We'll convene the meeting and welcome to the 2018. That's pretty good for a start. 2018 Annual Meeting of Shareholders. Actually, if we went back to 1918, we might be looking at some different landscape around here in the last 100 years. As we know, in Ormond, just north of here, the measured mile, Sir Malcolm Campbell, sometime in the '30s, set the world land speed record. I think it was 255, 6 or 7 miles an hour, which is pretty doggone fast. Everybody discovered the salt flats and what the land speed record is today. Having said that, my pleasure to, first of all, introduce our directors.
Let me say this about our directors before I introduce them, I'm going to ask them to stand as I introduce them and to remain standing, we'll give them a round of applause. We have a very dedicated board. They are really, really fine people, all with different backgrounds, they have a real love for this company that you don't find in a lot of companies. Sometimes as public companies get bigger and bigger, it becomes more impersonal. This is a very personal board. They really do take a great deal of pride in the success of this company and in being helpful, both strategically and in referrals of accounts, all sorts of good things. That's just most unusual. My congratulations and thanks to all of the directors. Now I'd like to introduce them. I'm Hyatt Brown, Chairman of the Board.
Sam Bell, who is former counsel to the law firm of Buchanan Ingersoll & Rooney. Hugh Brown, founder and former CEO of BAMSI, an engineering and technical services company. Powell Brown, who is President and CEO of Brown & Brown. Brad Currey, former Chairman and CEO of Rock-Tenn Company. Ted Hoepner, former Vice Chairman, SunTrust Bank Holding Company. James 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 based in Orlando, Jennings & Jennings, was the first female President of the Florida Senate, was Lieutenant Governor. Those were the good old days, right, Toni?
Good old days.
Yes. Next is Tim Main, who is Chairman of the Global Financial Institutions Group at Barclays Bank, an international bank, home officed in London. Palmer Proctor, President, Chief Executive Officer, and Director of the Fidelity Bank of Atlanta. Wendell Reilly, Chairman, Berman Capital Advisors, Managing Partner, Grapevine Partners, LLC, private equity investment firm focused on media and communications based in Atlanta. Last but certainly not least, Chilton Varner, Senior Counsel with the law firm of King & Spalding. That's your group. I'd like to also introduce our officers. As we all know, Brown & Brown is a very dispersed organization with offices in something like 41 or 42 states, including Bermuda and including London and the Cayman Islands. So not very many of our officers can be here today.
I'm going to introduce them all because they're out making money for the company, which is what they're supposed to do. Onward and upward. The first is, of course, myself, Chairman. Powell Brown, who is President. If anyone is here, you can stand as I introduce your name, and we'll have a round of applause. Robert W. Lloyd, Bob Lloyd, Executive Vice President, General Counsel, and Secretary. Scott Penny, Executive Vice President and Chief Acquisitions Officer. Julie Ryan, Executive Vice President and Chief People Officer. Tony Strianese, Executive Vice President and President of Wholesale Division. Chris Walker, Executive Vice President and President, National Programs Division. Andy Watts, Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer, and Treasurer. Now, these are the Section 16 officers. Let's give them a round of applause. These are officers not subject to Section 16. Neil Abernathy, Senior Vice President. John Berner, Senior Vice President.
Sam Boone, Senior Vice President. Steve Boyd, Senior Vice President. Barrett Brown, Senior Vice President, Regional President, Retail Division. Kathy Colangelo, Senior Vice President. John Esposito, Senior Vice President, Regional President, Retail Division. Joe Failla, Senior Vice President. Rich Freeborn, Senior Vice President. Tommy Huval, Senior Vice President, Regional President, Retail Division. Mike Keeby, Senior Vice President, Regional President, Retail Division. Rich Knudson, Senior Vice President, Regional President, Retail Division. David Lotz, Vice President and Chief Corporate Counsel. Don McGowan, Senior Vice President, Regional President, Retail Division. Carl Owen, Senior Vice President and Chief Information Officer. Anthony Robinson, Assistant General Counsel and Assistant Secretary. Paul Rogers, Senior Vice President, Regional President, Retail Division, Vaughn Stoll, Senior Vice President. Let's give them a round of applause. I would like to now introduce the representative for Deloitte & Touche, who are our auditors, Phil Nix, who is the Audit Partner.
Phil is here. Let me say this, they put us through our exercises to get all the numbers, and particularly this year, you may hear from Powell about all of the additional accounting responsibilities that we have. Phil, thank you for being here. Other guests in attendance, I hope I haven't missed anyone, because we have some very important people that are not officers or directors, and they're the spouses or spouses, if you want to use another term. First of all, number one spouse is my wife, Cece, right here. Then we have Ina Brown, who is Hugh Brown's wife. We have Sherri Lloyd, who is Bob Lloyd's wife. There she is back there. We have Kelly Robinson. Where are you, Kelly? There she is back there. Have I missed any other person?
