I would like to see continue. Next slide, please. The business segments we are in today, I think most of you know, but there may be some who doesn't know. On the Gaming and Enthusiast side, we are selling coolers. So coolers as a stand-alone product to a number of OEMs, here's a few of them. There's ASUS, Fractal, MSI, NZXT and so forth. And we are supplying these products OEM, meaning that our customers are branding them. We do have rebranding programs, et cetera, that we'll hear more about later, but the essence is that we don't sell direct to end users. We sell-through OEMs and their channels. And the target audience here is really PC tinkerers, hardware geeks, gamers, everybody who wants to build their own PC and tinker with their own PC. And along those lines, we also have gaming users but who may not have the skills or the desire to build their own PCs, so they would buy from a gaming OEM. A few examples here is also MSI and Alienware, which is still where we supply the cooler, for example, to Dell directly, then Dell would build it into their PCs and sell it as an Alienware PC. So that's the main part of our market and segments as it looks today. And here on my right side, we're looking at the data center business. That's also purely OEM. We don't sell directly to data centers. We sell to OEMs, here is 3 of our top ones: Fujitusu, Hewlett Packard Enterprise and Supermicro. Next slide, please. We have been not only from a revenue perspective, but I also think from a volume perspective, quite successful. If you look at the early start, it took some time, but in 2012, and we passed a 1 million milestone. And now 8 years later, we have sold more than 8 million liquid coolers. Next slide. We are organized in a way where we support our business, the best possible way, in my opinion, and I think that's also why we have been reasonably successful through COVID-19. In a normal year, we travel a lot. We see each other a lot. That's not been possible. But because we are spread out, even as a small company, we obviously also used to have a lot of online meetings and communication through time zones and emails. And if you look at the chart here, we have sales and marketing in Silicon Valley for obvious reasons. We have a lot of customers there. And Jim and Dipak will be calling in from there a little bit later today. Then in Texas, we have John, my COO, that you will also hear from right after me, actually. He's located in Texas. That's also a good place to be because in Texas, you have both Hewlett Packard Enterprise as well as Dell. Then we have sales offices in London. I'm calling in from Aalborg, Denmark, where we have R&D, prototyping, manufacturing, quality, marketing, branding and so forth. And then in an Xiamen, sorry, in China, we also have R&D, we have sourcing, manufacturing, quality, order fulfillment and so forth. And then in Taipei, in Taiwan, we also have sales, and that's important because a lot of our OEM customers have their R&D departments in Taipei. So we believe that we are set up in a pretty decent way to supply the or support the kind of business we're trying to do. Next slide. So talking a little bit about the new business we are entering. I'm quite excited about it for many reasons. But one of them is it's not been easy to figure out what we should do next. And when I say next, it could be anything from liquid cooling other applications to entering a gaming markets with different devices, et cetera. And we have looked for a long time and I think we have now finally identified the next step in our development. And the reason why we have been looking, of course, is to look longer term, look, 5 years, 10 years, decades out, and to continue our strong growth and our solid margins. And needless to say, a business that's selling into 5 different segments is obviously more robust than a business selling into one segment or only one technology. That being said, we didn't want to go into the rocket ship industry or something similar. We wanted to leverage the capabilities and the know-how and the skills we already have. And I think we have a huge potential here for further innovation and consolidation as a business. So next slide. What I'm talking about is the SimSports gaming market. And I do believe that what we're looking at here has a lot of similarities than what we did and what I did some 20 years ago, because the market today is very fragmented. There is a lot of small players selling tables or steering wheels or things like that. And there are a lot of, let's say, challenges, and there's a lot of problems with it. And I think we can solve a lot of those. And we got this idea for 2 reasons. One of them is that I have been in the racing business for 2 decades myself, and I still am. So I, as an individual, know a lot about racing, and I have built several simulators myself. And on top of that, our eSports Academy, we have had, I think, 5 or 6 simulators for the last 1 to 2 years. And based on that, we got the idea that, hey, there's something we can do better here. There's a good business potential. And from a, let's say, a product perspective and mechanical perspective and software for that sake, we do believe there is a big opportunity in the market. Obviously, we would like to go-to-market as soon as we could. And as soon as we can. And as such, we made some investments in IP and both hardware and software that was already in the market. I will get a little bit back to that as well. And that will enable us to go to market faster, for sure. And I think -- and I hope that late this year, we will be able to actually launch the first set of products or rather the first component of a simulator this year, and that has gone tremendously fast. So that's really nice. And from a customer perspective, there is a lot of overlaps here. We are still in the gaming space. We're also in the enthusiast space because a lot of people are building their own simulators and on top of that, a lot of people who are building their own simulators are also building their own PCs. So we see a lot of synergies. Next slide. So to the support development and at the end of the day, our product offerings, we have done 2 acquisitions, as we announced earlier. And what we really bought was, as I said before, time-to-market. We bought software. We bought technology, we bought consultancy. We bought designs, mechanical and hardware designs. And yes, we could have done this from scratch, but we believe and we still believe that what we have done is we have cut perhaps 2 years of our development time. And we did that by buying IP from Granite Devices in Finland, a total of $8.3 million, of which half was paid in shares. And then we bought a small company in the U.K. called UltimateGameTech, which was also software and hardware design and I would say already now a few months after completion that these deals have been really good. We are working together really nicely in terms of Granite Devices, we are working with them. And in terms of UltimateGameTech, we took over a software engineer and to go with the business. Next slide. So we believe that this will fit right into our current business, both in terms of our capabilities, in terms of our customers, in terms of our supply chain and sourcing and and we are very well underway, actually. And I would like to show you a little video that we made for the occasion that will give you a little bit better idea of what it actually is that I'm talking about. [Presentation]

As you can see, this is something that we are passionate about. It's something we believe in. And we have a decent number of people working on it already. I think we are 18, 20 people or something like that, and I'm spending quite some time on it myself. And if we look at the slide here about our growth, what I hope and what I'm trying to achieve is that in the 5 years' time, we have doubled our revenue, which will equal $150 million and which would equal a growth rate of 15% a year. And I definitely believe with this entrance to the new market, that's possible. And with that being said, I'm sure you have a lot of questions and comments, concerns and excitement. But as mentioned earlier, we will do a Q&A when the rest of my team have done their presentations. So with that being said, I would like to hand over the floor to John.

