I think we've got everybody here, thank you all for coming to the annual shareholders meeting of Brown & Brown. I'd like to start off with introductions of our board of directors. I would like for each of the board members to stand as I recognize them, remain standing, then we'll give them a round of applause once they're all introduced. I'm Hyatt Brown, chairman of the board. Sam Bell, who is retired and former counsel to the law firm of Buchanan Ingersoll & Rooney. Hugh Brown, who is founder and former CEO of BAMSI Engineering and Technical Services firm. Powell Brown, president and CEO. Brad Currey, former chairman and CEO, Rock-Tenn Company, now WestRock company. Larry Gellerstedt III, chairman and chief executive officer, Cousins Properties Incorporated. James C. Hayes, vice chairman, Brown & Brown, Inc. Ted Hepner, former vice chairman, SunTrust Bank Holding Company.
Jim Hunt, former executive vice president and chief financial officer of Walt Disney Parks and Resorts Worldwide. Toni Jennings, chairman, Jack Jennings & Sons, commercial construction firm in Orlando, and Jennings & Jennings architectural millwork firm based in Orlando. Tim Main, global head of Financial Institutions Group at Barclays British Bank. Palmer Proctor, president and chief executive officer and director, Fidelity Bank Atlanta. Wendell Reilly, chairman, Berman Capital Advisors, managing partner, Grapevine Partners, a private equity investment firm focused on media and communications and based in Atlanta. Last but certainly not least, Chilton Varner, senior counsel with the law firm of King & Spalding. Let's give them a round of applause. I'd like to comment that we have a very unique board. I have had the opportunity over the years to serve on several publicly owned company boards, in many cases, they're all very intelligent people.
They're nice to be around, but the commitment to the company, in many cases, is not really that strong. In this case, our directors are really committed to this company. They have a personal interest, they have a diverse background that allows them to bring to us knowledge that we would not otherwise have. Most of that background is an operational background. One of the great reasons for the success of Brown & Brown over a period of years is we're operators. We're not executives. We sell insurance, as Powell says, we do sell a lot of insurance, and we service and et cetera. I now would like to introduce the officers, very few of our officers are able to be here today because they're out selling insurance, which is what we encourage.
I'm going to list the officers all the way first through Section 16, then the officers who are not subject to Section 16. Hyatt Brown, chairman of the board, Powell Brown, president and chief executive officer, Robert Lloyd, executive vice president, general counsel, and secretary, Scott Penny, executive vice president, chief acquisitions officer, Julie K. Ryan, executive vice president, chief people officer, Anthony, otherwise known as Tony Strianese, executive vice president and president, Wholesale Brokerage segment, Chris Walker, executive vice president, National Programs segment, R. Andrew, Andy Watts, executive vice president, chief financial officer, and treasurer. Let's go to those officers who are not Section 16. J.
Neal Abernathy, Senior Vice President, John Berner, Senior Vice President, Sam Boone Jr., Senior Vice President, Steve Boyd, Senior Vice President, Barrett Brown, Senior Vice President, Regional President, Retail segment, Cathy Colangelo, Senior Vice President, Mike Egan, Senior Vice President, Regional President, Retail segment, John Esposito, Senior Vice President, Regional President, Retail segment, Joe Faiella, Senior Vice President, Rich Freeborn Sr., Senior Vice President, James C. Hayes, Vice Chairman, Tom Huval, Senior Vice President, Regional President in the Retail segment, Mike Keeby, Senior Vice President, Regional President, Retail segment, Rich Knudson, Senior Vice President, Regional President in the Retail segment, David Lotz, Vice President and Chief Corporate Counsel, Don McGowan, Senior Vice President, Regional President in the Retail segment, Carl Owen, Senior Vice President and Chief Information Officer, Anthony M.
Robinson, Assistant General Counsel and Assistant Secretary, Paul Rogers, Senior Vice President, Regional President, Retail segment, and Vaughn Stoll, Senior Vice President. Those are our officers of this company, and we're proud of them all. They do a wonderful job. I would like to introduce the representatives of Deloitte & Touche. Those are our independent registered public accountants. First is Richard Helm. Richard, would you like to stand wherever you are? Right here, and remain standing. Then Phil Nix, who is the Audit Partner. He's the Lead Client Service Partner for the Brown & Brown account. Thank you very much. Other guests. We have some important guests here, and I hope I don't miss anyone. First of all, my wife is here, Ceci, someplace. There she is. We have Sherry Lloyd, and she is Bob Lloyd's wife. There she is.
We have John Ryan, who is Julie Ryan's husband. There he is. We have Kelly Robinson. There's Anthony. There's Kelly. First time she's been here, and she's not pregnant, which is good. One of the things that we're proud of her for. You see, what people don't understand is the world runs on green. In order for GDP to grow in the United States, each woman must produce 2.1 children. They're working on it. Having said that, I'm going to ask Robert Lloyd to act as the Secretary of the Meeting and present proof of the due calling of the meeting. Bob.