I tried to get everybody's name as you came in. Looks like we're right on that. Now we get down to the business of the meeting. Robert Lloyd, act as the secretary of the meeting and present proof of the due calling of the meeting.
There we go. Mr. Chairman, I have the mailing affidavit certifying that on the 19th day of March 2018, 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 26, 2018, the record date. I also have the certified list of all common shareholders of Brown & Brown, Inc. 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 138,072,531. Of this amount, 127,329,964 shares, representing approximately 92% 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. In the interest of saving time, I would like to suggest that we dispense with the reading of the minutes of the last annual meeting of shareholders, which was held on May 3, 2017, and approve the minutes as set forth in the minute book. Is there a motion? Is there a second? Obviously, we haven't scripted this very well. Are there any objections? Without objection, so it's adoption. I will now entertain a motion for the appointment of two individuals to act as inspectors of voting. Their duty shall be to decide upon the qualification of voters, to accept the votes, and to count and ascertain the number of votes, shares voting for and against each proposal. Is there a motion? Who is it?
Okay, we're going to, I guess since we don't have this scripted, we're going to move that Anthony Robinson and Lisa Gayton are the inspectors. Is there a second to that motion? Okay, there's a second. Without objection, we'll so it adopted. Now, the inspectors have previously filed their oaths of office with the Secretariat. We will now turn to the vote on the nominations for board of directors set forth in the proxy statement. Most of you have already submitted proxy 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 that wants to raise their hand? That's good. Very good. That was scripted. Not really.
The inspectors will see that you receive ballots and that they are collected after you have voted. Do we now have the results of the voting?
I do. Each of the 12 nominees for the board of directors has reached at least 110 million 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, 2018, has received 124 million votes, sufficient for approval. The approval on an advisory basis of the compensation of the named executive officers has received 118 million votes, sufficient for approval. The approval of an amendment of Brown & Brown Incorporated's 2008 Stock Incentive Plan has received at least 119 million votes, sufficient for approval.
Thank you very much. Congratulations. We always have a very lusty turnout of shareholders, and we're very pleased, and we're pleased that we can deliver really great results for all of our shareholders. I now declare the meeting adjourned, and I'm going to call upon Powell Brown to do the CEO presentation now.
Thank you. Is that too loud? All right. Good morning, everybody. I would like to ask, if you have a mobile phone on, if you could turn it off or silence it would be great during this process. I really would like to focus on last year was a really good year for Brown & Brown. When I say a good year, we executed across the entire organization. Each one of our divisions, our four divisions, actually grew organically and improved, and we are constantly and consistently trying to get better. We talked about 6.5% retail growth. We've invested more in technology, which is something you're going to hear more about later, and our teammates
We've created new products and offerings across the organization. We've actually worked with several of our large carrier partners where we lifted out actually programs which we are underwriting on their behalf. Something you may have heard of called the Core Commercial Program as an example with QBE. We repurchased about $140 million worth of our shares, and we delivered total shareholder return of 15.7% last year. In the last two years, we've been fortunate enough to deliver 61%, whereas the S&P 500 was 37.4%. This is a bar graph of the organic growth of each of our four divisions. If you look at it, what we are trying to do each and every year is grow organically a little bit more, understanding that growth is not linear.
In our retail business, and we're going to talk about what each of these do, over the last several years, we've averaged 2%. We grew 2.9%. That was up from 1.8% and 1.4% the two previous years. National Programs grew 6.1%. In our National Programs business, as you may know, we have some flood businesses that were very active in terms of adjusting claims on behalf of our customers. Wholesale Brokerage grew 6.6%, 5.6% is the average over the last several years. I would like to recognize Tony Strianese and Neil and Kathy, who are here. This is the business of all of our businesses that has grown the most organically in the last six years.
It's interesting because they have, like all of our divisions, are flying or operating in a very significant headwind, meaning downward pressure on rates, they've continued to be able to grow their business organically. I'd like to just thank Tony and Kathy and Neil and all of our teammates in Wholesale and the rest of the organization, your performance has been exceptional, thank you. Our services business, which is we have several businesses where we adjust claims on behalf of clients. That could be a self-insured customer. That could actually be an insurance company. That has performed really well. I just wanted to kind of take everybody back to look at the evolution of our organization. In 1993, as you know, we became a publicly traded company through a merger of two organizations. One, Brown & Brown, privately held at the time.
