Thule Group AB (publ) (THULE) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Good morning, and welcome to the Thule Group conference. [Operator Instructions] I would now like to turn the conference call over to your host, Mattias Ankarberg, CEO and President. Please go ahead when you're ready, sir.

Thank you very much, and welcome, everybody, to this call. I'm here today with Toby Lawton, our CFO, as well, and we'll be speaking to the presentation that is available through the webcast, but also on our web page afterwards. We've termed this presentation update on strategy and acquisition of Quad Lock, which we announced this morning, and we'd like to cover both points. And before I dig into the presentation, let me just share a few words about the acquisition that was announced this morning, our time. So we're quite excited, I think, for 3 reasons. First of all, Quad Lock is a really great company, global market leaders in a very attractive niche within outdoor lifestyle of performance phone mounts; make high-quality products. It's a very category, almost category-defining brand, very well-appreciated brand, talented people and, of course, history of very good growth and at good margins. Founded not too long ago in 2011 by 2 gentlemen in Australia to -- I think we are, yes, just impressed by what they and then, of course, now a much bigger team have achieved. So that's number one, a really great company we're excited about. Number two, we think this fits really great into Thule and the strategy that we are pursuing, both in terms of our brand, in terms of our strategic priorities and actually in terms of culture, and we'll cover a lot of that today. And then lastly, there is also a good complementarity. So there's clear opportunities for us to develop things further together. In a couple of ways, I mean, just look geographically first, Thule is strongest in Europe and Quad Lock is strongest in North America and Asia Pacific. Channel perspective, Thule is really over 90% sold through retail or distributor, whereas Quad Lock is 75% sold through direct-to-consumer or e-commerce. So we can help each other there, too. And then also in terms of consumer or target consumers, Thule's biggest exposure is within bike, where, of course, Quad Lock also has some exposure, but the biggest is motorbikes. So there will also be development opportunities in several areas. So a great company, a great fit and opportunities to address together going forward, which we're quite excited about. We'll get more into that into the presentation. But before we talk about Quad Lock, I'd like to spend a few minutes on Thule and our strategy going forward. And for those of you who follow us, you know that I will, typically in our quarterly reports, include some personal reflections in the CEO comment about what makes Thule strong. So I thought this would be a good opportunity to sum that up, maybe share a few more reflections, and hopefully, that also helps the understanding of why Quad Lock fits so well into Thule. So on Page #2, that's the agenda for today. We'll cover that first section of who we are very quickly, as I anticipate most people know Thule on this call, and spend more time on the strategy and the Quad Lock chapters. So very quickly then, who are Thule, on Page 3. Well, we're a product company, we're a growth company, and we've been around for a long time. We've done this for over 80 years. And we were founded in Hillerstorp in the forest in South Sweden, started out basically in the winter categories with the ski racks and the ambassadorship with the world famous then Alpine skier, Ingemar Stenmark, moved into water with surfboard carriers, into bike, RV and the story goes on from there. And this year, in 2024, at the bottom of the page, we have continued to launch new categories, entering this -- just these past couple of quarters into dog transportations and car seats. So a growth-oriented product company is what we are. On Page 4, we do this at a global scale, and we do this with a lot of in-house capabilities. We sell in almost 140 markets. We are quite proud about our premium brand that consumers feel represents quality, safety, well, good design and ease of use. We are also invested a lot in our global R&D and test centers, particularly in Sweden where Thule is from, but also in some of our satellites. We manufacture what we do. We're proud of our culture, and we take sustainability for real and include in the way we do business. We've been around for 80-plus years, but on Page 5 is the history we have as a publicly traded company. We had an IPO in 2014. And I think it's fair to say we had a good track record of profitable growth since. And pandemic years aside, it's a fairly steady improvement. And last 12 months, we turned over, well, almost SEK 9.5 billion with an EBIT of SEK 1.6 billion and a margin of just over 17%. Coming back to the sustainability topic. We also have a good development in our sustainability towards our sustainability goals. We have several. And here, I highlight the climate-related goals. And again, for those of you who follow us closely, you know that we have integrated this agenda into the way we do operations in terms of our manufacturing footprint and our product development, for example. And lastly, but not least, on the chapter of who Thule are. We are a product company, we are proud of our products, and we are also proud to be recognized for having really good products. And these are some examples of recognition we have had within the last year. We, starting from top left, recently launched our first product into car seats and very proud that we, as a newcomer, won the biggest consumer test in Europe, maybe in the world, the German ADAC test as for the Thule products. We have received 23 iF DESIGN and Red Dot awards in 2024, adding to the 27 we have achieved before in history. Got some nice prizes for being best of the best, as it's called in a few categories, and very also proud of the team to be awarded the Design Team of the Year in Red Dot, as an example. So that was, as flagged, quite quick rundown of or introduction of who we are. Now on the coming pages, I'd like to talk to who do we want to be and how we will get there, so to speak. And moving into the Page #9, this is how we phrase our vision. We have found our identity as a company with over 80 years of age. That's maybe no surprise. And we are a product company, and we phrase our vision as we want to make the best product in the world. And we are also an outdoor company, and we want to make products that are of high quality, and we phrase it as we want our products to last and pass the toughest tests and enable an active life outdoors. That's who we want to be. And following that, on the next page, we are fortunate to do this from a position of strength. And this is a page on Page 10 that I have shown several times during the last year. I think it sets a very good theme for who we are. And I'm also, as a person, a fan of the principles or the mindset of building on strengths. And I think there are 3 important strengths at overall level. First of all, we are fortunate to operate in a market that have tailwind. People do want to live active lives and increasingly so. Secondly, we are global market leaders in our key product categories. And thirdly, we invest a lot in ourselves, as I typically say, invest a lot in our own capabilities for innovation and quality, and that really helps us. And today, in this section, I'd like to speak a bit more about the second point here, which is being global market leaders in our key product categories. And I have 4 things to say about this. Starting on Page 11, the first thing is that this is how we make money. I