Good morning, everyone. I was sitting here looking out the window and I was thinking, 75 years ago, in June, Brown & Owen was started here in Daytona Beach. Had Brown & Owen, which were only 2 people plus my mother, so it'd be 3 people, had a shareholders' meeting at this location, what would it have been like? I think it would've been all palmettos and some fiddler crabs, and maybe a rattlesnake or 2. It is substantially different. If we then would fast-forward another 75 years, which I won't have to worry about, wonder what it'll be like then. The future is before us, and the future is before this company. Even though we're 75 years young, we've only just begun this long trek to ultimately being the best, the biggest, the most successful insurance broker in the world.
That's a very lofty kind of goal, and it's a long ways out, and it puts a lot of burden on the shoulders of our leadership. The nice thing is that I am very proud of what our leaders are doing. This is a very, very difficult marketplace. I think you all know that. Things are different today than they were even 3 or 4 years ago. Bottom line is, welcome everyone, and I would like to introduce first our board of directors. I'd like to ask them to rise and remain standing. Once I've introduced our entire board, I'd like to give them a round of applause. I would like to also say that we have a very outstanding board of directors. They're very hardworking. They are very, very interested in this company and they're involved.
That's really, really important to the leadership of our company. It's a wonderful opportunity for us to call upon them for their collective abilities, which is vast. First of all, I'm J. Hyatt Brown, and I'm chairman. Secondly, Sam Bell, who is of counsel to the law firm of Buchanan Ingersoll & Rooney. Hugh Brown, who is founder and former CEO of BAMSI Engineering and Technical Services firm. J. Powell Brown, who is president and CEO of Brown & Brown. Brad Currey, who's former chairman and CEO of Rock-Tenn Company. Ted Hoepner, who is former vice chairman, SunTrust Bank Holding Company. Jim Hunt, former executive vice president and chief financial officer, Walt Disney Parks and Resorts Worldwide.
Toni Jennings, chairman, Jack Jennings & Son, a commercial construction firm and Jennings & Jennings, a technical millwork, and also was the president of the Senate for 2 terms and lieutenant governor of Florida for 4 years. He's had an outstanding political career, and it didn't make her any different. He's still a wonderful person. Next is Tim Main, who is senior managing director of Evercore Partners. Palmer Proctor, who is president and director of Fidelity Bank in Atlanta. Wendell Reilly, who is chairman of Berman Capital Advisors, managing partner of Grapevine Capital Partners LLC, a private equity investment firm focused on media and communications and based in Atlanta. Last, and certainly not least, Chilton Varner, who is a partner of the law firm of King & Spalding in Atlanta. Let's give them a round of applause. I'd like to introduce the officers of our company.
Some are here. If when I introduce you, if you would rise and remain standing, then we'll give you all a round of applause. First of all, myself, I am Chairman. Powell, who is the President. Linda Downs, who could not be with us today, Executive Vice President. Rich Freeborn, Executive Vice President, Internal Operations and People Officer. Robert W. Lloyd, Bob Lloyd, Executive Vice President, General Counsel, and Corporate Secretary. Charlie Lydecker, Retail Division President. Scott Penny, Chief Acquisitions Officer. Tony Strianese, Wholesale Brokerage Division President. Chris Walker, Programs Division President. Andy Watts, Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer, and Treasurer. Neal Abernathy, Senior Vice President. Sam Boone, Senior Vice President. Steve Boyd, Senior Vice President. Garrett Brown, Senior Vice President. Kathy Colangelo, Senior Vice President. Steve Denton, Senior Vice President. Nick D'Ambra, Senior Vice President. Tony Grippa, Senior Vice President. Tommy Huval, Senior Vice President.
