At its Capital Markets Day in Stockholm, Thule Group presented a new Product Category structure while raising its financial targets.

While continuing to report sales in two regions, the company outlined global ambition levels for the four product categories that will be tracked going forward: Sport & Cargo Carriers; Packs, Bags & Luggage; Active with Kids and RV Products.

“We have, as announced on June 2nd this year, finalized our strategic repositioning to become a pure branded consumer goods company, via the divestments of non-core businesses. At the same time we have been growing fast in some of the product categories within what has up to now been called Other Outdoor&Bags. We feel that the new structure with four Product Categories better represents the way the business is run in the two regions and will enable us to better communicate our ambition levels going forward,” commented Magnus Welander, CEO and president.

 

 

 

 

 

The overall ambition for Thule Group continues to be to drive profitable organic growth across all the categories, but as market trends and market position differs between the categories, the long-term ambitions in the four product categories are:

  • Sport&Cargo Carriers – Strengthen Global No.1 position
  • Packs, Bags & Luggage – Become a serious contender in Luggage and Daypacks
  • Active with Kids – Become a serious contender in Strollers
  • RV Products – Outpace the RV market

New Long-term Financial Targets – Thule Group

“With our proven track record of organic constant currency sales growth above 5 percent in recent years and currently delivering an underlying EBIT-margin of 1 percent, which is above our current goal of 17 percent, we also felt it was time to update our new long-term financial targets,” said Welander.

 

“We continue to see profitable organic growth as the No.1 focus for the company and thanks to a combination of economies of scale in an efficient and well-invested back-end of our business and an expected positive product mix shift going forward, we feel we have the key drivers to aim for a more ambitious long-term EBIT-margin target. Our proven strong cash generation and the focus on organic growth, while still being open to possible strategic M&A opportunities, are the main reasons behind the updated leverage target,” added Welander.

Photo courtesy Thule