Good morning. For those of you who don't know name, my name is Jon Hamill, and I am the Chief Operating Officer at Asetek. I'm Based in Austin, Texas, and I'm approaching my 12th year anniversary with the company. Next slide, please. So I'd like to start with the overview of our revenue in recent years and quarters. And focusing on last year, in particular, has been quite a ride. We come out to the year with modest expectations, in part due to losing our largest customer and in part due to the outlook provided by our remaining customers. Then along came COVID. And we never looked back, frankly, we couldn't -- we didn't have the time. The entire company and I'm including quality, research and development, operations, sales and product management, the entire company, our contract manufacturer, our supply chain was focused on servicing customer demand. And thanks to the sterling efforts of all those entities, we were able to conclude the year with successive record quarters. Next slide, please. The data from Jon Peddie Research confirms we were not alone indeed, Jon Peddie Research believes the entire PC hardware market grew substantially last year, and effectively established a new level for the industry. Now as COVID played its part, the market drivers we've discussed so often in the past are still underpinning this growth. Next slide. To reactivate how do those market driver come into play, no pun intended, we have to consider how new games or derivatives of existing games, drive gamers to chase what we've described historically as that immersive experience. Because it's that drive for the immersive experience that results in demand from the latest PC technology, the latest CPUs, the latest GPUs, which, in turn, leads to demand for liquid cooling technology as liquid collers are instrumental in enabling the CPUs and GPUs to deliver 2 things: performance and rock-solid stability. And those 2 elements are both important in achieving the immersive experience that the gamers seek so much. Next slide. As our revenues grew last year, so did our activity with customers. We were able to launch more than 20 new products in the last 2 quarters of the year. At the same time, we were able to add new customers. We were able to expand product offerings with existing customers. And we continue to pursue our branding initiatives. It's a testimony to the resolve and the commitment of the entire Asetek team and again our CM and again, our supply chain, that we were able to achieve all this and at the same time, deliver successive record quarters. Next slide. So this slide is fairly self-explanatory however, I think it's important to highlight that despite losing our largest customer, we believe that our current customer base is the strongest customer base we've ever had. And we're not resting on our laurels. We continue to look for new partners, new customers, high-quality partners, high-quality customers. And we're committed to reducing our dependence on any particular customer, whoever they may be. Next slide, please. We touched on our branding initiatives earlier. I just want to reiterate that at this stage, our branding efforts are designed to complement those of our G&E customers. Our content, our outreach, is designed to remind the community that if you want the best liquid cooling products, you should buy Asetek products from our partners. Now there'll be even more emphasis on the Asetek brand and how the brand is employed when we move into SimSports. And Jim Carlton will talk about that later on in his presentation. Next slide, please. So to summarize. Our goal for the G&E segment is to further develop our leadership. To achieve that goal, we'll focus on innovation sponsored by our R&D team. We'll focus on growing our business with our existing customers. We'll focus on adding new high-quality customers. And we will continue with our branding efforts. Now I'll conclude my comments at this point. And I'll remind everyone that I'll be available during the Q&A to answer any questions. With that said, I'll hand over to Dipak, who will now provide some insight into our data center business.

Hello, everybody. My name is Dipak Rao. I'm the Vice President and General Manager of what I would call Asetek's traditional business. I've been with Asetek now for a little more than 9 years and based in san Jose in California in the United States. I'm going to be presenting an update today related to Asetek's data center business and strategy. Next slide, please. In 2021, we entered our ninth year in the Data center business. And in this time, we've established ourselves as a significant player in this space. 7 of the top 100 most powerful and efficient supercomputers in the world are cooled using Asetek technology. And while we have experienced success, and we continue to experience success, what we believe really limits our ambition is the lack of action so far on behalf of governments to implement legislation that requires data centers to reduce their carbon footprint. This is something that we'll talk about a little bit more later in the presentation. Next slide. Here, we're taking a look in the rearview mirror. 2020 really stands out on the chart that you can see on your screens. This growth that you can see in 2020 was fueled by bringing on 2 new customers in our Data center business, more on those shortly. The numbers, as always, tell a story. The past 3 quarters have been the biggest 3 revenue quarters that we've had in Data center in the past 3 years. And clearly, our margin trajectory, which is illustrated here by the white line, is also headed in the right direction, and we do hope to see this trend to continue into sustained profitability. Next slide. I mentioned just now that our success in 2020 was driven by 2 new customers. The first of those is HPE, also known as Hewlett Packard Enterprise. HPE is traditionally the world's largest high-performance computing OEM brand. And Asetek had been selected for their mainstream service systems, which are the Apollo 2000 series and the Apollo 6500 series. So it's good for Asetek to be involved and associated with the biggest name on the block. The second new customer is Supermicro. Supermicro is also a global IT provider, but more on the up and coming level compared to somebody like an HPE although Supermicro has great ambition and great reach. Now measuring the meaningful impact of having these 2 new customers on board, it's actually quite obvious when you look at the screen here and the chart where on the left-hand side, you have the 2019 bar, and Asetek announced 2, what we call significant orders, in 2019. That's a total number of 2, and the value of those orders was just over $1 million. In 2020, which is after we had the new customers join us, that number of 2 increased more than sixfold to 13 new orders and 13 new orders valued closer to $8 million, as you can see here on the screen. So significant impact of bringing on new customers, and we do hope for continued success with both our new customers and our existing customers such as Fujitsu. Next slide. I'm going to hone in just a little bit on HPE for this slide. HPE has gotten off to what I can only describe as a flying start. By winning 8 deals in the first 6 months of their partnership with Asetek. And we certainly hope and we look forward to working together with HPE in building on that initial success. Next slide. I'm going to come back to a point that I've stated at the very start of this session. Sustained success in the Data Center business is going to be about legislative change. And our business is going to struggle to meet the grand ambitions that we have without that change. Now there's a multitude of reasons, some illustrated here on the slide that you can see. Why we would continue to pursue the educational efforts that we've started. It feels as though our hard work of doubling down on this approach is not falling on deaf ears. For example, European and Danish politicians have been receptive to our message and to the data. But my job is to manage expectations, and we should keep in mind we're talking about legislation. And legislation is something that will take years rather than quarters to be enacted. So patience will be key. Next slide, please. There's nothing really new on the slide that you're seeing here as a summary. Our goal remains to create a sustainable and profitable business in the longer term. We're persevering with our approach because it does seem to be paying off. Things are going well from both a revenue and a margin point of view in Data Center right now due to, again, existing customers like Fujitsu and our 2 new customers that we spoke about just previously. And we're working very hard to keep those efforts moving forward in the right vein. Our green and sustainability agenda is also gathering steam. So we're going to remain committed with those efforts as well. And with that, I'm going to conclude my comments and hand over to my colleague, Jim Carlton, who has something very exciting to speak to you about. Thank you, everybody.