There were over 30 teammates who owned shares other than people with the last name Brown. They bought those based upon merit. Once they showed that they could help us grow the company, they got an opportunity to buy stock. When we technically came together, we were $85 million in revenue. The public company was $50 million, Brown & Brown was $35 million. There was an accounting rule that was in place until 2001 called pooling of interests, which makes you restate earnings of the company back in perpetuity, which in essence, if we had owned them, these businesses bought through pooling of interests up until July of 2001. By doing that, it reflects $96 million in revenue. Where I really want to direct you is look at the amount of Retail revenue. Okay? The blue. All right?
In 2000, with $210 million in revenue, $146 million, and now the blue of $963 million. That was not a conscious decision. It occurred because we had the opportunity to invest in several very high-quality businesses that fit culturally and made sense financially in Programs, in Wholesale, and in Services. One of the things that people actually, none of you, but some people may get confused about is that we're a Retail-only business. We are not a Retail-only business. As you know, we're a diversified insurance broker, of which all four of our divisions actually have performed and performed really well and are growing organically and profitably. Something that we're really proud of. To that end, before I begin, if you ask me, what does the company look like in the next 5 and 10 years? Let me back up.
On this slide, as a percentage, Retail as a percentage of the overall, I would say that we're somewhere between 55%-70% Retail just because of the availability of other Retail businesses out there, not because we're trying to have more Retail or less Retail. We're actually, it all comes down to the people. You've heard me talk about this. We have teammates at Brown & Brown. We don't have employees. We have not had employees, we will not have employees. We look at ourselves as high-performing athletic teams that operate under this umbrella called Brown & Brown. Today, we're predominantly in the U.S. We have 27 teammates in London. We have 12 teammates in Bermuda. You'd say, "Well, what is it that you really do if you're talking about Retail and the others?" Retail is fairly simple.
That's where we come to see you, the owner of a business. You own a construction company that does renovations on people's homes. You own 12 nursing home facilities. You are actually a food distributor. You own cold storage warehouses around the country. You manufacture welding equipment. Those would be the examples of some of the property and casualty accounts that we write. From an employee benefit standpoint, you might be a three-person firm or a 30,000-person firm, and we handle everything in between. That said, our second largest segment is actually National Programs, which is bottom left. National Programs, simply stated, is where we underwrite risks on behalf of an insurance company. We don't ever want to bear risk. We transfer that risk to an insurance company. We have the underwriting authority to assume risk inside a very clearly defined box.
You say, "What is the box?" I'm going to give you several examples. Dentists around the country, professional liability of dentists. We write through retail agents, some of whom are Brown & Brown agents, about a third of all the dentists in the country. If they pull the wrong tooth or something, that would be covered under an error or an omission. Hopefully, that doesn't happen. How about earthquake coverage in California, both commercial buildings and residential homes? How about wind in places like Florida on buildings like this, not only in this part of the state, but more specifically in Southeast Florida, in Dade, Broward, and Palm Beach County? National Programs is a segment which is growing, and we think there's a lot more growth in the future.
One of the areas here that presents opportunity, we've already had this happen several times, is insurance companies are under considerable pressure to manage their expenses. Many of them are not as efficient as they could be, sometimes we can actually do work on behalf of insurance companies more efficiently than they can, that would be where that would occur. We've done that on a couple times already. The Core Commercial Program that I referenced from QBE as an example. Top right is Wholesale. Think of risks that are not standard type risks. A traditional insurance company that you would know by name would not write those risks. What would be an example? Underwater demolition contractor. How about the directors' and officers' liability on a small public tech company, struggling tech company? How about a $50 million cold storage warehouse in Miami?
No insurance company is going to take all of that risk. They're going to layer it. In this business, it says 65% of the Wholesale revenue is binding authority. That's where we assume, like we do a little bit in National Programs, risk on behalf of a carrier partner inside of a very tight box. These are very small premiums. Average premium might be $3,000 to $4,000 in premium. The transactional brokerage piece is the things that I described in terms of the underwater demolition contractor, the D&O for the tech company, and the layered property program for the cold storage warehouse. The services business is really made up of three segments. One, we adjust workers' compensation claims for actually self-insured clients. When someone is injured on the job, we are adjusting the medical and the indemnity portion of those claims.
We also do that on behalf of insurance companies in some instances. We have a Medicare set aside company where our customer is actually an insurance company, and we are qualifying individuals to get onto Medicare that qualify. In terms of the Social Security disability advocacy firm, we have two firms, that works with insurance carriers that write disability insurance. For those individuals that would qualify for Social Security, we help facilitate that. That's what we do. That's the world of Brown & Brown. What we try to do is just do that a little bit better each and every year, every day, every month, every year. We talk about the most important thing in our company, the company that you own part of, is our culture. What would be characteristics of our culture?