Mr. Chairman, I have the mailing affidavit certifying on the 21st day of March 2019, the proxy statement and all related materials were mailed to owners of outstanding capital stock of the company as of the close of business on February 25th, 2019, the record date. I also have the certified list of all common shareholders of Brown & Brown Incorporated as of the close of business on the record date, which has been certified as true and correct by American Stock Transfer Company in its capacity as Transfer Agent for the company.
Do we have a quorum?
Yes. The number of shares of capital stock outstanding and entitled to vote on the record date was 281,829,199. Of this amount, 265,433,955 shares, representing approximately 94% of the total number of shares outstanding, are represented at this meeting. This constitutes a quorum.
The meeting is now lawfully convened, and we're ready to transact business. I suggest that, in order to save time, that we dispense with the reading of the minutes, and the chair will recognize a motion to dispense or to record the minutes as approved. Is there a motion? Is there a second?
Second.
Without objection, show its adoption. I will now entertain a motion for the appointment of the two individuals to act as inspectors of voting. Their duties will be to decide upon the qualification of voters, to accept the votes, and to count and ascertain the number of votes, shares voting for each and against each proposal.
I move that Anthony Robinson and Lisa Gaine be appointed to act as inspectors of voting.
Are there any opposed? The motion is carried. The inspectors now have filed their oaths of office with the secretary. We will now turn to the vote on the nomination for the board of directors set forth in the proxy. Most of you have already submitted proxies by mail or today as you came in. If you have not turned in your proxy, or if you wish to change your vote, please raise your hand. Is there anybody who wishes to raise their hand? No hands. The inspectors will see that you'll receive ballots and that they are collected after you have voted. Since there are no hands raised, we don't have to compensate the inspectors, sorry about that, inspectors. Do you have the result of the voting?
I do. Each of the 14 nominees for the board of directors has received at least 229,460,491 votes, sufficient in each case for election. Additionally, the approval of the ratification of Deloitte & Touche LLP as the company's independent registered public accountants for the fiscal year ending December 31st, 2019, has received at least 259,607,750 votes, sufficient for approval. The approval on an advisory basis of the compensation of the named executive officers has received at least 235,820,551 votes, sufficient for approval. The approval of Brown & Brown Incorporated's 2019 Stock Incentive Plan has received at least 232,484,425 votes, sufficient for approval.
Thank you very much. This concludes the scheduled business of the meeting. There being no further business, the meeting is adjourned. We're going to have presentations, before we have the presentation, I'm going to introduce Powell. I would like to give a special recognition to someone who is a longtime friend and has been very important to this company. What you all may not recognize is the first Brown of Brown & Brown was my father. The second Brown of Brown & Brown was Worley, my older brother, who's passed away. The third is me, the fourth is Powell, and the fifth is Barrett. In 1964-ish or '65, my older brother, Worley, was asked to go to Atlanta to be the president and CEO of a small paper box manufacturer called Rock City Box Company.
When he went to Atlanta, one of the things that he first of all had to do was to establish a banking relationship. The reason was that the banking relationship was in Baltimore and the home office was in Atlanta. He interviewed people from all the major banks in Atlanta, and he called me and said, "I have met a person who absolutely is a wonderful person.
He is a senior executive with Trust Company of Georgia, and his name is Brad Currey." I said, "Gosh, I'd like to meet him." I came to Atlanta and met Brad, and I thought, "Gosh, here's a guy who has a wonderful background, smart as heck, and he relates to people, and he's involved, not just in the business, but basically he's involved in the community and has a love for the Atlanta community." That's 1965-ish. Then a little time went along, and Brad and I were elected to the board of directors. Brad was vice chairman of Trust Company, not SunTrust. This is before the merger.
One day, my brother called and said, "You know, I sure would like to get Brad to come on to be the person who would succeed me." Talked to Brad, and Brad said, "Okay, we'll do that." That was a big, big move. I mean, a huge move. Brad came on board. The company grew, prospered. Brad and Worley were just wonderful partners in that business. As a result of that, when my brother came down with Parkinson's, Brad moved right into the position, and the company continued to grow and expand. Fast-forward to 1993, Brown & Brown became a publicly owned company. It was then called Poe & Brown. We did an upstream merger with Poe & Associates of Tampa. They were publicly owned, we were private, and we took over the company.
We were going to control the board of directors. The first person that I wanted to see if they would be interested in joining the board was Brad. Brad said, "Yeah, I'll do that." He said, "I think that would be interesting. I know a little bit about the insurance business from being a banker at Trust Company of Georgia." He came on board, and I saw that he bought some stock, and it was $300,000 worth of stock. I thought, "Gee, Brad." I asked him. He said, "Well, I believe if I'm a director, I need to have a substantial investment.
