I think we're about ready. Good morning.
Good morning.
Welcome. 2013, Mother Nature's cooperated with us today in Louisville, Kentucky. It's a lovely day, which is helpful in July. Thank you so much for coming along. We've got some familiar faces in the audience. I know from India, I think we've got Kia today. Thank you very much. I think, did I see the state of New York? I saw somewhere over the last couple. Plenty of representation of the states of Kentucky coming along in Kentucky. From outside the U.S., Australia this year, U.K. We've also got some retired directors with us today. It's a special pleasure to be able to welcome Mr. Martin Brown Sr. along today. Hello, Martin. Ina Bond. Where is Ina? Oh, hello, Ina. A retired director and former CEO of our beverage business, Mr. Bill Street. Thank you for coming along today.
Half the company public. In any event, it's sort of special to be here on the 80th anniversary of this company being public. There's a display on prohibition that you'll be able to see in one of the hallways walking over to the Brand Fair afterwards. I would encourage you to go see what some of the team have put together about that period in history. Okay? Let's move now to the formal part of the meeting. I now call to order the formal business portion of the 2013 annual stockholders meeting. We have two items of business on the agenda for today's meeting. The first is to elect your directors. Second, with approval of the Brown-Forman 2013 Omnibus Compensation Plan. Unless there's an objection, I'll waive the reading of the minutes from last year's meeting.
If I could ask our Secretary and General Counsel, Matthew E. Hamel, to describe the election notice given to shareholders.
The people who are entitled to vote on the items on today's agenda are Class A shareholders who appeared on our records as of June 17, 2013. On June 27, 2013, we mailed each of these people a notice of this meeting, together with a proxy statement, a proxy voting card, and a copy of the company's annual report, which included our Form 10-K for fiscal 2013. To establish a legal quorum to conduct the business on today's agenda, we must have in attendance at the meeting, in person or by proxy, a majority of the outstanding Class A shares. I can report that at today's meeting, 95.5% of Class A shares are present in person or represented by proxy. We therefore have a quorum to conduct business.
Thank you, Matt. The following people were sworn in earlier as electoral inspectors to supervise the voting: Jeff Caffey, Holly Lewis, Mark Stegeman. At this meeting, the following 10 directors are up for election to serve for the coming year. If I could ask each of you to stand as I call out your names. Joan C. Lordi Amble, Retired Executive Vice President of American Express Company. Patrick Bousquet-Chavanne, Executive Director, Marketing and Business Development at Marks & Spencer in the United Kingdom. Martin S. Brown Jr., a partner in the law firm of Adams and Reese in Nashville, Tennessee. Bruce L. Byrnes, former Vice Chairman of the Board of Procter & Gamble. John D. Cook, Director Emeritus of McKinsey & Company. Sandra A. Frazier, Founding and Managing Member of Tandem Public Relations in Kentucky. Dace Brown Stubbs, a private investor. Paul C.
Varga of Brown-Forman, Vice Chairman of Brown-Forman Corporation. I also stand for re-election. In addition to my role as Chairman of your board, I'm also an Executive Vice President of the company. I'd now like to entertain nominations for your board of directors.
Mr. Chairman, I'd like to nominate the following: Joan C. Lordi Amble, Patrick Bousquet-Chavanne, Garvin Brown IV, Martin Brown Sr., Bruce L. Byrnes, John D. Cook, Sandra A. Frazier, Dace Brown Stubbs, Paul C. Varga, and James S. Welch, Jr.
Is there a second?
Mr. Chairman, I second those nominations.
Are there any other nominations? If there are none, I declare the nominations closed. The second order of business here today is described as Proposal 2 in your proxy statement. We're asking you to approve the Brown-Forman 2013 Omnibus Compensation Plan. This is the program that allows us to pay our employees and directors performance-based compensation, both in cash and in the form of equity awards. We believe the plan is essential to attract, motivate, and retain key talent, and your board of directors has unanimously recommended a vote for this proposal. I just can't help but say a few words on this. Omnibus Compensation Plan, probably not a phrase that rolls off everyone's tongue really easily. Omnibus is a fancy Latin word, which means all in one.