Lean, decentralized, profit-oriented, high integrity, prideful relationships, sales and service-focused, highly competitive, common goals, high quality. My wife and I have four young kids, and they play competitive sports, maybe like many of yours. I tell you, I think those are characteristics of competitive athletic teams. We are very interested when we talk to people about acquisitions of people who have similar cultures and make sense financially. Those similar cultures, someone might ask, how do you determine if they're similar? I ask really three key questions. I want to know how those people in this other business we're talking about work and think about their teammates. Most of them don't have teammates, so you have to describe, but I want to know how they think about their teammates.
I want to know how they think about their customers, and I want to know how they think and work with their carrier partners. That's the first big three in my mind. What defines us if that is our culture? I believe there are a number of things that define an organization, but this goes back in and reinforces all of those adjectives that I showed. We are a performance-based common culture. That is critical. We have highly talented teammates and leaders across the country, about 8,700. We have an entrepreneurial meritocracy. It doesn't matter who you know, where you went to school, what you look like. It is how do you do what's in the best interest of our customer each and every time. If we do that works out for Brown & Brown long term.
We are different than most other publicly traded companies, as you know, and some of that would be some of the things we've talked about and some of the things we will talk about, but we have a significant inside ownership. We believe that all of our teammates combined have roughly 29% ownership of the entire company. Highly unusual for a company that has a market cap over $7 billion and over $1 billion in revenues. We're an acquisitive company. We haven't done as many acquisitions in the last three years. We only bought $17 million of revenue last year. In the two prior years, we bought $56 million and $56 million respectively. That's not a problem, because I believe it's all about cultural fit and making sense financially.
We are excited about some of the things that we have going on this year in terms of those that we've closed. We've closed $12 million of revenue. We announced an acquisition that we believe that will close next month, that is in the Pacific Northwest and Hawaii, that's $24 million of revenue. The most important thing for a forever company is cultural fit and makes sense financially. Strong balance sheet, that allows us to leverage our ability to use the money we make to invest back in the business. M&A is one of those. We're very growth and margin focused, we believe that you can't improve anything that you don't measure. We have a decentralized sales and service model.
Somebody might say, "What does that really mean?" That means that if you're in Seattle, Washington, or Syracuse, New York, or Denver, Colorado, you, as the leader of the office, have the ability to chart and focus on certain areas of growth in your regional area. For example, let's say if you were in Seattle, you wanted to focus on tech companies, and somebody wanted to write a lot of tech companies, that would be up to them as long as they make their budget and do the right thing for our clients. We're not going to say, "Don't go after tech," we usually say it's good to have a diversified business mix. We really want to be the leading insurance broker serving the middle and upper middle market.
We do business with anybody from a startup firm to companies that are Fortune 100 firms and have the capabilities everywhere in between, we're constantly and consistently thinking about how we can improve and deliver better capabilities for our customers. We do that through a strategic plan, which we've modified ever so slightly, and I'll point it out this year. We are in the people recruiting and enhancing business, first and foremost, the most important thing that we do. Number two, we're in the money-making business, which enables us to reinvest it back in our business. We are in a business of selling and servicing insurance, which enables us to reinvest back in the business because we're focused on making money. The new one is in the innovative solutions business. We're not necessarily trying to sell you additional insurance coverage.
We're trying to make sure that you understand what risks you face and what options you have, options are a good thing, to transition risk to other parties if you want to. That is underlined by the core foundation of make no big mistakes. What would a big mistake be? One, it would be a large failed acquisition. Two, it would be getting in the risk-bearing business, becoming an insurance company. Having a large E&O, error and omission, that exceeds our limits of liability or a number of E&Os. Those would be big mistakes. We believe that we have the controls in place to try to prevent those, we're always trying to improve. Bob Lloyd and his team help me and others all the time in thinking about risk as the organization.
This is, you may find, kind of an interesting slide in terms of how we have allocated the money that we have earned over the last 10 years. We've generated $3.3 billion of earnings, and those earnings have actually been reinvested to the tune of $3.8 billion. We are a net borrower, and that money has been split in three ways. Number one, we've bought businesses, which is $2.7 billion of investments. We've actually returned to shareholders through dividends and stock repurchases of $946 million. That you might find interesting. We've deployed $175 million internally. I think the one that jumps out at me many times is the $946 million of return to shareholders. All right? The money that we make, we do three things with. We invest in and reward current teammates and hire new teammates. That's number one.
We're in the people recruiting and enhancing business. Number two, we're in the do M&A, which we've talked about, and we haven't done as much of that in the last several years. Finally, return it to shareholders through dividends or share repurchases. We do not have a stated repurchase plan. Wall Street and the other analysts out there want us to say, "We want you to buy a set amount back every quarter." We say, "We're not going to do that because we think we can invest the money over a long period of time in acquisitions. When the opportunity looks right, i.e., the stock price looks lower to us, we may buy some stock." We're in this industry, which is facing, and it's an exciting time and a challenging time all wrapped up, which is facing unprecedented change.
