Joe Galli, the CEO of Techtronic Industries Group (TTI) has had broad experience across industries. He began his career at Stanley Black & Decker, where he was critical in the launch of the DeWalt brand. Denied an adequate promotional path, he left and held a range of other positions, including a period at Amazon. He joined the TTI in 2006 as the head of Techtronic Appliances and was appointed as chief executive officer and executive director of TTI on February 1, 2008.
As perhaps the power tool industry's best CEO, his biannual presentations of results are dynamic and far-reaching, dipping into everything from technical details, to the formation of new markets and longer-term strategies.
The following is a transcript of his presentation for the first half results for TTI in its FY2021. It has been edited for clarity and conciseness.
Introduction
Hi, I'm Joe Galli. And I am beyond excited to share with you the results of TTI's first half 2021, along with some highlights that you can expect from us, in the months and years to come. People continue to ask us what we think is going to happen near term, long term based on the virus, other issues that we face in the world today. And, you know, our response is very simple here, we believe that the best way to predict the future is to control it, to create it. As Lincoln said, and this is exactly what we intend to do. We are building the company here that will flourish in good times, and bad, whatever the overall overarching circumstances are. And that's exactly what we have done in 2021. And we will continue to do.
Now, greatness is an elusive quality among companies. And it takes a lot of courage to be great. As Teddy Roosevelt famously said, ‘We must dare to be great’. And for TTI, greatness means not only building a powerful company with outstanding financial results, but also a company that cares deeply about ESG. And you're going see, in our highlights today that we are we are incredibly obsessed with and focused on doing the right things for our business, for our shareholders and for the planet. And I'm excited to share that with you as we go.
Results summary
Okay, first half, can you imagine a power tool company growing 52%! We were up a cool 2.188 billion in sales in the first half of 2021. In the Milwaukee business, which is our flagship, high margin, professional business was up 64%. Now, what makes these numbers even more extraordinary is, when you look back at our performance versus 2019 you'll see even more incredible numbers. In fact, versus 2019, we grew the company 71%, and in Milwaukee 84%. This is meaningful because many of our competitors saw their sales collapse last year in the first half while we grew. So we think it's very important that you look at a two year track record here in terms of sales results. And I think up 71% for the company and up 84% from Milwaukee is pretty darn good.
Unsubstantiated claims
There's been some misinformation that was introduced by our large competitor in the US. And it's now in the public domain. And, and I intend to correct some of this misinformation today. For example, our largest competitor said that TTI is really good at North America and Australia. But the rest of the world, not so much. Just so our investors understand, our European Theatre of Operations is flourishing. In fact, I think Europe may be the biggest opportunity we have in this company, and Europe was up 71% when you compare versus 2019. Rest-of-world also grew nicely. So you need to look at TTI not as a US or North American company, but as a global company that is growing like crazy, beyond the shores of the USA.
Floorcare results
I am delighted to report that our floorcare business contributed nicely to our first half this year. Floorcare was up 25.3%. That's global floorcare. It's a direct result of a lot of hard work and a lot of new products we've launched in the fiercely competitive floorcare market. But you know, when you take floorcare out, you have to remember that power equipment, our tool business, grew even more impressively, actually up 55%.
Further results
All in all, it's pretty astounding to look at what this company was able to deliver in the first half of 2021. When you look at our P&L, you see not only sales exploded up 52%, but gross margin improved yet another 58 basis points. We invest in some of that gross margin as our strategy is, as we've stated consistently. We've invested some of that back in strategic SG&A (selling, general and administrative).
Our profit grew at a faster rate than sales. On the EBIT line, we read 57.4% and net profit up a cool 57.9% in the first half of 2021. One of the things that we obsess over in this company is our gross margin improvement. We believe it's critical that we outgrow the market on the top line while we continue to improve gross margin at a pace of roughly 50 basis points a year. And we exceeded that target in the first half, growing gross margin 58 basis points while we grew.
What this tells you is that the marketshare we're capturing – and believe me we're capturing a lot – is not a result of us cutting price and denigrating the quality of our brands or our products in the minds of the consumer. We are growing at premium prices and growing like crazy because our products are demonstrably superior to our competitors. We have technological advantages that that no one else has. And you can clearly see that in a company that's growing at this rate with gross margins consistently improving.
