Electrolux Professional AB (publ) (EPROB) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

[Presentation] Welcome to Electrolux Professional Investor Day. We're broadcasting live from our demonstration kitchen in our largest food factory here in Pordenone in Italy. Welcome also to those of you who watch online, and for those of you who are live with us here in Pordenone, my name is Jacob Broberg. I'm Head of Corporate Communication and Investor Relations. Some housekeeping rules before we start. All of you who watch online, you have the opportunity to ask questions. [Operator Instructions]. And for those of you who are here in the room, you have the opportunity to ask questions, and we will then hand out to the microphone. So today's presenters, as you hopefully have seen, is Alberto Zanata, who's the CEO of the company; Mr. Dave Herring, who is running our Food Business Americas Organization; and Fabio Zarpellon, our CFO. So if we take a look at the agenda for today, as you hopefully know, I mean, we will focus on 3 things. It's a general update from Alberto, the food business in Americas, and of course, the financial update. For those of you who participate live here in Italy, you will also be able to see the factory, a lot of our products and also demonstration of our connected appliances. And I think with that, let's get started. Alberto. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Jacob, and good morning to everybody. So let's start with a picture of what is Electrolux Professional today? I mean watching the video, you already got the numbers about Electrolux Professional. But let's bridge this number what it was a year ago. A year ago, when we met in Ljungby for the ones who attended the Investor Day in Ljungby last year, there are 3 major things that are different from what was presented to you in Ljungby. The first one is the turnover. This is a rolling 12 months, so including the last quarter of last year and without the last quarter of this year. So for instance, the sales of Unified Brands are not included or they are only for 1 month because we acquired the company December 1. So -- and the first number is that for the first time since we separated, but only for the second time, since we were even a sector in the division, we are above the SEK 10 billion in terms of net sales. So it is a threshold. It is a step that we are taking in the progress we are doing to improve the business. The second one is that the share of Laundry business is smaller compared to the one we had a year ago. Two reasons: clearly, the Food & Beverage business recovered faster or better. They recovered because it went down significantly because of the pandemic, while the Laundry already recovered in 2021 and in 2022 develop steadily. The second one is that we added the Unified Brand business that is in the food area. So a comment could be, okay, we are growing more the less profitable part of the business. The reality is that if we match this mix with the market, you have to remember that the Laundry business is 1/10 of the Food & Beverage. So it is natural that we have a larger part of that business in that area. The third one, equally important is the geographical mix. So a year ago, the share of business coming from United States, from North America, from the Americas was much less than what it is today. That is already 1/3 of the total business of this company. And we will see this later how important it is considering the current environment. So with this said, the first part of the time we will spend together, I want to dedicate it to the market. I believe -- or at least these are the questions that I'm usually receiving how it's going, what is going to happen. I will not focus so much on this chart that is already well known basically to everybody. But let's have a look at the result of some research, some analysis that have been provided to us from external institutes during the past months. The first one on the left is showing the tourism or travel spending. You know that travel was one of the last subsegment of the hospitality industry recovering after the pandemic, in particular, business travel. Here, we are talking about the tourism that was indeed the opposite or the first one to recover. But you see that one element is that for the whole 2021, the part of this business that recovered the group was the domestic travelers. So people traveled staying inside of the country or inside of the continent. Indeed, Asia was locked down until basically spring, summer of this year. So you see the second chart, the one on the right, that is showing the international tourist arrivals. And you see the green line is that 2022 updated to July. So it is a fresh number. And you see how rapid is the growth of number of international tourist arriving. This is showing the reopening, in particular, with the routes to Asia but also North America, Americas in general. So the tourist and travel is coming back faster and reopening in a global way. Another important element that we consider, this is the out-of-home spending. So yesterday, today, you are participating in the out-of-home spending because we are all spending money to eat, sleep, travel or whatever out of home. So there is not a direct relation between the out-of-home spending and the sales of equipment. But clearly, if there are more people spending money eating out of home, in the case is eating or washing the linen out of home, obviously our customers sooner or later will have to buy the equipment to treat this food, this linen and this other stuff. So it is not direct, but it is a good indicator to understand if the business is growing, if we are going to get sales of equipment today or in the near future. And here, you can see this is by geography. Here, you can see that the market is not back to the '19 level yet. So the out-of-home spending in 2022 is expected to be still below the '19 level. It is expected to go over -- to reach the '19 level in 2023 and then further growing. This chart was updated during the summer. So this number are coming from research that was commissioned during the summer. The other element that is important to notice here is that, if the overall out-of-home spending is not back to the '19 level, it is in North America. So North America recovered faster than the other part of the world. This is the same chart, not by geography but by customer segments. And obviously, the total is the same. But here, the thing that has to be noticed is that there is one segment that already recovered the '19 level, and that is the QSR, so the commercial restaurant chains, okay? So the reading out of these 2 charts, again updating July, is that the market is not back to the '19 level or at least the spending of people like us is not back to the '19 level, is in a recovery trend -- still in a recovery trend. And all the markets, geography or segments are still late to the '19 level with the exception of Americas and commercial restaurant chains. Now the point is that, okay, but this is old because during the summer we had the acceleration of the energy costs going up, the inflation items kicking in, all this concern about possible recession. And that is the reason why I want to show you another index is different. In this case, it's even more related to our business than the one before because these are the number of outlets in the market. Outlet means restaurants or bar or cafes -- so establishments. So in this case, the relation is one-to-one to our business, meaning that, obviously, if there are more outlets, by definition, they have to buy more equipment. Because not only the replacement that is the big chunk of our business, but there is also the new one coming. So more outlet means more business. And here, this one has been updated to the last day of October this year. So it's super recent, very fresh. In this case, I'm showing you United States and Europe, we have the same for Asia and Middle East, and I tell you that the trend is obviously even more positive in those 2 part of the world. So the growth is faster in these 2 parts of the world. But the important thing here is to see that in the United States, again, the number of outlets is similar to the '19 level, no surprise considering what we saw before. But we also see that it is expected to grow even next year and the following ones. In Europe, it is the same trend, so growing next year and the following one. But it is not yet at the level of 2019. So again, I believe no surprise, just confirming what we saw in the out of spending -- out-of-home spending, but this is with a more strict relation, let me say, to our business. So this is, in some way, confirming also the feeling that we have looking at the order intake that is still not as high as last year. But remember that last year, I think I mentioned more than once that in some way the order intake was inflated by the number of orders we were receiving, that were anticipated by our customers because of the announcement of the price increase from January 1 because of the fear of not having the product available when needed due to the lack of components or the supply chain issues. This doesn't mean that we don't hear, we don't see what is happening around. This is the reason why also a couple of weeks ago, we're commenting the Q3 result, I said that we are preparing for a possible downturn. But at the same time, I would like to further underline that we are preparing. We can't get by surprise, obviously. But what we see from the market, from our customer or the customer of our customer is that they're still in a positive momentum. The market or the industry -- the hospitality industry with some plus, some minus where we are in. It is an industry that, in any case is changing because the supply chain disruption created problem. The inflationary item that are today hitting the industry are creating problem. For instance, there are things where our customers are optimizing the menu. They are looking at instead of increasing the price of the item, they are reducing the quantity of food that you have on the plate. If they reduce by 10% the size of the steak, I bet you are not able to see this one happening. But it is, in any case, a reduction of the cost of the raw material. They are reengineering the menu, the meaning that they are using items that are less costly than the others or things like that. For sure, they are looking at the technology to make the operation more efficient. It is what we are doing in our factory. You will see this visit in the factory. At the end, the kitchen is a small -- it's a sort of small factory. So if you are able to digitalize the operations, then you will make the factory more -- the factory, sorry -- the restaurant more productive, more efficient. And at the end, you're saving money. If you're using equipment that are using less energy, less gas, less water, you generate savings. You do well for the environment, but in particular, you generate savings for your operations. So these are important things that are connected to trend that are there in the industry such as sustainability. I just mentioned this one. And it is not only to be green, to safeguard the environment, it's also to make sure that I have more money in my pockets. Energy cost, I believe we said it, Fabio will give you also some hard numbers about that are not materially impacting our business, but they are the business of our restaurant. I believe the electrical bill or the gas bill for a restaurant is one of the major offender as well as for a laundry operation. So to deliver products that are significantly reducing, these 2 items is super important as well as everybody is talking about the ghost kitchen. It was the most talking things during the pandemic. I don't know what people were thinking about ghost kitchen was. In reality, it is a kitchen. So it is an existing hard kitchen where there are people working inside. The only point is that customers are not going to that kitchen, that is only used to deliver food to customers because that time people were not able to travel to go to the restaurant. The restaurant were closed. That is not something that disappeared after the pandemic. It is still there. That is an habit that we didn't lose. I don't know if you are used or not to call the -- any company, from Uber or whatever, to get food at home. But in particular, the young generation are using this one, I would say, every day. So ghost kitchen are still growing and it is good for us because the ghost kitchen, in particular, it is typically not one kitchen, but it's the aggregation of several kitchens in one building. Each and every one dedicated to different kind of ethnic food. So for us that we deliver everything that you can think about in a kitchen, we are the perfect partner for the operator of this ghost kitchen because they can get from one company and they can get everything that they need. With this said about the market, I believe the other question. So if one was how do you see the market, the other question was, okay, how do you see the trend of the business? How do you see you reacting to a possible downturn of the business. What happened when there was the financial crisis in 2009? So we dig into the number. Now we have -- I'm presenting to you and showing you a long-time trend of our business. If some of you already did it, and I know that some did it, looking at the annual report of the Electrolux Group, this number are different because we have been restating this