When we do good things, I'm going to feel really good, and when we don't do so good things, I'm going to feel really badly. That $300,000, if you look in your proxy, is now about a half a million shares, and it is over $15 million. He did pretty well. He has been a wonderful person for Brown & Brown, and he is the sage.
Worley Brown was the best friend a fella could ever have, and I found his sock. I'm awfully proud of what this company's done. I've watched it all these years. I've had a part in it, in its governance, and now I'm succeeding to have a further role, and I'm sure it is fun to see how it goes. I love making money for this company.
Thanks, Brad. When Brad speaks, he doesn't say a lot in board meetings, but when he speaks, everybody listens, and the advice is spot on. Now I'd like to introduce Powell Brown, our President and CEO, to give a report on the company. Powell.
Thank you, Dad. Good morning, everybody. Good morning. We're going to talk about our company and what's happened in the last year, and it's been a good year at Brown & Brown. Before I begin, I wanted to say: What do we do at Brown & Brown? We help our customers protect their assets and their most valuable possessions. That's what we do. We provide solutions to our customers, and those solutions may be buying insurance to transfer risk to an insurance company. What was last year like? First and foremost, we crossed our intermediate goal of $2 billion in revenue. Seven short years ago, we set out to go from one billion to two billion, and we did that last year, both through organic growth and acquisitions. We grew the business 7.1%, and the earnings per share adjusted our net income by 22.3%.
We added roughly 1,100 new teammates. You hear us talk about we ended the year with full-time teammates, those are individuals that work a minimum of 30 hours a week, at somewhere right about 9,600. I will tell you that I believe that we have today in excess of 10,000 teammates. We're on our way to something I referenced yesterday, around 20,000, as we double the company again. One of the things that's interesting that the analyst community is really starting to take notice of, but we've talked about for a long time, is our cash conversion. What that means is if we make a dollar of revenue, not earnings, a dollar of revenue, when we do that, how much of that revenue do we convert that we can reinvest in our business? The answer is 26% in 2018.
To give you an idea of what others did, it's usually half of that or less in our industry. We're efficient at converting revenue to earnings and then taking that earnings and investing it in the company in three ways. You've heard me talk about it. We invest in teammates, most importantly. 2, we make acquisitions that fit culturally and make sense financially. 3, we return it to shareholders by paying you dividends and/or sometimes buying our stock back when it looks appropriate. We completed 23 transactions for $323 million of revenue. That's the largest year of acquisitions in the history of our company. You might ask, "Well, what happened differently?" The answer is nothing happened differently. We are out a little bit like farmers, constantly planting seeds all over the country and evaluating people's culture, and looking, and they're looking at our culture.
Then when and why they sell is different. The answer is, we had the opportunity to acquire a lot of fine firms last year. We made the largest acquisition in the history of our company called Hays, which is based in Minneapolis. Jim Hays joined our board. Jim Hays is like us. Jim Hays started his business from scratch in 1994 in Minneapolis and grew it to $210 million all organically with a team of 795 high-performing teammates. The coming together of two high-performance teams has been very simple because they do a really good job, and we believe we do a really good job, we haven't missed a beat. We just keep on going, and we're working famously together. We invested in technology and new capabilities.
You heard us talk about the need to continue to capture our data in a manner that we can scale it, we can use it to the benefit of our, 1, customers, 2, teammates, 3, carrier partners. Many times in these presentations, we talk a lot about numbers, I wanted to talk a little bit about what we're really all about. If you were at a meeting internally at Brown & Brown, I talk about the three most important things in our lives. That is, number 1, your health, number 2, your family, and number 3, Brown & Brown. Brown & Brown not only is how we make our living, but it gives us the opportunity to reinvest or invest back into the communities that we live and work in.
I would tell you that I believe that we have an obligation, not just an opportunity. We also talk about health as defined in four ways. That's physical, mental, spiritual, and financial. We talk about that internally with our teammates. When you take that, we believe that there are four major stakeholders around that core. Starts with our teammates, shareholders and customers, and carrier partners. When we have a balanced view of those four stakeholders, we believe that returns the best returns over a long period of time. We grew the business organically at 2.4% last year overall. That actually is a little misleading because we had, in the first quarter, some revenue that was non-recurring, relative to some flood claims revenue. If you took that out or normalized it, we would've grown the business about 4%. This is by division.
Retail continues our biggest division, just 52% of our revenue growing 3% organically. National Programs was down almost a percent. That's where the flood revenue was, that's non-recurring. Wholesale Brokerage and Tony Strianese's team, that continues to be our highest organic growth business in the last six years in a row. Our services business grew 3.4%. We're very pleased with the performance of the business overall. I alluded to our intermediate goal. In 2011, we were having a sales meeting, and I asked everyone at the sales meeting that wanted to be part of our team and our quest to get to $2 billion to sign up on this particular poster board. They did. It was framed, and it sat outside my office. We have achieved this goal. We have now moved that to another place in the office and come up with another goal.