mean having been in the company for a few years and a bit more than a year as the CEO, reflected a lot about what is the core of Thule, of course. And it's, I think, highlighting or revealing to understand that the market-leading positions are the driver of our profitable growth. We have several categories where we have been the market leader for decades, for example, rooftop boxes on the picture since the 1990s. And a handful or a few of these market-leading positions account for about 90% of the sales growth and gross profit growth since we became a public company in 2014. So that's important. The second point I'd like to make about market-leading positions is on Page 12, and that point is that we have a lot of things in common or at least the categories have common characteristics. And I'd like to highlight 4 things. And the pictures here are examples of some of these market-leading positions. So if it's a bike carrier or if it's a running stroller or a rooftop box, they all fit with the Thule brand. Our brand is about enabling an active life outdoors, and we are a premium brand and have premium products, and we are appreciated by enthusiasts. So that's one thing that is in common. The second one is that these categories typically have good growth, good tailwind and also a consumer that is willing to pay for innovation and the best product in the market. Thirdly, there are some barriers to entry. So if it's related to safety, like a bike carrier, or complexity or regulations or IP or other things, but that means that there's a little bit less competitive intensity. If it's difficult to solve from a sort of safety or regulatory perspective, like a bike carrier or an RV awning, it's typically good for Thule. The last point is that we do get leverage from innovation, as I call it. So the category lends itself to be driving to getting sort of premium positions and growth from innovation. We are positioned to deliver the best product and drive that innovation. And we also get scale from the infrastructure that we have in, for example, distribution and supply chain. So these positions have things in common. That's message number #3 -- number #2, sorry. And message #3, on the Page 13, and this is an important one, not only do we have these positions, we have a model for how to grow them or extend them. So I'll try to explain this a little bit simplified picture, of course. But on the left-hand side, by being market leaders in a niche or in a pocket, that's not just the number of units sold or a market share, that also means we have the market-leading resources. We have the best understanding of the market. We have technology platforms. We typically have intellectual property. As the biggest player in that segment, we have probably the biggest ability to invest, and we also have reach that we can get scale on our improvements and our developments. And secondly, by having our Thule model that I described briefly initially, we have a lot of capabilities and the culture that suits to develop these pockets. We have invested a lot in our innovation center. We manufacture things ourselves. We have a culture of never settling and always improving, and we get scale effects. And combining these 2, I think in my mind, is the main reason why we do what I call out-innovate the market or we push innovation to the next level. And that drives profitable organic growth. And that means we can invest more in our own capabilities, and we can extend these market-leading positions. So a bit conceptual, but I think important point to describe how we create value in Thule. And by doing this well, we grow the market share in these categories and actually, to some extent, to also grow the categories themselves and, therefore, have an influence over our own future. I'd like to take a short example on this on Page 14. And this is about bike carriers that many of you know as a core Thule category. And we can start back a bit 30 years ago. Thule was the global market leader in so-called roof-mounted bike carriers, that is you put the bike on the top of the car. Typically, you have a bike carrier then mounted to your roof racks. And then in '92, we launched the first towbar-mounted bike carrier, was a hanging bike carrier. Five years later, we entered the so-called platform segment, which today's version of that is seen on the picture to the right with a product called Thule EuroClassic, and that quickly took off, and we became a market leader. And as we were the market leader, we also had more capacity to invest. And then without going into all the details, we quickly moved forward from there, acquiring a supplier, starting in-house manufacturing, launching a mid-price product, e-bike-focused product, launched Thule EasyFold, currently the world's most sold bike carrier in 2014 which is a foldable premium product, et cetera. And then fast forward, launching more products, platform bike carriers overtaking rooftop bike carriers by volume. And just a couple of weeks ago, end of September, we launched what is maybe the most recent example development in this category, the world's most sold Thule -- sold bike carrier, Thule EasyFold, just got upgraded with better functionality, 50% lower CO2 emissions and then a higher price, EUR 100 up versus previous generation now to EUR 949. So it's, in my mind, a good example of how we start from a leading position, develop from there, invest and continuously push innovation, develop the market and grow both the market and our own market share. So that was message #3 regarding market-leading positions. On Page 15, message #4 is that acquisitions have added to these market-leading positions. Now Thule hasn't done a lot of acquisitions, but we've done a few. And here, I have listed 4 of them, I've excluded the smallest ones, but 4 of them we've done since the start of -- yes, since 2000 basically. And in 2005, we acquired a company called Omnistor, which was the European market leader in bike carriers and awnings for RVs. We acquired Chariot in 2011, a Canadian company, which was the leader in multisport child trailers; bike seat company Yepp in 2017, 6 years later; and then Tepui Tents just 1 year after that, American manufacturer of and market leader of rooftop tents that we've taken to Europe. So we've had some history of bringing acquisitions in and adding to these market-leading positions. And on Page 15 -- sorry, 16, we can also see that these businesses have grown fast and been boosted by the Thule brand and culture. And as you can see from the naming here, they have also been integrated under the Thule brand umbrella or co-branded as we can call it, maintaining the strength of the specific category brand, but combining it with the Thule brand and, of course, combining it with the Thule people and culture, adding more passionate people who are always looking to improve and innovate the next product in these categories. And this business have done quite well. I mean Thule Omnistor has grown by 9% CAGR since acquisition, Chariot with 13%, Yep with 10% and Tepui, which is more recent with 23%. So that has been a good piece of value for us as well. And then summarizing all this by summing up the strategy chapter of this presentation on Page 17, with a mindset of building on strength, we phrase it as our strategy is being big in pockets or niches, if you will, but all be united by our Thule brand. And we have 4 focus areas in this strategy. One is to focus on market leadership in the attractive product categories. Second is to continue to drive what we call product-driven growth, out-innovate and extend our market positions. Thirdly, add-on acquisitions to complement the organic growth. And I think important word there is