Rich Knudson, Senior Vice President, and David Lott, Vice President. Let's give them all a round of applause. We are very, very proud of our leadership team. Of the people who I introduced who are not here today, they are spread all over the U.S. today doing what it is that we want them to do, which is growing the business. That is a very important part. As you know, we have some 200 profit centers spread all over the U.S. and including one in Bermuda and one in London. Our people, because of our culture and our strategy, our decentralization, we are constantly on the road and in the offices and touching our people, our teammates, and touching our clients and customers. That is very, very important. I would also like to introduce now John Gordon. These are the Deloitte & Touche independent registered public accountants.
John Gordon, who is Partner, and Phil Nix, who is Senior Manager. Those are the two gentlemen that are responsible for our audit. They do an excellent job. Thank you very much. There are other guests. I would like to introduce my wife, who is Cici. Where are you, Cici? Would you stand up, please? This is Cici and Kellam, our middle son. This is Kellam Brown. Kellam lives in Brussels, and he is the guy that is our own family Indiana Jones. He has the most fun of anybody in the family. He is an African art dealer living in Brussels and doing research in the Congo. Some of the stories he tells, unbelievable. Thank you all for being here. I would also like to recognize [inaudible] . Would you stand up, please, honey? Who is [inaudible] wife.
Is there anybody else that I mentioned that is a spouse? Sherry, are you here? Oh, yes, Sherry. I thought you were sick. You made it here anyway. Would you mind standing? This is Bob Lloyd's wife. Thank you very much. The spouses are very, very important to our leadership. Now let's go to the business of the meeting. Bob Lloyd, will you act as Secretary and present the proof of calling of the meeting?
Yes, sir. Mr. Chairman, I have the mailing affidavit certifying that on the 27th day of March 2015, 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 March 2nd, 2015, 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 of 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 143,486,278. Of this amount, 133,078,598 shares, representing approximately 92.75% of the total number of shares outstanding, are represented at this meeting. This constitutes a quorum.
Thank you very much, Bob. The meeting is now lawfully convened, and we're ready to transact business. In the interest of saving time, is there a motion to waive the reading of the minutes? Moved and seconded. Well, objection. One of the things is normally we have someone who knows that they have to move it, and we didn't do that this year just to see if we'd get involved. We did. Thank you very much. The chair will entertain a motion for the appointment of two individuals to act as inspectors of voting. Their duties will be to decide upon the qualification of voters, to accept the vote, and to count and ascertain the number of shares voting for and against each proposal. Is there a second? There is a second. All in favor say aye.
Aye.
The motion carries, the inspectors have previously filed their oaths of office. We will now turn to the vote on the nominations of the board of directors set forth in the proxy statement. Most of you all have already voted. Is there anyone in the audience who would like to vote today, your shares because they have not been yet voted? One of the things you have to be careful about, we don't want hanging chads here, which means you can't vote twice. Hearing no one, we will announce the results of the voting. Bob?
Each of the 12 nominees of the board of directors has received at least 116,241,931 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, 2015, has received 132,418,321 votes, sufficient for approval. The approval on an advisory basis of the compensation of the named executive officers has received 121,926,003 votes, sufficient for approval. The reapproval of Brown & Brown Incorporated's 2010 Stock Incentive Plan pursuant to Internal Revenue Code Section 162(m) has received 120,084,079 votes, sufficient for approval. The approval of an amendment of Brown & Brown Incorporated's 1990 Employee Stock Purchase Plan has received 122,028,893 votes, sufficient for approval.
Thank you very much. We're all reelected, congratulations to everyone. Is there any other business to be brought before the meeting? Hearing none, we will announce the adjournment of the meeting, I'm going to call upon Powell Brown, our CEO, to make his presentation. Powell.
Morning, everybody. The clicker. Morning. I'm going to make a couple remarks turn it over to Andy Watts, our CFO, make some closing remarks, we'll open up to questions. This last year, I'll give you a couple highlights of things that occurred at Brown & Brown. We grew our business just over 15% last year and organically about 3.5%. Right now, as you know, the investment community has placed a great deal of emphasis on the organic growth of any company, not just Brown & Brown. It's something that we've always looked at and worked towards, but we continue to put more and more emphasis on it. We have grown, obviously, through acquisitions to supplement that organic growth, we did just over $160 million of annualized acquisitions last year.