And in fact, talk about consistently improving, we have now improved gross margin in the first half, for 13 consecutive years, we've gone up on average 50 basis points a year, in terms of gross margin. This is essential for our strategy, because we take some of that gross margin improvement and we invest it right back into what we call strategic SG&A. So make no mistake, we are ruthless about squeezing non-strategic SG&A, unnecessary overhead administrative overhead. And we did again, in the first half, where [the SG&A was] down eight basis points. But in the strategic SG&A area, we invest it into new products, new geographic expansion opportunities, more sales coverage, marketing, and user conversion.
When we identify strategic areas of investment, we take some of that gross margin improvement and we invest it right back into our future. And this bodes well for TTI over the back half of this year, over the next five years, over the next decade, because these investments are going to pay off in the months and years to come.
If you look at our working capital in the first half, you clearly see a very different strategy than many of our competitors. We actually have weaponised inventory, we believe strongly in our ability to grow this company as we go forward. And that's why we have built high levels of inventory so that we position TTI to grow, continue to outgrow the market in the back half of 2021, and on into 2022 and beyond. So yes, we added 34 days of inventory, we had 136 days of inventory finishing up in the half. And that's exactly what we planned so that we would be in a position to take more market share and serve our customers around the world.
At the same time, our marketing and sales companies globally have been incredibly disciplined in managing receivables. That's why we have virtually no bad debt in this company. Our days [outstanding] for receivables actually went down from 65 last year in the first half down to 56 days this year. And one of the reasons is we just we don't go into countries where there's high risk, bad debt risk. We are very, very careful and disciplined about this. Because anybody can book a sale. But if you don't collect the money, it really is not a sale and it shows up later. So our team's doing a great job with this.
And when you look at payables, our payables performance shows you that we were up from 109 to 125 days payable, so we're paying our suppliers in 125 days. And this shows you that our suppliers are working very closely with us to enable us to build the inventory we need to continue to capture market share and grow this company well above the market.
And we're very grateful for our supplier partners, we work very closely with them. We've grown with our suppliers for years and years now, in a way that bodes well for both TTI and a supplier base. So working capital as a percent of sales still finished under our goal of 20%. And we did it the right way. We don't cut inventory off in the middle of June so that we can impress Wall Street and investors with a lower days of inventory. We are building this company to win in the market. And we still had 20% of working capital as a percent of sales.
Environmental, social and corporate governance
One of the things I mentioned up front is TTI is excited to embrace ESG [environmental, social and corporate governance] as a corporate obsession. You will see we are maniacally focused on being a global world class leader when it comes to ESG. We are we have many, many initiatives in the company that we've embarked on that will help us achieve and exceed world class standards in ESG.
You will see many examples as I go through this update in terms of the products, the disruptive products we're introducing that will allow us to help save this planet and put the society in a better place. But let me give you a big example. We are going to be the global leader in battery powered lithium mowers, whether it's riding mowers or push mowers. We decided to build our battery laminar factory in the United States, so that we wouldn't have the ocean freight issues that that are a very, very bad thing for sustainability. And we also think building our product close to market is the right thing to do.
This is it a real life ESG example. And we have dozens and dozens of examples that we'll share with you as time goes on here as we roll out our ESG initiative. But you should feel free to ask questions and follow up with us. Many of you want to discuss ESG and we would love to share with you why we are so far ahead of our competitors that this will be yet another advantage TTI has versus the market competitors that we go up against.
Milwaukee Tool
Let's shift gears to talk about Milwaukee. It's hard not to be impressed with our global Milwaukee team here at TTI. Milwaukee grew 64.1% in the first half. And contrary to what our largest competitor suggested, we're doing a great job in North America, that part our competitors got right. But Europe was up 90% in the first half this year in Milwaukee; 90%, which ought to dispel this notion that we're not strong outside the US and Canada. And of course, rest of the world was up 58%, which is not bad. We're very proud of the global build out our Milwaukee team has put in place, and we intend to aggressively take market share in the pro market around the world, not just in the back half, but for many, many years to come.
Core strategy
Milwaukee is pursuing, aggressively pursuing a disruptive strategy of converting legacy power sources to clean lithium battery powered tools. The three areas of attack here are all areas that were created in World War Two. These are World War Two era technologies that we are now attacking. And we intend to launch this global revolution away from these traditional power sources, which are not good for the environment and into battery powered lithium.