complement. Organic growth is still the foundation of our strategy. And number four, very importantly, uniting all of it with our premium Thule brand and our culture, uniting our categories and enthusiast consumers under the one brand and culture. So that, hopefully, is a little bit more information about the way we look at value creation and strategy and connect some of the messages we've been talking about for the last couple of quarters together. So with that said, let's talk about, on Page 18, Quad Lock and how Quad Lock fits into Thule. And we can start with an overview of Quad Lock. And if you happen to be a, I don't know, hardcore mountain biker or a motorbiker, you're probably -- or there's a good chance you're familiar with Quad Lock products. And if you're not, hopefully, you are a bit more familiar after this presentation, we will try to explain what this is about. But at the big picture, Quad Lock is a company that helps adventurers use or integrate smartphones when they are active or in their active lives. It's really a category-defining innovator of what's called performance phone mounts for outdoor adventurers and sports enthusiasts. Founded 13 years ago in Australia and today selling in over 100 countries. Sales of almost SEK 1.5 billion, SEK 1.4 billion the last 12 months and EBITDA more than 25%. Obviously grown quite fast since inception, since it was just 13, 14 years ago. Quite diversified revenue, but still with the main footprint being in North America and Australia and New Zealand. 75% of the business is through direct-to-consumers and a high degree of returning customers that speaks well for the brand, and actually an enthusiastic consumer base of 2.5 million active consumers by now. So that's the big sort of picture facts about who Quad Lock is. And similarly, on Page 20 then, how does Quad Lock fit into Thule and our strategy? Well, let's keep it simple and run through these focus areas I just talked about when I talked about Thule's strategy. So first of all, we say we should focus on market leadership in attractive categories. So Quad Lock is the global market leader in performance mounts and by quite a distance to the #2. It's the #1 in mounts for motorbike, for bike and for off-road cars. And it has clearly and importantly, the widest offer in the market, which caters to enthusiasts and their specific gear and needs requires specific solutions sometimes. It also operates on the topic of attractive categories, in the category that is growing well and the category that fits Thule well. It's really an enthusiast category at its core. Consumers buy it and prioritize their purchases based on products that are robust and qualitative and safe and ease to use, which fits Thule well. And the category has had about a 10% historical growth and similar forecasted going forward. Secondly, we said in our strategy, we should focus on product-driven growth. And this is really a company which has a successful innovation track record and portfolio expansion, and we'll share more on that soon. It's also a company that's grown faster than the market and taking market share in the recent years and also has the plans in place to do so going forward. It's also a company that gets good leverage from the innovations given the reach they have as the market leader. And lastly, we talk about a premium Thule brand and a culture that unite all of our positions. And Quad Lock and Thule have really a lot of things in similar. We share the same target consumers from an emotional point of view. We have the same brand fundamentals, and we think that sets a stage for a very successful Thule-Quad Lock co-branding going forward. And we've also believe there is a very good cultural fit in terms of a similar passion for product and outdoors and a very competitive spirit and global business mindset from both Quad Lock and Thule. And I'll now dig a little bit more into a few of these points to give you some more depth into this. So Page 21, we talk about -- or I talk about Quad Lock being the market leader in performance mounts. Let me maybe start to explain why consumers buy performance mounts, to the right-hand side of this page. Well, if you're a, let's say, active mountain biker, a performance mount gives you the opportunity to keep your smartphone on the bike, stable during high-speed rains -- ride, sorry, or rough terrains. You can use navigation or other adventure or activity-specific apps easily hands-free. And that's quite common these days and increasingly used. And Quad Lock is really focused particularly on this part of the phone mount market, the one that's called performance mounts. That's the vast majority of the business, and Quad Lock is the market leader both in performance mounts for motorbike, for bike or cycle and for off-road drive. Page 22. This category is also attractive, we think, and it has some good supportive trends that rhyme very well with some of the Thule categories that we already operate in. The market has been growing for about 10% to 12% per year, and we expect that pace about to continue with the biggest growth in cycle. There are some good trends, from quite overview-ish to more specific. We believe that we continue to see that consumers are being more active also related to these activities. There is a steady growth in adventure motorbikes, mountain bikes, overlanding cars. We see that the general consumer awareness for performance mount is increasing. We see that consumers increasingly use smartphones when they are cycling, for example, or riding their motorbikes. And we also see that innovations and features help drive higher price points and sales in this category. And Quad Lock has, on Page 23, a really strong track record of innovation since basically Rob and Chris established this company back in 2011 and started selling products in 2012. And they were focused on bicycle right from the start already in 2012, sooner after followed off-road, motorbike a few years later. And then as with Thule, some of the growth bursts came with or timed with some of the more successful product launches that came later in the year, and you see several coming here towards the end. So a good strong track record of innovation and product portfolio expansion. Page 24. We also are almost -- it's almost striking to us how the similarity between the brands. And we've joked a bit between the Quad Lock and the Thule teams that maybe we could almost share each other's photos when we do advertising or promotional material. Quad Lock as a brand is focused on outdoor enthusiasts that live active lives and consumers who are willing to pay for the best product. The brand is, if you do the research, really known for robustness, quality, safety. And a lot of these things hold true for Thule as well, targeting outdoor enthusiasts living active lives, willing to pay for the best product and, again, the brand known for quality, safety, design and ease-of-use. So a lot of things in common. And speaking of in common on Page 25, we are -- been very fortunate to acquire a business which has a good cultural fit and experienced management team. We have importantly been fortunate to spend quite a bit of time together as management teams and with other positions in the respective companies and with the founders, both in Australia and in Sweden. And we feel that the culture is well aligned with the Thule Group culture and some of the highlights here. And we're also happy to welcome an experienced management team of 9 executives, including the founders and the combination of good long Quad Lock experience and clearly relevant external experience as well. Then I'll let Toby, on Page 26, cover some of the more transaction-related information.