What this is basically the document or the tool that the shareholders use to govern, literally, how people are paid in cash and long-term equity at the company. That's for a broad group of senior managers, as well as for the board of directors. Typically in corporate America, these things last for about 10 years. You voted on the last one in 2004, we'll probably vote again on an Omnibus Compensation Plan in 2023. It can get confusing. This is separate from Say on Pay and Say When on Pay, which are two things that you voted on two years ago, and you voted to vote on that every three years. That's a document that really governs the much more senior top four or five officers in the company. You'll vote again on that next year. All right?
Matt, would you please describe the voting process?
Thanks, Garvin. If you completed and returned your proxy card, you've already voted and don't need to do anything further. If you did not send in a proxy card, or if you would like to change the proxy card you did send in, please ask for a ballot from one of the people now walking through the aisles. In the election of directors, only Class A shares vote, and a nominee will be elected if he or she receives a majority of the votes cast. For Proposal 2, the approval of the Brown-Forman 2013 Omnibus Compensation Plan, only Class A shares vote, and approval requires an affirmative vote of the majority of the votes cast, provided the number of votes cast is a majority of the shares entitled to vote on the proposal.
Would the inspectors please provide the results to the secretary? Thank you.
At today's meeting, each of the 10 director nominees has received at least 99.3% of the Class A votes cast. Each nominee is duly elected to be a director of the corporation. For Proposal 2, approval of the Brown-Forman 2013 Omnibus Compensation Plan, I'm pleased to report that the number of Class A shares cast on Proposal 2 represented 95.5% of the shares entitled to vote on that proposal, and that 99% of the votes cast were voted in favor of Proposal 2. The Brown-Forman 2013 Omnibus Compensation Plan is approved.
Thank you. On behalf of your board, thank you for your continued confidence in us and for your approval of the Omnibus Compensation Plan. Unless there's any other business to come before us, I declare the formal portion of the 2013 stockholders meeting adjourned. All right. Just before we move on, it's worth observing it's been a good year at Brown-Forman. Really not a bad year at all. I was thinking about it, I thought if Brown-Forman's a garden, this garden is in bloom. I was nudged to think about it a little bit more at a meeting recently in London. Sort of nice being in an office where others will come through and use it as a central meeting place.
Hendrik Rosbach, who's in charge of pricing analytics in Europe, he's based out of Hamburg, was in London recently with a bunch of the sales directors from all over Europe. Paul's going to talk about margins later. I think Hendrik's doing a pretty good job. We were just chatting with the team. I was chatting with the team, and towards the end of things, Hendrik wanted to see if there were any other questions, and people can often be reticent in a public setting to ask questions. I didn't think anything would happen. On my left, Pavel Lisitsyn, our sales director from Russia, raises his hand. "Pavel?" He said, "Yeah. I've got a question." "Okay." "What do you think of F13, and how would you describe the drivers of growth?" Hmm. See Kentucky Law Journal. Okay. It got me thinking about it.
How would I describe this garden that's in bloom? Actually, it was Bill Street, who used to always call Woodford Reserve an acorn that he wanted to see grow into a great oak tree. Bill, I would say that that acorn is a very strong sapling right now in our garden. It's about 250,000 cases worldwide, growing in double digits, I think, for the 16th year in a row. Certainly, on Jack Daniel's in the world of brands, Jack Daniel's continues to be this wonderful flower in the midst of our garden, feeding so much, with growth all over the world, even in Japan these days. Japan has not been a wonderful imported spirits market for the last decade, and Jack Daniel's is doing so well in Japan now.