Hi. I'm Jim Carlton, Vice President and General Manager of the new SimSports Group here at Asetek. I've been with the company almost 6 months, but my history with Asetek goes back almost 12 years. I'm excited to share with you our plans for the SimSports business. Next slide. SimSports and particularly racing is among the fastest-growing categories of gaming today. Our target market is willing to invest thousands and thousands or more of dollars in their hardware, all in pursuit of realism. The racing industry, as you are all probably familiar, is huge and the intersection of real racing and sim racing continues to grow. For the first time ever, the GT 3 series is including sim racing. Teams will have to compete successfully in both in order to win a championship. As you can see, NASCAR's iRacing event was the most viewed television eSports event in history. That's a big deal. Next slide. As you can see from this drawing, a full-fledged racing setup requires a wide range of products, all designed to provide an immersive experience to the user. From pedal and wheels to shifters and seats, these components all provide the user with a true-to-life racing experience. And for Asetek, there is no reason not to be eventually in every 1 of them. Next slide. There are a lot of companies with offerings in this market. But for the most part, they are fragmented, offering only a part of the solution. Nonetheless, we see opportunity in this space. Our long-term goal is to become one-stop supplier for all your racing needs. Today, the nearest we have to that is Fanatec. They have been at it for 15-plus years. But they still aren't in every category, and they don't provide the user with an experience that they deserve. We hope to change that. Next slide. We see sim racing as a big, big opportunity. There's already 1 competitor, Fanatec, who is over $100 million. The racing Sims are doing really well. iRacing in Assetto Corsa, whose numbers you see here, have seen their numbers surging with no end in sight. Next slide. So to summarize our goal and strategy to become one of the key providers in next level immersive gaming, we intend to leverage our years of experience in mechanical, electrical and software engineering, as well as our global supply chain to develop products that speak directly to this market. We want to use in-house and acquired technology with an emphasis on the latter to start. We're adding this important third area of growth in the hope that it will one day generate as much or more revenue as our G&E products do. Thank you very much. And now I'd like to hand the mic to Peter Dan Madsen, Asetek's CFO.