Thank you, Mattias, and good morning, everybody. And now you've heard all about the Quad Lock, I can explain some of the key transaction terms here as well. Firstly, the enterprise value is AUD 500 million, which is equivalent to approximately SEK 3.6 billion. So that's the enterprise value, means it's on a cash and debt-free basis. And that purchase price is equivalent to an EBITDA multiple of 10x. When it comes to financing the purchase price, it's a combination of cash and shares, and approximately 79% of the purchase price is financed with cash. And those of you that follow Thule, you know that we've had a good cash flow generation, particularly the last couple of years. So we're reinvesting some of that cash generation. We're also using the existing funds available. And we're going to extend our existing RCF as well to finance the cash portion. And we're happy to -- that our existing lenders are extending that RCF for us to help finance this transaction, and they're very happy to support us. Approximately 21% of the purchase price is financed through newly issued Thule shares, and that represents around 1.9% of the total number of shares. And lastly, approximately 1% is in what's called a deferred performance incentive for key management shareholders, which will be paid out over 3 years depending on performance. And you can say, with both that deferred performance incentive and the share portion that the key management shareholders have reinvested the majority of their proceeds in the current transaction. So they really believe in the business going forward. The next point here, and I think a key point, is we expect the transaction to be accretive on a number of lines, basically accretive to Thule Group when it comes to earnings per share. We expect it to be accretive when it comes to sales growth and EBIT margin and also EBITDA margin. When it comes to leverage, following the transaction and the funding of the cash portion, we expect the pro forma leverage to be 2.0 post transaction, and that's the end of 2024. That's where we forecast to be on a pro forma basis, at the end of 2024. And then finally, the closing of the transaction has not yet happened. The signing of the transaction happened this morning, but not the closing. The closing is dependent on approval from the Australian Foreign Investment Review Board. There are no other approvals needed. This is a foreign investment approval and is expected to be closed within the fourth quarter. And then we can just flip to the next slide, and I won't present this slide in the interest of time. But here, you have a slide with a number of transaction facts on it on both the company and on the transaction that you can find information there. And then with that, I'll hand back to Mattias for Slide 28.