We had this slide last year, and I wanted to just point out a couple things that may have changed, or we elaborate a little more on. The additional capital up top has not changed. There continues to be business partnerships and other organizations out there that manage lots of money around the world that were waiting for an event or events that happened last year. About $140 billion of losses occurred in our industry, and there was this rush of outside capital in to try to participate in what was perceived to be an increasing rate environment. There's more capital rushing in than the number of risks out there, which kept a governor on rates increasing even in areas that sustained losses.
Standard carriers continue to have pressure on them, and they're trying to think about how they grow their businesses and how they become more efficient in terms of their expenses. Some of that might be something we could help them with our National Programs, lifting out pieces of their business. Private equity continues to be very active in the acquisition space. About 60% of all acquisitions last year were done by private equity. They're a big competitor of ours. That's usually a short-term game plan. It's 3 to 7 years. I tell owners of businesses sometimes when we're talking to them or if they're just a friend and they're considering selling their business, if in fact you're going to sell your business, find the firm that you fit best with culturally and go in the corner and try to negotiate a transaction that is workable for both parties.
If you want to sell for absolutely the most money, you will sell to private equity, and I'll guarantee you won't be there in 3 years. Legal and regulatory. We are always watching this and how it may impact our business. The two areas that I would point out which go in waves would be healthcare and flood. We have a large flood business and the reauthorization of the NFIP. Talent is the single most important thing we think about. It's the thing I think about most. It's our greatest asset. It's our greatest challenge going forward. How we get the company to the next level, and I've talked with Julie and the other senior leaders of the company, we are thinking about and trying to think about and build a platform that will handle 25,000 teammates, not 8,700. When we get there, we're ready.
Big data and analytics, you're going to continue to hear externally a lot about that. What you want to know about your company is this. We are doing better at synthesizing, analyzing, and utilizing our data for the benefit of our customers and our teammates. We have room to improve. We always will have room to improve. We are not actually selling data or any of that other stuff. We're trying to use it to the benefit of our customers and our teammates. Finally, technology. This is an area you're going to hear a lot about, and the term in our industry is Insurtech. Right now, there's 1,400 firms out there that are in the Insurtech space, and there's a gaudy amount of money that's being thrown at these companies.
I would tell you that I think 85% of them are going to actually go broke, but some of those that go broke have some technology that we may be able to use a part of. The 15% that don't go broke, they actually could potentially help us. We look at technology really in 3 ways. One, technology, how does that make us a better company? Efficiency in terms of things that are commonly done items in the workplace. That's improving a teammate experience, potentially improving a customer experience, one. Two, we think about how does that technology help us mitigate risk. Bob and the legal team, that's one of the ways we mitigate risk, but it's an everybody is in thing and how can technology help us. The third is disruption.
How do we think about how our business can be disrupted in the future potentially, and/or how do we use technology to help gain and grow our business going forward? This is a slide that I referenced a little earlier in terms of our total shareholder returns, 15.9% last year, 61% in the prior three years, 111 over five years, 10-year 135, and 1,421% over 20 years. This is something that we're really proud of. Obviously, your stock price, we believe, is never exactly right. It's either probably a little high or a little low, but we always think it's probably a little low because we're in the business every day. Having said that, we are really focused on the long term.
When you have 29% internal ownership, our focus is doing things not for the quarter, it's doing things for the year and five years and the decade and beyond. I want you to know, and I think you would feel good, that I am the most excited today about our company and our management team and our leaders than I've ever been. We've worked really hard at that, and we're going to continue to work really hard at that. Now I'd like to turn it over to Andy Watts, our CFO, for some financial remarks.
Thank you very much. Good morning, everyone. 2017 was a really good year for Brown & Brown financially. We delivered $1,881,000,000 of revenue last year. We grew our business 4.4% organically. When we think about organically, that's reflective of the businesses that we owned the year earlier, more like a same store sales. In 2016, that was 3%. In 2015, it was 2.6%. We did pretty well last year. We continued to move the ball forward, which is what we're trying to do as an organization. We maintained our industry-leading margins and our cash flow yield. This is what drives our share price each and every day for this organization. Last year, we delivered $442 million of cash flow from operations. In 2016, that was $411 million. We grew it by 7.5%.
It was a pretty nice movement forward, right in line with our revenues. We also, last year, made sure we paid down some of our debt. We had borrowed some in the past. We paid down $97 million last year to our lenders. We appreciate all the money that they lend to us. We also grew our earnings per share on an as-reported basis by 54.4%, and on an underlying basis or adjusted basis, 2.7%. Last year, in the back end of the year, there was tax reform that happened. As part of that process, we had to go through and revalue all of our deferred tax assets that are out there. That gave us about a $0.85 benefit. That was what drove a lot of our 54% increase.