Thanks, Jim. A lot of interesting stuff going on in your part of the business. And good night, Jim. We are sending Jim and Dipak back to their own beds in California, it's wicked late over there. John, who is in Texas, he will stay with us a little bit longer for the Q&A session later. So now we'll turn our focus to the financials. Just as late as last week, we delivered a quarterly report and an annual report with record numbers, and we're, of course, happy and satisfied with those numbers. What we're going to do now is that we're going to look at both in the quarter, last quarter and the last year, 2020, and then we're going to take a look at what the future in terms of 2021 will bring us. Next slide, please. I think by now, we have sort of used our allocation of bragging rights, talking about the top line and the bottom line, et cetera. So I'll jump that over that relatively easily, just saying that overall, we are happy with the numbers. They were in line with our indications and our communications. And that is, of course, how that should be. The quarter as such was super busy. In terms of us releasing and shipping now 12 new gaming enthusiast products. And also on the data center side, we -- I think we received 6 new relatively large orders, so large we had to to disclose them and we did that. And then, of course, we were busy with the 2 acquisitions that Andre talked about in the Gaming and Enthusiast segment for our new business segment. Next slide, please. If we take a look at revenue over time, then you will see that revenues have grown about 15%, a little bit over 15% on average for the last many years. And that is in line with also our long-term ambition that André spoke about of a 15% growth rate in the future also. There are good years and weaker years. 2019 was a weaker year. 2020 was a strong year. We'll come back to that in a little bit. What's also interesting here is the white line coming up. When we started being profitable in 2015 then onwards, it's the EBITDA margin, the earnings margin, what's interesting here to me is that when revenue goes up, then also the earnings as a percentage go up as a general rule, and with the earning -- if the profit, not say if the revenue goes down, then the earnings also go now. So what that shows to me is that not only our gross margin, but also our overheads are pretty much under control. And it shows me that we should have, which we do have also an eager for revenue increase and growth. Next slide, please. And this thing about weak quarters and strong quarters volatility here. That is also quite obvious when you take a look at the quarters, we came out of a 2019. You can see that a little bit to the right in the -- towards the middle of the graph here. A '19 that was weak. It was a fighting year for us. We were fighting the tariffs in U.S. You might have forgotten about those, but they were there, and they are still there. And we were fighting the fact that we were changing our -- at that point, largest customer with another or a couple of other larger customers who take their place. So that meant that we actually came into 2020 with some level of anxiety. We didn't know exactly what it would bring. And you could also see that Q1 of 2020 is the weakest of the 4 quarters in 2020. I said before that there's a general trend that when our revenue goes up then goes our earnings so what does that mean? Then when you see that over on the right-hand side, the EBITDA margin is 24.9% versus 24.8% in the third quarter, it's flat. That doesn't really jive with what I just said. And that's because Q4 last year was impacted by not only foreign exchange rates going towards us but also an inventory cleanup we did in the data center side of things, and then we had some write-off of an R&D project on the overheads line. So that's what happened there. Next slide, please. So looking at gross margins year by year. You can see that gross margins have increased from the 36% level in 2017 and then up north of 40% to 47% in 2020. And that has been in line with our expectations and our communications. For 2020, the gross margin at some point actually was over 50%. And then -- and that has been driven by a change in our business model, where we are focusing, so to speak, on selling products with a higher value proposition, high margins and telling our customers kindly to suggesting to our customers, maybe as you call it, to buy lower value products in a different way so that we focus on the products where will really add value and hence also can charge a premium that drives up the margins, and that's what we saw in in 2020. We have then seen the opposite effect coming in from weaker U.S. dollars, meaning a more expensive Chinese currency that drives up our cost prices. And then in Q4, specifically, we had an inventory valuation that drove down our gross margins. For 2021, we expect, and keep in mind here that our visibility into the future is relatively limited. That's just the nature of our business. But we do expect the gross margins in 2021 to decrease a little bit compared to the very high level we saw in 2020. And as a level indicator I would put in 45% for 2021. And when I say level, that means it can go up a couple of points to on a couple of points. We had hoped of course, that President Biden, he would remove the tariffs that we have been fighting in 2021. That seems not to be the case at this point. And although the tariffs don't impact us directly so much, then, of course, having someone, able to say, stealing 25% of the value chain in terms of tariffs doesn't help our margins at all. We had certainly hoped that they would decrease or even go away, but let's wait to see how that's going. Next slide, please. Currency rates impact us quite a lot. We report in U.S. dollars. And if we take a look at this slide here then on the left-hand side, we have the chinese currency, which impacts our cost of goods, even though all our sales and purchases are transacted in U.S. dollars, then deep down in the belly of the beast, the Chinese currency, remember, impacts, of course, our negotiations in China. And as a general rule, for every 3 percentage points up or down, the Chinese renminbi moves then we need to -- we are and then adjusting our cost prices towards our vendors. I believe that we are pretty well caught up. There's of course an element of delay, there's an element of this 3 points threshold step here that creates a delay function itself. I believe we are pretty well caught up at the end of the year on our currency exchange rates. But of course, it impacts and you don't -- well, your guess as to what's going to happen with currency is at least just as good as mine. Of course there are other things that impact the margin then the cost of the goods or our ability to negotiate sales prices and the products. Not least the projects, not least it is impacting us quite a lot. And as a proof to that, even though the price of the Chinese money went up by 5% during 2020, we still show an improved gross margin in 2020. But it's a complex matter for sure. On the right-hand side of the graph here. Here we have the Danish krone, about 1/3 of our overhead is denominated in Danish krone. We of course, paying our salaries here in Denmark in Danish krone, and of course, impacts our P&L quite significantly. So when Danish krone went up by 7% last year, it impacted us significantly. It seems to have flattened out by now, but again, your guess on currency rates is probably better than mine. Next slide. If we then try and tally up the income statement and how it looks. Solid revenue increases year-over-year and certainly also quarter-over-quarter. We had a 3x difference between the weakest quarter and the strongest quarter. The biggest being the first quarter and the strongest being the fourth quarter. And we could capture that in our organization and that's actually pretty well done by our supply chain, both internally here, but also our vendors. It's a job well done, I believe. Gross margins, we spoke about those already. Operating expenses, if we look at the 2020 number then it says $23.3 million versus $22 million the year before. If we then allow ourselves to correct for the one-off income of $750,000, which was a legal settlement that we got paid in 2019, then that actually shows an increase in overhead and operating expenses of only 2%. And how does that then link up with the 7% currency rate increase that I just spoke about, and how does that link up with the numbers on the left where operating expenses in Q4 were $6.7 million versus %5.5 million the same quarter of the year before. Meaning a significant increase. Well, the way that links up, is that we came out of 2019 prepared for a challenging year. We had the issues with the tariffs. We had the issue with a customer that we exchanged. So we were pretty lean in our setup. We pride ourselves in our ability so scale both up and down our organization quite rapidly. And that appeared to be the case also here in '20. When we then saw the revenue pickup in Q2 and 3, we started adding resources to our operation to cater for new products coming up and new products being started. And that meant that here in Q4, the $6.7 million is is impacted by both an increase in activity, yes, but it's also impacted by currency around $400,000 out of the increase of 1.2 comes from foreign exchange rate. And then we had a one-off write-off of $350,000, which also impacts Q4. So Q4 was relatively expensive in the big picture of the scheme here. That brings us down to the income pretax, which was $9.4 million in 2020 veruse $1.5 million in 2019. And after tax, you will see that the tax amount is only $230,000 there in 2020, you might think that that's a low amount that has been held by an addition to our deferred taxes assets on $1.6 million, and then if you add those 2 together, then you will see a more normal checks, checks rate. Next slide, please. Cash generation. We have typically, overt the years, been relatively low on fixed assets et cetera. We've been quite flexible there. And that's also -- and the way that turns out is that what we make on the bottom line pretty much turns into cash the same quarter or the quarter after. And that also shows here over the years, where we have shown the cash generation. If I may direct your attention to the right-hand side, 2020 where we started out with $24.5 million in the bank, we then generated $21.5 million with Gaming and Enthusiast segement at EBITDA level, and then we spent $1.2 million on Data center. And what's interesting here if we compare the 3 years of Data center spend, then you would see that in 2018 we spent $7.3 million, and then '19, $0.3 million and then in 2020 $1.2 million. We are not home safe yet, I would say, on -- Data center is not profitable at this point still. We are working on it. We have not been guiding specifically on Data center for the last year or so. And we probably -- and we will have to start talking about that segment and report it on that segment specifically, again, because it's going going to be to come back in a significant portion of the revenue. Last time we guided, we said that our -- that we needed revenue around $10 million before we became profitable in that segment. That number has probably changed up towards $14 million, $15 million, I would say, maybe a little bit less and that's driven by the fact that our gross margins reduced a little bit. They're still significantly higher than the G&A, but they have reduced due to the customer composition. And then we have added more resources in that segment also to develop new products. What else? Investments , $4.8 million in 2020, that's a little bit higher than they have been in early years due to a couple of things. We are invested in a company in the United Kingdom. As Andre spoke about and what is -- and part of the basis for what Jim does in the SimSports department