number, eliminating, for instance, the sales of some businesses, the sales of some assets. So that happened mainly in 2010, 2011. So here, you will see -- you will not find the sales of -- we sold a dealer in the United States. We sold a production unit producing heating elements and so nothing with our business in Switzerland that we're building here and there. So these are apple with apple, let me say, sales. So you see that in 2009, when the financial crisis hit this -- not this industry, but every industry, our business went down roughly 10%. And no surprise, it was more on the food side. We didn't have beverage and roughly half of it was laundry. So Laundry is proving to be resilient as well as during the pandemic, also during the financial crisis, the Laundry business didn't decline so much. So that is the first thing. Then 2012 -- sorry, 2010 was the year of rebound. So why such a high peak of profitability? Because in 2009 during the crisis, they've been as normally restructuring, so taking out cost incentives. And in 2010, due to the drop of the demand, the price of the material went down significantly. So the 3 elements altogether, they boosted the business on that year. Then the other things important one was that, we had the European recession. So in 2010, from the '10 onwards, America, for instance, went up. They continued the growth. This did not happen in Europe because there was the euro crisis, at least the ones of you who remember it. And it was in particular hard or tough in the South European countries that were and the South European countries were the largest share of our business. So these are the things that are explaining these things. For what concerned the last years, I believe I'm spending only a few seconds about that because, yes, I said that we are back over at least a rolling. And clearly, around the EUR 10 billion or above of sales. And the other important thing is that it is true that percentage-wise, the margin is not back to the '19 level or even less to the peak that we have in '17, '18, where we are close to our target of 15%. But it's also true that in absolute value, we are more or less back to the '19 level. There have been always teach that, typically, you pay the bill with the absolute number and not with the percentages. So it is important also to look at the absolute numbers. Also because investors, we paid the dividend on the absolute number. So it's 1/3 of the absolute number that will be divided for dividends, obviously to approval and so and so. The other important thing is that if this is what happened in '19, today, we are a different company from the one we were in 2009. If a financial crisis will hit us, today, we are a different company than what we were in 2009. We have a Laundry business. We had it in the past. It is even stronger and larger today, and we know it is proven also by the pandemic that the Laundry business is more resilient. The other thing I said -- I mentioned that we've been hit harder than competitors because we had majority of our business. The North America business was less than 10% at that time. So the market in U.S. restarted. In particular, the commercial restaurant chains that during the financial crisis, they had the best ever year because when you have a crisis like that one, that is not the one that we had with the COVID when we were locked at home. But you have a financial crisis, people will not change the habit to it out of home. They will just spend less. And they are spending less, you go to the commercial restaurant chains. I was living in the States, and I remember that McDonald was advertising a full menu for $0.99. Chips, Burger and cola. So I mean you can afford even if you are in a financial crisis. So today, 1/3 of our business is in the U.S. The share of business coming from commercial restaurant chains is much larger than what it was in the past. And the third thing that have not forget is that we just left a crisis much worse than the one that hit the market in 2009. And we have been proving that we have been able to manage the downturn, the slowdown of the sales, managing costs, managing assets, managing the business at the end to keep going. I think it's important to remember this one because we are preparing, as I said. We are preparing for 2023 that we hope it will be another year in the recovering path. But clearly, the single side there are not so positive. So we believe that the material, for instance, will become -- the availability of components will be much better than what it has been during this year. It has been an itinerary in the factory to manage. You know pretty well what we have been forced to do in the Laundry business because we were missing the electronic board. And by the way, I was reading reports also from our competitor who had the same experience. They had to preproduce product and now they are recovering them. So we are also expecting the material price going down. The surcharge that we applied in May, now has been consolidated in price. If you remember in May, we said we don't know it is expiring in October. It has been consolidated, becoming a price increase and we are planning to have some price increases also next year to compensate the other inflationary item, in particular, transportation, that is important for us. So we are doing the things to prepare this company to the worst, clearly hoping for the best. So if this is the market, these are in some way the history, but also how we are preparing ourselves, I believe it is important to say that despite everything, this chart is exactly the same that I presented when we separated in 2020. Our strategy is unchanged and not because we are lazy or because we have no ideas, it's because these are the important priorities. These are the things that if we are able to deliver well, will -- we make this company stronger and more profitable. I believe it's very simple, and I like and I think that if I'm here to present to you the strategy of this group using 20 slides, then if I would be you, I would be doubtful that we will be able to deliver about that. This is simple. Everybody in this company knows that we have to grow the business through innovative solution or product, that we have to grow the customer care, that we have to grow in North America and with the chains, and now you understand also why considering what happened in 2009, and that we have to invest and accelerate the digitalization of our product and our offer. And what I want to spend few minutes with you is to update you on where we are against this priority. Because if they were the same when we separated, it is important to see where are we now against this priority. The first one is about product. We are constantly bringing new product to the market. Many of them are products that are addressing the chain needs. The one on the left, for instance, the SafeBox is a specific product for the delivery and for the drive-through business, ghost kitchen or those kind of stuff. We are constantly bringing to market products that are delivering enormous savings in terms of energy and water. This has been something that we have been doing since server. I would say, it is deep into the DNA of this company and the people working here. We don't have even to talk about the possible saving or the fact that we need to develop product with saving because this is coming to the mind immediately to everybody who is in the development area. We are also making progress for what concern the restaurant chains. So you see the progression coming during the year. So the year when we had the financial crisis that I told you. It was the year where we had limited business also in North America, to today when we have obviously now Unified Brand, part of the group and as a consequence, contributing well to the development of the chain business. And please do consider this one. If you make a comparison with our competitors, roughly the American, they have 50% of the business coming from American chain. We have 50% of our turnover in North America coming from commercial restaurant chains. This is related to the entire group. So there is also the laundering side, and obviously, with the laundry -- yes. I think you understand that you don't sell laundry appliances to McDonald's. We sell a washing machine to McDonald's for the mops, but it's not really a core business for the commercial restaurant chains. So if you exclude the laundry there, you are around 25% roughly of the business coming from chains. Good progression year-over-year. We are making progress also on the customer care business. I've been asked more than once where are you? Here, this is the progression of the share of business coming from customer cares versus the total net sales. And 2017, why 2017, because 2017 is the year when we launched the Essentia program, the program that is a sort of flagship for Electrolux Professional for what concern, caring about the customers. And you see that now is above 18% -- is close to 20%. That was in our initial target even if never declared. It was our initial target for what customer care. And I'm very proud of this one because it is also coming with a strong development of the top line of the sales of the product. And it's coming mainly from having sold consumable accessories, so upselling. When technician is visiting a customer, he's not just repairing the product. He's also upselling services to this customer, items that can make the product working better. It is important. Clearly, the largest part is still the spare parts. But I don't think we want to build a business selling parts because this means that the product broke when we sell a part. So we want to build the business, making sure that our products are lasting longer and working better. And last but not least of our strategy pillar is obviously the digitalization of our company. These are the targets that we have been also showing to you in the past. And here is where we are. So last year, we had the pilot countries, Germany, Sweden, U.K. During this year, we extended -- or we deployed the system and the OnE platform in many other countries from Korea to New Zealand to many European countries. We still missed big country like North America, like Italy, for instance or others. But in the country where we installed the OnE platform, we already see that the target we had have been overcome because 72% of the orders in those countries are going through the OnE platform. They use the OnE platform to access, to connect with the company, to place the orders. We see that in terms of value is less why? Because if you have a large order, typically a project, still they prefer to do it in other ways than going through the platform. But it's coming. But look at the parts, accessories and consumable, we are talking about 100%. We do not receive any more orders in those countries for what concern, part, accessories and consumable in any way other than through OnE platform because we are adding value to the customer. I'm always stressing this company that the digitalization, the connectivity, whatever you want to call it, is meaningless, if you do not add value for the customers. But adding value is super important. In particular, when we will be able to connect even the product, when it is not only a business connection between the dealer, the service agent, the company, the customer, but it's also among them plus the product. And this is also -- you will have the possibility at least the ones have been present here in Pordenone, you will see it live. We see how it works because it's not anymore something a dream or something there. It's reality. It is what we are going to bring to the market today in Food and in a quarter, in Laundry. I will -- I believe that the Laundry, in particular, in North America in a couple of years from now, there will not be any coin shop, any laundrette that will not be fully connected because it's giving the possibility to the customer to improve management, to improve efficiency, to manage well in particular, if you are a chain, all the appliances that you have spread around the country. And in particular, at least the one known to me that this is my dream. It's the dream to have the service provided automatically to our appliances without having the customer calling the service, but having the service going to visit the customer and telling them, look, your product will be down in an hour, better I repair it for you. So this is where we are in all these things. And all these things are embedded in our overall vision that is what we call our sustainability vision. That is not just being green, even if it is important, in particular on these days, when we see many things changing the environment. But it's important that we go ahead with our plan and we are perfectly in line with our ambition to be climate-neutral 2030. But not only, we have been also clearly addressing the fact that while our declaration and our targets are related to Scope 1 and Scope 2, majority of the CO2 emissions are coming from the usage of our product. 90% of that is coming from the usage of our product. And so that is the reason why we are going to set up the way -- the target also to reduce the CO2 emission from our products. So including the Scope 3 in our environmental target. So this is good for the company. It's good for our customer because they will save money and clearly, good for the world where we live or at least our kids will live in the future. So with this said, I believe Jacob, we are back to you.

