Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Techtronic Industries 2021 Annual Results Announcement Analyst and Investor Webcast. In this webcast, TTI will share the updated performance as of December 31, 2021.
Before we begin, let me introduce to you the key management of TTI with us today. They are Mr. Horst Pudwill, Group Chairman; Mr. Joe Galli, our CEO; and Mr. Frank Chan, our CFO. Mr. Horst Pudwill will first give us an opening remark, then Mr. Frank Chan will walk us through the full year financial results, followed by the business overview and strategy by Mr. Joe Galli.
Without further ado, let me pass the time to our Chairman for the opening remarks. Mr. Pudwill, please.
I would like to thank you for attending TTI's 2021 annual result announcement. Given the continued public health concern and requirement for social distancing, we are presenting our annual results announcement via webcast.
I'm extremely pleased to announce that 2021 was an extraordinary year for TTI with outstanding revenue and profit growth. We delivered exceptional sales of USD 13.2 billion, an increase of 34.6%.
Over the 2-year period, we substantially outperformed the market with a 72.2% sales growth. Our dedicated, skilled, compassionate teams across the globe are enabling us to exceed outstanding results. It's our unrelenting board vision, customer focus on business momentum that will make 2022 another successful year and position TTI with exciting opportunities in the months and years ahead.
Frank Chan, our group CFO, will now provide you with the 2021 full year financial overview. And Joe Galli, our group CEO, will cover the business overview and strategy.
I will now hand you over to Frank Chan and Joe Galli for the presentation. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 2021 indeed was an extraordinary year for TTI. We have delivered organic sales growth of 34.6% to USD 13.2 billion, an increase of USD 3.4 billion over 2020. When compared to 2019, we significantly outperformed the market with a sales growth of 72.2% over the 2 years period. We have managed to maintain this very strong growth momentum as we continue to execute our very focused strategic investments in new innovative products, in field marketing initiatives, manufacturing capacity expansions at optimal locations, selective geographic expansions and masterful job managing the evolving supply chain landscape and logistics.
Gross profit increased by 36.5% to over USD 5.1 billion with gross margin increased for the 13th consecutive year by 54 basis points to 38.8%. This margin improvement was a direct result of launching high-margin new products and categories, favorable mix, volume leverage, productivity gains and operational excellence, generating high level of cost efficiencies and controls across all operations.
Both EBIT and net profit for the first line passed the USD 1 billion milestone, increased for the 14th consecutive year. EBIT increased by 37.2% to USD 1.2 billion and net profit increased also by 37.2% to USD 1.1 billion, with both margins improved by 10 basis points. Earnings per share increased by 37% to USD 0.60 per share.
The Board recommended a final dividend of HKD 1 per share, representing an increase of 22% over last year. Together with the HKD 0.85 per share income dividend paid, subject to shareholders' approval to the final dividend recommended, total dividend for the year 2021 will be HKD 1.85, an increase of 37% over 2020 and a payout ratio of 39.7%, same as that of last year.
One of our key financial objectives is that our EBIT and net profit increase must outperform over our sales growth. The objective once again has been achieved in 2021 with EBIT and net profit increased 37.2% and 37.1%, respectively, as compared to our sales growth of 34.6%. On a 13-year CAGR performance trend, sales grew by 13%, while EBIT increased by 20% and net profit by 27%.
Return on equity is also another important metric of TTI. Over the past 13 years, we've increased our shareholders' equity by 5x to USD 4.3 billion while we improved our return on equity from 2% in 2008 to now 25.5% in 2021, an increase of over 12x. This best demonstrated our ability to produce more net income per dollar of equity for our shareholders over time.
Power Equipment segment, accounting for 90.6% of group revenue, delivered a sales growth of 37% to USD 12 billion. The increase mainly is as a result of our continued strategic investments to extend our leadership position in both professional and do-it-yourself tools markets. In 2021, our flagship MILWAUKEE business delivered a 40.6% growth, while our Ryobi DIY and outdoor business continued to deliver impressive double-digit growth.
Operating profits of this division increased by 37.8% to now over USD 1.16 billion as we aggressively invested in new products and technology and user conversion, strong commercial execution and maintained very tight cost controls.
Floor Care division accounting for 9.4% of the group's total revenue continued with a strong sales growth momentum, delivered a 14.8% revenue growth to over USD 1.2 billion. These results reflected our disciplined efforts to produce best-in-class cordless and carpet washing cleaning products. The division generated an operating profit of USD 29.2 million, an increase of 19% over last year, with 10 basis points margin improvement. We are confident that this division is now well positioned to deliver consistent improvements in sales and financial performances in the years ahead.
From a geographic perspective, all regions delivered double-digit sales growth. North America, accounting for 77.4% of the group's revenue, delivered a revenue growth of 33.7%. Power Equipment grew by 36.4% in this region. EMEA, accounting for 14.8% of the group's revenue, increased by an impressive 41.1%. Power Equipment division of this region grew by 43.6%. Rest of the world, led by Australia and New Zealand, increased by 31.8%. Power Equipment of this region grew by 32.1%.