I'm going to talk about that in a moment. We look at the performance of the company from 2010, or really starting in 2011, to 2018. That's where we went from $1 billion to $2 billion. We started at the end of the year in 2010 at $973 million, our compounded annual growth on a revenue basis would be 9.5% in that period of time. We started with 5,100 teammates. We ended the year at just under 9,600. We had 248 locations. Now we have 291. Net income diluted $56, compounded growth rate of 10.2% to $121. I would draw your attention to the growth of net income per share is higher than the growth in the revenue. That's a little bit more efficient in terms of that.
Enterprise value, that's the value of our company at the time, was $3.3 billion in revenue, and today, it's just under $9 billion. Again, the growth in the enterprise value exceeds the growth in the revenue in that same period of time. We've also expanded our capabilities. I'm not going to go through this slide line by line, but what I would tell you is this. We were a very good middle-market broker that did some programs and some services, and a lot of good wholesale. Today, we have the capabilities in our Retail segment to very effectively compete and serve customers of all sizes. What I mean specifically is lots of upper middle-market and Fortune 1000 companies. That does not mean that we target those all the time, although we have certain units that do.
Our capabilities to go from startup to multibillion-dollar company is fully complete, and we continue to build that out. In our program space, we continue to grow in the number of programs we have, but the capabilities in those programs and the capabilities to capture, analyze, utilize, and actually work with our carrier partners on the data in those programs. This is just a quick snapshot in terms of what the business looked like. I'd like to point out in 2000, just to give you 18 short years ago, 19 now, look at the size of Wholesale Brokerage. It says $23 million. That business today is just under $300 million, $287 million. Look at National Programs at $22 million, it's $494 million. Services was $19 million, and now it's $189 million. We are actively looking and investing in all four divisions in our company.
As I've said before, and I'll say again in the future, this is about cultural fit and the talent and quality of the people first when we make an acquisition, then we look to see if it will make sense financially going forward. We talk about the power of we in our company. And what is that? The power of we is a bunch of core characteristics that we talk about internally where people understand what we're all about. I describe us as a highly competitive athletic team. If an individual doesn't want to be on a competitive team, they probably don't want to work at Brown & Brown. For everybody that does or has or has interest, there is a deep feeling of camaraderie, competition, and collective solutions for our customers. We describe it as a decentralized sales and service focus based on high-quality integrity.
We have ownership and entrepreneurial culture. I've said before that 29% of our company is owned by teammates, that's very unusual for publicly traded companies of this size. If you did a sort out there on public companies in the United States, there's about 4,400, and you said, "How many of those have over a billion and a half in revenue? How many of those have more than 15% insider ownership? How many there would be?" There would be 25, and we're one of the 25. Prideful relationships, common goals that are communicated across the system. We're highly competitive. We chart everything. We're lean, and we're profit-oriented. We actually take the money that we earn, and we try to reinvest that in the company to the benefit of our teammates, our shareholders, our customers, and our carrier partners.
One of the things that our Chief People Officer, Julie Ryan, has done with her team is come up with articulating core characteristics that make people successful at Brown & Brown. We call those the power of be, consistent with the power of we. I'd just like to point out a couple of these. Be gritty, okay? We have a lot of gritty people at Brown & Brown. When I say that's a lot of people who went to state schools, that had their first jobs well before college, that might have put themselves through college, and they're gritty, and they make it happen. We're not looking for somebody that went to an Ivy League school necessarily. We're looking for people that want to do the right thing for our customers. Not that they don't, but it's a little different. Gritty, talent magnet, be a winner.
We're all about results. Be a mentor, customer-focused, be the link. Create teammate connections and energy. Collaborate across the platform. Be trustworthy. Authenticity is a core value in leadership. Be a futurist. How can you be innovative and bring solutions to our customers? Be clear, be smart. We completed an acquisition in all four of our divisions last year for the first time in the history of our company. Scott Penny is very proud of that, and we all are, but that was one of his personal goals. You'd say, "Well, why did that happen?" The answer, as I said earlier, is we were not doing anything differently. We were just continuing to go out and talk to people and see if they fit culturally and made sense financially.
We will have lots of opportunities to buy businesses now and in the future, but some of those businesses might look good financially, but if there's not a cultural fit, we walk away. If it does not make sense financially, we walk away. We have a disciplined approach. It is forever. I think I like to make it simple. I have four kids, many of you I've said that to before, but in the last 10 years, we've generated about $3.6 billion in terms of cash and the cash deployed. We've deployed $4.6 billion. This is a chart of where we've deployed it. As you can tell, acquisitions are the vast majority of that. However, we make annual capital expenditures, we repurchase shares, and we pay dividends. We pay roughly $77 million of dividends on an annual basis.