The first power source that we're going after is the corded tool. Yes, the corded plug in the wall AC tool is still, in the professional arena, is still a massive part of the market. In fact, this is an example, this chop saw. Ninety-nine per cent of all these chop saws around the world are still corded – 99%. And there's so much opportunity in front of us to convert just the corded power tool to battery powered tools. We are on the vanguard of this revolution. And we intend to be very aggressive about it, liberating people from these dangerous cords where there's electrocution risk and all kinds of other factors that inhibit productivity on job sites and we intend to move people to clean lithium powered products.
Examples
This chop saw is an amazing product. This will cut with the same power, speed, torque as a corded version, and the life is actually longer on our cordless, battery powered chop saw than the traditional [corded] unit. So this is yet another example of the many different corded products that exist on job sites today that we intend to make cordless.
This is a more striking example of how much opportunity there is in front of us. The residential construction arena globally has grown nicely and we believe that RESCON will continue to grow here over the next three to five years.
So if you are a residential construction contractor, you need a device called a nailer. The nailers are used to fire a nail through two pieces of wood to attach them together to frame a house. The technology that's ubiquitous today on job sites all over the world is the pneumatic air nailer. And I want you to think about this. In 1944, Howard Hughes hired an engineer to help him build his Spruce Goose wooden aircraft. And this engineer came up with the idea of a pneumatic nailer instead of a manual version. So we're talking about technology that’s 75 years old, it's still present everywhere on job sites. And when you have a pneumatic nailer ... you don't just have a nailer, you have to have a nailer that attaches to a hose, where you have the compressed air to fire the nail, the hose which is long unwieldy and heavy connects to a gas powered compressor.
So you have to pull the cord on a gas compressor, which generates electricity, which compresses air in with a pump device and a compressor and then fires the air through that nail. And you need your trusty gas can because those trips to the Exxon station are a requirement all throughout the day as you're framing houses. So can you imagine this technology is World War Two vintage, the noise level of this technology is deafening. We have literally noise ordinances that are trying to control this stuff. The fumes and the maintenance required, and just the sheer weight of driving these things around is madness.
So we are leading this revolution to cordless nailers. Our latest introduction is a framing nailer, it's selling like crazy. And we intend to be the global leader in non-compressor powered, non-pneumatic nailers. These are lithium battery powered nailers, there's no gas cartridge. They're just ultra-quiet nailers that will revolutionise the way contractors build houses. So we're going after the AC market, we're going after their pneumatic market. And of course, we're going after the petrol or the gas market.
Milwaukee outdoor power equipment
Milwaukee will be our brand that targets the professional landscaper. And this is a massive opportunity because this market is largely gas and petrol. In Milwaukee, we won't make the mistake of having any gas products under this brand. Milwaukee will be pure lithium battery powered cordless.
You have products here, like a chainsaw where historically, if you're using a chainsaw and you're doing any kind of trim work, you literally have the gas engine in your face, and you fire these things up. And you have the fumes coming at you along with all the other debris. So every time we develop a cordless version to eradicate this gas nightmare, it enhances productivity. It's great for sustainability. And it's really cool to use. This is a one handed chainsaw that will out cut a gas equivalent. And for the pro landscaper, this is a real breakthrough.
In the Milwaukee family, we have a roadmap of a number of high performance, battery powered lithium battery products. Next year, we will launch a lawnmower, a Milwaukee branded lawnmower. It's battery powered. This lawnmower not only will blow away any of the battery mowers that are on the market today, but it will outperform the gas mowers. We will roll us out this year. We intend to see Milwaukee as a vanguard of this once in a generation revolution. It's a stampede away from the filthy gas polluting power sources to clean cordless.
Milwaukee range
Today, we are the global leader in full size, cordless, pro cordless, with Milwaukee M18, our full-size cordless system. In three years, you will see double the amount of cordless products. We will have to shrink the tools down to a smaller size. We have so many new products in the pipeline. The idea here is to get people away from the cord, the pneumatic hose, the petrol, the hydraulic products that are still in use and to liberate the professional user into something that makes sense for not only for their productivity, but for ESG, for sustainability.