Not just Jack, even in Japan, Early Times is doing well, thanks to this renewed excitement from the local sales force. The Russians want Early Times. The brands are just in such wonderful shape. On the people side, of course, in Paul's team, there have been changes in the last year. The head gardening team. We've got new people who have joined the team, Kirsten Hawley, Lawson Whiting, John Hayes. Others have got new exciting challenges, Jill Jones, Jane Morreau. Of course, the 4,000 employees around the world. This garden has long roots, but the luster of today's color is really theirs. The Pavels of the world and the Hendricks of the world. On our board, we've had an exciting year. John D. Cook has really played the role of Lead Independent Director for some time, but this year now has taken on that title officially.
The board also, in May, went down to look at that sapling in Woodford Reserve down in Versailles, Kentucky, at one of its meetings, where it was joined as well by a member of the family committee as a guest on that tour. In the family, of course, the family had been in the garden for 143 years. Some of those mature hedges around the edges of the garden, we can thank the family for. Those roots run very deep. There are some new flowers sprouting, too. This year, we had two professors come down from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University to help run a governance course for a combined audience of family members and directors. We've also had DendriFund, a sustainability foundation, funded by the company and staffed by the company and some family members, really kick off this year.
It's been an exciting year. I think I found the best answer for Pavel when I went down to Sydney, Australia, in June to a meeting that Marshall Farrer had organized. I don't know if you've been to Sydney. It's a long way. Sydney Harbor, and the people, and the business will get you over the jet lag. I was on a coffee break, and I started chatting with someone who just joined the company three years ago. Wonderful guy named Grant Onions, who's from Tasmania and is a salesman down in Tasmania, which of course, is just a little bit further than Sydney. I think it's another four-hour flight. Grant said to me how excited he was. He couldn't have been a nicer, more enthusiastic guy.
He said, "If there are three words that I'm taking back to Tasmania, they're belief, confidence, and balance." Belief and confidence are great words. I'm sure every company would love them. Balance is a Brown-Forman word. It's the way that we balance brand-building between being true to tradition from yesterday, but innovating for today to win today. It's about how we engage long-term family shareholders and uphold our responsibilities to our public shareholders and our partners in the financial community. It's about how we have such great engagement from such a great number of family members, while at the same time having the industry's strongest management team, taking this company to untold heights.
Culturally, I think balance is how we've been able to grow such a wonderfully complex, global international business with real operating businesses in market all over the world without actually ever forgetting who we are or where we're from. We're distillers, and we're from Kentucky. That sense of place gives us a strength that allows us to grow all over the world without ever losing our way. It's like a beacon that helps light our way home. Please, with me, welcome a man who always gives me a warm welcome when I come home, and who's been leading this company for a very successful 10 years, Mr. Paul Varga.
Very well said. Thank you. Very nicely said. Thank you. Thank you, Garvin. That was some fine gardening yourself there. I think using the theme that was in our annual report and on the wall behind me, I think there's some nice proof there of some of what the company and manifest here in one of its foremost leaders is all about. It's my role, as always, to take you through a combination of things here today. Of course, I want to touch on FY 2013 and the recent business results, also try to always give a little bit of insight into what's happening at the company and how we might be operating. Today, I talk a little bit about things that you oftentimes don't see because you don't work here every day.
I'll get a little bit into the, maybe a little the underbelly of our culture as I talk about our people some. Let me start with our fiscal year 2013, what we call top-tier performance that highlight our results. Garvin referred to them. Sometimes because we've had such nice, consistent performance, and these numbers are on the screen behind me, often hesitate to come up and talk about the same thing. I remember a friend of mine who's a CEO once told me, said, "Never miss the opportunity to talk about good results. By the way, if you have bad results, it's a perfect time for a three-week international trip just to get away. Be elusive." Thankfully, I'm here today. I'm not on a three-week international trip. You can see here, I'll just highlight a few.