We have continued with our strategic SG&A investments accelerating our sales growth momentum and margin improvements. Total SG&A spend for 2021 was at 29.9% of sales, a 37 basis point increase over last year as we continue to make bold investments to expand our new product development capabilities and user conversions, sales coverage, geographic expansions and our leadership development program. We've also been able to deliver savings on nonstrategic SG&A, leveraging on our sales growth.
R&D expense was at 3.2% of sales, same as that of last year. Net finance costs remained low, less than 0.1% of revenue as we've been able to leverage our balance sheet, very diligent financial and cash management despite the fact that we've maintained a higher level of gearing to support our working capital requirements and CapEx. We maintain that we can continue to deliver very effective and efficient finance costs going forward.
Effective tax rate remained same as last year at 7%. Again, we've been following the global tax developments very closely and make timely adjustments to our tax plans to ensure our low effective tax rate to be sustainable. Our balance sheet remains very strong.
Our shareholders' equity increased from USD 3.9 billion to now USD 4.7 billion in 2021, an increase of 21%. Net current assets also at a healthy level of USD 2.4 billion.
As we strategically build up our inventory level to support our strong sales growth and service level, together with our increased investments in new facilities, capacity, productivity and new products, we carried a slightly higher level of debt in 2021 with a gearing level of 28.2%. With the strong cash-generating capabilities of our business, we are confident that we will improve our gearing going forward.
Total working capital as a percentage to sales was at 20.9% as compared to 14% reported in 2020. We have continued with our strategic inventory build to buffer inflation risk and critical component shortages and to support our anticipated strong growth -- sales growth and to maintain our high service levels.
Inventory days was at 134 days, 14 days higher than 2020, but 2 days lower than as at June 30, 2021. Receivable days increased by 5 days due to strong sales at the end of the year. Our receivables are of very high quality, and there's no issues with the collectability despite the days increased. Payable days was at 110 days, 7 days lower than last year, mainly due to the timing of the inventory build.
We will continue to leverage our financial strength, volume and order visibility for the best terms from our suppliers. Managing working capital has always been our key focus, and we are confident that we can continue to deliver very effective and efficient working capital management.
CapEx for the year was at USD 747 million. The increase mainly due to our additional investments in new facilities, capacity expansion and new products. We project our 2022 CapEx will be at similar level.
Optimizing our debt portfolio and structure is always one of our primary objective to support our strong long-term growth and in anticipation of potential interest rates increase. During the year, we increased our debt level to support our short-term working capital needs and increased CapEx investments. Working capital increase was mainly financed by floating rate short-term debts for flexibility as we expect that will be reduced by our ongoing strong operating cash flow and the cost of financing was also lower. CapEx were mainly financed by fixed rate debt with longer-dated tenor. We will continue to further review our current structure for the best balanced portfolio to support our growth.
And now I will pass the presentation to our CEO, Mr. Joe Galli.
It's my pleasure to share with you as CEO of TTI, the spectacular results that our team delivered for 2021. It was an epic year in many ways. And the exciting thing is that we're just getting started in this company, We have so much potential long term that I think, after today, you'll begin to see what our team inside this company sees about our future.
First of all, I want to share a quote with you that I think is relevant, and we have learned this lesson over the years here at TTI. When things are bad, they're worse than you think. And when things are good, they're better than you think. So we see many competitors, many companies announce results and make excuse after excuse after excuse about things like logistics and inflation, they can't get cells and computer -- semiconductors. And the fact is we're in the exact same environment. We have the same inflation, the same logistics channels, except we don't make excuses at TTI.
And that's why I think it's important to remember when things are good, they're better than you think. As you look at our future, you'll, I think, begin to see this more clearly. We are proud of our strategy of building a company here that will flourish in good times and bad. We don't make excuses. Excuses are for other people. What we do is we find a way to take whatever environment we're in and find a way to deliver better than our competitors.
So let's look at the first -- at the second half last year. So we finished up 21%. That's 21% growth in the second half last year, and that's going against a 2020 that was a massive comp, 40 plus comp. And our largest competitor actually reported up 5% for the second half, we're up 21%. I think that's an important comparison. For the year, we're up 34.6%. So we added $3.3 billion in sales to this company. No acquisitions. That's all pure organic growth that our team grains out all over the world in all of our business units.
Our MILWAUKEE team globally delivered 41% growth last year. 41% growth, which is a dramatic statement about the leadership position that MILWAUKEE has now claimed. And more importantly, look how we did as a company versus 2019. The corporation was up 72%; MILWAUKEE, up 77%. Can you imagine, we're up 77% compared against 2019. And this is particularly exciting when you look at what our largest competitors are reporting.
And in fact, look, there's been some misinformation and misleading information that's been introduced into the public domain that we want to clear up a little bit here today. So our largest competitor, Stanley, actually announced last week at the Barclays conference, and I'll read the quote from one of their executives. Stanley said, our professional power tool business has had a 13% average annual CAGR over 5 years, well in excess of GMP. Why would you compare with GMP? And it's so clearly outpacing the market performance, gaining significant share. And so I feel like up 27% would be outpacing the market and gaining significant share. We don't even -- we wouldn't even look at GMP because we're developing cordless solutions to achieve sustainability and to transform the way people use our products.
And so anyhow, we only compare with ourselves, and we expect to outperform the market this year, next year and all the years to come.