Thank you, Alberto. And we will now open up for questions. Those of you who are in the room, you can use the microphone and ask the questions. And for those of you who are online, I remind you that on the web window, you can just write your question and then I will read it up here. So I open up for questions. I have no questions from the web yet. But maybe someone in the room.

Karri Rinta, Handelsbanken. Can you talk a bit about competitive landscape, mainly in the Food & Beverage business? Maybe firstly, what happened during the pandemic in Europe, which has been a bit more fragmented market. So have you had some smaller competitors exiting, merging. So what has happened there? And then about the -- specifically about North America, what has happened since Ali Group took over Welbilt in the U.S.

First, I believe you should ask, Dave, about the North America one, but I believe there is no -- there are no changes in what we see in the market, okay? But remember that Ali is famous or the way of managing the business from Ali is to leave the company that they acquired normally, totally independent. So I'm not expecting that there will be a different treatment for the Welbilt Group. So I don't see for the time being, at least, we don't see differences in the dynamic. Reps, dealers are still doing the business as they were used to do in the past. So nothing special. We have also to say that they've been -- 2022 was a crazy year in the meaning that, component availability, scarcity of product. So in many cases, you were getting what you were able to find, let's put it in this way. So we don't see differences. We don't see company going out of business. There have been not so many movements in the acquisitions. I would say that beside the big one. So Ali and Welbilt, the largest is the one that we closed in December with the acquisition of Unified Brand.

All right. Good. Then maybe one additional one about Laundry. I mean you see that it has higher margins. It's more stable. It's maybe lower growth. But the -- are you still seeing more organic growth in front of you? Or have you reconsidered your position when it comes to M&A? Do you think that there might be some scope for M&A?

Okay. First, we never said that we don't want to buy laundry company, okay? We acquired Schneidereit in Germany. If a laundry company is coming to market and is becoming available and it has the right profitability, I believe we will be -- we will, for sure, evaluate the possibility to acquire. The point is that there are not so many. So while in the Food business there are thousands of companies, very small some of them, sizable others, but there are many, many companies. In the Laundry, there are really a few players, if you consider country by country. And we are talking about mainly the professional part. If you remember, we are always segmenting the industrial, but we are not really interested on that one because the margin is low to run the business in that part. And the semi-professional that is typically connected to consumer products to consumer producers. So the big chunk in the middle is what we call professional. So they are the products that we produce, that we market. And half of the market is covered by 2 brands. One of the 2 is Electrolux Professional. Then the other, we have some player, but we don't have so many competitors. So more than happy, honestly, if something is coming up. But is not excluded. The only comment is that there are not so many. I think it's important the first part of your question is about the organic. You are sitting pretty close to Paolo, who is now leading the Business Area, Laundry. He will be very happy to tell you that there are a bunch of opportunity to grow organically in the laundry business. There are markets where we do not have a very high market share. There are business models where we are just starting. For instance, the rental business that is relatively common in the laundry business and we have it limited only to Germany and Austria. So there is still the possibility to grow organically, gaining market share following the market.

I have a couple of questions from the web too. The first one comes from Henrik Christiansson at Carnegie. He asks if you can say anything about profitability levels on customer care business compared to appliance -- sales of appliances. And also profitability of when you sell it through the OnE platform, is it different compared to traditional sales channels.

Okay. The profitability of the customer care, we don't disclose the hard numbers, so the exact number, but I believe you clearly understand that is higher than the product sales. It is important to say that the 2 things are in some way related clearly. If I don't sell the product, it's harder to have the customer care business. So the 2 things, they get together pretty well. And then when we develop, for instance, new product, we are always thinking about how we can also match the product development with a customer care package development.

The OnE -- the profitability of the OnE platform.

The OnE platform in this moment, no. The profitability is not higher in terms of gross profit. Evidently not today, but I'm expecting that tomorrow I will generate efficiency in the order management. So in the cost, in the fixed cost that I have inside of the organization.

Thank you. Next question is from Stefan Stjernholm, Nordea, who asks, given the demand that the demand seems to soften, have it become harder to increase prices to offset cost inflation? What's your view on 2023, will you be able to fully compensate 2023.

So I think I mentioned that we convert the surcharges into price increase. They were expiring at the end of October, they've been transferred. They've been solidified into a price increase, and we already announced our price increase from January 1. It's not as large as it was in the past, but you will see also when Fabio will present the financial that, today, with the current prices, with the carryover of what we did last year and beginning of this year, we are already totally compensating the material. So we are also able to compensate the inflationary item. So unless things are different for what we know today, this should be more than enough to compensate inflationary item next year. We are also thinking that material, they should go down sooner or later.

Thank you. And then we have a question from Johan Eliason at Kepler Cheuvreux about the Laundry. Can you give some details on how our Laundry business had become stronger since the global financial crisis in 2009-'10. Is it because of increased market shares or more consolidated markets? Why is it stronger today than 2009, the Laundry business?

Okay. I don't want that you feel that I'm arrogant. But I believe -- it's stronger in us because we did better. So we developed great product, a technology product that are bringing value to the customers. And with this one, we gained market share. We gained clearly market share. I don't believe that our sales in North America are growing double digit, but not 11%. Much more than that in Laundry. And the market is not growing so much. It is clear that we are gaining market share, thanks to the very good product, quality product. We don't disclose this number, but we are obviously measuring the service rate and we never had a so low service rate that we have today. So they are durable product, reliable product that, at the same time, are very innovative with technology. That's not always is easy to combine the 2 things. So it's a gain of market share that I believe will continue, in particular, thanks to the digital innovation that we are bringing to the market.

Thank you. Do we have any more questions from the room? If not, I think we will conclude for now.

Thank you, Alberto. We will now leave for Dave Herring, who will present about the Americas business. Please welcome on stage Dave.