The 2.7% increase in our earnings per share last year, a little bit under where we were on organic as well as on our total revenues. That's reflective of the fact that we were investing in our business in technology, we were investing in our teammates, and we were also investing in launching some new programs. We think these are really important as we continue to grow our organization to $2 billion, $2.5 billion and $3 billion. Revenue growth. Last year, we were 6.5%, right in line with the S&P 500 as well as the industry group. Over the last five years, we've outpaced both all of our other peers as well as the S&P 500, as well as in the last 10 years.
Our goal is to continue to try to grow the top line both organically as well as supplemented through acquisitions. We're pleased with the top line. What we're most pleased about and ultimately what drives the cash in our organization, our EBITDA margin. If you look back across all of our peer groups as well as you look at the S&P 500 over the last year, the last five years as well as the last 10 years, the average is about 18%-20%. We average about 32%. In any given year, we could be anywhere from 55%-85% better than everyone else. That's the power of our operating model. We've been able to grow this organization over the last 10 years. We've doubled it. We've grown the top line very well, but we've also maintained all of our operating margins. Industry-leading cash flow.
This is really an indication of how well can we convert the cash that we generate each year as a percentage of our net income. When we look back over the last 10 years, we averaged 8.3%. Quite impressive number when you look at the S&P 500, 6.7%, and our peer group at 5.5%. In eight of the last 10 years, we've outpaced everybody. What's really impressive of what we've done in the last five years is we've continued to make sure that we run a very efficient organization. Our net debt outstanding. What is this an indicator of? We borrow money. Powell Brown talked about this earlier. We're a net borrower of money.
What we look at is how much debt have we borrowed as an organization, subtract off the cash that we have on our balance sheet says, what do we owe back to all of our debtors? The couple lines here that are interesting, if you look at the red line that's out there, that is the ratio of our net debt to our EBITDA. In the last 10 years, we've averaged 0.6x, so under one time. The S&P 500, 1.5 times. Our other peer group, 1.8x. We run a very conservative organization, and we like that because one of the things that we believe that does, that gives us options. When we have opportunities presented to ourselves as an organization, is that we have the ability in which to deploy our capital when appropriate. You can see we did that in 2014.
We acquired a number of businesses back then. Our rate increased up to about 1.6x. Every year we've been paying that down with the cash that we generate. That will oscillate around over time as an organization. We publicly stated that we believe 1.5x-2.5x on a net basis is an area that we're very comfortable with as an organization. It doesn't mean that we're going to always stay inside of that range. That frustrates some people because they say, "You said your range was one and a half to two and a half. Why aren't you there?" We said, "Because we're comfortable." We don't operate the organization to a specific metric. We're going to do what's best for our organization each and every day. Our EBITDA growth. We continued to grow our EBITDA.
Think about EBITDA as a proxy for the cash that we generate. It's not exactly the same, but it's pretty close as an organization. In 2008, we were at $347 million. We finished last year at $596 million. A significant increase over the last 10 years. In the last three years, we've grown on a compounded basis 8.2%, 4.7% compounded over the last 10 years. As we continue to grow the top line, we maintain our margins as an organization, our EBITDA flows along with it, so does the cash that ultimately drives our share price. The cash that we generate each and every day for the organization has also allowed us to do something we're very proud of, is we've increased our dividends now for 24 consecutive years. We are truly in an elite organization. There's very few companies that can do that.
Last year, we paid $0.56 per share. We paid almost $78 million of dividends out to all of our shareholders, all of our teammates that are shareholders. This is on a pre-split basis as an organization. We did a stock split in March 28th of this year, so all those numbers will be adjusted. We're very proud of our dividend that we pay each year to our shareholders. What gives Brown & Brown the financial strength that allows us to do what we do every year and deliver our financial results? First and foremost, it's diversification. You heard about this earlier. It's the power of our four divisions. It's the power of all the businesses that sit underneath of there. It's the power of the fact that we write insurance coverage in almost every line of business that's out there across the U.S.
We do this in almost every geography across the U.S. That gives us a lot of stability inside of the organization. We like stability. It drives consistency. We also have a tremendous amount of financial discipline inside the organization. We talked about the make no big mistakes. We like to just hit it down the middle of the fairway, just nice and easy all the time, and make sure that we don't get too far off of there. That financial discipline allows us to make sure that we're making very conscious decisions as to how do we deploy our capital each and every day. Our strong cash flow. Ultimately, this is what's going to drive our share price in the future, is to make sure that we continue to drive really strong cash flows as an organization. We also have $1 billion of available cash.