We created our first true credit facility and issued publicly traded bonds in anticipation of continuing to invest in our business in the future, which we're going to talk about the three investment options that we believe that we have now and on an ongoing basis. We've added 600 new teammates. That means we have roughly 7,800 teammates around the country. We've raised the dividend by 10% last year, and we've increased our dividends, which Andy will show you in a moment, for 21 years in a row, something that we're very proud of. We, as an organization, strive to be the most innovative insurance broker serving the middle and upper middle market in the U.S. About 5% of our business, as you know, is personal insurance. That's homes, that's boats, that's cars. The rest is commercial.
50% of our business today is where we go out to see you, the buyer of insurance. We call that the retail side of our business. That has come down as a percentage, not because we have consciously tried to bring it down. It's because we've been presented with several opportunities over the last three years, Arrowhead General Agency and Wright Insurance Group, which are not retail businesses. They are programmatic businesses. In our four businesses, we really have four pillars upon which we grow and think about our strategic plan. First and foremost, the most important thing, we're in the people recruiting and enhancing business. We have, as I said, 7,800 teammates, and as you know, we don't have employees at Brown & Brown. We have teammates. We are part of a team. It is like a large athletic team.
We want the best athletes on the field. Some people, and I am one, used to say it's all about talent, and we agree that it's all about talent. Ultimately, the people that work at Brown & Brown, I think, have a distinguishing characteristic, and I think of that as true grit. At the end of the day, there are a lot of people who may not be blessed with an athletic ability or even, for that matter, something else. Because they are so focused on doing what it is that they want to do, whether it's the 10,000-hour rule or the 10,000 times, it is something that people do and do it well over a long period of time. That's the kind of people that we look for at Brown & Brown and those that excel. We're in the money-making business.
We take that money, and we reinvest it in options, and we'll talk to you about those three investment options in a moment. We do that through selling and servicing of insurance. When somebody asks me what do I do if I'm at a party or at one of my kids' soccer games, I sell insurance. My father sells insurance. Every senior leader in our company sells insurance. The day that the person that leads this company, which we're not going to have, is not an insurance salesperson, that's a problem. We sell and service insurance, and we're in the make no big mistakes business. As you've heard me say before, a big mistake would be defined as a large error and omission. It would be getting into the risk-bearing business, which we don't want to do, or a large failed acquisition.
What are the three options that I've referred to that we would reinvest our money into? Number one is called internal investment. That's a fancy way of saying hiring new teammates. Those teammates can come right from college, they can come from another industry, or they can come from another firm that we think they have the talent and the cultural fit to work on our team. We can do external acquisitions, of which we're going to talk about in a moment, and we can return it to shareholders. The way we'd return it to shareholders is, one, we've done it over the last 21 years through dividends and/or through a share repurchase, of which we did last year and we are in the process of doing as we speak right now.
If you look at this slide, over the last number of years, we've done a number of acquisitions. As you've heard me speak of before, why we do an acquisition is when we look for a firm that fits culturally and makes sense financially. That's a very important follow-up term, makes sense financially. As you can see, last year was the year that we've done the most annualized revenues in the history of our firm. The fact that we did the most doesn't mean that it's the best, and just because you've done more in one year than another doesn't mean it just means that there were good opportunities that fit culturally that we could come to a financial agreement on. You'd say, well, who's out there buying these businesses?
The insurance agency business has been around for a very long time, it is a very entrepreneurial business. We took this snapshot and looked back until 2006, I think you'd find a very interesting point that jumps right out. If you look at the bottom left of this slide, you see that 4% of the buyers in 2006 were private equity firms. On the top of that left part of the slide, it shows 29%, the biggest buyers of insurance agency businesses were banks. I don't know about you, but I've never met a banker that I thought could sell insurance. Most banks today are reevaluating the fact that they own insurance agencies. What I mean by that is, I don't think there are that many banks that are committed long-term to the insurance agency business.