This underlying net sales growth at 8%, which is near our historical average when you do stretch these periods out over long periods of time. Our underlying operating income at 13%, a really strong operating income growth. Even higher at 16%. We continue to have return on invested cap, signaling the efficient. Really fun for the 12 months, all of that April 30th, which was the conclusion of our fiscal year. You see, even though the at 16% our growth in shares is almost double that. Then the growing section, we ended the year around some market cap. The performance for the year. Usually, when we talk about it in here, I sometimes forget that there's so many actually tune into this.
If you wouldn't mind joining me in a salute to them, all of the people who produce these results, who are all over the world, that Garvin referenced, with a round of applause. We try planned, right? I mean, they just aren't going to happen magically by themselves. We look backwards first to see, "Hey, are we doing this consistently?" We try to show this chart as much as we can, which is putting various time frames on a similar performance called total shareholder return. Of course, we'll start to compare ourselves to. Of course, you see on here the S&P 500. You'll see the consumer staples, which is a broad group of consumer packaged goods companies against which we like to compare ourselves. Then you see various participants in our industry.
The thing that stands out across all of these time frames, one year, three year, five year, 10 year, is how strong our industry is. You see that in almost every instance, the industry generally performs above the S&P 500 and consumer staples. We're performing well with our Brown-Forman on these screens near the top of the industry in almost every one of these periods. Doing it against what I consider to be a very significant benchmark in a great set of global competitors. I remember 10 years ago, all of the questions. Geographically, I think the numbers for the last 12 months, ending April 30, was that the U.S., our oldest and most largest market, grew 6% in terms of underlying net sales. The developed international markets grew at about the same rate, 6% underlying net sales.
The emerging markets out in the world grew at 12%. Across the globe, unlike many of our competitors, who in one of those three segments or so, or three groupings, and that's just one of the ways we look at it. We look at it, obviously, by country. When we go and look at how we're doing in developing around the world, we're always impressed by the great diversification of our performance. Within function, it takes not just a sales or marketing, or production operation to do all this great work. It's the coordinated effort across everybody from our information systems and our production, our tax, our treasury. You just can't imagine the amount of work that's going on each and every day to produce the kind of results across every function of Brown-Forman.
Within the P&L, we were really anxious this year to want to improve our pricing and margins, because the prior year. I spoke with you a year ago, we had exceptional results, but they were so volume driven that we thought, particularly on Jack Daniel's Black Label, there was an opportunity to reinforce some of its specialness and premiumness out in the market. We produced stellar results again, but with a different balance of volume and pricing. Even great cost management, which flowed through to our gross profit growth. There was a nice, what I call P&L balance in the delivery of our results as well. Investment. We have often talked publicly about our very broad definition of investment. It encompasses things that don't show up in your advertising. Oftentimes, people define it narrowly. An over investment as encompassing investment in people, in training, in system.
Thinking, of course, about investment. But also been very capacity or fitting in order for creating, which we can store our whiskey. Places like Sonoma-Cutrer. Toward being for our products. Finally, the portfolio. A year ago, we were calling at the time, are not Jack Daniel's, because we were so successful on Jack Daniel's because of the launch of Jack Daniel's Tennessee Honey and the growth of Black Label. FY13 to have a better balance of portfolio growth. Which we're just so proud of this. Here's a sampling of the product portfolio. We really did have a better performance from the non-Jack Daniel's brands. The bench business enterprise is something I would like to call rarefied air. Let me explain to you what this little 2 by 2 is. On the bottom axis here is volume metrics.
For purposes of splitting this in two, this is 10 million cases, which in our business is huge. If a brand can achieve 10 million cases, it's very big. On this axis is price. We sort of define super-premium in our business as $25 U.S. dollars and above. Of course, prices, for a variety of reasons, vary all over the world, but we think we've got it directionally correct. Usually, there's an inverse relationship, of course, in the sale of most products with price and volume. What we tried to do here was to plot the largest brands in terms of ultra-premium scale and volume, just to see how it looks. The first thing you can see is that some of the greatest trademarks in the world, represented here above the $25 price point, that are doing very impressive volumes.