We talked about the fact that we've deployed $2.7 billion of cash over the last 10 years into acquisitions. We have the ability with our balance sheet and the backing of our banks as well as our cash, that we can deploy $1 billion when and if an opportunity is ever presented in front of ourselves. Most importantly, what makes us work the way that we do every day, we have 8,700 teammates pulling on the same oar each and every day. It's the power of all of our teammates across the U.S., in London, down in Bermuda, up in Canada, that gives us the financial strength that we have each and every day. 2017 was a wonderful year for Brown & Brown. We're really excited about what's going on, we're heading into a great year for 2018.
With that, let me turn it back over to Pal Brown.
Thank you, Andy. Great report. I've got a couple other slides. Then we'll open up to questions. Number 1, I'd like to say, as I alluded to earlier, I think we're very well-positioned for growth going forward. I'm very excited about the team, the entire leadership team across the organization. We've got a lot of exciting things going on. The most important thing is always people. It's our greatest asset. It's our greatest challenge. For us to get to the next level, we have to find a lot more good people to help us get there. We're obviously focusing on businesses that fit culturally and make sense financially. When and why people sell is varied, but at the end of the day, we want to be at the table.
We're always out talking, Scott Penny, Vaughn Stoll, others of us are out talking to people about the possibility of joining our organization. Collaborating with our carrier partners. Our carrier partners and our relationships with those carrier partners are better today than they ever have been. I will tell you that as they continue to grow and struggle with cost pressures, we may be able to help them in more than one way. I alluded to that earlier. Technology and innovation are very important going forward. We think that our data and our ability to leverage that on behalf of our customers and our teammates will help us be a better company today and in the future. We're investing back into our community. Most of the investment is both time and money into our local communities that we are part of.
Many of the local nonprofits, whether it be here in Daytona Beach or in any of the places that our offices operate, we give time and money back into those organizations. Periodically, we do make larger contributions across on a national basis. 2 examples of that would be we have supported the Boy Scouts, and we have supported Red Cross, which I think both of them have very noble missions and causes and very fine organizations, each of them. When you get right down to it, you say, how do you drive long-term value at Brown & Brown? How do you grow the company, the value of your shares? The answer, I believe, is really in this slide. We have to continue and constantly evaluate our capabilities to deliver for our customers.
We want to add those new capabilities where they make sense and are able to bring value to our customers. We have to have a disciplined capital allocation strategy, which we have to this point, and we'll continue to plan on doing that. We have to continue to execute our plan. One of the things we call it internally is GSD, get stuff done. How do we get stuff done? Ultimately, we have to continue to drive the organic growth and profitability of the company. Acquisitions will be lumpy, but we can always improve the business that we currently have with our current customers and our prospective customers. What really differentiates us, in conclusion? We have a proven track record of growing our revenues and our earnings over a long period of time.
We have a great leadership team that has significant time together, but operating experience, not only in the good times, but in the bumpier times. We have a very balanced and diversified business. Andy talked about a diversified business. I alluded to it. We are very focused on the middle and upper middle market. We have a diversified operating model that generates industry-leading margins, and we have strong liquidity and cash flow, as Andy said. We have the ability and the options to invest as we see fit to the benefit of our company. All of that is on a foundation of significant internal teammate ownership. It is an ownership culture. You would find it interesting when I go into an office, it could be anywhere in the country, and the director of first impressions, that's my term, our term. Some people call that person a receptionist.
I don't. He or she might say, "Hi, Powell. How are you? What's up with the stock?" I know immediately they own a share or more of stock. That is real. Whether it's up or down, I always say, "Well, Jane," "Well, John," "Well, Amy, we are working really hard for you and the rest of our teammates and shareholders to grow the value of that over a long period of time." They ask right out of the box. There's not even a pause. "How are you doing? What's up with the stock?" I'd like to stop now and open it up to any questions that you may have about our company. When you do stand up, I will probably repeat the question so the people in web land can understand it, and then I'll give the question.
Who would like to ask a question today, if anyone? Yes, Big John.
Well, now I'm going to talk
Do you want to talk into this and your couple things?
Powell, number 1, I don't know if you've matured into the job, but you couldn't have done a better presentation, and you sure don't need Toastmasters.
Thank you.
That's one. I want to talk about the good things first and then the not so good things afterwards. First of all, Yvonne over here in your tax department, do you know her?
She's always very nice to me every year when I come here, and I'm not the easiest guy to be nice to. We have never forgiven you, I can't see her right now, but Alicia's out there somewhere. I see her. From stealing her and gutting the Volusia County legal department, that's never recovered since she left. An outstanding steal on your part. I can't sell the damn stock because it's getting worth too much money, and I made too much money on it, and so I'm a little bit resentful that way, but.