and because we've added more activity, taken on more activity in the data center business. We have invested in more machinery recently the data center, manufacturing plant here in Denmark. And there's a new column, share repurchase. We spent $6.4 million during 2020 to repurchase our own shares. And of course, that then contributed to the cash generation and usage here in 2020. Next slide, please. Cash conversion, just a few words on that. When we grow as significantly as we do, then it's interesting to see as we look as to whether we can -- we have our working under control, and I'm happy to report that I believe we do. The numbers are increasing. You can see on top the the receivables are increasing significantly year over year and so does payables. If you look at the table down below, then you will see the net of it all, that we are actually improving a little bit on what's called the cash conversion cycle from the day when we receive invoice from the supplier, until the day when we receive payment on customer, it nears now 8 days, which is a slight improvement compared to same quarter last year in 2019. Some years ago we communicated -- planned ambition to be above 0, and I think this is pretty much above where we should be. The numbers are bigger, you can see, but that's simply a matter of math and where you have the -- where the revenue is placed. Next slide, please. Balance sheet. Those of you who have been following us, history will know this sheet, this map here has not changed at all. We have strong cash position, we have almost no interest bearing debt. It's a solid picture, we are very attractive towards our OEM customers, particularly in data centers business where our customers over there are very interested in our balance sheet, they also make that we are solid enough to go through a period of R&D and a period of business development, et cetera, and being able to fund that, and we are. And we have the flexibility to both develop and our IT platform. What to say here, I'll come back a little bit on dividends. We do have an ambition to pay out dividends, we don't have any desire to sit on excess cash, but I'll come back to that. We have a challenging tax situation that I need to address. So if you change the slide, yes we have gone through something totally different although it does have something to do with cash allocation, capital allocation. We are here, almost sitting on each other's shoulders our staff is sitting pretty much like sardines in a can, and that means that we need to expand. We have purchased a building plot in a prime location here in Aalborg where we are developing a new a innovation center and manufacturing facility. It's very much in it's early stages. Right now, we are meeting with architects and contractors and it's a multiple year project, obviously. But we are simply -- we are sitting on each other shoulders. Literally, the last time we added to our test facility out here it was built on top of another test facility. So it is being -- it's quite cramped . For now, the idea is to fund it by own means our own cash. And long term debt, we don't have any strong desire in either direction but we certainly don't have a strong desire to become a major property owner, and it may very well be that we do an optimization of the balance sheet at some point down the road. But for now, in order to maintain the flexibility and keep that, we are taking it on our own books. If you squeeze André a little bit during the Q&A session later, I'm sure that he'll be happy to tell you the story about how we actually deliberately bought a plot that was a little bit too big, and then we sold off a portion of the lot to a fast food chain for, I think, 3x the price we paid per square foot. So that just underlines the fact that it is a prime location. It is a new hotspot here in Aalborg close to the highway as well. So if you change the slide again, please? Yes, innovation. We need to be innovative, and we are, and we are committed to that. And we support that by the program or the funding. Our R&d funding -- R&D spend is actually increasing higher than the revenue. On the graph over to the right, you can see that, how I've overlaid the revenue and the R&D spend in 2016, and then you can see the development from there. We are outspending in terms of R&D, the revenue increase. On average, we're spending around 8% of our revenue on R&D. Here in 2021, we'll see a generic increase on the liquid cooling, the existing business, up to $6 million or $7 million thereabout compared to $5.7 million in 2020. And then we are adding the SimSports investment, where, on the R&D side alone, it's between $1 million and $2 million. Right now, we have some -- 16, 18 people out of 120 allocated full-time to SimSports. That's going to increase a little bit during 2021. So it is a significant amount of investment. Next slide, please. Then the fun stops and we have actual real life, so to speak. Tax structure. I need to talk about that a little bit. Those of you who have been following us, you will know that we have a little bit of a tax challenge in the sense that both the Danish government and the U.S. government considers Asetek a tax subject. And that has actually not been a problem for the company per se up until now because the company that is a tax subject does not have significant taxable income. That income is in subsidiaries, which are local to either Denmark or U.S.A. But the top company does have a tax liability in both jurisdictions. And that means that for our investors, if we should pay out dividend, then we would have to withhold dividend tax to both U.S. and Denmark, which would make it rather unappealing, if there's such a word, unappealing situation for the -- especially the smaller investors who don't have a tax presence in the U.S. and get their tax money back. We would simply lose too much on taxation. So at this point, we don't have any plans -- actual plans for paying out dividends. It has been the case both in '18 and '19 and now here in 2021 again. We have, however, filed a complaint or a request for resolution, I think it's called something to that effect, with the Danish and the U.S. tax authorities. They don't have an obligation to find a solution. There is what's called a tax -- double taxation. It's really where they are obligated to talk about and obligated to seek to find a resolution, but they are not obligated to find a resolution. This whole thing, I -- let me start, please. Add to that, that the Americans have now figured out a new way of taxation, something called -- they call GILTI, where the Americans charge an extra tax on foreign activities by U.S. companies. And keep in mind that for the Americans, we are a U.S. company. So they -- and they see that we have activities in Denmark so they want to tax that. They call that a GILTI tax. That GILTI tax costs us $400,000 here in 2020 and like $1 million the year before. And that actually may be a little bit of a help to us, even though it sounds contradictory. But it means that now it is the company who has an extra liability and an extra double taxation situation. And that is easier, that's a better argument to be made to the tax authorities in both countries, that there is actually a real double taxation situation that they should figure out how to fix. But it's a long time -- long-term process. It started a year ago or so, and we know they're communicating, they have been asking questions, but it's still early stage. Share buyback. We have transacted 2 share buyback programs during 2020, and we are running the second one right now. It's ending on Friday, the purpose of which is to buy back shares to hedge our risk with the employee stock options that have been issued over the years. The shares that we are buying back are certainly sitting in our bank depository accounts and are then resold out to the market when employees are exercising their options. But that program is running out here in -- on 5th March. We expect there might be other -- or additional smaller share buyback programs in the future if and when the Board of Directors, they decide to grant new employee options. And options have been a natural component of our pay structure since 2010 or even earlier than that, I believe. So it should be expected that there will be smaller additional share buyback programs in the future. Next slide, please. Looking at 2021. If you look at the graph here, then there's this bubble over here on the right-hand side, which is an ambition, not a guidance. It's an ambition for us to maintain our 15% annual average growth in the years to come. We also have to release a specific guidance for the year 2021 as such, and that guidance that we've come up with is -- or that we offer is an increase on the top line between 10% and 20% compared to 2020. So that will result in a top line of $80 million to $87 million of revenue. There is volatility there, uncertainty about many things. COVID-19 is still playing a factor here. And you know, if you know the company here, that our transparency into the future is fairly limited. Margins, as we said before, expect them to lower just a tad bit compared to the 47% here in '20. And that means that we -- and there's some risk in that also, as I said. And that means that our operating income guidance is between $9 million and $15 million. Quite a wide range, we do realize that. We'll narrow it down, I'm sure, as we go through the year. But there are a number of uncertainties, not least, related to our relatively short transparency into the future. Next slide, please. Changing gear. Truly, CSR, ESG, sustainability, call it whatever you want, is something that has taken up quite a lot of resources and work during 2020. We have, as you know, a product on the data center side that provides significant positive climate effect. But of course, that's not enough when it comes to ESG and CSR. We need to show how we operate the business as such. And we've had -- we've been running through a project last year, where we set up the framework both for measuring and for goal setting, and then for reporting of all these good goals here and good message. So we are measuring it now. We are sharing our measurements internally, and what is measured tends to be met when it comes to goals. So that is definitely something we're going to be working on more in the future. We've always been running our company in a sustainable way, I believe. But now we're building it into a more formal framework. There's are link here to the report that you can follow if you chose to do so. Next slide, please. All right. I think I've taken up quite a lot of my time here so I'll just focus on the left-hand side. My focus is on the continued profitable growth, solid platform, financial platform, and that remains to be my focus. And that's how it is. And in that sense, I certainly welcome the SimSports investments that both Jim and André, they were talking about. Good. Last slide from my hand. Please change to that. Yes, investment highlights. What is Asetek as an investment case? Long-term growth driven by megatrends and innovation both on the OEM side and for the end users. It's market leadership, and it's then again, solid gross margins. We -- as we say, we focus on difficult problems. And if we solve difficult problems, then we can also charge a premium for that. That's the whole business here and the whole idea here. We are primed for continued growth, both in Data center business and the Gaming and Enthusiast market, and then we are starting out this new entry into the SimSports gaming. With that, you can change the slide again, please. Then we'll hand over the microphone to the moderator, who will take care of, first, the phones, whoever is choosing to call in, and we'll address the written questions afterwards. And while we're setting that up, I'll run over to André's office, and we'll do it from there.