Lending money and selling insurance are two different things. Having said that, if you look over the next several years to, let's say, the last two years in particular on the bottom right, private equity has made up 44% and 43% of the total transactions announced, which is enormous. They've not only taken on the place of the banks in 2006, but they've taken on more perspective or more market share than any other buyer in the space. If you think about private brokers at 27%, 18% of public brokers, which are ourselves, and there are four others, and 7% are other. Other is just across the board. It could be all kinds of financial operations, including an insurance company. There's an evolution in this space as we speak today in the acquisition space.
We get asked a lot in the investment community, what's happening in the acquisition space? What we would tell them is there's more interest in the acquisition space by more buyers today than we've had in the past, one. Two, with that interest, that there are prices of acquisition, there's upward pressure on pricing of those acquisitions. Some of those acquisitions, where they fit culturally, we cannot make sense of the numbers that they're being offered, in some instances, by some firms, many of those firms would be private equity. Not to worry, we have to evaluate the three options each and every time and where we invest our money. Do we hire more teammates, which we always will do? Do we make external acquisitions? Do we return to shareholders? Just a little snapshot on our performance as an organization. The top grouping is revenue growth.
Remember, revenue growth includes acquisitions. This shows these other firms are the other publicly traded firms, Willis, Aon, Marsh & McLennan, Arthur J. Gallagher. We would tell you that Willis, Marsh, and Aon are much different businesses than ours. They are international. Sometimes more than 50% of their revenue is worldwide, and they're focused on Global 1000 accounts. They're not necessarily middle market, as we define middle market. Gallagher, another fine firm, also has a component of their business that's like Brown & Brown here in the U.S., but they have grown very rapidly externally. The point is, there's no real comparable firm that is public to Brown & Brown, which is predominantly in the U.S., small operation in London, and a small operation in Bermuda. The EBITDA margins is something that we're very proud of in terms of our efficiency over time.
Some of the people out there, you would be interested in the investment community, have criticized us because our margins have come down from about 38% prior to the slowdown in the economy to around 33%, 34%, 35%. We have said to the investment community, we think that that is the range that we will continue to be in. Why is that? One, as we continue to grow and we invest in people to help provide services and capabilities to our clients, and some of our clients, before the slowdown and the recession, have not grown back to the level that they were before. We are very happy with where we are from an efficiency standpoint. When you take this slide and you look at the most important slide, which is of the money that you earn, how much do you actually convert into cash?
Now you'd say, "Well, aren't earnings cash?" The answer is they are. In a business like ours, there's amortization of intangibles. When you add back your amortization and some of those other accounting items, you get to the cash that you generate, which basically says, over a 10-year average, for every dollar that we earn, we generate $0.24 of cash. That cash we can reinvest in our business. Our job, in addition to selling and servicing insurance, is to be good stewards of the investment of that cash. With that, I'm going to turn it over to Andy Watts to talk a little bit about our financial performance, and then I'll step back up, and we'll take some questions.
[inaudible]
Great. Thank you, Powell. Good morning, everyone. Pick up, everybody knows about all those. If you didn't read it, you'll catch it up later. Let me give a view into our financial performance for last year. We're really pleased with the revenues that we delivered, $1.580 billion. Last year, we grew 3.5% organically. Powell mentioned this is a really important number for us as an organization because this is how we measure ourselves based upon kind of a same-store sales concept. The businesses that we owned in 2013, how did they perform in 2014? In a market that we're in right now is a challenging one. To grow 3.5%, we're really pleased with it. We delivered $385 million of revenue last year, a historical high for our organization.