I will tell you that our share repurchases, many of the analysts want us to have a constant and consistent share repurchase program. We, and more specifically, yours truly, has said we're not going to do that. We're going to buy the shares if and when we believe that it's trading below intrinsic value. That's a nice way, that's their way of saying it's cheaper than we think it should be. Okay? We also have said we do not want the total number of shares to creep up. We are buying in a certain amount to keep that constant. Finally, we talk about returns over a long period of time. As a long-term company, when we make investments, we're not thinking specifically about next quarter or just next year. We're thinking 5 years, 10 years, 15 years, and beyond down the road.
Whether it's building our new campus or it's investing in a new business or hiring new teammates, we talk to people about, "Do you think you can get in the boat with us for the next 15 or 20 years?" That is not something most people are asking potential teammates out there we find in the market. All these returns are a reflection of all the teammates at Brown & Brown and what they have done on behalf of our customers. Our success right here is directly correlated with the relationships that we have with our customers, the relationships we have with our carrier partners, the relationships that we have with our teammates to leverage the collective knowledge of the company, the power of we, to the benefit of every single customer. Having said that, it's been a good ride.
As you know, past performance is not a predictor of future performance. We believe that if we continue to exhibit and use the disciplined approach that we have in the past, that we will continue to be able to generate free cash to reinvest in the business, and the market will value us at what the market thinks it is worth. We don't control the stock price, we just try to influence the earnings of the company over a long period of time. With that, I'll turn it over to our CFO, Andy Watts.
Good morning, everyone.
Good morning.
All right. Thank you, Powell. Put that there. Wonderful. Well, 2018. It was a really good year for Brown & Brown from a financial standpoint. See if this works. Yeah, there we go. Perfect. Last year, we generated over $2 billion of revenue, $2 billion 14 million, actually. We grew the top line 7%, and organically 2.4%. Powell mentioned earlier, if we isolate the impact of the flood revenues that we had in 2017. Hold on. There we go. Perfect. Jeff, we went blank.
We're up.
There we go. Perfect. Okay. Can everybody still hear me? All right, perfect. Thank you. We also maintained our industry-leading margins. One of the things that we're really proud of as an organization. Last year, we were also over 30% EBITDA margins. I'm going to talk about more of these in a little bit more detail. Our free cash flow yield, over 7%. I'm going to get into the kind of the details of what free cash flow means for our organization, for all of us as shareholders. We delivered $526 million of free cash flow last year. This is our cash flow after we paid out CapEx, an incredible, an all-time high for our organization. We maintained our strong balance sheet.
One of the things that we're really proud of is the conservative nature in how we run our organization, the disciplined approach to making sure that we've got a really strong balance sheet. Last year, we acquired the $323 million of revenue. We also spent over $1.2 billion of capital. We refinanced some of our debt last year to make sure that we've got a lot of options as we go forward as an organization. We delivered diluted earnings per share of $1.22. On an adjusted basis, almost 23% growth year-over-year. I mentioned before, we grew the top line 7%, but what have we been able to do over the last five years and over the last 10 years? Well, we grew at 6% and we grew 8% on a compounded basis. Think about what that's been able to do for us as an organization.
That growth rate has allowed us to double our company since 2010. It's right there in line with all the other public peers, as well as we also outpaced the S&P 500. We think if you can grow the top line, the important thing is what can we do on the margins? Last year, a little over 30%, our five-year average, 31%, 10-year average, 33%. Look at the average of the peer group that's out there. We are 100% better than them. We've continued to do it every year. A lot of people have said to us, as we get larger as an organization, there's no way that we can maintain those margins.
We say, we think we've got a proven operating model that we can continue to grow our business on the top line and make sure that we can maintain the margins that are out there. That just got demonstrated again over the last 10 years. Free cash flow conversion. There's a lot of things you can do as an organization, but one thing you can really do is you can count cash. The most important thing we can do is make sure that we can generate a lot of cash each year. Free cash flow, what is this? This is cash flow from operations. We spend somewhere around $30 million-$35 million of CapEx, and what's left is the money that we have to invest as an organization back into our company or return back to our shareholders. Last year, 26%.
Every revenue dollar that we generated, $0.26 free cash flow, an all-time high for our organization, a little bit higher than normal. If you look back over the last five years and the last 10 years, we average around 23%. A really good average for Brown & Brown is somewhere in the low 20s to the mid-20s. Think about the power of what that does when it's 100% better than all the other competitors. That means we generate the same amount of cash as if we were a $4 billion organization. That's powerful for us as an organization. We believe that we can continue to do this. If we can generate that level of cash, we want to think about what does it do as a percentage of our market value. That's free cash flow yield. Our market value is about $9 billion.
If you look last year, that means about 7% of our market cap was delivered in free cash flow. The S&P 500, as well as the public brokers, the other ones are out there, 5%. We're 50% higher on a 10-year average and versus the S&P 500, 30%-35%. Clearly a differentiator in the marketplace. This is also how we think about the valuation of our organization. Our earnings per share. I mentioned earlier, $1.22. Said it was down 12.9% year-over-year. Well, in 2017, we had two things that happened to the organization. We had a nice legal settlement for $20 million that we received, and then we also had tax reform that we implemented back in 2017, which gave us a large one-time benefit. We like to take out those benefits and try to understand what the business did on an underlying basis.