Thank you, Toby. I will start summarizing this. And well, stepping back, and as I said initially, not only is Quad Lock a impressive company, it's a good fit with us and supports our building the next level of Thule Group. And there are 2 points I'd like to make. First of all, we see that it's a strong fit with Thule and with the strategy we have going forward, back to the point about global market leader in an attractive category, product-driven growth and a good match with our brand and our consumers. And then secondly, and excitingly, we have several areas where there are opportunities to explore together. Again, geographically, Thule is strong in Europe where we could hopefully add some value and help the Quad Lock business, whereas Quad Lock is strong in Australia and New Zealand, and APAC becomes 10% of the new group's share of sales from today, 5%. DTC moves from 7% to 15% of the group's share of sales where Quad Lock is strong, and Thule is strong within retail distribution, we can hopefully support there. Quad Lock has the strongest segment, largest audience within motorbike, which adds development opportunities for us. And then, of course, there are several technology opportunities and technological platforms. And for example, Quad Lock has good capabilities within electronics in, for example, wireless charging. So both a strong fit and further areas of opportunity. A good contribution on Page 29, also on our journey to reach our financial targets. This is the same picture that we showed at the start of the presentation, but updated with a preliminary set of pro forma numbers for the new Thule Group on the right-hand side. And well, as is probably possible to see quite clearly from the graph, including Quad Lock in our Thule Group numbers, pro forma provides a boost to both sales and EBIT. And as Toby mentioned before, we expect this to be accretive across the lines basically. So just again, preliminary net sales would for the last 12 months be around SEK 10.8 billion from SEK 9.4 billion today. EBIT would have moved from SEK 1.6 billion to about SEK 1.9 billion. And EBIT margin would have increased around 0.5 percentage point to about 17.5%. A good addition towards our journey of reaching the SEK 20 billion sales in 2030 and an EBIT margin of not less than 20%. So in all and summarizing on Page 31 before we move to Q&A, 3 messages from us today. We are building the next level of Thule Group, and we are doing it based on our strengths. We are focusing on market leadership in attractive product categories. We're continuing to drive product-driven growth. We will have add-on acquisitions on the agenda to complement the main part of our growth strategy, which is organic growth. And we will tie it all together united with our premium Thule brand and our Thule culture. Secondly, we are happy to have Quad Lock in the Thule family. It's a strong fit with our Thule brand and our strategy going forward for the reasons mentioned. And we feel it is a financially attractive acquisition that also clearly supports reaching our target, adding SEK 1.4 billion of sales with an EBITDA margin of 25% and a transaction multiple of 10x EBITDA. With that, I conclude the presentation part of this meeting and ask moderator to turn to questions.