Milwaukee is already the global leader in subcompact cordless. Subcompact is critical, because in full-sized cordless, you have power and runtime concerns, but in many cases, because our technology and electronics is so advanced, we're able to miniaturise or to shrink up a product and make it much lighter and smaller and easier to use, less unwieldy. And this is creating a massive opportunity for us with the professional user.
Let me give you the latest example in our brand new revolutionary subcompact blower. This little device is a super powerful blower for job site cleanup in tight places, in high places, etc. The end user reaction to this is unbelievable. People can't believe the power and the convenience of a blower that's literally one-handed and super compact. We think subcompact is a vast opportunity. And this is a complementary range to full size. So many end users, many pros will buy a whole fleet of full size cordless products, but they complement it with a subcompact line. And we have a lot these subcompact products that will end up in their fleets.
Here's another really cool product. We think the automotive aftermarket, the whole transportation arena is massive. Right now it's very difficult to buy a used car most any country, you can't rent cars, you can't buy used cars. Cars are scarce. So people are repairing cars at record levels. This is a big opportunity for DIY and pro. One of the many products we have for this transportation arena is an underbody work light. This device actually has two magnets. One magnet is what you attach to the bottom of a car or truck or whatever the work surface is. And then the other magnet is on the side.
As you remove a lug bat or a bolt, instead of it dropping on the floor into a greasy bucket, you just stick it right here with the magnet, and you can control this work activity. As we showed users this sample, they didn't want to give it back. The auto mechanics just fell in love with the idea. Remember, it's the same battery we have in all our other subcompact products.
Let's just say we think the subcompact family of Milwaukee has vast opportunity for growth. By shrinking down traditional power tools into these smaller sizes, you make tools safer, you make them less unwieldy. You enhance productivity in many ways. And it expands the market because many users are saying now they want a full size product and a subcompact product for those applications where size and weight matter.
Milwaukee MX
Our MX cordless equipment series is flourishing around the world today. We are launching a brand new backpack vibrator. This is for the commercial contractor, the concrete masonry market so that you're able to pour super smooth concrete surfaces, whether it's for roads bridges, what have you. With the infrastructure boom that we're about to see globally, this product is just in time and it's exactly what the user is looking for. So this vibrator will give us an expanded fleet of MX equipment products.
You have to remember most of these equipment products today are powered by gas, which is terrible for a job site and try to use gas indoors to do masonry work. It's madness because of the fumes and the noise. The noise is deafening so we have a more quiet, much cleaner range e of equipment. We expect this to be a multi-billion dollar platform for the company long term. And we're enormously excited about the reaction we're getting from the end users, as we share with them the MX field series.
Milwaukee accessories
Our Milwaukee accessory business is flourishing, we are rapidly expanding our Milwaukee accessory line with one new breakthrough product after another. This will be a billion dollar platform on its way to USD2 billion long term. We are incredibly excited about the management team we've assembled and the new product ideas and accessories. It's just another great way to enhance the performance of cordless products because if you design the right accessory, these accessories will allow the tool to actually have longer runtime and extended battery life.
The obsession in our company is to try and make the cordless experience better every year and far better than AC or pneumatic or gas. We also find that the mechanics, hand tool market globally, is vast and full of vulnerable competitors. We intend to attack this market aggressively.
Mechanic’s hand tools are used in two main areas. One is the transportation arena, whether you're repairing a submarine, a plane, a boat, a car, a motorcycle, a dump truck, a bulldozer. Or, in the construction side where you're assembling buildings and or factories. We can see hand tools are pervasive in these applications. We have a mechanic's tool line many professionals prefer over the incumbent lines today, and we're going to expand this range aggressively here as we go forward in the second half this year and on into the next three years.
Milwaukee Packout
Our Packout storage system has created a cult-like following. People today view Packout as a superior solution for mobile storage, also for stationary storage. And in terms of vehicular storage, in your van or your pickup truck. The Packout system is a perfect way to store your tools, accessories and fasteners and other things you would need on a job site.
In order to propagate the system even further, we're launching a series of new Packout products this year. This rolling chest is a super cool way to store large, heavier cordless power tools. We have these deep organisers we're launching now. So whatever materials or tools you have that require more depth, this will provide that opportunity. And there are dozens of additional Packout storage solutions that we're adding to the system. All these Packout products interconnect, so an end user can configure his or her ideal storage solution, whether it's mobile, vehicular or stationary storage, and we expect Packout to be another billion dollar, long term opportunity for Milwaukee and for TTI.