All right. So look, last year, our P&L was another record-breaking year for us. Yes, 34.6% growth on the top line. Our gross margin was up 54 basis points. We'll get to that in a moment. We reinvested much of that gross margin back into SG&A to drive more R&D, more new products, more geographic expansion, more in-store coverage with key partners, like the Home Depot.
And so our EBIT grew actually at a faster rate than sales, as it always does, and so the net profit and EPS. In fact, EPS came in over $0.60 a share. Our gross margin was up, yes, over 50 basis points again last year. This is an incredibly relevant and important measurement for the company. Why? Because we feel like anybody can grow if you cut price and cut gross margin, which our competitors, in fact, reported last year. But we are growing this company. 21% in the second half, while the gross margin goes up, which means that we are continuing to bring the market technologically advance, demonstrably superior innovative products that we can price up to command a premium and deliver high gross margins while capturing massive market share. That's what this means.
And let's not forget, this is the 13th consecutive year, 13th as in 2021. 13th consecutive year where our gross margin was up, on average, around 50 basis points. We started this journey at 30.8%. People laughed at us when we said we'd get this into the high 30s. And we're at 38.8%. And I can tell you right now that over the next 5 years, we feel confident we will deliver 50 -- on average, 50 basis point gross margin improvements consistently from today into the next 5 years.
Why? Because we're not going to stop the strategy that's been driving this. Because we have tremendous support from end users and retail partners. And because we have so much more innovation in the parts of the market that matter, that we believe and we're very confident we can continue to drive this.
Okay. So one of the advantages of having a superior gross margin to our competitors is that we are able to reinvest a lot of that gross margin, not all. A lot of gross margin back into growth drivers, strategic SG&A. And whether -- as I said, whether it's hiring more software development engineers or product managers and user conversion teams in the field; store coverage for people like Home Depot and our other partners around the world, like Bunnings; geographic expansion, which we continue to pursue; and our transformative -- organizationally transformative initiative called LDP, or Leadership Development Program, where we go to campus, we hire high-potential, newly minted grads, and whether they go into purchasing, logistics, finance, sales, marketing, product development, engineering, importantly, software development engineering, all these recruits that we cover are part of the LDP program, and we're broadly part of the strategic investment we continue to make.
We feel like we are vastly superior to our competition in terms of investing in the future. In fact, our largest competitor announced last month that they were having yet another workforce reduction. I think Stanley said they're going to cut another 1,000 plus people. Can you imagine working in an environment where every year, every 2 years, there's another workforce reduction as opposed to the sprawling, breathtaking growth levels that our people are able to see at TTI.
Okay. So look, we did develop the phrase several years ago when it was clear to us that the virus in early 2020, when it was clear to us that the virus was not going to hurt or slowdown demand, in fact, it was going to allow us to continue to grow, we decided to weaponize inventory, meaning we saw the logistics challenges that were increasing around the world. We saw the shortages unfolding in semiconductors and in sales for batteries. And we heard our customers complain, fiercely complain that our competitors were not shipping at a 98% service level, which is what our customers demand. So we decided to weaponize inventory.
And we built -- last year, we built $1.6 billion in inventory over the previous year. We took the days up. This is rear-looking days by 14 days. To be fair, we would have built more inventory if we could have got the semiconductors and the cells that we wanted.
Now you have to be careful because we have competitors that have also increased inventory, but they're doing it because they're acquiring companies with dated technology, and they're sitting on piles of inventory that actually would be called excess or perhaps is hard to sell. And when you look at gross margin, you have to remember, gross margins go down when you are selling off that inventory, which you noticed we don't do that because we don't have excess obsolete inventory. We're very disciplined about this. So this is important to keep in mind when comparing us to other companies.
Okay. So I -- we don't give official guidance, but let me give you some direction here. We feel strongly that TTI is positioned beautifully to grow double digits in 2022. Can we do better? Of course, we can. Are we committing to that now? Let's just let the year unfold. In spite of any questions or uncertainty you might see, we are very confident that double-digit growth this year is something we can deliver. And if we do a great job, and our team seems to do a great job year after year, then we'll grow 15% or more, we'll see. But you can count on a double digit as you look at the company.
And more importantly, many of you have heard me say and many of you have rolled your eyes when I said it. But you've heard me say, we are going to get to $20 billion in revenues by 2025. This is not guidance. This is an internal target we set because our team rallies around these internal targets. And we believe in being bold about these things. We are not trepidatious. We want to set goals that people care about and motivate behavior and create excitement and passion in the company.
So I have told you in the past that we would get to $20 billion in sales in 2025. I have to tell you, though, that we decided to move that up a year based on what our competitors have announced over the last 2 months, based on what's going on with the competitive set, which I didn't anticipate. I misled you. I thought it would take us until 2025. I now think that we can get to $20 billion by 2024. This is not going to be easy. But my team has convinced me. In fact, if you talk to our people around the company, they would tell you that they're committed to this 2024 number. Even if we get it in 2025, we're still going to change the industry. But I actually think there's more opportunity than what I've suggested in the past.
Okay. So ESG is a massive commitment to this company. We are maniacally obsessed about being world-class in ESG. We just added a Board member, Ginny Wilmerding, who's considered to be a global expert in ESG and has been enormously helpful already in terms of driving sustainability in the company. And we have many, many things this year in ESG as time unfolds. I just learned this morning actually that we won the Call2Recycle, which is the largest U.S. battery recycling program in the United States. We just won -- we were recognized again for leadership in sustainability.