[Operator Instructions] The first question comes from the line of Fredrik Ivarsson of ABG Sundal Collier.

I've got a few questions related to the acquisition. First one, Mattias, you talked about entry barriers and the importance of those, of course, on Page 12. Can you explain what are the sort of key moats in Quad Lock, please?

Fredrik, yes, sure, we'll do. Well, a combination of things and I think a key one, we could talk about IP and brand strength, and those are definitely true. But I think a key one here is the -- having the widest offer in the market, catering to specific enthusiast needs. So these core consumers are people that are, let's call them, enthusiasts, the least in terms of, for example, mountain bikes and motorbikes. And they have specific bikes and specific gears, and they would like to equip them with in a specific way. So there's a lot of model-specific adaptation to really penetrate this market deeply. In a way, we draw a parallel to roof racks, which may look like it's a simple standardized product. But hundreds of car models and many, many launched new every year makes this quite complex category to manage. And it's one -- our ability to do so is one of the reasons why we stay so strong a market leader. So I'd like to highlight that specifically.

Yes. That's good. Okay. Second one, if you're willing to share some historical financials in terms of margins. You gave us some growth figures, but if you could give us some sense of the 25% EBITDA margin, how that sort of relates to historical levels?

Yes. I can say. So you're right. So the -- I mean, the EBITDA margin LTM basis is 25%, which we've disclosed in the material. You can say there's not a lot of volatility in historical margins. So it's not changed a lot, and the company has also always been profitable since the start of its creation, which I think is quite impressive for a start-up.

Perfect. And then on the sales channels -- sorry, 75% you said is D2C. On the other 25%, do you have any sort of overlaps today? Or do you believe you can sort of add the Quad Lock's products into your current dealer network or boost sales that way? Or any other flavor on this topic you could add?

Yes, sure, helpful to. No, I think for sure, we see some opportunities. We shouldn't overestimate them. I think as a strong company with a strong ambition, they have addressed the most relevant ones on their own quickly. But it's really a business that comes from DTC and that has, over the years, also moved more into retail to get that omnichannel presence and have some good -- they have some good channel partners, particularly in North America and Australia Pacific. There's opportunities for sure in Europe, where we have a really strong distribution particularly in the bike category. Motorbike, we have less to offer. But in bike and outdoor, we clearly have some introductions we can make.

Yes, makes sense. And last question from my side. You say around, I guess, 40%, 45% of sales comes from Asia, if I do my math correctly. How much is from Europe and the U.S. or North America? And also if you could tell us how the sort of production setup looks like in Quad Lock, where are these products produced? I assume it's by third party. So some more flavor on that.

Yes. I can answer the supply chain one, while Toby finds the numbers for the geographical split. Supply chain is largely outsourced. And being an Australian company, a lot of this proximity is produced in Asia, operated through its own -- Quad Lock's own procurement and purchasing office also located in China specifically. So management in-house in Australia and in China and then Asian third-party suppliers for manufacturing.

Yes. Thanks. And on the split of sales, Fredrik, on Slide 19, actually, we show a split. But basically, it's 35% North America; it's 30% EU, which obviously excludes U.K.; and then it's 20% Australia and New Zealand. And then the remaining, rest of world, is 15%, and a big chunk of that is actually U.K. So it's not a big chunk in Asia, like you mentioned.

The next question comes from the line of Daniel Schmidt of Danske Bank.

Maybe a very sort of detailed question, but just coming back to what differentiates this product from the low end. And could you say anything, Mattias, when you look at their product assortment, how does that differentiate from something you could buy [ at DTC ] sort of in terms of performance?

Yes, absolutely. So as in many product categories and as in Thule's, for example, there are, of course, low-cost options. And similarly to Thule, I would say, the defining characteristics or the differentiating characteristics are around quality, particularly. And if you would look at the number of review wins or 5-star ratings, et cetera, Quad Lock really, really stands out, having the highest quality and most robust solution. If you have a, let's say, smart -- if you have an actual phone mounted to your motorbike and you're going off-road or even not bumps, that phone, there's lots of tests on the Internet. That phone could get destroyed in many ways or fall off or wear and tear could reduce the parts particularly if you go on bumpy rides. And Quad Lock has the highest quality, most robust solutions in the market.

Okay. It looks like sort of when you look at the bike solution, it looks like you twisted on. Is that in any way patent protected? Or is there any part of this that is patent protected?

Yes, this -- right. This Quad Lock is a name sort of alluding to the twist on, if you like. And there is a whole portfolio of intellectual property protection around this.