[Operator Instructions] We have a question from Yiwei Zhou from SEB Bank.

I have a couple of questions here. Firstly, regarding the 2025 revenue target, is it possible to elaborate a bit on this target? I mean how much do you expect the Data center business and also the new business area, SimSports, to contribute to this $150 million sales? Then secondly, is it possible to elaborate a bit on the profitability for the new product area? Yes. I will start with 2 questions, and I'll follow up later.

Yes. Thanks. Well, in terms of the spread on our revenue target, it's impossible to say. Obviously, we need to start selling something in the SimSports market before we can actually talk about how much we can sell. So I mean, it's way premature. What we can say is that looking backwards, as I showed earlier, we've had a 17% growth rate over the last decade. And let's say, with another business leg to stand on, we feel even more comfortable talking about it. So that's the way we look at it. And what was the second question? Again, that was -- yes, how big the opportunity is, it's also too early to say. On the probability...

Profitability.

Profitability. Yes, okay.

The margins -- gross margins for the business.

What I can say is that we have no intention in entering low-margin business segments. So I absolutely expect that we will keep seeing the same margins or better than we're already doing.

And could you indicate maybe a value per user for the gaming stimulator (sic) [simulator]?

It's really difficult to say because you can -- that's obviously not the segment we will be playing in. But you can go to an electronics store and buy a $300 simulator set-up with very low-end -- in our terminology, low-end stuff. And these markets, I think, are typically dominated by Logitech and Thrustmaster, and that's not where we are going to focus. And I don't have a spend per user. But if I should give you an indication, I would say at least from $1,000 and upwards.

Okay. Very helpful. And then how much additional OpEx investments, especially on the sales and marketing, have you planned for launching the SimSports products? Do you have anything currently to say about it?

Yes. Well, we are applying 16, 18 up to 20 people or so this year. So if you do the math simply by counting the head count in marketing up, then it's between $2 million and $3 million in total for this year.

And I mean, for the launch. I guess, next year, 2022 is probably the year where you can generate -- start to generate sales. Is it possible to sort of also give us an indication on the 2022 budget for the new product launch?

I appreciate the question, Yiwei, but I think it's too early for us to talk with any level of quality about what's going to happen 2 years out on the sales and marketing side.

Okay. Fair enough. And could you just clarify, these 15 to 20 people, are they mainly the R&D function or also includes the sales and marketing?

Actually, that's an interesting question. If you look back over the history of Asetek, then our projects have always started with a heavy R&D effort. Then that has sort of scaled down and then the marketing and sales have scaled up. What we're doing a little bit different here is that we are applying significant marketing, product planning and whatever you want to call it or different disciplines relatively early in the project. So it's a mix.

[Operator Instructions] We have another question from the line of Johannes Les from Arbus Capital .

A couple of questions also following on with SimSports. Only to guide it right, is your intention to deliver a full system? Or is your intention also to sell only components for the system, only the pedals or the wheels of...

The plan is to let the customer choose, but to have the possibility to buy everything from us. This is obviously something we will go much more in detail about over the next and the coming quarters. But some of the obvious, let's say, opportunities we see in the market is that if you have tried to build a simulator yourself, you'll see how difficult it is. You will see how halfway you need to be a computer scientist and you need to be an engineer to actually get it to work, and that's independent of brand right now. It's very complicated. Unless you have a console and you just have a simple set of steering wheels and pedals, it's very complicated. And what we want to do is pretty much the same as we did more than 20 years ago with the liquid cooling market. Remember back then, liquid coolers were a lot of components. Then you had to cut tubes and put in -- or pour in liquid yourself and hopefully, everything would work, whereas we came out with an all-in-one cooler that kind of revolutionized it. And what we are intending to do here is pretty much the same. It has to be easy. It has to be user-friendly. And as such, we focus a lot of effort in software right now because software is what ties all the hardware together. And I think it's an understatement to say that the software that's out there is flaky at best. So you would be able to start out. I have our first prototype of our pedals right here. You would be able to start out buying those, and then you would be able to upgrade as you go along. So that was a long answer, but nevertheless how we see it.

Okay. I always say it's a safe channel because I think it's a little bit different on your cooling. You go a lot with OEMs. Maybe here, you really sell a full product under your brand. Therefore, having to build up a new sales organization, you have some synergies with the Esports Academy and things like this, your brand. But how will you bring this especially this full simulator into the market?

I think we still have time to fully figure that out. What we can say and what we are willing to say -- there's also some elements of what we want to tell the competition at this point, of course. But what we can say is that pretty much the competition is selling direct. We will absolutely be pushing our own brands. But we were also very careful when selecting this new business that we did not step on our customers' toes and we did not compete with our customers. And I actually do believe that there is potential both to push our own brand and also to do a partnership model. But at the end of the day, it comes down to what bill of materials we can achieve. We have a very strong supply chain. And I think when I look at the entire simulator landscape, I think by far, we are the company who's best positioned with our China operations. And as such, at least in theory, we should be able to get the lowest possible cost prices. And by getting the lowest-cost prices, applying our margin, then we will see what's possible. But at this point in time, we are not ruling anything out. So -- yes. Do you have anything to add, John?

No. I think that pretty much covered it, André. We're keeping our options open here, yes, until we know more about our bombs. We obviously have some very good idea of what we want to do, but nothing ruled out.

And maybe as a follow-on. After these 2 acquisitions, do you think, everything together, you need to build these products or maybe could sell -- so one or other small add-on acquisitions to need -- to make the product really complete?

Yes. So just a little word about the process. We actually identified and looked at more than 120 companies within SimSports. So it's not like we woke up one morning and said we're buying these 2. It has been a quite rigorous -- it's been a quite rigorous process. And I would say that especially on the software side, we knew that, that was going to take a long time if we had to -- if we have to start from scratch. So that's why we bought a software company, and I believe we bought the best. In terms of the hardware, we are pretty good at that stuff. The pedals you see here, for many reasons, I don't want to go into detail with what they are capable of. But we've actually been turning around this set of pedal within 4 months internally. So that stuff, I'm quite confident about. We know what we're doing. But in terms of the actual wheel base, so that's what's giving you the force feedback, there's a lot of software into that as well. So that's why we acquired those capabilities again to accelerate. But other than that, I do feel we are quite well suited. That being said, we acquired a company, I think, 17, 18 years ago. But other than that, we never really did any M&A activity. Not because we've not been looking, but because we haven't found anything interesting. M&A can be dangerous for many reasons, as you know. But I have to say what we have done here has been really successful. And I can say that even before entering the market because in one of the acquisitions, we kept the employees, the software engineer. That's working really well. And on the other side, we are working together with Granite in Finland. So the short answer is we don't have anything on our list right now. But if an opportunity will present itself, I will obviously be looking at it.

Super. Maybe coming to Gaming and Enthusiastic (sic) [Enthusiast]. Do you expect maybe that if, what we all hope, COVID go a little bit away or a little bit it's not so severe anymore maybe in the second half or maybe in the next year, the gaming PC market could see a setback, like some people expecting for DIY, things like investing in your garden or in your house? Or do you -- like John said, do you expect it stays at this high level or even grow further because that was a push for market if it stays around?

If I was a prophet, I would work in the church and not for Asetek. So I have no idea. My guess is no better than your guess. What we are doing is focusing on fulfilling our customers' forecast. And the stats this year have been good. And we have guided, as you know, between 10% and 20%, and that's what we are aiming at fulfilling. What's going to happen with tariffs, with COVID or anything else in the world, I really don't have anything intelligent to say.