We have received a number of awards and all kind of recognition about our sustainability efforts. And we're focused on the right kind of sustainability. For example, we are not out buying gas-powered, petrol-powered lawnmower companies. I mean can you imagine they actually trying to say you care about sustainability and you buy gas and petrol lawnmower companies that are actually going to be extinct here by the end of the decade? I mean, can you imagine? We not only are driving battery-powered -- lithium battery-powered cordless products, but we also are actually moving manufacturing into the U.S. to reduce carbon footprint in a meaningful way going forward. You'll hear a lot more about ESG as we go forward, and we look forward to answering any questions that are going to come up here in the -- as we do our road shows.
Okay. Let's shift gears. There is an enormous opportunity that's become very topical called battery-powered outdoor products. 5 years ago, nobody talked about the category for a good reason because the gas-powered, the petrol-powered products haven't changed basically since World War II. The technology is the same. The carbon emissions haven't improved. The noise levels are incredibly bad.
And so we are clearly the global leaders in battery-powered outdoor equipment. And we -- actually, last year, we were up 71%. 71%. That's how much our -- if you look at our RYOBI, our MILWAUKEE and other brands we sell around the world, 71% in battery. We -- last week, I had to listen to a retailer announce and boast about some things that we just feel like we have to clarify from our point of view. We don't sell Lowe's. Lowe's is a smaller competitor to the Home Depot. We love our relationship with Home Depot. In fact, this is a brilliantly managed company that really gets sustainability and they really get what the future is going to look like. And so I just -- I have to call this out. So Lowe's boasted about being up 37% in their battery-powered outdoor equipment business last quarter and 118% over 2 years.
By the way, Home Depot, with us, is up 72% last quarter and 174% for the year. Beyond that, Lowe's actually is boasting about being #1 in outdoor power equipment, but they're forgetting to say that a lot of that is gas product, which won't even be legal to use in many municipalities on parts of the country. So all we care about -- and this is why we love working with Home Depot because they're so strategic and they're so forward-looking. And all we care about is the cordless part of this market.
When I hear Lowe's announced this stuff, it's like listening -- it would be like Steve Jobs announcing that he's going after the total phone market. Pay phones, fax receives landlines and smartphones. I mean, you got to be kidding me. All that matters is cordless and that's all we're focused on. And our retail partners are fiercely aligned with us here.
So -- okay. We are going to -- just to make it clear, we are not even beginning to get started here. We're still in the embryonic state of rolling out transformative, revolutionary, once-at-a-generation products that will change the way people maintain their outdoor, maintain their yards and anything outdoor. So we're going to launch 70 new RYOBI battery products this year, 2022. That is 70. This is a breathtaking number. I wish it was 80. But -- and by the way, it's not like we didn't launch any last year. We already have the broadest range in the world with our 40-volt, 18-volt platforms in RYOBI for battery outdoor. But 70 new ones is pretty exciting.
The one -- there's a lot of flagships here. One of the things we're most proud of is we are going to finally launch a zero-turn rider that's easy to use, where you can cut straight and eliminate some of the problems that we have witnessed for decades here. And this is another case where Home Depot's competitor announced a new zero-turn product from this company, Chervon EGO. By the way, Home Depot discontinued the line of EGO-branded outdoor products and all of the Chervon products in 2020. They sent a public announcement out. And I have people telling me, "Oh, my god, I wonder, EGO decided to sell at Lowe's."
The decision -- the Home Depot eliminated the brand from their shelves. Why? Because they felt that TTI working together with them would do a better job. And that's exactly right. So the zero-turn rider, that I listened to Lowe's boast about last week, it's -- here's a direct comparison with the one we're about to launch. So theirs is 52-inch, ours is 54. They have 25-horsepower. They bragged about it, 25 horsepower. Ours is 42. They talk about 4 acres of run time. We conservatively get to 5 acres, it's probably higher. They have a 3-blade design. We have 3-stack, 6-plate design. So you get more effective cuts, easier to bag, cleaner mulching and it goes on and on. The EGO product has a plastic discharge shoot, which means when you run your rider into a gate or any pole or whatever, it snaps right off. Ours is rubber and forgiving. And so you don't have that issue.
There's a classic problem called windrow, and this is interesting to me. So farmers for years would have tractors. And when they would harvest their wheat yields, they would have a tractor that was designed to push the wheat to the side of the tractor and create something called windrow, which is a technical term for comps of wheat that go alongside the tractor so that you can go back and harvest the wheat and you sell your crops, right?
So the problem is the design of a farmer's tractor is not the right design for riders. And riders -- look at any of these riders, whether zero-turn or whatever, and you get this windrow issue, so you're cutting the grass and all of a sudden, there are clumps of grass alongside of you while you're trying to cut the grass. And you're not harvesting the grass. You want the grass to go away in the bag, which -- or into mulch.
And so we've -- our design, because of the blades and the other things our guys have developed here, we've eliminated windrow. But maybe the most exciting to me, the most exciting development is iDRIVE, the joystick development. So in 1964, a zero-turn -- the zero-turn mower was invented by a company called Hustler, now part of Stanley. And the design was 2 levers, and you're supposed to sit in these things and control these 2 levers. And even today, with all the years, these 2-lever designs, it's very hard to cut straight. It's very hard to steer these things.