Well, we delivered $1.18 on an adjusted basis. That was 23% growth. Over the last 10 years, we've been able to grow our earnings per share on a compounded basis over 7%. Think about the top line. We grew that about 8%. We grew our earnings per share 7%. We're growing those two almost in tandem as an organization. What does this allow us to do? Well, with this cash right here, we've also been able to invest in technology. We've invested in teammates. We've invested in new capabilities and new programs during this entire time period. That also allows us to pay back the dividend that we do each year. We talked a lot about how we've grown the P&L.
Let's talk about the balance sheet, because every great organization, you got to be able to grow both of them, and you need to have a really strong balance sheet. Think in your own home. You want to make sure that you've got a really good, strong bank account. This is our bank account. If you look at what we've done as an organization, we finished last year at $1.5 billion of outstanding debt. That is up $525 million versus 2017. Earlier on the slide, you saw that we deployed about $1.2 billion of capital through acquisitions, buybacks, dividends, and CapEx. We only took our leverage up, in this case, to 2.3%. We think as an organization, if we can operate on a gross debt to EBITDA level anywhere from 0-3x, we feel really comfortable with that.
Why we feel comfortable is that if there's ever a downturn in the economy, we don't want to have a tremendous amount of debt on our balance sheet and trying to pay a lot of interest. We think conservative nature is the way to run an organization. That gives us options. Options will come to Brown & Brown over time. We feel really good with this. If you look back to 2014, we did also a number of acquisitions. What did we do on the back end of that? We've paid that down over time. It would be our intention to do that again. Over time, we will pay that back down. We also have the ability, though, as an organization, if opportunities come to us, we could deploy somewhere between $800 million and $1 billion. That's a company that has a really strong balance sheet.
If those opportunities ever do come to us, what a great thing. We can lean in, we can buy, and we'll have the cash, and we'll pay it back down over time. We feel really good about our balance sheet, and hopefully all of you feel really good about the balance sheet for Brown & Brown and how strong we are. Dividend increases. Well, last year, we increased our dividends. Again, 25 consecutive years. That's a pretty amazing number. That puts us in an elite group. 25 years of dividend increases means we're a dividend aristocrat. Earlier you heard Powell mention there's about 4,000 public companies that are out there. Last year, 53 companies were actually able to do that 25 years in a row. We're one of them. Think about that, 4,000, 53, Brown & Brown is one of them.
Every year that goes by, that group shrinks smaller and smaller. We continue to be an elite organization on how we run our company and the value that we deliver back to our shareholders. As we think out for 2019, 2020, and beyond, 5 things we'd like for you to think about our organization from a financial standpoint, because we think we're positioned really, really well. First, investing for future growth. We think about on 3 axes. First and foremost, teammates. That's what makes our organization work every day. We have to have great teammates. We've invested in the past, we'll continue to invest in the future. Technology. It's here, it's going to be here for a long time.
We need to make sure that we continue to make the right investments in the technology and data for the benefit of our teammates, our customers, and all of our carriers that are out there. We also want to make sure we continue to buy the right businesses. Over time, we're going to make sure that we buy businesses that fit with us culturally and make sense financially, and we have the capital to do that. Broad diversification. As with any organization, diversification is a very powerful thing. It keeps a boat from rocking back and forth when you have a lot of diversification and that weight across all of it. Us as an organization, we're very broad. We sell every line of coverage that's out there. We're in almost every market in the U.S. that's there.
Every industry, we have incredible diversification, and we will continue to do that. That gives us a lot of stability as an organization as well as cash flow. Disciplined capital allocation. One of the hallmarks of our company is that we try to invest the money like it's our money, it's your money. We try not to do anything irresponsible with our money. If you look at what we've been able to do over the last 10 and 20 years, it's a very disciplined approach. We're never, ever going to lose that discipline as an organization. It'll help keep us right there in the middle of the lane all the time. Strong cash flows. We talked earlier about somewhere around 20%-25% cash flows. If we can do that, and as we continue to grow the organization, $526 million last year, that's going to continue to grow.
We're going to have a high quality problem. The year when we start generating $1 billion of free cash flow, we have to be able to invest that as an organization. It's a really great problem for us to have as a company. Our conservative leverage. Talked earlier about the fact that we always want to try to be conservative, and when we can, that gives us a lot of options as an organization to make sure that we can buy organizations, invest the way that we want to out there in the future. We're going to continue to be conservative as a company and look out for all of your best interests. If we continue to do this as an organization, these five things, we're going to be really, really well-positioned to capture future opportunities for Brown & Brown.
With that, let me turn it back over to our CEO, Powell Brown.