Milwaukee PPE
Jobsite safety is growing in terms of popularity and government support and requirements. The Occupational Safety and Health Associations around the world that police jobsite safety are insisting on better Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) products, and this has nothing to do with the virus. This is a trend that will continue. This trend is growing in Europe in North America, and throughout Asia, you're seeing more focus on jobsite safety.
So we have pioneered a unique range of hard hats that we actually make in the USA. These hard hats are loaded with features you can customise based on your application. And these hard hats will be the cornerstone of a full range of PPE that we will roll out under the Milwaukee brand. We have begun launching some of these products, and the reaction in the market has been incredible. We think there's so much room to improve jobsite safety, which is the right thing to do.
Ryobi
There are a couple of comments about Ryobi that I have to clear up. Our largest competitor stated that they have a DIY brand, that's a better brand than Ryboi. This is of course absurd. Ryobi is three times the size of this brand that our competitors are referring to, and you know Ryobi is a global brand, a competitive brand. And our people that run Ryobi around the world were quite upset about this misinformation.
...
We are very fortunate. We have an outstanding team of Ryobi product managers, sales executives, logistics people, etc around the world. And make no mistake Ryobi is the strongest DIY brand in our industry by far. Ryobi is a brand that has an overarching cordless platform between power tools and outdoor equipment and floor care and cleaning products and many other subsets. And we intend to build on that global strength with Ryobi.
DIY market
The other misinformation that came out is this idea that the DIY market is now flattened out, while the pro market is the only market is growing. This is of course, highly inaccurate. The DIY market has massive opportunity in cordless. Of course the gas DIY market is shrinking, the AC market is down. And so is pneumatic but the cordless DIY market we think has all kinds of potential.
One of the things that we work on at TTI is creating the newly minted DIYer. So many people are first time homeowners, they're finally graduating from university or they're moving into the workforce. And these newly minted homeowners can become newly minted DIYers if you show them the right opportunities and the right ideas and that's exactly what we're doing.
Ryobi automotive
As I mentioned earlier, the automotive aftermarket right now is growing like crazy because there's such a dearth of used cars, new cars, etc and people have rediscovered the notion of repairing a car. In the old days, we used to call these people shade tree mechanics. But make no mistake, the DIYer is spending a lot of time and money repairing cars trucks, etc. and Ryobi is uniquely positioned to serve this DIYer in the automotive aftermarket.
For example, this is an extended reach ratchet, which these automotive enthusiasts love. Here's an impact wrench for high torque applications in the automotive aftermarket arena. Here's a die grinder which is ideally designed for many automotive applications. In fact, we have an incredibly exciting line of DIY automotive aftermarket products.
One of my favourites is a super lightweight polisher if you want a wax or polish the car, the camper, the glamper, the motorcycle, boat, trailer, you name it, this is perfect. And of course, the battery pops out of this device and works in all the other DIY automotive products. So we see the automotive aftermarket alone as an enormous opportunity that we intend to capitalise on.
But the DIY market is also flourishing when it comes to nailers. If you're a newly minted DIYer, if you're a homeowner and you want to do any kind of work around the house, in the old days, you would have to get that gas powered compressor and the hose. And all that noise comes from a gas-powered device versus buying a Ryboi. We call this the Airstrike cordless nailer, that's super quiet and super powerful. This is another example where we think we can drive more DIY adoption here in the months and years to come.
We have now introduced 22 new high performance, Ryobi DIY brushless products, we call these HP high performance brushless. Why? Because we think this is a way for us to catalyze the activity. We could show a DIYer that instead of having to hire a contractor or instead of procrastinating not doing a project, you can go to Home Depot or Bunnings or one of our other global customers and you can buy the right product for the job and attack these DIY projects in your home. We do not think that the DIY market in any way is mature. In fact, there's an old saying that there's no such thing as mature markets, there are only mature managers, and we don't have those here so we expect to grow this space in the future.
Ryobi outdoor power equipment
Let's now turn to outdoor which is something we're very excited about. We think the outdoor arena around the world for the DIYer or a landscaper is a massive opportunity to really achieve greatness in sustainability, convenience and productivity and value. There's just there's so many advantages to battery powered outdoor power equipment versus gas and petrol. There's so much upside here. In first half of this year, we grew 57.8% in battery powered outdoor equipment.