And is there any expiration of that? Or is that for the foreseeable future? Or how does that work?

There's no expiration in the near future. I mean it's -- patents have a lifetime, but they haven't been around very long. So it's patented for a long time.

Okay. Good. And you also got a question on top line synergies and you don't mention it, and I understand that this is maybe not sort of you alluded to Europe being an opportunity maybe. Do you see, on the other hand, that Quad Lock is going to propel your sort of knowledge when it comes to the D2C approach? Is that an obvious for you?

Sorry, Daniel, you broke up a little bit. Can you say the last part again?

Not that you don't mention top line synergies a lot, but you did mention that there is an opportunity when it comes to the European market where you have a stronghold when it comes to distribution. But putting it the other way around, given that these guys have been very successful on the digital approach, do you think there's a lot of learnings from their digital journey that you can copy basically?

Absolutely. For sure, there are good learnings. It's a really strong team on digital things. And there's also really good market insights into, for example, Australia and New Zealand. So there are some opportunities. So I don't typically like to use the word synergies. But it's for sure some things we can address together and learn from each other for sure. And then we should, of course, realize that it's not sort of copy-paste, you can't just automatically replicate things between businesses from day 1. But as we now have a bigger family of businesses and good capable colleagues, there's absolutely opportunities to address in these areas that you mentioned.

All right. It sounded like when you sort of show the picture of product development, a lot of things have been developed in the past few years, but it did also sound like there is much more to come. But one thing that you -- when you look at the product and I haven't looked at it for more than sort of 10 minutes so far, it does, of course, fit into a lot of what you're trying to do with your products, but it doesn't have a safety element. Am I right? It's sort of one of the strongholds that you've been good at developing. Is that something that could be added to one of sort of the part of the assortment going forward? Or what's your thinking there?

Well, I'd put it like this, 2 points. First of all, I think Quad Lock is really known for having the most maybe secure is the better word than safe, but for sure, the most, the product of the highest quality and the best performance in terms of staying on the bike, protecting your phone, protecting your gears. So from that perspective, I think it's the most -- there's clearly an element of being secure here that's connected with both the property and the brand. But having said that, secondly, Daniel, to your point, there's a lot more development opportunities in this category. It's an exciting category that is growing. And for sure, some -- you will see some newness in this category as well going forward over the next couple of years and with some ideas already in the works and others to come.

Okay. Just a final question. Have you thought about reporting when it comes to this acquisition? Is this going to be a new line or a new segment or it's going to be part of the existing sort of way of reporting?

Yes. Basic answer, we will come back on that, Daniel. But we -- this is a business that fits well into Thule, so will fit into the existing reporting of Thule. But we will come back on exactly how that will be done. And we'll, of course, make clear how much of growth and so on comes from acquisition versus organic growth to be able to judge that over the next 12 months.

Yes. Okay. Just a final one maybe also, what's your current financing cost?

We have -- it's basically a floating rate. So the financing cost is -- right now is a little bit over 4%.

The next question comes from the line of Mats Liss of Kepler Cheuvreux.

Kepler Cheuvreux. First, I mean, I appreciate the high level of DTC sales. But my question is sort of, could you use that platform to improve your own DTC sales? Or do you have sort of -- will the platforms be complementary or used side by side?

Well, I think the obvious opportunity is that, yes, there is opportunity, and the obvious opportunity is to use knowledge and capabilities that this team has. And then we can, going forward, look at some more hard opportunities in terms of technology and shared logistics and things like that. But for sure, here, we get a very capable and high-performing team in place that knows how to run the DTC business in more than 100 countries. So that will be a source of inspiration and knowledge for us and help Thule in general.

Great. And then you're talking about the brand as a premium brand and it's sort of at the same level as your own Thule brand. And I guess it will be sort of [ curious ] then and you will try to keep it running. Could you sort of -- well, the question is, could you use Quad Lock to maybe, well, move into new market segments or new markets, rebrand maybe some of your existing Thule products? Or is that to take it too far?

Yes. Well, the strategy going forward is really to unite everything under the Thule brand. So it will be called -- co-branded with Thule over time. But to your point, several of the business we have acquired and also some of the organic ones have really strong sort of category brands. And I mean, Thule Chariot, for example, or Thule Omnistor in RV and bike trailers. And Quad Lock is a strong brand, and particularly so with the motorbike enthusiast, maybe also with some of the biking community around mountain bike, for example. So here, there are for sure development opportunities. We can all get creative and excited, but we do not really tap into the, for example, motorbike audience today. And they need bags and other kind of transport solutions like other people, too. So we will, for sure, find development opportunities related to this brand strength of Quad Lock.