And the design hasn't changed since Lyndon Johnson has been present. Can you imagine? So we have done exhaustive research, and we have users that are screaming for help here. And we've come up with the joystick iDRIVE system, and it is so cool that you can't believe it. Home Depot helped us develop this. Their command of this space in the end user is superior. And if you ever use a zero-turn riding mower, you've got to try this, you won't believe it.
So that flagship mower is part of a family. Can you imagine? We have 41 battery-powered mowers that we'll have in the market this year under the RYOBI brand alone. And we have other brands that also will have incredible mowers. But 41 battery mowers. Our largest competitor just bought a company with 140 gas mowers. We have no gas mowers. We believe in the future in sustainability. We -- and again, working with Home Depot, we decided to -- when Home Depot discontinued the EGO brand and all Chervon products, we work with them closely, and we decided together that U.S. manufacturing made sense.
So TTI decided to build a greenfield, a brand-new, world-class battery lawnmower factory in South Carolina. So by the way, these are made in the U.S.A. We don't have the carbon footprint issues of shipping across the Pacific nor the logistics nightmares with all the logistic challenges around the world today. So this is a powerful statement. And when you visit -- any investor is always welcome to visit our factories and any analyst, and you won't believe it when you see the way we're going to build mowers in the United States. We're very excited about this.
Okay. So believe me, mowers are just the tip of the iceberg in terms of what we're doing here with battery-powered outdoor. We have just pioneered and launched the best tillers ever in our view, according to the users. And these are battery-powered, not gas powered, not petrol. So the rear-tined tiller is incredible. It's so much easier to use. Their performance is amazing. The front-tine is equally impressive. We have both the cordless, both literally will outperform in every measure that matters what the petrol tillers on the market will do today.
And by the way, without the noise and without the emissions that blow into your face while you're trying to till your garden or your yard. We are -- we have just launched yet another world-class string trimmer. It's super powerful, super quiet. I'll get to quiet in a second. Easy to use. And let's not forget, it's part of the battery platform where we have all these dozens of other products. So that same battery pops out and you can use it for so many different other products that we have today, and that will be underway.
Okay. So here's another area where the misinformation in the market is not fair, not fair to investors or even end users. But once again, Lowe's last week boasted about an EGO blower. And they actually said it's the most powerful handheld battery-powered blower, 765 cubic feet per minute of blowing capacity. Now cubic feet per minute is a classic measurement for blowers, and it's meaningless when you look at a blower in its total context.
Now we have a unit. Our unit we're launching, we will sand a box at 730 cubic feet per minute. We've tested it to be the same or better than the competitor's unit. But get this, our blower is actually 80% more quiet than the EGO blower. Can you imagine? If you ever listen to these blowers on Saturday morning, you'll know that the noise is a nightmare. So we've cracked that one.
Our blower is 40% lighter and has 50% more run time. And this is one of a family of blowers, but the fact is when people talk about CFMs, cubic feet per minute, it's such a myopic, misleading statistic and -- or measurement or feature. And we need to make sure people understand, there's more to a blower than CFM. And I find it crazy that in our industry today, after 100 municipalities in the United States alone, and these are some big cities, like Boston, et cetera. 100 cities have issued ordinances that they've outlawed, it's illegal to use a gas-powered mower because the noise is so loud. And we are the only company that really -- we've established acoustic-engineering capabilities in our R&D centers. We are the global leader by far, noise reduction technology. What we want so far is just the beginning. We think that the opportunity -- when we look at sustainability, we look -- of course, we look at emissions, but we also think noise pollution matters a lot. And I think the governments around the world are going to agree with this. You'll see us lead this in the years to come.
And that leadership will include the super powerful backpack blower. It will include a whole family of outdoor products. This is our current line of Whisper Series. Whisper -- by the way, we're doing the same thing in our other brands. But this Whisper Series will grow and grow with a focus on better performance and less noise. We are not going to cut performance just to get less noise. We're not going to do that. And we think we can do both, and that's exactly what our team is doing.
Okay. So we also have, together with the Home Depot, a massive advantage in outdoor, massive. Because our ONE+ system, which is an 18-volt cordless platform, which has been in place for decades, we now have 41% household penetration in the United States on RYOBI 18-volt ONE+ products, 41%. When people walk in the Home Depot, the 41% of them already have the RYOBI battery and charger at home. So when they're looking for a lighter weight blower or string trimmer or hedge trimmer or chainsaw or mower or pole saw or one of the other 50 products we have, now they're coming in ONE+. They already have the battery and charger. So it's presold.
The Home Depot competitors do not have that. They can't even approach this. They don't even talk about it because they have products with household penetrations that are de minimis. I mean they don't even show up. So this is an advantage that people misunderstand and don't look at and you should because it's going to be a big deal as we go forward.
All right. So let's shift gears again. So the MILWAUKEE team -- so let me go back. Two years ago, we made a decision to set up a brand-new start-up outdoor power equipment business at MILWAUKEE. We -- RYOBI attacks the DIYer, the light-duty -- or say, the budget-conscious landscaper, although many of our RYOBI products outperform what landscapers are using today. But MILWAUKEE is our target -- this is where we want to go after the real pro -- the pro landscaper.