Okay. But so far, you said the year has been good. Therefore, an ongoing development, like you have seen in the second half last year and a strong market, yes?

Yes.

On another topic. Graphic card cooling, graphic GPU, how the things are going on there after the first product out? And how big could be this market maybe in the next 4 or 5 years? Have you anything included in this vision, this 2025 vision? Also, I get a feeling you have not really broken it down to the different businesses and even subactivities.

John, do you have a comment on that?

Yes. Yes. We continue to engage with various graphics card vendors. We have a multiple graphic card solutions shipping to date, interestingly enough, to not just NVIDIA now, but also AMD solutions. However, the volumes continue to be extremely modest. And I think the reason for that rise and the cost of these solutions, the solutions that typically have liquid coolers added to them retail in the region of $1,000 to $2,000. And that contrasts with CPU liquid coolers that typically retail down at the $100 to $200 mark. So what I've come to realize over the years is that, yes, every PC has a graphics card. But trying to sell liquid coolers into those is quite a challenge given the price points that we typically see with the liquid cooler graphics cards. So we've got a healthy business. We're very committed to servicing that. We've got some great customers do some great stuff, but volumes continue to be fairly modest when stacked up against the CPU cooler business.

But do you see these prices coming down going forward?

John, I think -- I'm sorry to interrupt. I think it's important to clarify, it's not the cost of the cooler. It's the cost of the graphics card that drives the price. So that's really a question for NVIDIA. But if you ask my guess, I would say chances of pricing going down for their high-end solutions is fairly slim. But I think as we've elaborated a couple of times, what would change it would be the competition between AMD and NVIDIA and if GPUs came to a level where they were just unbearable noisy. In some people's mind, they are, but that's one thing. And the other thing is also if you as an end user buy a graphics card and you take off the cooler, you lost your warranty. And I think the appetite for end users buying a, let's say, $1,500 graphics card and then the first thing you do is to void the warranty, I think there's a limited amount of users that's willing to do that. Whereas on the CPU, you have to mount the cooler. So that's the big difference. So I think what we can hope for is that the graphic cards vendors will kind of accept a solution wider and broader for the end users to mount the cooler themselves. It's just that the, what should we call it, the architecture of a graphics card is delicate. If you're sitting there fooling around with a screwdriver, you can easily ruin something. Whereas if the cooler is mounted from the factory, it's different. And that is also why, for example, Dell Alienware have success with their graphics card coolers. It's because it's mounted from their factory.

Super. Last point at the Data center business. Could be -- I think it was already on the slide. After the success you had with HPE and this new guy on the block, Solution Hub or Solution Minder was the name, are there further OEMs looking at the solution seeing the success with HPE and there could be further OEMs added to this business?

Well, we can at least say that's our plan and our hope, of course, that other OEMs will carry on. But I also think it's important to calibrate the business we are in here with how you look at it in the sense that the gaming business is fast-paced and moving forward really fast. We launched our data center, I think, 2012. We were in Utah talking about our solutions and OEM adoption. And we have to realize that now it finally happened, which is good, but it's also 8 years ago. So yes, I do believe, over time, we'll see more OEMs, but it's also a business that just works at a different pace than the gaming business, for sure.

But your short or long you needed in was the gaming business. Therefore, it could be an inflection point going forward. It did not depend on you. It depends on the politicians now. They discuss it often enough now.

Yes. I agree 100%. And I can only say that in terms of the politicians that we are seeing, I would say more or less constant improvements in the EU and talks about this very topic. So I'm still firm in my belief that we will see it. But just to get it out of the way, it's not built into our 2025 plans. Because, frankly, it's out of my control, and it's out of Asetek's control. We can try to influence it as much as we can, and we are. But I think our growth plan will be way too fragile if we kind of baked in that something would happen on -- in terms of legislation.

If something happens, then there is a little push in the market. Definitely, it would be upside. But like I said, it's not -- I expected this.

[Operator Instructions] And as there no further audio questions, I will hand it back to the speakers.

Perfect. Thank you. Then we will address the questions that are coming in via the website. And feel free to keep asking. We'll refresh the site once in a while. I'll pick them out here. We did speak about COVID. John, there's one for you here. The gaming industry is scaling fast. Are you available to keep up the demands -- on demand?

Yes. It's one of the topics I was trying to stress when I made my comments earlier, that we've handled that very, very well. And I continue to have confidence that we'll be able to continue to handle upsides in demand. So yes, don't see any issues there at all.

Very good. There's another one, totally different. It's 3 here. I know Asetek is an interesting acquisition to big -- several big companies out there. Have there been any dialogue that we shareholders should be informed about? And I can answer the last part of that question quiet clearly. No, of course not. Because then we would have informed you. André, do you -- because, we have to. Not to be rude, sorry. But there are very strict rules about what we have to inform you on. Anything else on that, André?

No. I mean we look at the inquiries we get. But what's been there so far have, let's say, not been interesting to us or interesting to the inquirer for various reasons. But as Peter points out, of course, if there is anything significant, then we will let you know.

Very good. How is your business network within Europe set up? John, can you talk to that a little bit?

Is that a question with respect to our supply chain or our customers or both? I'm not sure. Is there any more clarity?

I would think that's a customer-related question, the sales network in Europe, just broadly speaking.

Okay. I see Europe -- a lot of customers in Europe, most recently, Fujitsu, who -- that consume a lot of our resources there, actually pretty much closed down all the functions in Europe and moved everything to Japan. So we don't see a whole lot of activity from what I would call indigenous European customers. We do have customers there. Fractal springs to mind. We are courting all our brands in Europe. So we're not sitting on our hands. But those -- it's nice to not have a massive business there. The vast majority of sales and marketing activity is undertaken in North America and in Asia.

Very good. A question here along the same lines, I would say. The question is very specific. Maybe you -- John, you can talk in broader terms. How many big customers is the goal for 2021? We know we changed out one big customer in '19 and ramped up in '20. Can you talk in general about that?

Yes. I wouldn't put a number on it. There's never a number. The thing we were more interested in -- and again, I tried to touch on this in my comments, is the quality of the customer. We had a big customer in the past that really didn't appreciate what Asetek brought to the table. That's why we're no longer with them. I stressed here in my comments that the customers we have today, we believe, are the strongest customer base we've ever had. And when we go looking for new customers, that's very -- it's very important to us that they value what we bring to the table and that they can make a contribution that will help us reduce our dependence on any one single customer. So we're trying to be smart by adding new customers. And we're always looking for strong brands, brands that can grow to make a contribution, a significant contribution, but brands that appreciate what Asetek brings to the table.