This is just the beginning. Let's remember what's going on around the world today. Take the US. In the US, California has already introduced legislation, proposing that all gas powered outdoor equipment be outlawed in 2024. Can you imagine? Yeah, it means gas lawnmowers, string trimmers, hedge trimmers, snow blowers, blower vacuums, chainsaws and all the other gas products that the gas, outdoor companies have propagated. They'll be outlawed in California. Once California goes, it is our view that many states will follow suit and try and do their part in this green movement in trying to save the planet. Illinois has legislation similar to what California proposed.
One of the fastest growing trends we see with municipalities is that they are increasingly sick and tired of the hideous noise you get from a gas blower vac or a gas lawnmower. You get up in Saturday morning, and your neighbour starts firing away with that gas blower and you want to go nuts. So you have municipalities outlawing the use of gas blowers and other gas outdoor power equipment in the US.
This is going on all over the world, this trend is going to be a stampede. And we are going to accelerate the pace in which this happens. We are going to be the disruptors in this in this space. So we have pioneered a concept called the "Whisper Series". These Whisper products led by a blower vacuum, these are super quiet. It's not just the fume pollution but noise pollution is an issue and these blowers, you turn them on you don't even know they're on.
They're super powerful. Our acoustical engineers have really achieved breakthrough level advancements when it comes to controlling noise, not only the decibel level, but also the tonality of these things. The tone of some of these traditional devices is so bad, it hurts your ears, you want to buy earmuffs. So we are launching a whole line of Whisper series outdoor power equipment all powered by battery, lithium battery, no petrol, no gas. And we think this will contribute to the literally the once in a generation revolution that we want to ignite from polluting noisy gas products to clean lithium battery products. This is an incredibly exciting, unique development here at TTI.
Ryobi lawnmowers
Additionally, we have established our company as the global leader when it comes to battery powered lithium lawnmowers, whether the mowers are push mowers or riding mowers, we intend to continue to be on the vanguard here in this space, and we will lead the global charge away from gas and corded to lithium battery powered units. What's mind boggling to us is that our largest competitor is literally buying a company now that has over 150 different gas mowers. Our competitor is going to have 150 lawnmowers powered by a gas or petrol engine with all those fumes, all that noise. And we want to be the Tesla of this space, we are going after the battery powered versions of these things. The reaction with our end user and with our retail partners has been phenomenal. And for good reason. It's about time that we eradicate the pollution that comes from these gas lawnmowers all over the world. It's about time.
Ryobi snowblowers
So let me tell you another exciting area that that none of our competitors ever really admit and talk about. And this is the category of the snowblower. I grew up in Pittsburgh where it snows a lot and so I'm very familiar with how dreadfully bad and hideously smelling that snowblower products are today. They are largely gas powered. In fact, our largest competitor has over 40 yes snowblower products. Let me tell you what happens with the gas snowblower, with a gas unit because the mufflers are always located on the top of these products. The fumes come right out at eye level. The fumes mixed with the snow, that's why when you use a gas snowblower, the snow goes from white to black. That black is that is that is the emissions to pollution it comes out of a gas snowblower.
And believe it or not, snow blowers are like the least regulated gas powered equipment product you can find. There are no regulations so the gas manufacturers have gotten away with murder here for a long time. And if you use one of these, you smell like you just left the coal mine. The pollution combined with the moisture in the air and the snow, you're blowing and the ice, it all mixes up and it's just a hideous, toxic mix. So you end up after you clean up the driveway, you go into the house, and your family kicks you back out because of the smell.
So we have developed a range of battery powered lithium snowblowers This is our two stage unit. Our high end unit will throw snow over 50 feet as good as any gas unit. It's much more quiet, there's no cord to pull, and you don't have to keep filling that up with gas. And your neighbours will thank you because the noise level on these things is so much better.
Ryobi' part in ESG
This is all part of our ESG movement. We could sell gas snowblowers, we could sell them like all the other competitors do. But we're going to be Tesla here, we are going to pioneer the battery side of this market so we have six snow removal products we're rolling out this year. We will be on the vanguard of battery powered snowblowers on into the future. This is yet another example of our obsession with ESG and with moving people from gas to battery.