Thanks, Andy. I'd like to wrap up and leave you with a couple things that we think about in the industry that could either directly or indirectly affect Brown & Brown. I used a slide that was a little bit similar to this last year, but I've modified it as our thinking has continued to evolve. In a changing landscape, we talk about acquisitions and the state of competition out there. Many of you have heard me say before, it used to be banks in the late '90s and the early 2000s, they were very active in the space. In the later 2000s, 2006, '7, '8 and beyond, private equity started to get into the space and is very active today. There are over 30 PE-backed firms, and just envision kind of a roll-up strategy. They buy many businesses.
Many times they have disparate cultures, they put those together with the idea of flipping them in three to five to seven years. It's totally counter to the way we think, it does have a tendency to impact the way that deals are priced. I would tell you that pricing and the way to buy businesses, they are expensive today. We have to be very disciplined about how we look at those acquisitions and want to make sure that we invest your money as shareholders as wisely as possible. The carrier landscape continues to be an interesting space to watch, and the reason I say that is there's lots of alternative capital out there that is not being used in the PE space that is getting into the risk-bearing space.
That's not new in the last year, it continues to present options in the space. That's number 1. Number 2, many carriers are starting to see that the rates that they've been charging in certain areas are inadequate. The most glaring example would be commercial automobile. Commercial automobile and personal automobile, commercial automobile rates are going up 7%, 8%, 10%, 15%, depending on the loss experience, and that's driven primarily by distracted drivers, unfortunately. There's also lots of discussion around property. Although there's a lot of discussion, we're not seeing incredible pressure upward on property today. We are seeing a little bit of upward pressure. Healthcare. One of the things that you've read about, and we will continue to hear a lot about here in Florida, is the idea of Medicare for All as a potential presidential candidate race, particularly in the Democratic side, heats up.
If you think about it, if I take you back prior to ACA or Affordable Care Act, there were about 47 million uninsured Americans in the United States. That's about 330 million people, as you know here. The answer is, when ACA was instituted, that went to about 28 million to 29 million uninsured. There's been modifications, obviously, to ACA, there's still about 28 million to 29 million uninsured people in the United States from a healthcare standpoint. Do we believe that Medicare for All is a possibility? Anything is possible, we think the probability is a lower instance. What we do think that might happen, depending on who's elected, is we could have ACA 2.0 or something like that, which would create additional complexity for our customers.
We will continue to be out talking and bringing and presenting solutions to them to manage their healthcare costs and help them with their teammates across their platforms. Legal and regulatory. We have a number of businesses that we've invested in that the government either has direct or indirect involvement in. Flood, Medicare Set-Aside, Social Security Disability Advocacy. That's just three. We watch with great interest how the government looks at regulating these businesses, and we believe that, number one, we bring great value in being able to adjust claims or distribute an insurance product in an efficient manner, either on behalf of or in conjunction with them. That would be an example of a flood policy. The most important thing that we think about is talent. As I said, we have roughly 10,000 teammates.
In order for us to get to the next level, we're going to need to hire or acquire or some combination thereof, another 10,000 teammates. That's going to get us to $4 billion in revenue. To do that, there are a lot of people out there that think about being committed to a company differently than they did maybe when I was starting my career or when you might have been starting your career. We're interested in finding people who are committed, that are honest and honorable, who are willing to put the customer's interests first. When we find those people, they usually make really good teammates. This is something that I spend an inordinate amount of my time thinking about and how we get more high-quality people on our team. How do we recruit them? How do we train them? How do we retain them?
How do we launch them? Big data analytics and technology. You heard Andy talk about what we're doing in terms of investing in upgrading some of our systems, capturing our data, trading with our partners, working on behalf of our customers, how we're mining data internally. I'm not trying to give you the impression that we're actually trying to sell that data. That's not what I'm saying. We're actually trying to use it for the benefit of teammates, customers, and trading with our carrier partners. More to come on that. We also continue to invest in and follow emerging technology and how that will help us become a better company in the future, how we create additional value for our customers. You've heard me say that our goal is to be the leading insurance broker delivering innovative solutions to our customers. Notice that doesn't say in the United States.
That doesn't say in Florida. That means to be the leading. You can interpret that however you want. We are not trying to go international, but we want to be the best out there. We don't go into anything saying we want to be second or third. We go in with the attitude that we want to be the best, period. Constantly and consistently, we can improve our business, and we do that four ways. The most important is we're in the people recruiting and enhancing business. We believe any high-quality organization, that should be the most important thing on everybody's mind, but it categorically is for us. We're in the money-making business. You heard that we take the money and invest it in our company or reinvest it in the three ways we discussed earlier. We do that by selling and servicing insurance.
We're not trying to sell our customers necessarily more insurance. We're trying to actually bring to their attention their exposures and talk to them about potential solutions to transfer that risk if they so choose. If they choose to bear that risk, how much do we think that will cost with them, and would that be a good decision? Finally, we're in the innovative business solutions business. That's what we bring to our customers. This year at our annual sales conclave, we actually challenged everyone, if you want to be part of the organization going forward to the next intermediate goal, which is $4 billion, please sign up on this. This piece of paper that hangs outside of my office is enormous compared to the other one physically. The other one was maybe, let's say, 36 inches by 45 inches.