Three, four, five, maybe six million cases of volume, but at exceptional prices. I mean, these are economic engines for their owners. I mean, very impressive brands. Grey Goose, Johnnie Walker Black, Hennessy, Chivas Regal, wonderful trademarks. On the other end of the spectrum, extremely well-known and popular brands, I don't even know if the scale would capture it correctly, but selling 15s and 20s and 25 million cases of Smirnoff and BACARDÍ around the world. Very impressive, large-scale operations, but at quite a bit lower prices, right? Here's the 2 ends of the spectrum. A couple of brands we would note that are actually pretty premium at price level, which are probably one brand that is, as a single expression of a trademark, above 10 million cases and $25. All of the great assets address some of these things that are maybe inhibitions with people or barriers.
It's also a very motivating reason for our brand extensions. I'll just show you some of these labels over the years that are out in the marketplace and in many instances thriving. I'll just use a couple of examples. Using this nice one here, Gentleman Jack, which is over here on the far end. Gentleman Jack works on the imagery of Jack Daniel's. It refines some of the edges of what we know to be the Jack Daniel's imagery. It actually tastes differently. It's twice mellowed. It's certainly not more affordable. It's more premium priced. It doesn't really work on convenience, and its potency, I think, it might be perceived as less potent. It can work on any of these, obviously, our ready-to-drink offerings. Jack Daniel's & Coca-Cola work on taste because we're in a mixed format.
Potency, it's a diluted effect of the product itself. Imagery, it sometimes makes us appear and in reality to be more contemporary because of the settings we're in and the way we present it. Very much a convenience item. We like to sometimes say we're competing for the beer occasion when we offer these products. In each one of these instances, you'll see an example where Jack Daniel's extensions play a role in addressing things that are just harder for Jack Daniel's Black Label to accomplish. Oftentimes, when one goes and extends these brands, they come at the expense of the parent product. What we found, hopefully, and in a balanced way, since here, these successes in the marketplace have been additive to the Jack Daniel's trademark. They have not been what we sometimes call cannibalizing, but they add to it.
Times because they're addressing these issues that exist, they're drivers or adding new. Not only them, maybe whatever % profits of that would have been earning here a long time ago. Today, increasingly, we're deriving a higher % from these while this one continues to march on. It's really a nice success story of trademark development as well. I've got to mention this guy right here, Tennessee Honey, really becoming an important success story for the company just here in the last couple of years as we've first launched it in the U.S. It's continued to grow here. It's been part of this explosive flavored whiskey segment in the U.S. and has shown real promise in the last 12 to 15 months as we've rolled that internationally.
It's probably been our most rapidly accepted line extension on a global scale of anything virtually Brown-Forman has done, certainly anything Jack Daniel's has done. Very exciting, and we'll continue to report on its progress. I thought I'd share advertisements about some of these. I think the examples here are Gentleman Jack, which has a new advertising campaign, and Tennessee Honey. I'll just run them all together. There's four spots.
While stocks rise and fall, elections come and go. Summer, fall, winter, and spring, with birthdays, funerals, and everything in between. While the world turns and the moon casts a watchful eye from above, we'll be right here in Lynchburg, making Jack Daniel's the same way we always have, the best way we can. He sat in on countless legendary recordings. He was Sinatra's right-hand man, playing with some of the biggest names in rock 'n' roll. He was there at CBGB's in 1977, the Sunset Strip in 1981. He's been on tour since 1866, and he's still going strong today. His name is Jack.
What is The Order of Gentlemen?
The simple dignity of gentlemanhood? No. The Order of Gentlemen, Gentleman Jack. Tennessee Whiskey men order like gentlemen. A society? I suppose we'd run around wearing rings, having secret meetings. Gentleman Jack Rare Tennessee Whiskey. The Order of Gentlemen.