And so we set up a start-up business unit with outstanding engineers, and we are now beginning to roll out products in MILWAUKEE Outdoor, and these will blow your mind. So this mower, which I wish you could see the actual mower because the thing is gorgeous. This mower is not inexpensive. This is going to be a high price cordless mower. But it will actually outperform the world's highest rated petrol mower, which is Honda. Honda has been #1 forever. And when you use this, the cutting performance, the speed, the ability to cut through wet grass, dry grass, all sorts of conditions, it will blow your mind. And this is only our first one. We're just getting -- so we didn't even know enough about this, yes, to really achieve our potential.
In 3 years, you will see MILWAUKEE do what RYOBI is doing and we will have a family of leadership mowing products. But when you see this -- and by the way, we're sold out for the season. We believe this will be a massive success and a highlight of the company's 2022.
But in MILWAUKEE, we also, as I said, this is a new business unit. We're just getting started. So we will launch 15 battery-powered new products in MILWAUKEE alone for 2022.
And so when you look at this, our competitor, the one that Home Depot kicked out, EGO, what you see is they have publicly announced that they're going to roll out 10 new battery-powered outdoor products in 2022, 10. 10 is pretty good. It's impressive as hell, except when you look at our -- look at what we're doing, we have 103. I mean, are you kidding me? So when I hear people who compete with Home Depot, trying to claim that they have some sort of leadership, I don't know how you guys classify leadership. I think 103 versus 10 is a pretty compelling fact when you look at establishing or defining something as leadership.
Anyhow if you think this is the end of our onslaught here, believe me, it's not. Because we love the outdoor category unlike our largest competitor, Stanley, who just bought 2 gas-powered lawnmower companies. We're going to focus on battery. And we're not going to put teams of people to integrate gas into cordless. We're just going to develop cordless.
And so just to make that point clear, we now have, for 2022, 977 -- these are engineer -- degreed engineers, many EEs and many software development engineers. So 2 years ago, when we started to talk to Home Depot about us developing a relationship together, a serious relationship together on outdoor, we had 361 engineers. Last year, we hired 442 engineers. Remember, our largest competitor is boasting about firing people and workforce reduction. And this year, we'll add another 174 that will get us to 977. We'd hire more if we can, but we're very selective about this.
But this is a statement, our model of high gross margin with self-funds investment in software development engineering and other technical skills that we need, like acoustic engineering. This is where we feel like we're building an unsaleable leadership position long term. And the leadership position, we believe, much like what Apple has been able to do and what Tesla is doing in the EV market, we really think that we have a chance to broaden the gap, and we'll stay in the vanguard here for years and decades to come.
Okay. So another maddening bit of misinformation that's in the public domain is we have competitors that are saying now that COVID seems to be slowing down, the DIY market is now flattening out, and so the potential is always a pro. And this couldn't be further from the truth. The DIY market, we think, is a massive opportunity. We've established 20 verticals of DIY. 20, I'll show it to you in a minute, that we think are untapped. We believe that the opportunity to create what we call the newly mid-do-it-yourselfer is something that our competitors don't understand. There are college grads launching their careers and the people that buy houses, condos, they're buying properties now. And they don't have any tools to start. This is -- I've never seen the rate of newly minted households that we see today in terms of ownership.
And that's just one of many, many examples here. So look, what do we think about DIY? First of all, what we've done in 2 years in our RYOBI power tool line is remarkable. We've reengineered the entire line of RYOBI DIY. We now have 20-plus RYOBI brushless motor, high-performance cordless products that will supplant what we sold in the past, which our products worked very well. And it allows Home Depot, which sells this product line in North America, to trade people up to a higher-end, higher-performing products and enhances user satisfaction and encourage people to take on more projects.
Okay. So we have many, many different products that we're rolling out in RYOBI DIY. This is a brushless motor, Brad Nailer. The performance is, it will blow you away, better than a pneumatic product and selling like crazy for 2022.
We have finely pioneered legitimate cordless options for woodworking products, for benchtop tools. We have a table saw and a remarkably accurate minor saw and a super-cool, what we call a track saw or a real saw. And these 3 benchtop products are all cordless. Everybody has historically assumed that these things have to have a cord because they take power and they have accuracy. And we -- our engineers again have come up with more cordless solutions here. We priced it up. These are premium priced products. You can see that in our gross margin. And the end users who tried can't believe their performance.
One of the most exciting DIY areas -- it is DIY, and we call it cleaning. So any project you ever do in your home and your garage, in your truck, there's -- at the end of any project, you always have to clean up. We also refer to this as Floor Care, which is the same thing. And we have, in the RYOBI line -- I mean, we -- of course, we own -- we have Hoover and we have Dirt Devil, we have VAX, we have Oreck. But the RYOBI line of Floor Care is now the second fastest-growing brand of floor care products in the world. Why? Because of the battery. The same battery that's in 41% of all households in the United States alone, 41%. The same battery is used in these vacs.