Very good. Thank you. Then there's a question which is in a totally different direction. It's about our share buyback program, which is coming to an end here on Friday, I believe it is. If we plan a new round. And about that, yes, we do if and when our Board of Directors grant a new series of options. And they have been doing that more or less constantly since 2008 or '09. So that should be expected. That's a common part of our compensation plans. So yes, there will be probably a smaller plan. It will be a smaller plan because what we've done in the last couple of years is to play catch-up to our -- to hedge our option plans. The gentleman is asking if there are news about the legal issues regarding the payment of dividends. That's somewhat related to the option program -- or the share buyback program here and then yet separated. The news, I think I touched on it in the presentation, is that there is no negotiations going on between the American IRS and the Danish taxation authorities. We are being double taxed. And politically for many, many years, there has been agreement that double taxation should be avoided. However, that said, when the Americans all of a sudden unilaterally decided that when companies leave U.S. soil to make money outside of the U.S., they should still remain taxed in U.S., then we are up against quite some resistance. It's coming back to Apple pretty much living out of a mailbox in Ireland. When they made all the money over there in a low-taxed company, of course, that was annoying to the U.S. taxation system and politicians, and they put in place all kinds of preventive measures. And we are being caught in that. So that's what we are debating with the tax authorities. Long answer. Complex issue. Back to COVID-19 and how the physical meetings have been difficult. André, can we talk about how the meetings and education of politicians on environmental benefits from our products, how is that going? Do you have more to say on that? You did such a...

No. I think I already touched upon it. I think there will be -- and the reason I say think is because I know we have been conducting a study with the German government. And I also know that it will be coming, and I think we are at a point where I can say soon now. And I hope that study will be -- I hope that will be used in the green deal and I -- with the German lead in the EU. That's my hope, and that's my belief. It's not really been held back by COVID because it's based on data from both our own data center and other data centers, air cool and liquid cool. In more general terms, of course, I've not been able to travel to Brussels. Neither have our advisers. So for that reason, it's not been as easy as I had hoped, of course. But on the flip side, I don't think we lost out on anything significant.

Very good. Oh, a fun question here. Will the SimSports mainly focus on car simulators or can flight simulators be relevant too?

There is actually a reason we call it Asetek SimSports, and that is that it could be applied to anything from cross-country simulators, to flight simulators, to racing simulators, to golf simulators. We have to start in one place, in one corner. And we are starting with racing because that's what we know a great deal about. But the name has been specifically made so that we, over time, can look at many other types of simulators than just car race.

Very good. And staying within the SimSports here and talking about the, what should I call it, the level of enthusiasm or professionalism that the customers need here. Is it for arcades? Or is it for very enthusiastic customers, gamers as, I guess, the equipment itself could take up to 3 to 4 -- 3 to 5 square meters by and large? The total esport market is estimated at $165 billion in 2020, and the relevant segment for SimSports seems to be around $40 billion. Is that a fair guess for revenue to look at? I know it's a very broad question.

That was a lot of questions in one question. Let's see if I'm smart enough to remember all of them. But in terms of precisioning, we are not going to compete with, excuse my French, cheap Chinese manufacturers of arcade equipment because we have no value add. What we are trying to do is to make equipment that would actually mimic a real car or a real race car. That's to begin with why it's called simulation. That being said, I have personally built a $30,000 simulator for my son in combination with his racing 3, 4 years ago. And obviously, the volume of those is pretty low. So the ambition is to do it at reasonable price points. We will, of course, have entry-level and more advanced level. But per definition, it will be higher end. That does not necessarily mean that we will not go after the console market because we will. We will definitely go after both the Xbox and the PlayStation market also. So you don't have to be, let's say, a PC enthusiast to buy our product. Funnily enough, what we found out was that a big portion of the SimSports drivers, let's focus on racing right now, they actually do have a gaming PC with, more often than not, Asetek liquid cooling inside. So there is actually a big overlap of customers. In terms of the total market size, we have not really gone that detail yet because what's important for us is that we believe there is a significant market and that we believe the market is growing. Being a part of real racing and having been a part of it for many years, looking at the green side with noise, gasoline, et cetera, for sure, sim racing is taking over and merging and becoming more -- the fine lines between, let's say, simulation and reality is being wiped out. So we believe in the market. How big it exactly is at this point in time, we actually don't know. What we can see is that, let's call it, the main competitor, or the current market leader, they are projecting plus EUR 100 million in revenue this year. I think there are several flaws in their business model, in the product program and in their execution. So I firmly believe there's space for more than one. I also believe that there is a whole forest. As I said earlier, we looked at 120 just racing simulator companies. So there's a whole forest of smaller companies that are doing components, and they seem, all of them, to be doing reasonably well. So that's kind of the indicators we have used.

Yes. Staying in the same segment. Can you talk more about the market strategy in SimSports? Will it be B2B only or B2C only?

It will definitely be also B2C. I don't believe in a business model where we are only selling directly to consumers.

Very good. Changing gear. Once again, totally to our new innovation facility here in Aalborg, can you add comments on what operational possibilities and competencies it will add that we don't have today?

Well, that's difficult because we have most of it in-house today. But what I can say is that we are completely filled up today. There's not really room for any expansion. And frankly, if there was empty facilities available, we would have to move much sooner than this new place will require. So it's mainly a question about us growing out of what we have. And we have searched a lot, and we've not really been able to find anything that -- it's -- for the region we are in, we are actually becoming a pretty large company, and it's been impossible to find anything that's larger than what we have right now.

Very good. That actually brought us to the end of the list here. Let me just reload to see if there's anything else. No, we have arrived at the list. André, do you want to make a closing remark of any kind other than saying thank you for...

What I want to say is, of course, thank you for listening in. It would have been more ideal for all of us, I believe, if we could have met. That's not the case. On the flip side, you saved your traveling time today. But we definitely believe it's exciting times. And I would say proactively, since nobody asked the question, that, to me, I have been facing this question from investors for many years. How is the next quarter going to look like? And it's actually pretty frustrating. It's a pretty frustrating question, not because I'm not willing to answer, but because I cannot answer. In the short term, we have low visibility, as always. And although it may sound contradictory that we are then guiding 5 years ahead, it's like the weather forecast. They can't say the weather tomorrow, but they can present global warming in 100 years. It's a little bit the same. I feel much, much better talking about a 5-year growth plan than I am talking about Q3, for example. And the reason for that is I believe we can see and we can spot the large trends. But what I cannot say is will I get a bad quarter 3 quarters from now. So from my perspective, I think it's nice to be able to have this goal. And for sure, we will probably have to adjust it one way or the other during the next 5 years. But at least, now we have a stick in the ground to aim for, and I think that's important to all of us. So I think that's it.

Perfect. Thank you for listening in. This will be available on our website in a few hours, I'm sure. And well, you know where we are, send us an e-mail, [email protected], if you have questions. Thank you for your time.

Thank you.

This concludes our conference call. Thank you all for attending. You may now disconnect your lines.