You see a balance or composition of creative there intended to appeal to a variety of audiences and taken out to the world to introduce not only new trademarks from Jack Daniel's, but also very much even within the Jack Daniel's brand. You saw an example of the traditional approach with him, one we're very proud of. Usually emphasizes the place where Jack Daniel's is from and where it's made, but also bridged very much by advertisements that demonstrate that Jack Daniel's very much alive in society and where it's consumed and how people enjoy it with one another. In addition to all of the things we're doing today to try to make Jack Daniel's, this 147-year-old brand, remain relevant.
We take this for granted today because it's been going on now for several years, but just think about when people go out into the world today and how they get information, and they Google, right? I mean, that's exactly what people do. They Google to find things out. We tried to look and see, well, scientists and sports, any of these subjects. About this, look at the company we will end up keeping here, Martin Luther King, Michael Jordan, and all of these, essentially, creations of those are very established and in some instances, centuries old, searched and sought. People do the same thing for whiskey. They get this. This is the company that Jack Daniel's is keeping in a modern world where people are gleaning information in this way.
It's not only the messages we're sending out, but it's also the way acting and presentation today on the sophistication of Jack Daniel's efforts in the world of digital, all of which grew out of early work and inspiration that we would have learned technology today to capture still the direct consumers, in this case, through Facebook friends and direct activity. It's one of the most interesting and fun developments in the Jack Daniel's franchise over the last 10 years. It's very exciting. We all joke about this, but how could this guy, his name, Jasper Newton Daniel, 147 years ago, have figured out he would be the top Googled whiskey? We all joke inside, and this is the truth.
I mean, I don't know that a lot of people knew his name was Jasper Newton Daniel, the stroke of marketing genius was when this guy changed his name from Jasper to Jack, nothing against any Jaspers in the audience or in the investment community, there's no way the Jasper and Coke would be the call that the Jack and Coke is. For all the advertisements we're doing, I think if you go back, that was probably the single greatest marketing stroke that has occurred in the history of the brand. Anyway, an area here that is rich with excitement at the company and around the world. I'd like to talk about, as great as it is today, looking ahead a little bit for other brands in our portfolio, too.
Here are just five statistics that should give you as much excitement as it does us about the future for Jack Daniel's and Brown-Forman. The first is that the whiskey category worldwide, and it is the most worldwide in terms of breadth of distribution, is the top-performing spirits category of the last 10 years. The whiskey category with a 6% Compound Annual Growth Rate. We're in a growing core category of whiskey. Within it, the premium-plus side is leading the growth. That is exactly where Jack Daniel's is positioned and many of Brown-Forman's entrants are positioned. We think we're positioned very well against both aspects of that. A third, that within whiskey, which would include Scotch and Irish and Canadian, and all kinds of other whiskeys, US whiskey is now outpacing every other whiskey category, in part because why? Jack Daniel's has been driving it.
A very encouraging sign for those people who are in the bourbon business or in the American whiskey manufacturing and selling business. The fourth is that today, Jack Daniel's is, of course, in a leadership position with being the world's largest premium whiskey. Those are four. I think the most fascinating thing is, well, how do you continue this? We only have a 3% share of the category. For reference, when we study other categories, similar price segments, similar scale, and think about things like tequila, look at rum, you look at vodka, most of the leading brands will already represent north of 10% share. 12, 13% share. We think there's a lot of room, not only because of the momentum that are behind the categories, but also very much because we still have a relatively low share.
It's hard to say that we've just cracked the surface with the size of the brand, but I do think there's a tremendous remaining opportunity. I'd like to shift gears a little bit from the what of our business and the results, and talk a little bit about the how. Every single one of the Brown-Forman people that we encounter, they come to work to, of course, work on they have great job productive careers, also want to when they come to work. Because we're in beverage alcohol, periodically, our people will think, "I wonder what people think about me working in beverage alcohol." Periodically their children will ask them, "What do you do for a living?" Conversations have gone on at Brown-Forman five or six years ago, we would have purpose it some different ways.