Something that really drives the share price for our company, also allows us to invest back in our people, acquisition, as well as returns to shareholders. We also grew our earnings per share by 9.5% last year, which is a really key value driver for all of our shareholders throughout the organization. As we look, though, at our share price last year, it was relatively stable. We're a big believer in Brown & Brown and the value of this organization. We thought it was a wonderful opportunity for us to go out there and buy some of our own shares. Sometimes the investment community doesn't believe in us the way that we believe in ourselves, so we decided to buy $75 million, the first time ever in our history. Powell also mentioned we've done a lot with our capital structure.
Last year, we entered into a new credit facility to really give us the flexibility to be able to borrow money from the banks at the right time so we can invest, pay it back with our cash flow. Very much the concept of a credit card that we've been able to use. We also went out there and issued our first public bonds, $500 million. We had incredible subscription on that. We're a very stable company. Everybody loved the profile of Brown & Brown. We're very low risk. We had a lot of people want to come into it. Most importantly, we delivered total shareholder returns of 6.1% last year, very proud of. Over the last 10 years, we've done a lot with the business. We've doubled the organization from about $800 million to almost $1.6 billion.
We diversified the organization across all of our four divisions that are out there. Each of them have grown over time, as we continue to diversify the business, it gives more and more stability to the organization, and the consistency of the performance that we delivered. Over the last three years, our compounded annual growth rate is almost 16% on the top line. We've done three large acquisitions in the last three years. We continue to grow the organization from the top line, which is very good. What's our capital deployment? This means, what do we do with all the money that we generate every year? If you look back to the three buckets that Powell mentioned, that's the investments in our teammates, acquisitions, and return to our shareholders. Over the last three years, most of our capital has been deployed toward acquisitions.
With this pivotal move that we did in 2014, we've also changed the trajectory of the return to our shareholders. In 2012 and 2013, we delivered about $50 million-$55 million back to our shareholders. 2014, that number jumped all the way to $134 million. Almost 150% increase returns back to our shareholders, which we believe is really important. For everyone that owns a share of Brown & Brown, we want to make sure that we continue to grow value in all of it. We'll continue over time to make sure that we're balancing this across the entire organization. Cash generation, the most important thing. We can grow revenues, we can grow everything else, but we got to grow our cash. That's what drives the value of Brown & Brown shares.
You can see over the last 10 years, we have had a wonderful increase in the cash. As I mentioned, we hit $385 million last year, something very proud of, and we've grown that about 17.5% on a compounded basis over the last three. We think we're on a very good trajectory. How we're able to generate our cash, the margins that operate that organization. Operating in that range of 33%-35%, and making sure that generally around 22%-24% of every dollar that we generate is cash we can invest back in the organization. Something we're very proud of. Our earnings per share growth looks very similar to what we've done with our revenues over time, because we have a very efficient model. We continue to drive it forward. In the last three years, we've grown our revenues on a compounded basis almost 13%.
Last year, on an adjusted basis, we had $1.62 per share, which would be 9.5% growth in our earnings per share. We're continuing to focus to make sure that as we grow the top line, we're growing the bottom line very well. Well, we're now in our 21st year of dividend increases. We can tell you, we are in a very small group of companies that have been able to deliver dividend increases for 21 years. That is in an elite group of organizations. Every year, we continue to increase it. Last year, another 10%, rising our dividend to $0.41 per share. Over the last 20 years, we've been able to increase, on a compounded basis, almost 13%. We believe giving back to our shareholders is very important.
We're really proud of our performance financially as well as operationally in 2014. We look forward to a great 2016. With that, I'll turn it back over to you.
Thank you. In conclusion of my prepared remarks, we talk about what do we need to do to continue to grow this business, and grow it in a very measured, appropriate fashion. We think about it in a couple of things. Recruiting, engaging, and rewarding teammates. That's first and foremost. We are an intellectual capital business. Our teammates walk out of the door every night at the end of the day and come back in the morning, and they work towards, hopefully, the very best interest each and every time of our clients. Innovative solutions for our customers. We do that through expanding our relationships with our insurance companies, whether those be domestically here or overseas. We continue to leverage our operating platform, all with the idea of trying to continue to invest in our business to drive the share price up.