So if you walk into Home Depot, you don't need to spend $399 on a stick fat. You could just buy the bare tool without the charger and you save hundreds of dollars and you get amazing performance. By the way, the fastest-growing brand of floor care products in the world today is a brand called MILWAUKEE. I'll get to that in a second. And our Hoover and VAX and Dirt Devil brands are also flourishing. So we feel very excited about the potential in cleaning and Floor Care.
All right, new category, for us. So we think, hobby, crafting -- during the virus, one thing that's happened is people rediscovered hobbies. People learned new -- people who never would consider hobbies started to do it. And unlike what our competitors think that the virus ends and people are going to go back to some kind of normal, we think that people are so excited about hobby and craft and the feedback we're getting confirms that.
So we rolled out a new leadership line, and we intend to be global leaders in this space. This program consists of all kind of cool stuff. Here's a hobby station. So you take a rotary tool that's been around forever, and we make it cordless. So we put it in a stand and you get accuracy and it's actually so much more fun to use that we think hobbyists will flock to this. We have a really cool power craving product. So whether you carve dots or whether you want to put your name in a piece of wood or whatever else, this is cordless. It's a cordless power carver and the performance is outstanding.
So we have a cordless magnifying light. So there are many, many hobby craft projects, many projects in general, where you need magnification, and you needed it to be lit. We have that first time ever, and it uses our battery. So we are finally going after the X-acto knife area. This category hasn't changed for a long time. We think the existing products are dangerous, hard to change the blade. And we -- the RYOBI versions are so cool to use. And if you don't have hobbies today, you'll pick this up and you'll start them.
Okay. So another area that we have underestimated historically, and believe me, now we're all over and it's called storage. So one thing we have learned from the MILWAUKEE success in PACKOUT, which are these things over here. The PACKOUT mobile storage units. One thing we've learned is that storage is a massive opportunity. And when we talk about storage, it's not just workshop storage. It's mobile storage. It's taking products to the job site or around the house.
If your workshop's in a basement and you're doing something outside, you need a way to transfer the tools to the yard. And it's also vehicular storage, as in, in your pickup truck or your van or any vehicular environment where tools are transported, there's a real opportunity. And we think -- and Home Depot has worked with us closely on this. We think the garage storage is massive.
And so we've developed this new revolutionary system called LINK. LINK is -- it consists of not only mobile storage like PACKOUT, but garage storage, workshop storage and all types of other solutions. How many times have people -- if you have a garage and you walk in your garage, how many times you said this garage is a disaster, I got to organize this. The problem is there's no really good way on a market to organize until the development of LINK. And MILWAUKEE is going after this, and we have other brands also developing storage solutions for the garage, workshop, et cetera.
Okay. So -- and by the way, storage is part of DIY. When people say DIY is flat. I don't know what markets they're talking about. We -- I've been in this business a long time. I've never seen DIY more on fire than it is today. And you'll see that with our numbers. Okay.
Let's wrap this up with MILWAUKEE. We did grow 41% last year. We are -- our growth rate in the cordless part of the pro market is superior to all of our competitors and it's only going to get better. We -- I'm a little disappointed in our North American teams because they only grew 38% last year. Our European team was up 53% in MILWAUKEE. 53%. Rest of world, by the way, up 44%. Rest of the world actually matters now because, yes, it's growing so fast.
So when people ask me, how are we doing with MILWAUKEE around the world, the answer is great. Now I always like the Steve Jobs quote. And Steve Jobs famously said, we get -- I'm more proud of what we didn't do than what we did do. And I feel like the same way. Like we pulled out of Latin America really before the Brazil Olympics. Why? For a lot of reasons. We never really went into India. We did the whole BRIC, Brazil, Russia, India, China. The acronym, I thought, was goofy. It was a headline that company -- one company after another boasted about. Ironically, China is actually one of our fastest-growing international markets because in China, the job sites are getting more tough on job site safety and we have the perfect products for them.
But anyhow, I think our MILWAUKEE growth last year is pretty darn exciting. And we are going to continue to propagate that growth with the flow of new products. So just let me touch on one area. The wet-dry vac marketplace for the pro is an area that hasn't changed for a long time. Wet-dry vacs are corded. There are some cordless units, but they have no power -- not enough power for real professional job sites. And these wet-dry vacs are cordless, of course. They're super powerful. They will literally -- they're also very quiet, by the way. They will literally outperform corded units in virtually every application we've tested. And by the way, like I said earlier, every job site needs to be cleaned up afterwards. And wet-dry means you can vacuum and clean up spills, damp areas, drier, it doesn't matter.
But what really will set us apart in addition to having the best wet-dry vacs in history, what really will set us apart is the revolutionary air tip system of vacuum tools that go along with our wet-dry vacs. So this is an example. This is an air tip powered nozzle, with, one of our M12 batteries in it. And you turn this on, and what you get is a vastly superior agitation brush that gets all the debris out of whatever material you're vacuuming.
So when you include -- when you match this up with a super-quiet, high-suction wet-dry vacs that are cordless and the air tips, you get a whole new level of wet-dry vac performance for the pro. And by the way, a lot of DIYers are going to want to have these as well.
And our -- we have over 10 revolutionary air tip accessories that enhance the performance in a variety of different applications, whether you're a drywall contractor, a carpenter, a painter, there -- we have developed these really cool air tip accessories to enhance the performance of our wet-dry vacs. So a very exciting development.