Thank you, Jacob. Good morning, everyone, and I will say I'm very excited to be here. As the newest member of the leadership team coming with the acquisition, 11.5 months ago, not quite 1 year yet. We got anniversary next month. But 11.5 months ago, it's been a whirlwind. First and foremost, those 11.5 months feel about like 11.5 days. But as we get into it, it's been exciting. And I get the fortunate pleasure to talk about the second strategic pillar about how do we expand the foodservice and chains and particularly, how do we grow our share in the Americas that influence the rest of the world. But really, before I talk about that, I want to talk a little bit about going through the acquisition process. When you come from the outside, obviously, there's natural concerns: what's the impact on Unified Brands, what's going to be the impact on the people I've developed, on me personally as a career. So as we got into this early in the discussions of the acquisition, so last summer -- end of last summer, at the height of the pandemic, the country restrictions, I remember talking with Alberto and Fabio and we're trying to figure out how to meet personally together and countries were locked down. We're looking at neutral countries. It's like we're trying to find the Switzerland, if you will. But we ultimately got an opportunity to come here, and we got to see this complex and the investment that's been made by Electrolux Professional. In their pure strength in the European market, it's pretty phenomenal. On the flip side, in the U.S., it's relatively small. As we sat down and started to talk, we got through the pleasantries and the introductions. When I started to hear Fabio's and Alberto's vision of the future and what could this be and what should this be, it started to get exciting. So it went from a concern to, quite honestly, excitement and optimism. And we started talking about how does the market look different in the U.S. And Alberto particularly served 5 years in the U.S., starting the Electrolux Professional business. So he saw these nuances in these differences. As we talked a little bit at the table last night, a kitchen, you heat something or you cool something. But here in Europe, it's done differently. You see a pretty elaborate kitchen, very nice setup, in a less emphasis on chains than in the U.S. In the U.S., half our business is with chains. And they're not looking at one restaurant or one showpiece, they're looking at 1,000, 2,000, 10,000 outlets. So a very different approach. They're still cooking. They're still cooling, but at the end of the day, it's a different approach to it. So when I was part of the Dover Corporation before this, the executives didn't understand that. We're 1 of 20 different companies. Again, a strong financially, viable company, good leadership, but just different markets. Here, what I noticed is right away they actually understand the market better than I do. So it's kind of fun to know the nuances. What Richard faces in Asia is different than what we faced in the Americas, which is different than Europe. So with that as I look at the # 2 priority, we're one of 20 companies before. Now I'm the second priority, top priority of the corporation. So you imagine, it's a little bit more exciting going forward. And you'll see that on my leadership team and on our entire integrated group in the Americas now. So really, there's 5 major takeaways, if you will, from my presentations. One, the importance of the U.S. market. It's growing. If you look at the size of the market, it's a large market. In the relative share, while strong in Europe, it's very small in the U.S. Home of the large global food chains. The fact of the matter is it's very prevalent in the U.S. And those chains are not only growing in the U.S. but they're expanding internationally. To be effective in any market, you've got to be customer obsessed. You've got to understand the nuances of the channel to market, what they value, how to design with them in person, and that's very important. And then we talked about acquisitions or M&A or what's going on in the dynamic market. Well, the fact of the matter is -- so the fact of the matter is, 1/3 of the market in the far right side, a 1/3 of the middle, and a little bit larger share but the rest in the Americas. So the fact of matter is that it's important. But also you look at the growth rate. To that point is, restaurants, especially in chains as we see them go through different environment like the recession. Quite honestly, they're very sophisticated. So they will slow down quickly and adjust, but then they'll ramp up and adjust our model quickly. So as we got into lockdown mode, let's face it, restaurant chains, quick service restaurants were already set up for delivery, for drive-thru, for different ways of doing it, and they've accelerated presence hospitals. So -- and those -- there's over 0.5 million outlets. So we can't touch each one individually as us. So we have independent resellers and independent reps that call them. And we have strong historical relationships with those. In the restaurant chains, they do kind of half and half, while we'll sell and spec directly with their operations folks. At the end of the day, they'll fulfill it through a distribution network because they've got so many outlets, one location won't work for them. And then another growing area is the retail chains. And what they'll do, oftentimes, whether primary business is grocery or a convenience store, they'll start doing prepared food on the side, and they're pretty sophisticated too. So they'll tend to order in place business direct with us. So again, you've got to know, each channel of the customer and how they work. We'll spend all day on this chart. But being customer SaaS is also about knowing the channel, having a relationship with those channels. So for us, again, not to spend a lot of time on this, but we have a direct sales team that's focused on our independent reps and how they go to market. We have a direct sales team that actually focus on our end customers, drive the spec, specialty chains, and then they'll drive that business through our distribution channels, so they can fulfill it with the dealers. And then certainly, on the parts side of it, we got yet a different supply chain or channel to market, and we have partnership there and with our authorized service agents. And something that I think Europe has done much better than us is on that customer care, that aftermarket sale. In the U.S., we're typically very, very focused on that initial equipment sale. So we have opportunity to expand, learn what's been done over here and successful and apply that to our home base. The question came up about the changes in the marketplace and the landscape as far as competition. For the U.S., you see a little over half the business is really handled through, I call them, the major category suppliers. Middleby, Ali, ITW. But even those folks go to market. We compete with their individual brands. I don't compete as Unified Brands or Electrolux Professional now with Middleby. I compete with growing versus their esteemed platform. I compete with Welbilt with Delfield versus [ Groen, Randell ]. So again, it's very much down to the product category level. And then that other category on the far side, the single category player, hundreds still exist are still relevant in the U.S. folks like True, which does refrigeration very, very well, a private company. Alto-Shaam, there's Combi Ovens, CaptiveAire and Bob Luddy, he's been in the -- he owns the Air Handling Systems and the ventilation. He's been doing the business for 40 years. Mid-70s and still running strong. Then you've got Perlick, which is on the third generation of the family. The grandchildren run the business now, which is back bar equipment. So again, there's a long runway, not just for organic growth, but there's opportunities that come forward with like-minded, high-quality, highly engineered products that as they become available, it's something for us to consider. If you look at the timeline, and this is really important, trusted brands, and that's something that really resonates in the U.S. because while we're not oftentimes designing the entire kitchen, we'll be very focused on certain applications within the kitchen. And as Unified Brands, we tend to focus on the center of the kitchen, where the chef interacts, that chef stand, the chef table how they're going to prepare the food, how they're going to hold the prepared food or while it's being prepared, how is the exact temperature. If you get the peripherals of the -- of a restaurant, oftentimes very utilitarian type of equipment, shelving, racking, generic refrigeration. We don't do a lot there because we can't add a lot of value. But as you get towards the center of the kitchen, that chef is actually creating their brand. And as you help them optimize their factory, I would say, a food factory, it makes them more efficient and more profitable. So we're really focusing on that center of the kitchen. And with trusted brands, those chefs have grown up through school or as first job in a restaurant or as they open up their own restaurant, they go back to, hey, I used to work with Groen on this. Or hey, I work with somebody out of Middleby on this. It's very important. So on this chart, you'll see Electrolux Professional has really established at the far right side in 2004 when Alberto came over. So in a way, it's still a very new brand in the U.S. and when you talk about longevity. And if you look at with the strategic and very select acquisitions, the Electrolux Professional did in 2017 with Grindmaster and then with Unified Brands this past year, now all of a sudden, we're no longer a 20-year-old company. We're a 120-year-old company with people that -- I've gone out in the field, I'll see our kettles from Groen, started in 1907. I'll find them from 1980, 1990, still operating. And what they'll do is they'll make sure they repair that one because they know it works, they want to keep it running. So again, it's about being a trusted brand. And by being part of this bigger family, now also we have opportunities to take these brands that do very well, are very well trusted in Europe, how can we bring those into the U.S. So what's the new Electrolux Professional in the U.S. First of all, historically, it's -- the U.S. has been much more of a regional distribution center with some small manufacturing for Electrolux Professional with really a commercial-oriented focus. Now if you look at it, we're 650 employees strong. We're over 100 years old in the industry. We're $250 million-plus in U.S dollars in sales. We have 600,000 square feet -- or 60 square meters in factories in 3 different locations. You see a host of unique brands and trusted brands. Now again, I'm not -- personally, I'm not looking to be the next Ali or Middleby that has everything and this and that and all these different -- we want to be the right value-add engineered products into this space because that's where you get that customer intimacy and that's where you can really make a difference on their operations. So we're highly regarded with leading brands. We do have long-term customer relationships. I remember when I first started with Unified Brands 8 years ago, the leadership at Dover, so you can do anything you want, but just be careful on the sales side because our sales team has years and years of experience. Our head of sales spend in 17, 18 years with us now, started his career with Coca-Cola. So again, it's a deep industry with deep knowledge. In my career, working with Emerson Electric, Avery Dennison, I can name on one hand the number of customers I know by first name. So a very industrial type of industry. Here in the Food & Beverage, it's very much hospitality. I know more customers by first name. I know their spouses, I know their kids because it's part of that community. And so that relationship goes long ways. It's hard for me to come over here to Europe and infiltrate a customer, just like it's hard for Electrolux Professional historically to come to the U.S. from Italy and infiltrate a customer. So bringing that together and then bringing the products and trusted brands behind it is very powerful. So our 3 facilities, our newest or most modern ones in Vicksburg, Mississippi. We used to have 5 rooftops. We combined them down to 3 and actually increased our square footage for growth in the future. But just like all the other companies, each of our brands used to be a privately held small company. And so as we brought those together, we're getting efficiencies and scale and build up. So Vicksburg, Mississippi being our newest with a little over 300,000 square feet and 265 employees. Predominantly focused on our Groen cooking line in our Power Soak or wash line. If you go to up north to Weidman, Michigan, I know these are easy to get to. But in Weidman, Michigan in the middle of the state is our facility, predominantly focused on Randell. And Randell was part of the DeLorenzo family, years ago that was acquired by Dover. We still have 3 -- well, I should say, 2 of their sons that work for us for years and years. And the third one actually retired last year. So again, it's a very intimate business. And these employees, 320 strong up there, a lot of them are -- been there for 10, 20, 30, 40 years. It's a very sticky industry. Once you get in, I guess you can't get out, I'm finding out. But the fact of the matter is, their siblings that work there, there's cousins, there's nieces, their nephews. So again, it's a very tight personal family style business in a much bigger corporation. And then certainly, last but not least, is Louisville, Kentucky, which was the original or the legacy Electrolux Professional facility. And again, the production has been moved off into Thailand, that's really a distribution center and warehousing for product coming from Italy and from Asia for Electrolux Professional and staged there and then moved to our customers. So again, all 3 very critical sites, all 3 very important sites. And again, long-tenured employees that have been there for years and years. Now I'll talk a little bit about new product development and innovation in the space. To have in-country research and development is absolutely critical. It sounds funny or -- cliche-ish, but we will design products on the back of a napkin. The one on the left is a cheeser station, we actually have it in the demo room now. It's something where we've done business with -- we do business with 8 out of top 10 pizza chains in the world. They're some of our largest customers. Quite honestly, 2 we don't do business with, they're price driven. And so it's okay. They can buy cheap and they try to cheapen their product or how they go to market. But the ones that truly are specialists in this area, we work with them on a day-to-day basis. So we've taken years and years and years of experience and designed something around that market that's very specific to solve a certain need. Cheese is the most expensive and one of the most important brands making portion of a pizza. So if you put too much on a pizza, you're wasting money. It's too much raw material. If you put too little on a pizza, it affects your quality of taste and flavor, which is bad for the brand. So we actually work in scales, in different technologies in this to actually make it just perfect because, again, pizza is about fast. It's about delivery. It's about getting out there. So they want to do it fast. And you've got, let's face it, high school kids making a pizza. So how do we make it easier and more effective for them to do it. And we apply our experience across the industry. Now on the right side, a little bit different type of development. We're a leader in the steam category across the U.S. with a 100-year-old brand. So we've got hundreds of years of experience on what works and what doesn't work. Steam's a difficult category, water quality, et cetera, et cetera. But by understanding that and making it the most robust, the highest quality, updated and modernized features, we can actually innovate around a segment, not just a customer platform. But we have roughly 50 engineers on the payroll in the U.S., focused on a day-to-day basis, working with our customers and working with our operations to make sure it all comes together. Other examples of chain relationships and why it's so important to us. Here's 3 different examples, a leading sandwich chain. As they're looking at how do I create differentiation and create my brand. I may go from a pressed sandwich, a panini style sandwich, but going forward, I want to do a toasted sandwich. So again -- and they want to do