This right here is 5 and a half feet by 7 feet. Okay. This gets people's attention when they walk in. Not that the first one didn't. This, we have said there's no timeframe. The analyst community wants to know when are you going to do it, and what's it going to look like? The answer is, we're going to get there when we want to, and we think it makes sense for the company. I can assure everybody in this room and out there on web land, that if we wanted to be a $4 billion business, we could be there next week or next month or last week if we didn't care about the cost we would have to pay, which by the way, would not be smart for the investors, our shareholders, of which 30% are teammates. Remember, we talk about health.
One of the things we talk about health is financial wellbeing, which is trying to build value for our teammates, and some of that value is created through the stock that they own. In closing, before I take any questions, we're really pumped about where we are as a company. We are really well positioned to invest in the business. We have lots of acquisitions that we continue to talk to, but I don't believe anything till it's done. Okay? If we didn't do another acquisition this year, that would be okay. It's not burning a hole in our pocket. I want everybody to understand that we are focused on investing in the right businesses, and we're running this business for the long term. Two, the market outlook is good. I have said and was criticized on an earlier analyst call in January.
Andy gets the calls when I make these comments, I said it wouldn't surprise me if in the second half of the year the economy slowed down. People were saying, "Well, are you seeing things?" They were all nervous, I said, "No, we're just saying that we've been nine years of expansion, at some point there's going to be a little bit of a slowdown." We're just giving everybody fair warning that we think about both sides. We're not operating in a vacuum, which thinks that it's going to be growing great guns every year in perpetuity. Our operating model is geared to deliver high returns, appropriate returns to run the business the way we believe, but it's high compared to everybody else. Why is that?
Is because they have layers upon layers upon layers of people in many instances that I really don't know what they do. Okay? We don't have that. Okay? We are a flat organization. I sell insurance. If I met you at a cocktail party and you said, "What do you do?" I sell insurance. That's what I do today. That's what I did when I started. That's what I'm going to be doing 20 years from now. We're focused on customers and getting the right teammates to work with those customers. That enables us to reinvest in that business, our business. Technology, as Andy says, is a big deal, and I personally am learning more about it.
I'm not a technophile. I'm going to become much more knowledgeable, and we talk about how we capture it, how we use it, and how we drive it to create value for our teammates, for our customers, and for our carrier partners. Finally, we have a balanced approach to how we invest the money that we earn. As I said earlier, we do not have a hole burning in our pocket to go out and buy tons and tons of acquisitions. We are presented with lots of acquisitions. We vet them. Scott Penny and Vaughn Stoll and many others do a fabulous job on the front end. We have all eyes on the prize. With that, I'm going to pause and see if anybody has any questions this morning before we wrap up. Yes, sir. Big John.
Here, we have a mic for you so the people in web land can hear you.
Powell, last year, I challenged you to try to reel in your father by having him do a little bit more corporate work than public work. You have failed at your job. I'm going to just leave that there. Number two, where is the cheetah?
Where is the cheetah? Oh, on the cover. Yeah. The answer to the question is, we still use a cheetah. We categorically use a cheetah as our corporate mascot.
It didn't demise then?
No, it didn't mean it's on the back, I believe, if you look.
No. I looked for it.
Oh, it's.
Maybe it's inside. At any rate, I was just shocked because everything else has the cheetah on it.
I'll have to check on that because I thought the one that we had The annual report. We have a cheetah on most of them, so maybe the one that you got Oh, proxy. You got the proxy. Sorry about that.
Oh, that's okay. I want the one.
We want to make sure you get a cheetah.
Yeah. That's very important. The third thing is, have we ever considered diversifying the workforce?
The answer is, I believe that we do have a diversified workforce, but we are always trying to hire the best people for our organization.
I know you're hooked up with Embry-Riddle Basketball, and I think that works out well.
Bethune-Cookman, the manager of this hotel actually is the first Black person I think that's ever been a general manager in all of Volusia County in a big hotel. Comes from Bethune-Cookman. Maybe we could do a little bit more in those areas. Just a thought. Thank you very much.
Thank you for the suggestion, and we are, and we'll continue to think about diversity and inclusion. Any other questions? I'd like to wrap up by saying on behalf of the roughly 10,000 teammates to all of our shareholders, number one, thank you for the trust that you place in us and letting us run this business. It's a very exciting place. It's a lot of neat things that are going on. We appreciate your patience, and we know that we want you to feel good about investing alongside, or we as teammates investing alongside of you as shareholders, both individually and if you're an institutional shareholder. With that, I'd like to say thank you again, and please drive home safely. We'll be around for a couple of moments if anybody has any questions for me. Thank you. We'll see you next year