That's a high-quality problem, right?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Can you tell us anything about your new building? Because some of us are local.
Sure. We historically have actually rented space as opposed to owning space. Interestingly enough, particularly for those of you that are here locally, you know that on the site that we bought, which is 10.5 acres, the original plot, was Lloyd Buick Cadillac since 1931. Interestingly enough, to my left, your right, our general counsel is Bob Lloyd. His grandfather, Sack Lloyd, started that business there in 1931, number one. Number two, we have been and continue to be very committed to the downtown Daytona Beach community. We felt we knew we needed more space. We had outgrown the space at 220 South Ridgewood. That does not mean we're moving. We're going to continue to have people there. We're going to have people down on Beach Street.
What we decided to do is how can we do something that works not only for us, but also consistent with our community-minded nature. With a lot of talk and discussion with my father, with Bob, Andy, the other senior leaders, the board, we decided to actually buy a piece of land, that 10.5 acres, and some small other plots around it, and we're going to build one large office tower. It has not been finalized exactly, but it's a 10- or 11-story building, probably 200,000 sq ft range. It will ultimately house probably 700 to 900 or 1,000 people on the Brown & Brown team.
We are bringing, over the next five years, a total of up to and probably exceeding 600 new jobs to the area, and those people will obviously buy homes and send kids to schools and eat in our restaurants. We think it's an exciting economic impact to the area. We are excited to be relocating our headquarters from just five blocks away to Beach Street.
Groundbreaking, question mark?
We think that we will break ground in the end of this year, so the end of 2018. We believe that our goal would be to be in by the end of 2020.
Less than perfect things. You're a current father.
Yes.
You give him too much time to dabble. If he worked in the insurance business more, he'd have less time to dabble.
He is now dabbling in the public park across the street from your future facility. These are all top-secret proceedings. Any idea when we'll find out what's going to happen?
Okay, let me make sure that everybody knows what the question is about. If you are not from Daytona Beach, there is a park right across the street from our proposed new building. In one of the filings to the community, that is kind of part of the overall plan. What I would tell you is we view the park, I don't know all the specifics, but I can tell you we view the park as something that is part of, for everybody in this community, and we are interested in doing things to the extent that we can that would improve the overall environment in that park for everybody to use. That park is public land and will continue to be public land under my understanding, and we are excited about it.
When will we know?
I don't know. You have to ask the person that you have referenced.
Yeah.
Yeah, that is a problem.
Yeah.
Okay. You're much more open than he is.
Yeah.
Lastly, he also likes to dabble in local politics.
We saw him on Granada holding a candidate sign. Unbelievable, right. He picked the wrong candidate, too, and used the Zambezi Corporation and the 26 other corporations and spent a lot of our money. If you could ride herd on that a little bit, we would appreciate it.
I will make sure and keep that in mind.
Thank you very much.
Thank you. Any other questions? Hearing none, I'd like to wrap up by saying two or three important things. Number 1, for everybody in the room that's a shareholder and out in webland, we'd like to thank you for the confidence you place in our organization each and every day. Number 1. It's really important, we appreciate it, but we're excited about it. Number 2, for those of you who may also be a customer, we want to thank you for placing your faith and confidence in our organization to handle your needs. If you are not a customer, we would like to talk to you, everybody out there, because we think we may be able to bring some solutions to you that you may not otherwise be getting from your current insurance agent.
The next thing is we are in the best position financially that we've ever been as an organization. As a teammate, I talk to our teammates a lot about that internally. As a shareholder, you want to know that. We view the responsibility of investing the money we earn as a significant responsibility on your behalf and our teammates' behalf. We are doing this forever, and there are very few companies out there that I know of that think that way and talk openly about it. I have asked and said publicly on earnings calls, if somebody has a problem with the fact that we have a little bit of the money building up on our balance sheet, they can blame me, all right, for saying that the opportunities to invest it were not right on behalf of the company.
When we make a mistake as an organization, it's my fault. When we succeed, I didn't do anything. It's our success. The final thing is this. We have 8,700 teammates, and I have no doubt the opportunities in the next 3 to 7 to 10 years for our organization are mind-boggling. Even I, who do it every day, cannot fully comprehend the change that we will see. We will have opportunity to do things that will continue to transform this organization and into things that are bigger and better and very exciting in the future. None of that happens without good teammates. We have 8,700 great teammates today. We just need more. If you know somebody that you think could work on the Brown & Brown team, we are always looking for people.
If, in fact, you live in a community that doesn't have a Brown & Brown office yet, don't worry, we're coming to a community near you soon. With that, thank you for your time, and have a nice day.