it fresh. They don't want to make them a day or 2 before and just warm them up. They want to make it fresh for the customer. But oh now with the pandemic, they want to put a drive-through in. So they've got to be efficient. So we look at ways of taking our prep table of experience with very precise temperature control for the fresh ingredients, but then they want a warming table in front of it. So when they toast the bread and put it down, it doesn't get cold on a cold platform while they're preparing it. So we integrate different features. And then I remember working with this particular chain, they were new to the drive-through and they were actually looking at seconds. How do I save off seconds for that customer because I'm preparing a fresh sandwich. It's not premade, so I've got to take the order when they drive up, it's got to be ready. And deals like this get decided on saving 2 seconds, saving 1 second. It justifies the program. In the middle is the pizza chains, and you'll see -- actually, I think you'll see this table in the demo room over there. But again, there's ways of doing it and there's very -- you can buy a pizza prep table of the Internet, but it's going to be pretty generic, It's not going to hold the temperature exactly. And if you're in the back room of a pizza -- large pizza outlet, there's a big oven right next to a table that's trying to hold the temperature constant around these ingredients. So the challenge of being a very precise is what stands us out there. On the far right, a high-growth burger chain. When we talked about the other night, very interesting. We do a 3-compartment sink that looks pretty generic. In the U.S., you can buy 3-compartment sink at about $1,200. We put a motor on it and charge $15,000. Now there's a difference in the value. What we're actually doing is, it's a pot and pan washing. I don't know about you, but when I was growing up in school, I worked in the kitchen. I worked back in the washroom. The worst job is the pot and pan washer. So what we try to do is automate that. How can we make it, so you're not sitting there scrubbing, but we tumble the pots and pans and it takes the gunk off and then they're much easier to clean. You can take that resource and put them in the front of the kitchen, not in the back. But when we went to this high-growth burger and fry chain, what we found out is they're doing their French fries, they take the potato, they slice it, drop it into water in the 3-compartment sink. And then they'd have a person standing there all day, moving around. Their objective was to take the starch off that cut potato and they're doing it manually. And they're running to the faucet, you talk about sustainability, they run the faucet all day, just pouring through. And what they give is, they get a certain flavor on the French fry. Well, one of our salespeople a few years back was watching this, actually going in there to sell them a pot and pan washer and said, I think I can do that better for you. Being customer intimate, being on-site. And what they did, we converted our Power Soak sink to be a produce washer. So now they cut the potato, it drops straight in the bath. It's got water jets. It constantly tumbles in a closed loop, taking the starch off more effectively. Happier employee, he's upfront. And then when they put it in the fryer dip to fry it, not only did they find they are more efficient at removing the starch, so therefore, the flavor is more consistent. Their signature fry was more consistent. Once they found out it's more consistent, employee was happier, the peanut oil that they use to fry it in is their most expensive raw ingredient. Well, now with a cleaner cut potato, starch removed, they can recycle and reuse that peanut oil for 5 days instead of 2 days. So cost savings. In California, there's a water restriction. They don't use as much water. So again, this isn't just about buying a sink on the Internet. It's about how do we solve their biggest challenge. And now even though that chain is based in the U.S. we have very little infrastructure as Unified Brands outside the U.S., every store in the world has one of our things. And now I'm working with Richard, as we look at how they are expanding in Asia, we have a factory that happens to do wash equipment in Asia. So now all of a sudden, what I couldn't do before in 8 years I've been here, in the first 11 months we've already built prototypes in that factory to supply the local market. So that's where you're going to start seeing this type of value. These next 3, 4 slides really just kind of talk about the expansion of the portfolio. That $25 billion market, $9 billion of it is in North America, in the Americas. And then it breaks down. So $3 billion of that $9 billion is in refrigeration. But you got to be careful. You can't just say refrigeration in that sense, it's one size fits all. There's -- within each category, there's probably 10, 15, 20 subcategories: our refrigerator prep table, an undercounter refrigerator, a freezer, a vertical, a static refrigerator. So there's a lot of different categories. And historically, as Unified Brands with really 4 key product groups, we're really restricted in what we could sell. So for that burger joint, we're doing very well on a Power Soak sink, but we don't have fryers. We don't have cooktops. We don't have combi ovens. Now we've got some access to that. So how do we take that long-standing relationship, understanding of the channel to market and that really intimate relationship and being customer-obsessed and bringing in more products. So you can see with the Randell line is really where we focused on in the past. Now we've got thawing cabinets and blast chillers, again, high-value product lines. That thawing cabinet now, we do very good in the chicken sandwich industry, also in restaurant chains. We didn't have a thawing cabinet. And to take frozen chicken to be ready to be thawed and prepared for food, it's a very precise. Application, it's very dangerous if we do it wrong. So with unique technology like the thawing cabinet, now with those places that we're doing a breading table, now we can bring a thawing cabinet and they got a trusted relationship. We can bring the product in, and we're already starting to see opportunities going forward. And likewise, on the Kelvinator side, when you're in there with highly customized unique products, they'll naturally turn in and say, hey, can you supply some of this more standard stuff. Historically, we walked away from that. But at Electrolux Professional in our Kelvinator brand, we've got a lot of good standard, high-quality refrigeration that we can add to the order. So again, we're expanding outwards. Cooking is probably one where we've known the best for in the steam categories with steamers, kettles, braising pans, very strong leadership position in the U.S. It actually does post into South America and over to Europe and Asia because of our presence in that category. And our cap cold systems is really a combination for a large menu cooking for hundreds, if not thousands of people. But we didn't have high-growth categories like speed cooking with SpeeDelight or with the Cook and Chill systems, which combines cooking with quick refrigeration to a safe temperature. And then while we had -- where we had braising pans and very well known for that category, we didn't have the subcategory of pressurized braising pans. Again, another unique, highly engineered product, now we can pull that together. So when we talk about addressable market versus non-addressable, there's a lot of categories within cooking. And again, there might be 100 different types of cooking equipment. So as we had a very narrow range as Unified Brands and did very well with the Electrolux Professional, we can expand that. Now there's nuances between how it's done in Europe as far as the heights, the counters, the dimensions, is it metric or is it English? There are certifications, of course. And then the styles of cooking, there's more prevalence to electric cooking here versus gas cooking in the U.S. But now those are even coming together. So there's opportunities to take that product, either import it to the U.S., take our product, export it. But now we have expertise on both sides. So we can start optimizing this equipment going forward. Ware-washing, I'd say we're still relatively niche. The Power Soak category is one that Power Soak company kind of invented itself with the Power Sink. So there's not so much about by taking market share, it's about expanding the applications. And when we acquired this company in 2012, it's pots and pans, now almost 1/3 of this business is on the food prep side, washing vegetables, washing fresh fruit, cutting French fries and get them prepared. So it's really expanding the applications and how we can apply the technology. And then certainly, undercounters and door and hood type machines is something we didn't have access to before. And when you're in the washroom doing pots and pans, there's always an undercounter, there's always a hood type of machine. So it's an opportunity to pull this together. And one, I'd say on the beverage side and certainly working with Philippe who sees beverage across the globe is oftentimes Food & Beverage go together. On the beverage side, where food may be their primary category -- it tends to be a little bit tighter margins. But on the beverage side, it tends to be a very high margin for our customer, a new revenue stream. When we're rolling out that potato washer at that food chain, the rollout actually got delayed because they wanted to put in a shake machine. Shake machine was a new ticket item for revenue for them and very, very high margins. So we actually got put them on the back burner because of that beverage opportunity that this customer found and sought after. Once they got that done, they went back to ours. So again, this one tends to be a little bit quicker cycle. The products around the world seem to be a little bit more standardized. But again, it gets into a recognized, trusted brand. So while the equipment may not vary a lot, if you're not a recognized trusted brand, I'm not going to put 20,000 of these in, in my chains and all my outlets around the world because I got to know, one, it's got to be up and running. And two, when it's up and running, I'm getting another revenue stream, I'm getting a higher margin. So it's very, very important. So maybe the most popular topic for a group like this. One thing when we first got acquired on December 1 and Alberto and Fabio and others came to our facilities, not only was there a passion about this industry, but there is a focus. Everything was done very deliberately. Number one, we had to separate from our parent company, Dover. And we had to set up in a country that had relatively little foundation from Electrolux Professional standpoint, so we had to set up Unified Brands as a stand-alone, separate from shared services. We did that. Second is both Unified Brands and Electrolux Professional have very aggressive growth objectives and business objectives last year coming out of the pandemic: how do you recover, how do you deal with the supply chain challenges. So number two, deliver on the business, make sure we don't lose sight of our customers. Because as we all know, when you're busy fixing the back office and putting it together, it's pretty tough. So we did that. And we're both combined companies and individually are having a very, very strong year. Not without disruption, not without supply chain challenges, let's come together very nicely. And during this, we actually merged the 2 business organizations 100% together, and that was announced in July 1. So again, we've been able to really act quickly while being very customer obsessed. And one area that we just doubled down on is on the chain sales team. One thing is the customers could not feel our pain going through an integration. And the importance of the customers, especially as they're coming through the pandemic, we had to make sure we took care of them. So the first thing we did, even as the organization is coming together is we put -- and merged the sales teams together immediately, and that's worked very well. And then there's other opportunities going forward. So there are some synergy targets absolutely that we're striving to get. Now I realize the infrastructure for Unified Brands across the Americas was relatively established and large, and in a way, self-sufficient. And then we're really integrating in as much smaller foundation. So while there's room for synergies, there's not the natural one-for-one replacement. So it's really coming together in the strengths of both businesses. So certainly on the revenue side, I think you can feel my passion and excitement. We've got salespeople just biting at the bit, we're waiting to go. But at the same time, they're hesitant because they want to make sure it's set up right because we're not going to disappoint our customer. So on the sales revenue side, we've already got many projects that are coming together. We've got a chicken sandwich shop that wants to use the thaw box. We've got Asia and wants to look at how do we make our Power Soak over in Asia. And quite honestly, it's following a U.S. chain over there. But there's also local applications in the Chinese market for it. We've got an individual in the Electrolux professional side, they had a great personal relationship with a small pizza chain. They're now buying our tables. Before they didn't have access to it. So again, the revenue side, I'd like to say we're being conservative, but we're going into budget discussions, so it's a little aggressive. But the reality is, there's opportunities but we have to execute because if we have a false start, it sets us back decades in a relationship. On the cost side, while -- it's the infrastructure is relatively small, the fact of the matter is on the procurement side, as part of Dover, we were the largest buyer of the raw material stainless steel. No other -- Dover company really bought a lot of stainless. So we led the negotiations in stainless steel. Well, now we're part of a parent company or a group that buys a lot of stainless steel. And working with Carlo and the team, we already see avenues on how do we leverage that scale, not just on stainless steel, but on components, on motors, on alternative suppliers. During this supply chain challenge, foam for insulation became a real challenge, we worked together on it. So there's opportunities to take out cost and just leverage our global reach now. On the business system side, with the Electrolux Professional Business System, with Grindmaster, with Unified Brands, we're in 3 different business systems. So we get 3 books to close each month. We've got 3 customer service teams because it's 3 different systems. We've got 3 invoices going to customers. So another area of opportunity is by the end of this year, coming into January, we'll be down to 2. And then this time next year, we'll be on 1 system. So while its efficiency in the background, it's much better for our customers in the front end. So it's exciting. There's opportunities. I'll clearly say the low end of this range has already been identified. Again, our focus was separating from Dover, done. Our second objective is to make sure we deliver the business plan we're putting in the group together. That's well underway. And now we're really just starting to aggressively go after this. The sales team is biting at the bit to get there. We already had the innovation team over, we're comparing notes. And this connectivity you're going to see, it's an area that Unified Brands was starting to think about how to invest in. So you can imagine our excitement when we see a company like Electrolux Professional come over here and say, don't worry about that, we already got you covered. And when you're selling just a steamer or just a prep table, connectivity to us is like, it's an afterthought. But now that you can be part of a broad kitchen in that aftermarket service side, when a prep table goes down or your center console and your kitchen goes down, the restaurant has to shut down. So how can we be more predictive and proactive in the maintenance. So again, a lot of excitement going forward as a group. And with that, like I say, it's fun to be part of this team. Being #2, not #20 in a number of companies, but #2 in the strategy, you can imagine a lot of excitement. And I'll say, right now, we've retained 100% of the leadership team on both sides. We've got -- the team is excited. And when you get the passion and the Italians going, I mean it's a lot of magic going on. So thank you. And with that, Jacob.