Ryobi posthole digger
Let me let me give you another example with a posthole digger. This is a giant auger that's used if you're installing a fence around your farm or garden, you use a posthole digger to dig large diameter holes in the ground so that you can install the fence. The problem is most posthole diggers that are sold virtually all of them today are gas and the engine is right at eye level. So when you turn these things on, the fumes would come right into your face.
Can you imagine using one of these things all day? You need three levels of hazmat suits to protect you from the fumes. So we have a cordless series of these augers these posthole diggers and these things are super powerful. They're just as fast as gas. They last just as long as gas, they make one half the noise or less, there's no maintenance required. Would you really want those fumes in your face if you're a professional landscaper installing a fence or if you're a DIYer, and you're doing any work in the yard that requires posthole digging, then you would love to have this so there's a lot of opportunity for us to eradicate gas.
Ryobi pressure washer
Another example are pressure washers which are terrific products for cleaning in and around the house, car etc. They are powered either by gas engine or by a cord or AC. Both power sources of course, should be eliminated. The gas pressure washer especially, but even a corded pressure washer, you have all this water with an electric cord. It's unwieldy. It's hard to use. So we are pioneering pressurised power cleaners. We haven't got to the psi levels of a pressure washer yet, but we will get there. We are working on technology to get rid of the gas engine in the pressure washer or the cord. This 40-volt power cleaner is a great example. It works terrific and you will see us continue to push the envelope you're in technology when it comes to using lithium battery.
Range expansion
So just let's put this in perspective. For 2022, we will launch 73 new battery powered outdoor products. We are not out buying a gas lawnmower company. We are pioneering, organically developing lithium powered outdoor equipment that we think will help eradicate this dreadful, polluting issue of gas, outdoor power equipment. And let me assure you that this is just the start. Between Ryboi and Milwaukee, our attack on gas outdoor power equipment is just beginning. We intend to be global leaders in the pro landscaping arena and in the DIY side with these products that we're launching.
Floorcare products
Finally, I want to acknowledge our floorcare team for delivering an impressive first half of 2021. I know many of you have been frustrated with our inability to turn floorcare into a contributing business. Well, you can be assured that we now have an excellent team globally, we have a great product road in front of us. And we have results. In fact, 25% growth in the first half is excellent. And okay, the profit levels are still too low. But we did almost double the profit in the first half this year. And we are really excited about what we have in our future in floorcare.
Our carpet washing and formula business is particularly exciting. We are taking market share here, we are developing products that outperform what's on the market today. And we're going to enhance this program with our brand new spot cleaner series. But this spot cleaner element of this carpet washing business is significant. We have participated poorly here at best over the years. So we now have a leadership product, we have more on the way. And this bodes well for our floorcare business because carpet washing is a significant part of the business. And the formula aftermarket here is a compelling financial contributor to the company.
Cordless floorcare
We also are continuing to push the envelope once again on lithium cordless powered cleaning and floor care products. Whether it's the Hoover brand, the Vax brand, or one of our other brands of floorcare, we really think that we can get people away from using a cord when it comes to a cleaning product and into cordless. And this is yet another example of that over overarching theme in the company where we just we really believe this whole this whole clean tech notion, this whole ESG notion should pervade every part of our company. And floorcare is no exception.
Conclusion
The important takeaway here is that our future has never been brighter at TTI. No matter what the economy does around the world, no matter how long it takes to eradicate this terrible virus that we've all have to deal with.
No matter what the geopolitical issues are that we face, we feel like we as Lincoln said, the best way to predict the future is to create it. And that's exactly what we're doing. And you know, remember Teddy Roosevelt said, one must dare to be great. You have to have the courage to pursue greatness, because greatness is elusive. And if you see how hard our team is working around the world, if you saw the talent level of our engineers, our product development people, our logistics team that performed heroically in the first half and really over the last 18 months, you would see why I'm so enthusiastic about our future.
We are going to have a good second half this year. We will outgrow the market, for sure we will outgrow the market in 2022. We will launch more new products than all of our competitors combined. And we will not fall into this trap of trying to dress up our financial results by adding gas power equipment that's got a short-term future and it really all it's doing is harming our planet. Like I said up front, we think greatness in TTI will be a function of outstanding, continually improving financial results, while we achieve greatness in ESG and try to help society and this planet, get to the right place. So thank you so much.