Okay. Great. And then I mean it's a lot of -- well, Trump won the election and there are tariffs to be implemented maybe or raised, Are there any reason to believe that your products will be more affected or Quad Lock?

Maybe I can take that. But I think all those discussions are kind of relative game. We don't believe to the extent it would affect Quad Lock or us, it will affect others as much or at least as much. And I would also add that the actual cost of the physical product is a relatively smaller part of the total price of the product. So that means it's the tariffs on the cost of the product are -- yes, although they're negative, they're not that big in relation to the selling price.

Great. And finally, just about -- I mean, this seems to be well managed and well, doing well on their own also. So what about the acquisition opportunities besides this? Should we expect this to be a one-off and maybe -- or are there more to come in not too far future?

Well, I think it's a good question. I think that we've always been clear that we have organic growth as our -- the main driver of our growth strategy is to do things organically, and that will remain. But we will also look for add-on acquisitions that really fit in. We have a quite high bar, we think, for what fits in, given the criteria we have outlined today. But we think that's good. So there will be a full focus on the organic growth journey and then selective add-on acquisitions as we find and conclude on things that really fit in to what we want to build here.

[Operator Instructions] The next question comes from the line of Carl Deijenberg of Carnegie.

So I think 3 questions from my side. Maybe first of all, if you could talk a little bit about the, let's say, historical contribution to the company of the sellers here and maybe specifically about the private equity owners. You talked a little bit about the historical organic growth in Quad Lock's, but has that been purely self-financed? Or has there been any significant equity injections during the way? Or how does that pan out?

Yes. I can start, and then Toby, you can add if you want. But in this -- I mean, in short form, 2 gentlemen named Rob Ward and Chris Peters started this business in 2011 and launched the first product in 2012 and have been operating profitably since that day, basically. And then you are right, an Australian well-known private equity company, Quadrant, owns currently 60% of the shares and have done so for about 4 years. Our view is that Quadrant has invested quite a bit in the business, really in product development, in the team and then also making the brand more visible and well known. And I think the combination of strong concepts, strong entrepreneurial founders and support from a private equity company willing to invest in growth has gotten them where they are today. We should also give credit, of course, to the management team that's built up over the last couple of years and which is now a combination of Quad Lock people who have been around for as long as the company has been around, so to speak, but also some external people that has now put, for the last few years, full executive management team in place.

Okay. Very well. And secondly, I just wanted to follow up also. I mean I appreciate what you said on the margin side, both on EBITDA and EBIT. And it seems like the discrepancy between EBIT and EBITDA is fairly similar to what you were reporting in the group today. But I just wanted to ask also, I mean, gross margin-wise, is there any significant difference in between Thule Group as it is today and Quad Lock's? Because, I guess, yes, if there would be or if the acquired entity's gross margins are higher, and you also talked about this growth rate, then naturally, maybe the longer-term margins could even be a little bit higher. Or is that -- yes, that's what I'm asking.

Yes. On the margin profile, I mean, you can draw a parallel to Thule in a way. And with the DTC business being such a big part in Quad Lock, it has a different profile as it does with the DTC business in Thule. So that profile would be higher gross margins because you don't sell through a retailer, and higher SG&A basically to operate with logistics, marketing and costs around that. So it's a bit different to the Thule Group average, but not dramatically different from the Thule DTC model.

Yes. No, understood. And just finally also on the synergy side, and I heard what you answered to the previous question, and I guess, also it's very early days. But I mean, further down the line, would you see the potential of consolidating these production lines also in-house to what you already have today in Thule Group? Or is there a material difference in production processes versus what you are capable of doing today if we look, let's say, 2, 3 years down the line?

In a few years out, we -- there's probably not a great fit in terms of manufacturing. There are other areas where we can support each other much better that would be more important to address in terms of distribution and some of the development capabilities, for example. Over time, as with some of the acquisitions in history that we talked about over many years, we, of course, can develop things more together as the bigger new group. But in the short term, there will not be a focus on manufacturing synergies.

As there are no additional questions waiting at this time, I'd like to hand the conference back over to Mattias Ankarberg for closing remarks.

Thank you very much, everybody, for joining this call on fairly short notice. I appreciate it. We materially will be available on our website, and we are reachable through the usual channels. And if nothing else, wish you a good day, and look forward to talking to you at the time of the Q4 report.

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's call. Thank you for joining. You may now disconnect your line.