Thank you, Dave. And with that, we open up for questions. Again, you can ask questions here in the room, and we have, of course, questions online. So Karri, please?

Yes. Two questions, starting with customer care. One of the earlier slides showed the customer care sales, excluding Unified Brands. Is it because you don't have data available? Or is it because it's very low number? Or is it because it's such an integral part of the way you work.

I will say it's an area of opportunity for us. We do have sales there. We do -- and a lot of our customer care sales are aftermarket parts in warranty, post warranty repair type of things. The fact of the matter is it hasn't been a big focus for us. And we've got some areas to learn there and actually expand it. And likewise, sometimes it gets to the equipment. If you're dealing with a refrigerator per se versus a high-tech combi oven, which takes different types of cleaning and that type of -- so there's different needs by different categories. But nonetheless, we have a long way, so to go there as far as learn and advance.

All right. My second question, if we compare the factory here and then we would visit your factories in the U.S., is there a big difference in, for example, automation rates?

You'll see a lot of metal being bent. We both have advantages and disadvantages. I'd say over here, you're going to see more of the automation and some of the major investments been made here, which are very attractive to us to figure out how to do that. And it depends on which facility you go to. If you go up to our Michigan facility, it's a lot of the custom refrigeration. So we're very well known to take an idea from a napkin to a prototype in 2 weeks. So it's a lot more of a fabrication hands-on shop, less automation. But then as you go down to our Mississippi facility, while again, almost 90% of all of our backlog are customer orders, so they're either designed to order or they're highly configured to order. So down there, we're seeing an opportunity to implement more of that type of automation. So I'd say some nice advancements and some key learnings from here that we can apply over in the Americas.

I'll take a question from the web in the meantime. It's Henrik Christiansson from Carnegie. What products or product categories do you see the most potential to sell into the U.S., I mean, from Europe then? And when do you expect to see a tangible acceleration of growth driven by the broader product offering being part of the Electrolux Professional group.

Great question. Did that come from Fabio or from Alberto? Now the fact of the matter is there's unique products in what Unified Brands has historically done very well, has really been a specialist in certain categories. So when I say things like the speed oven, we haven't done that before, but we cook -- we sell a lot of cooking equipment. So the ability to pull that along and quote it together, or as we enter a customer where they're trying to change and update their menu from one item to another, we have access to those specialized pieces of equipment. So I see that actually going on now. And typically, those are a little bit longer cycle for sale, especially in the chains because the chains are going to want to test, test, test because ultimately they're going to deploy it to hundreds, if not thousands of locations. So we've got some of that work already underway. So I think we'll see that naturally progress, which we're already starting to see some small orders. The small pizza chain I mentioned. We're already selling them pizza prep tables. But we'll see this continue to expand going forward. So any of the more engineered or specified piece of equipment where we add value, that's where we'll play. But on the other front, with the Kelvinator refrigeration, it's more standardized. It's still good, high-quality standard refrigeration. But when we're in there selling a custom refrigerated piece of equipment, we can naturally start pulling that through. So we're seeing it kind of on both sides. And I'll say through this next year, we'll start seeing pockets of wins. And I think as we get through next year into 2024, we'll start seeing that escalate.

Thank you. Maybe one more question here in the room?

Thanks, Dave. Could you comment a bit about the white spots that you see now? You have -- you mentioned the cooking solutions maybe and also the beverage solutions.

The which spot?

The white spots that you miss in your product portfolio and also the fact that maybe acquisitions is more maybe on the larger side, on the beverage side, if I hear correct?

Yes. If I look at some of the spots in some of those categories, one will be subcategories within the category. So even as we mentioned on that one competitive slide, companies like a Perlick that has back bar equipment and engineered solutions, we just don't do that today. But again, it's highly specified, highly engineered. There's different examples of that. There are subcategories in there that we just don't participate in. So there's opportunities. Now some of those spaces, too, will get very generic equipment, very standard refrigeration, the truckload sales. Quite honestly, I'm not sure I'm overly interested in that. So it really varies by product. Even in the cooking side, where we've got access to fryers, we've got access to different types of cooktops. We got to see can we add enough value by either bringing that overseas from here to the U.S.? Or is it a basic enough of design because we've got engineering -- cooking engineers, we've got factories and all that, could we take the design and actually execute it in the U.S., again, to get some of the scale and some of the cost out. So I think there's opportunities on both sides. While there's a few players that are trying to fill out every one of those rooms, realistically, at least still in the U.S. and especially in chains, they're optimizing their food factory. So they're looking at specific slices and saying who's the best to help solve this. So I think there's a combination of opportunity to bring more of this product in and harmonize it for the U.S. standards and vice versa taking ours out. And then I'm hoping, and I know we're all looking for the right acquisition opportunity, there's a lot of players out there that are very attractive.

And you should be able to do that in the new structure?

Yes. Yes, it's one thing to, is when I've joined Dover, at that point in their evolution, there was a lot of focus on participating in this kind of industry-wide roll-up of acquisitions. And it was a very big focus area for them. So when I got there, the first time I did, I built I'd consider a very strong staff around me. Everybody that's on my staff has run a bigger business than they're in now. But the intent was -- is to build the foundation so we can layer on top of that. Now for all the right and wrong reasons, depending on who you talk to, Dover had different visions. We've had different Chairmen, different CEOs and they evolved. So it's more opportunistic in the space versus strategic. And I think we'll now, right now is if you're an opportunistic buyer in the food space, you're not going to win because there's no good deals, just the kind of the private equity side. It's really strategic and people are paying a premium for premium brands. And so the excitement for me is this is very strategic on this side, it's very opportunistic on that side.

Thank you. I have actually no further questions. online or in the room. So with that, I will say thank you, especially to those watching us online. We will now take a break and be back at 10:45 sharp. So thank you for the online viewers. See you soon again. [Break]

Welcome back to Electrolux Professional Investor Day. We're broadcasting live from Italy. Now we will talk about the financial update. So with me, I have Fabio Zarpellon, the CFO. Please, the floor is your, Fabio.