We were having conversations that we believe we are enriched in building beverage alcohol. There's some underpinnings here of the good that alcohol and our products are bringing to society, particularly against a backdrop where the media, of course, will portray 10 to 1 or 100 to 1 more negative with things like alcohol. I started to think about the most provocative things I've read on this or seen, I went back to a time in 1996 when Owsley Brown was working for William M. Street, Owsley Brown at the time was asked to give a speech, and he asked me to help him with it. He wrote something, and I went back and looked at it. Excuse me.
I thought I'd just read you a passage from something, this will be familiar to those of you who know the voice of Owsley Brown, that he wrote, and I was very fortunate to help him work on. It really goes to what we believe our brands, in part, are doing in society. Let me just read this passage to you. "For millennia, mankind has known of 3 types of benefits derived from moderate alcohol consumption." It is known of physical benefits, as alcohol is one of our oldest known medicines. It's also known of psychological benefits, as alcohol has long been used to ease the tensions of mankind. It's known too, that alcohol has always played an important social role by marking the important occasions of life and facilitating the harmonious interactions of people that create civic unity.
I know, Christy, you've heard that voice before. Anyway, I went back and I found those to be very helpful. That social good. We, a contemporary expression, we try to use our initials for Brown-Forman when we can. For our endurance strategy, we call it Building Forever. Today, we call that social good Building Friendships for the role that our products and brands are playing in elevating the social interaction of the world. There's some real purpose, and I think our people increasingly are finding great use and enjoyment in the exploration of this kind of work, and I just thought I'd share it with you. We joked, we were in Europe a couple of weeks ago for our European congregation, and we were talking about this.
I told them at the time that when I was coming back through customs, that when they ask, they always ask, "Well, what do you do for a living?" That I facilitate. I was in a hurry. Decided was not to do it. In any event, I do think that these words and these ambitions of ours that go beyond just the production of economic profit and value are really, really important, not only to us, but also to a growing and important stakeholder wheel. We find a conversation on topics ranging from everything from the environment ability important to our customers and give us favor in the marketplace.
When we talk with the social con, all of the people experience of life of excise tax done with those taxes they do, of course, to have a wonderful career and their lives are enriched. Production of their can send their children to the world. I mean, fitness to this, I think has really, really helped. It means because you're the day to you as owners and shareholders. It's far larger than that and far more complex than that. I think at Brown-Forman, we understand that the qualitative aspect as much as the quantitative. It happens really because Oh, excuse me, we're going to be reporting on this in about 4 weeks when we publish our next corporate social responsibility report. There'll be a lot for you to read on our progress against these stakeholders and how we're enriching life.
None of it happens, of course, without the people we all clapped for a few minutes ago. These are our large collection of people all over the world. The way that our executive leadership team is talking with our people and amongst ourselves about it is these results will continue to happen as long as we have a cooperative environment, which it looks like we will, by continuing to develop our brands. Probably the foremost thing is developing ourselves, and making a real commitment to the continuous improvement of each of ourselves. I think I've said it before that if the company wants to, say, grow 10 or 12% every year, so too does Paul Varga and all of the executives and all of the employees. We describe this, are we really thinking as clearly and as we care about Brown-Forman?
We often describe, particularly the family control, but the engagement of our shareholders generally as a real strategic advantage. This packed room and the way you ask questions, your interest in the company is an advantage because we find that many public entities, people are not as interested or do not care about some of the stuff we've been talking about here. I think the continuing care and nurturing that you all do as shareholders of the company remains a huge advantage. We thank you for that. We think it's proof of your interest in the company, and I hope what I've shared with you today is also proof that your investment in the company will remain an excellent one. Thank you all very much.