Okay. We are going to -- we're launching a new generation of our cordless, high-performance hammer drills. These are drills for drilling in concrete. This line will be the best cordless line in the world. And our leadership position there will only be enhanced by this rollout here for this year.
We have -- I love this product. We have developed a super safe flathead grinder. So why is it flat? Because a flathead grinder allows you to get into tight places. And this has taken us a while to develop. But this is a super safe product because it has an electric brake. So when you use the grinder and you release it, the grinding wheels will keep going on and on, unless you have a brake on it. Now with a corded grinder, it's easy to solve because you have the power of the cord. But we solved this with cordless. There are countries where you're not allowed to use a grinder that doesn't have an electric brake. And we have it flathead, we have full head. We have every configuration you can imagine. But this is an example of what we are pioneering at TTI.
We've used this -- sustainability, it also includes safety on the job site and productivity. This is all part of an overreaching -- overarching theme of development of products that are safer for the user, that create sustainability, reduce noise, et cetera. And if you're a grinder user and maybe some of you are, you will never put this down.
Okay. We have an inflator now that outperforms other cordless inflators. This is an M18 version. It's a terrific unit. We have now the broadest line of high-performance, restless, professional-grade power tools in the world. And I can assure you that this range is going to grow and grow and grow over the next 5 years.
Now M18 fuel, the last thing I'll mention. We rolled out, just recently, a revolutionary screed vibrator system. So this is a piece of equipment. It's always been powered by AC or hydraulic or petrol. And what this does is it allows you, when you're pouring concrete for a new military base or a new hotel or a large convention center or whatever, this allows you to pour the concrete and then vibrate into a super smooth surface. And this is critical if you're working as a commercial contractor and -- but now we can do it cordless with MX. And in fact, the MX equipment line is off to a great start this year.
One of the benefits of the virus abating is that we can go to job sites, and we can demonstrate these highly demonstrable cordless products, which are inherently safer, less noise, no carbon emissions, and we think the potential here is vast. By the way, not a single one of our competitors has even discussed this category of equipment yet. And I could see why. Because we're so far ahead. I don't know how anybody is going to catch us here. So we'll see.
By the way, we have quietly built over the last decade under the leadership of one of our brilliant Presidents named Scott Griswold. We have developed a global leadership position in industrial-grade, high performance, not commodity, high-performance power tool accessories. This is an incredibly exciting line. It doesn't get the press, but it deserves it. And a good example of this is 5 years ago, we bought a company, ironically, in Wisconsin, where MILWAUKEE is based. And this company was the only legitimate manufacturer of oscillating blades for the fast-growing oscillating tool category in the United States.
So we bought the company. We were doing maybe $20 million in sales when we bought, this year, it will be $100 million. We have revolutionized the category with high-performance oscillating blades in all kind of configurations, for all kind of different end users, including DIYers. By the way, DIYers love these products, too. And one way we grow DIY is coming up with better ways for people to do their projects.
So we also, as we mentioned in the past, our safety equipment, our PPE initiative is incredibly exciting. We are actually going to make protective hats in the United States, and we have an ability to customize these hats based on color, based on what we print on the hat so that the contractors that buy these and the companies that buy these can tailor it and track their people. And this is an enormous advantage with this market.
We intend -- we think the PPE market is incredibly vulnerable for our attack here. We think there's some data -- some companies with data product lines, big conglomerate-type companies that have this as one of their categories, and we are going to go right at this with premium-priced better products that perform better, enhance productivity. And I think not only will OSHA love it, but every job site safety organization on the planet is going to flock to the products that our guys are developing here.
Okay. So Floor Care. So I mentioned to you the RYOBI Floor Care business is on fire. MILWAUKEE is going to revolutionize wet-dry floor care and other floor care products. But our floor care business is also doing really well. And I won't cover a lot of stuff here today. But real quick, our U.K. team and our Australian team have taken the Vax brand. And we are flourishing in the U.K., in Asia, New Zealand and some other markets with Vax leading carpet washing and formula products.
We, in the U.S., are beginning to roll out this kind of leadership we have. Our spot cleaner that we can't keep in stock. This is a corded version. We have a cordless one coming. This is one of the biggest categories in U.S. floor care. So we really haven't manufactured it, and that's going to change this year.
So we will continue to share with you our progress in transforming Floor Care into a financial performer, a contributor for this company that will matter and strengthen our results even more.
So let's just -- in summary, it's hard not to be excited about these announcements when I see how hard our team is working on new products. TTI is all about developing, is technologically advanced, vastly superior, demonstrably better cordless products that will transform people from polluting gas or from less safe AC or loud and unsafe pneumatic. And we want to move people into our state-of-the-art sustainable cordless products.
That's a mission. It's a strategy. It's a winning prospect for the P&L. And I could not be more proud of what our team delivered for -- in 2021. But let me tell you, I know the world is -- there's a lot of issues we're facing today in the world, but we don't -- we are building a company, as I said upfront, that it will flourish in good times and bad. And yes, I feel incredibly confident about 2022 and even more confident about the next 5 years.
So anyhow, thank you so much for your attention, and we will see you in 6 months.
Thank you for your participation. This concludes today's annual results announcement analyst and investor webcast. You may now disconnect.