Thank you, Jacob, and good morning to everybody. Let me start the financial update, confirming the financial targets, financial targets that are exactly the same, we announced in March 2020 when we have listed the company. Financial targets that are about profitably growing this company and reaching the 15% EBITA margin is to operate this organization with an efficient use of the asset. In particular, we set an important target on operating working capital to keep it in average below 15% of sales. We want to operate with a solid balance sheet, keeping the leverage of this company below 2.5x in terms of net debt-on-EBITDA, to keep the strength of a strong balance sheet. And the combination of profitable growth with an efficient use of assets give us the opportunity to offer to our shareholder a payout of roughly 30% going forward in terms of net income. So where are we today in this journey? If we compare Electrolux Professional today compared to a couple of years ago when we listed the company, we are a different company. We are a much stronger company. You have heard from my colleagues this morning that our presence in the market is different. We increased our presence in the high-growth and high-margin part of the market. United States, now with the acquisition of Unified Brands represent over 30% of total sales. Our presence in the customer care is over 18% of total sales. The chain business represents over 16% of our total turnover. In the same time, along these last couple of years, we improved the competitiveness of our operations. You remember we have invested in a new state-of-the-art operation in Thailand, where we have merged the 2 existing operations, one for Laundry and one for Beverage, a new state-of-the-art operation, where we moved also the production of Beverage that we were manufacturing in United States. Last but not least, we continue the digitalization of our company. And you heard earlier this morning the ones that were present physically here the great achievement that we deliver, both in terms of product connectivity as well as the digitalization of our relation with our customer. What about then financially, the last 3 years? I will say that -- and we were talking for the ones that were with us during dinner, the last 3 years have been pretty hectic, a lot happened. I've been in this industry in the last 20 years, but so many disruption in a short period of time, I've never seen it. Let's start with 2020. Pandemic hit us, hit us personally, but also professionally. But look here, we did perform pretty well also during the pandemic. We delivered more than half -- we delivered roughly SEK 0.5 billion in EBITA over 7% in EBIT margin. And this was possible because proactively we were managing the situation. We were not just wait-and-see, but we actually we took the decision to reduce the spending, to keep the margin. Proactively, we monitor our receivable. At the same time, also during the pandemic, we kept the critical investment like the digitalization. Then from spring 2021 with the market recovery, we started the profitable growth path. And you see that we delivered in 2021 and also this year a double-digit organic growth. And our profitability rolling 12 months is now at 9.6%. So if I compare it to our self, Electrolux Professional, to the prepandemic time, I will say that in terms of size, we are larger than 2019, but we are not yet there in terms of profit margin. And I believe it's worth that we look at it together. So let me start with the sales. Rolling 12 months, we are over SEK 10 billion. We were roughly SEK 1 million -- SEK 1 billion lower in 2019. What's the main difference? Unified Brands contributed significantly to the increase of the turnover with over SEK 1 billion -- SEK 1.3 billion in terms of sales. The second piece pretty much relevant when comparing with 2019 is the contribution from price. Already from the second part of 2021, to compensate the significant increase of raw material that continued into 2022, we had to significantly increase price. Our industry had historically 1% to 3% price increase. What we had to execute from the second part of 2021 was a much larger price increase. And that was necessarily to compensate the inflationary items. The last part in the bridge of sales is about the market. Here, Alberto mentioned earlier the market is not yet back to 2019 level overall. Here, when we look into more the details, we can say that in terms of volumes, the Laundry, yes, Laundry, we are back to 2019 value. In American chains, the market is back. Europe and Asia Pac, in particular, in Asia, China, not at all. Particularly China, the situation continue to be difficult considering the lockdown measure that are still in place in that market. What about the profitability? When we compare to 2019, we are still having a gap of a couple of points. We have currency translation and transaction that are tiny, but still positively contributed. Unified Brands joining us is a great asset. You understood it from Dave, that is also accretive, is accretive for Food & Beverage business as well as the total group. At the same time, we were talking about the price execution, strong price execution that we have been delivering so far but not yet enough to fully compensate the direct material cost increase when we compare ourselves to 2019 level. Focus. We discussed a lot about the component price increase, raw material price increase and additional ingredients that of inflationary is about the logistic cost. It's not only about availability of container, availability of ships, it's also a significant increase of transportation costs, both inbound and outbound transportation costs. And last piece is coming from lower volumes. Our utilization of the factories is still lower than 2019. Having said so, I believe that if this is, let me say, the journey and the comparison with 2019, since the spring last year, we restarted a profitable growth journey. Profitable growth journey that has been accelerating significantly this year. Look at quarter 1. This year, quarter 1, we delivered more than double the EBITA of last year. In quarter 2, the increase was 36%. In quarter 3, close to 60%. So we are within a strong profitable recovery trend where price and price execution play an important role. If you remember, during the quarter 3 call, we said in the quarter, we compensated with the price increase, the direct material and the component cost increase in Food, in Beverage and in Laundry. And with this strong price execution, we have the ingredient that at the end of the year, we will be able not just for the quarter, but for the full year to fully compensate the direct material cost increase. Few words now on the balance sheet of this group. We are operating in a healthy industry with an asset-light operating model. Our operating working capital on sales historically has been 15% or even below. Recently, we have had an increase, an increase that has been the result of a conscious decision, a conscious decision to increase the inventory of components, a conscious decision to increase the inventory of finished products to secure that we have the ingredients to guarantee a good service level to the customer. That was the purpose. And this is the reason behind the increased trend on operating working capital that, by the way, remains up absolutely, reasonably viable. Rolling 12 months, we had 15.6%. And now with, let me say, the improvement of the supply chains, I see this trend structurally going towards an improvement in the quarters to come. The other piece of a asset efficient management is the fixed asset. Historically, we have been operating this group with a couple of points in terms of CapEx requirement on sales. It did increase during year 2019, 2020 because of a specific investment, the large and efficient manufacturing facility that we built in Thailand. Now you see that once that initiative has been completed, we came back to the historical spending. And when I think about our strategic plan, our requirement going forward I believe that we can continue to operate with that level of CapEx on sales, meaning around a couple of points also going forward. Cash. Cash is key every year, in particular in these years. This is a company that has historically generated strong cash. Look at the years 2017, '18, '19, over SEK 1 billion cash generated every year. More than 100% cash conversion. Look also what we did in 2020, difficult market, pandemic, operation sometime closed. We generate more cash than EBIT. 2021, over SEK 1 billion cash generation. So we have the strength. We have the condition. We have the management capability to continue to deliver strong cash generation. Yes, this year, we are delivering less than 100% cash conversion is because of the inventory. But I would expect that already in quarter 4, we will go back to a positive cash conversion. And cash has been an important tool to manage our balance sheet. We added roughly SEK 1 billion to net debt when we separated from the group. And in September 2021, all this debt has been repaid, thanks to the strong cash generation. We invested in Unified Brands, conscious decision, good decision. And our ratio, net debt-on-EBITDA, increased. We have to say, and this is also what we reported in quarter 3, that from a representation perspective roughly 10% of the net debt has been increased because of different representation of our pension fund liabilities in Switzerland. But you have to say that this 10% that is inflating the value of net debt and inflating ratio, net debt-on-EBITDA is more an accounting treatment, without no implication on the financial net debt as well as in terms of income for this group. So strong balance sheet, and I would say also pretty sounded loans structure. A loan structure that, as you can see from this chart, foresee no obligation of repayment in 2023, so in the year to come. And when it comes to the revolving credit facility, this is the picture, EUR 172 million available at the end of September, beginning of October we fully repaid. So now we have the full EUR 200 million revolving credit facility fully in place. And this is important. This is important to sustain the organic growth of the business, but I would say this also show that we have the means if a good M&A opportunity come on our way, we have the tool in place to manage it also from a funding perspective. The last part of my presentation then is on a key topic. It's about our journey to the 15% EBITA margin. My big message is, the journey is confirmed -- the pillar of the journey has confirmed and exactly the same I presented to you last year in Sweden. Half of the journey to the 15% will come from cost out productivity improvement. Half will come from growing sales and mixing up. Cost out initiative are pretty clear. It's about improving our production. It's about improving our logistic value chains. The new factory in Thailand, the move of the production from United States, the former Grindmaster production is to Thailand is part of this journey. It's about improving the productivity in the operations but also in sales. A question came earlier about the benefit of digitalization in terms of productivity. We are at the beginning of that journey. But when you start to see that, all spare part business is managed digitally. A large portion of the pilot country product sales is managed digitally, you can just start imagining which are the benefit in terms of productivity improvement that we can extract through this important move of our organization. Then moving into the sales piece. Our focus in the last years and our focus in terms of business plan going forward is not just to grow the business, it's allocating resources in terms of OpEx and CapEx, in growing the high-margin part of our business. It's about the chains. It's about the customer care. It's also about securing that when we introduce a new product, they are not just meeting proactively customers' needs, but also securing that the new product we introduced is having a better margin, a better profitability than the existing one. And last, but not least piece is about taking care and enjoying the growth of the market, gaining market share. So this is -- the volume piece is not just growing with the market but gaining market share thanks to the synergies and the innovative solution that we are putting in place into the market. So few conclusions, at least from my side. We are operating in a healthy industry. And in this industry, we are a pretty healthy company. We are -- we have a solid balance sheet. We are a strong cash generation company. As you see, we restarted the profitable growth journey. The recent acquisition of Unified Brands is an important add-on on our strategy. And you saw the potential that this is going to offer to our group. As well as we have a clear and solid plan to improve our margin going forward. So overall, if I summarize Electrolux Professional compared to a couple of years ago, 2 message. First, our financial target are confirmed. Second, as you have seen from my presentation, the speech of my colleagues, we are definitely much more equipped and much better equipped to deliver on this target.

Thank you, Fabio. And with that, we open up for questions again. As always, you can write the questions on the web and also there are opportunities for questions here in the room. One question in the room here.

When we saw the slide from 2019 to last quarter, you lost 1 percentage point on the margin due to volume. If we take the next from, I gather, 2022 until 2025, that's my guess, you have 2.5% on the volume. How much do you see being self-helped from new products and also margins -- or new markets? And how much is dependent on, let's say, not a soft 2023, but a normal market.

Okay. Let me say the following. First of all, we are living in a particular uncertain moment and it's somehow difficult to say how the market is going to evolve into next year. But coming back to that bridge, I would like to underline 2 things. First, the bridge to 15% comes to, half of it is coming from cost out initiative and mix up. These 2 parts we are going to deliver regardless of the market development. Then when it comes to the remaining 2.5%, I strongly believe that our innovative solution with also better margin are going to represent a significant part of that 2.5% that we represent here in this picture.

So then your point is actually that most of it is more or less self-help from your company?

Not really. But we are creating the condition to improve the margin even if the market is not developed as fast as it has been historically.

Okay. And then my last question is on the cash flow. If one takes for granted that next year will be a bit softer, your cash generation must, all things being equal, be quite substantial. Is that a correct assumption?

I can talk about what happened in 2020. Business went down and cash conversion was exploding. So, and also, I will say that also in case of recession, in the case of 2021, we showed the ability to manage, in particular, the customer addition. If I remember the first quarterly call, quarter 1 2020, quarter 2 2020, there was a question around quality of receivable, the management of the credit. And we have been proving pretty good in handling it. So coming back to your question is, even if the market will soften, I expect the cash generation, all the rest equal, because we don't know what else may happen. We need to be prepared, but we don't know what else will happen, we'll be still -- we'll be positive. Pretty solid also next year.

Karri?

The 15% margin target. If I assume unchanged gross margins at 40%, then that would suggest that you would need roughly SEK 15 billion in sales to get to 15% EBITA margin. Does that sound reasonable? Or should I assume higher gross margins as well when you do the initiatives that you talked about?

You should assume improved margin, absolutely, because the initiative I mentioned, particularly on the cost out initiative, meaning improvement in terms of production setup, reducing logistic cost, improved productivity in our operations as well as in the sales organization, they are part of reducing the cost base or better, improving the productivity of our organization. So it's not necessarily that we need to stretch the volumes part, but I would say that half of that gap that is roughly [ 5 point ] will come from improved margin in doing exactly what we are doing today.

But that remaining other half, does it need the kind of revenue that I sort of just back of the envelope calculated?

This is your, let me say, evaluation and I'm not questioning your rationale, clearly the volumes and the market recovery will be an important ingredient on that improvement. Or better, will be an important ingredient regarding the time on when we are going to deliver that 15%. But I would like to stress it, the 2 other ingredients, the cost out initiative and the mix improvement, that we can deliver, and we have been proving to deliver in the last 2 years on top of the market recovery.

All right. Then secondly, I think Alberto showed a slide where it was flat raw material prices for next year. So does that mean that you are pretty much locked in or that you have locked in your raw material pricing for next year?

We started to lock specific commodities when we judge the price is reasonably good, but so far, pretty selectively because the expectation is that at least for some commodity we have reached a sort of peak and we expect some decline in the quarter to come. So yes, we started hedging activity into the first part of next year, but so far, pretty selectively, because we want to watch out what is happening before taking longer commitment.

I have a couple of questions from the online viewers. The first one is from Henrik Christiansson at Carnegie. On the EBITA bridge to 15%, what share is a factor of headwinds turning into tailwinds, such as supply chain normalizing, raw material costs coming down, operational efficiency ironed out. So how big share is tailwinds -- headwinds moving into tailwinds.

I will say that more than half of that is coming from headwinds coming into tailwind. And we have to say that profitability could have been much better already this year if the disruption of the supply chains and the logistics would not had happened already this year. I would say year-to-date, we are over 10% EBIT. 10.3% is what we reported accumulated in the first 3 quarters. The margin would have been significantly better if we would not have the disruption that we had that affected the real cost of the logistics, but as well as the productivity of our operation.

We have another question from you Johan Eliason at Kepler Cheuvreux about the M&A pipeline. What's the focus on the M&A pipeline going forward?

The focus on the M&A pipeline is unchanged, is the same that we had in the past. So it's about focusing our attention in growing the large U.S. market. And within the U.S. market, the presence in the quick-service restaurant chains. So this is somehow our top priorities when it comes to the M&A activity. Clearly, we are still watching what is happening in Laundry because Laundry is definitely a pretty attractive part of the market as well as working in completing our and strengthening our offer in the Beverage part of our product portfolio.

Thank you. I have no further questions, not in the room and not online. So with that, I will say thank you to Fabio. And I will ask Alberto to come to the stage again to make the summary of the day. Please, Alberto.

Thank you, Jacob. And I'm back to the, to the slide describing the strategic priority because if I look forward, as also Fabio presented, Dave commented about North America, our profitable growth comes from the execution of the strategic priority. The 4 pillars plus the operational excellence, that means cost out, but also making our operations more profitable and obviously more efficient. We are making progress. I believe in all these areas, we are making progress and new products are going to be launched during the coming days, weeks, beginning of the year 2023. They are all product, and we launch only products that are improving the margin of the company, products that have higher margin than the one we are replacing, in case we replace a product. Or if they are new products that are covering white spots as somebody described it that in any case, are accretive to the overall profitability of the company. Customer care -- sorry, going through the second one, as Dave pointed out, growing in North America and chain business. I'm reflecting on a question that Fabio got about the gross profit. Remember that more we will grow with the chain business, lower will be the gross profit because typically the gross margin is lower with the chains, but the profitability is much higher because the cost to sell is much lower. So the chains typically are paying less than a normal customer, obviously, because they buy hundreds of thousands of product. But at the same time, the cost to sell is clearly lower than the one you have if you sell to an independent restaurant owner or other things like that. So expanding in North America, we are making progress. 1/3 of our business is coming from North America. 16% of our business is coming from chains, that is 25% of the Food & Beverage segment. So a quite sizable portion. Still room for improvement? Absolutely, yes. And we can do it organically or eventually accelerating the growth inorganically. Customer care, we are making progress. Again, one of you pointed out that it was excluding Unified Brands. It's just because we are going to include this one. As Dave pointed out, currently, the customer care participation to the business of Unified Brand is below the average of the group. I don't see this negatively, honestly. On the opposite, I see this as a enormous opportunity to grow a highly profitable business also in North America. So we will include Unified, we are going to include Unified Brand clearly on this one. We are going to transfer to Unified Brand all the learnings and the actions that have been developed during the past years since '17. We are talking about 5 years of experience in creating a portfolio of accessories, consumables and services that we can sell to customer to make our product working better than what they are today. And obviously, we are going to leverage also the digitalization. I hope you appreciated and I saw a lot of people talking and asking, [ Carina], how it works here and there. So good to see that at least you got the message. You can imagine that people that are working in the kitchen, they are even more interested about that one because it's not just something funny. It's a nice demonstration. It's something that is creating value. And we are in the progress of doing this. I was discussing with one of you how we can differentiate ourself making this. It is something different. I'm not saying the competitors, they have the one-to-one connection with the product. Don't think that we are the only one in the world having the possibility to control the oven, for instance, downloading recipe or other things. Our competitor, they do it, but they do it with one product. I have the appliances at home connected and they are covering more than one screen on my mobile phone. It's unmanageable, guys. These are the appliances that you have in a demo kitchen and they are already roughly -- or roughly, more than 20 appliances. So this means 2 screens of your mobile phone. In the kitchen back there, they are roughly 100 appliances. So you need probably 10 mobile phone because you don't have enough screens to cover them. What I'm trying to say, it is unmanageable. The one-to-one connection is not manageable. You need a system integrator. They're company that try to do it. And we know that the customer are looking because they are asking us as well as our competitor to create this environment. There are company that tried to do this, famous Alexa. Before having Alexa in the Professional business, I believe -- I don't know if I will be still here talking to you. But in any case, it will take time. We can't do it today, and it is -- the difference is because we are producing all the appliances that you see here. If you don't do this, you can integrate as we do external appliances, but you can only read the documents. You cannot download the information. You cannot drive, you cannot download the information on the appliances. So that's the big difference, and this is the big advantage. It will be forever? Probably not. I'm pretty sure that sooner or later, this will be made available for every product or to integrate every appliances. But in the meantime, we have a competitive edge. And considering the time that it took to develop these things, I believe it is something that will last for some years. But it is not only connecting the appliances. It's creating efficiency. A good question was do you have more margin or the margin is higher when you sell through the OnE platform? The answer is no, but the cost to sell is lower. That is the important thing. So the cost to sell will be much lower because the efficiency will be significant in the overall process for us, but also for our customers. So we are delivering about that. It is not a high-tech industry where things are changing overnight, where you can expect an exponential transformation of the company. It is something that we do step by step. Hopefully, we will do longer step than the one we have been making in the past, but this is where we wanted to get. So just to conclude this part, I believe there are things that I'd like you to take back from a day spent together or half day spent together. The first one is the market. Again, I'm watching television as well as you are doing. We all hear what is happening with the war, with inflation, with the meeting that they are having around the world, we are all concerned about that. And for this reason, we are preparing. The reality is that what we really see every day in our customer is that the market -- the restaurants are still full. And if the restaurants are full, they are using the appliances. And if they are using the appliances, sooner or later, they will have at least to repair the appliances, if not change them soon. So things are still happening there. The market is still a market that is requiring service and product from our industry in the restaurant business, but as well as in the laundry one. So not only I see this. The Asia market, I've been recently in Asia a couple of times, first time visiting the new factory in September. It was not possible before. Now you can travel easily to Asia. I think the only country that is not open yet is China. But all the other countries are perfectly open. They are operating. People are starting to move in and out, so they are late in the curve of the recovery, but it's a huge market. We, as a company, Fabio was pointing out this quite clearly, we are a different company compared to the one that had to face the pandemic. But even compared to the one that had to face the financial crisis in 2009, we are better balanced geographically with a larger presence in North America. We are better balanced from the customer point of view with a larger share of business coming from chains. We already went through a couple of crisis like this one, like the others. I'm not saying no. But we went through this crisis, reacting proactively, preparing as we are doing and then executing the things that we prepare in case things, bad things, are happening. So we are different than what we were and I think at least better than what we were. We clearly have a U.S. business. It is an important strategic priority, but it's not only because it's that. Structurally, the business in the United States is more profitable. Structurally, the business in the United States and the business with the chains is more profitable. So it is important to grow the business in that part of the world. This doesn't mean that I don't have to grow somewhere else. On the opposite, we want to grow also in the other area. But obviously, the importance of growing the business in North America is structurally important for this company. And last but not least, the delivery of the strategic priority is the right way to go for reaching the 15% EBITA target. I think in all the areas, we are making progress. In some of them, I don't look even after the first one, that is the growth, because clearly we are growing more than 4% year-on-year but because we are recovering from a significant drop. So that one probably we have to start restating in the coming years to see really if there is this organic development. But all the others, starting from the management of the operating working capital with all the caveat that Fabio described, taking a conscious decision to keep growing the business with our customer, but then the debt that is still despite the acquisition of Unified Brands is still below our target and the possibility to deliver the dividends to the shareholders. So we are in line with our -- with the achievement of our targets. Good question. I would love to have the crystal ball and tell you when we will get them, in particular, the 15% EBIT. I believe we are living years full of uncertainty. So it is surely important to keep the flexibility and to be agile enough to adapt to the different environment. Nobody would have expected that the war in -- or at least not here, the one that I know expected the war between Russia and Ukraine beginning of the year. And then the missing components and then the inflation and then, and then, and then since '19 that I'm still repeating these things, that every year is different and every year is more challenging. I'm not saying anymore that everything is over and next year will be a regular one because I failed all the time during the past year. So really important is to learn about agility and flexibility. And these are the things that I would say we've been executing and showing during the past months. So with this said, I would say we are summing up the day. But before leaving you, I take the opportunity to show you something that is -- you are the first one to see. And now I was thinking about Jacob, who was pointing out that on the pen, in his pen, there was Electrolux only. Here is Electrolux Professional. And now I was thinking that now we have a -- we have something in front of us because when Dave joined and we've been discussing that, as Dave pointed out, the customer, they look at the brand on the product. That is what they see. If you think about the 3 big brands, ITW, Ali, Middleby, sorry, my mistake, the 3 big companies that he was pointing out, in reality, the brands that are on the product, the one that are seen by the customer are not those ones. There are no product branded ITW. There are no product, at least in our industry, there are no product branded Ali. And that is the reason why I always said that as a single brand, Electrolux Professional is one of the largest. And in the past was also a majority of our sales the Electrolux Professional brand. But now with the acquisition of Unified Brands, with the acquisition of the other company in the other industry and with the desire also from the people in the companies, but also from our dealer and our customer to have a sort of, let me say, reinforcement of what is behind the brand which is the company that is behind this brand that is supporting the development of the brand that is strengthening the brand, we had to think about that one. And that is the reason why we are introducing a corporate brand, so the Electrolux Professional group. It will not be on the product, this one, but it will be what we will use as an umbrella on top of all the brands, also because Electrolux Professional at the end is the usual challenge of the company that they have. They both have the name of the company and one of the brand that is the same. Because in some way, Electrolux Professional, I tell you, in Italy, Electrolux Professional is competing with Zanussi. So if you are competing, it's hard to say that you are part -- and is it known that they are part of the Electrolux Professional group. So you can see that it's a light umbrella, whatever it is, but Electrolux Professional Group will be the name that will be outside of this building. It will be the corporate brand that we will use to support and strengthen all the brands that we are having. Now the percentage of business coming from the specialty brand is larger than what it is or it was years ago. And we believe with this move, we will make them even stronger than what they are today. So again, thanks to everybody for being here virtually or physically and back to you, Jacob.

Thank you, Alberto. And with that, we will conclude this Investor Day. Thank you for watching and see you next time. Thank you, and goodbye.