Simply stated, we want to drive the share price up, your company, which is what you want, and that's what we want. Having said that, I'll be more than happy to answer any questions from anybody in the room today about something we've said or maybe more importantly, something that we haven't said. Yes, sir. Okay, the question for the people in web land is the impact of climate change on our business and what are we doing in anticipation or thinking around that. Number one, what I would say is we are in the business, as you know, of providing protection in the event of natural disasters. One of those things, those could be floods, those could be hurricanes, those could be earthquakes, and the like. In our business, we provide a lot of property coverage through a number of our four divisions in cat-prone areas.
In addition to that, we have invested over time in several third-party administrators, which would be those that would adjust claims post-loss, whether it be from a flood, whether it be from a wind event, from an earthquake. It's interesting, on the way in today, I was listening to one of the news radio stations, and it was talking about the impact of this particular item on the real estate market, particularly in Southeast Florida. I thought it was an interesting observation about as a long-term investor in real estate, thinking about what rising water impacts and how those impacts, this is a very long view, obviously, the value and how it will impact real estate in Southeast and other places. It's something that we think around on a more holistic basis, not so much on a day-to-day basis.
When we think about we are in the business of providing coverage for our clients, most comprehensive coverage possible for the most competitive price. That does not mean the cheapest price because the cheapest price you might have a bunch of holes in that policy. That covered claim or hopefully covered cause of loss, we stand in the ready on behalf of our clients when that event occurs to get them back to where they were before. We think about it of what your business interruption coverage is, what are your contingency plans, and things like that when we talk with our clients. We have not got a per se, a weather-related group at Brown & Brown at present. There are firms out there that do a lot of weather-related insurance and both products, not insurance products. We don't do that at the present time.
Don't think we will, but I don't like to say for sure. What other questions? Thank you. Yes, sir. The question is, we've looked at historical performance, what are our goals for 2015? Let's start with what we did in the first quarter. We grew our business 3.8% organically. We don't speak publicly or quite honestly, privately about having an acquisition goal per se. I've alluded to somebody saying, we'd like to do this. We can have a goal, but at the end of the day, it has to be something that makes sense financially and fit culturally. Number 2, we have said publicly that our business as a whole is a business that is a low to mid-single digit organic growth business. We do not give quarterly growth guidance, organic growth guidance.
We tell the investment community about the acquisitions that we've done, which was roughly just under $18 million annualized acquisitions in the first quarter. We don't speculate typically on what we're going to close in the near term because we don't believe it's done until it's done. I'm not trying to be vague to your question. What I'm saying is we say low to mid-single digit organic growth. We have to do what's in the best interest of our customer each and every time. We're going to do that through continuing to expand our relationships with our insurance carrier partners. We're going to continue to recruit and retain and reward and engage our teammates to drive the top line and the bottom line up so we can reinvest that money in the 3 buckets, internal, external acquisition, and [inaudible] . Another question. Do you have a question?
You could say that. Our goal for your company is very simple. Over a long period of time, we want to drive the share price up. One of the things that I believe differentiates our company from many publicly traded companies is that 29% of our company is owned by teammates. When you walk into an office, whether it's in Seattle or Syracuse or Sarasota or right here in Daytona, and you meet the first person when you walk in, I call that person typically the director of first impressions. That person may answer the telephone. That is not a receptionist in my vernacular. It's a very important person. When he or she asks me when I walk in, "Hi, Powell. How are you doing? What's up with the stock?" You know that she or he owns some stock.
There's an alignment, and we have a large number of teammates that own stock through multiple potential scenarios, whether it be just an open brokerage account, it could be through an Employee Stock Purchase Plan, it could be through some sort of rewards plan. We think that's important for every teammate to have the opportunity to get a piece of the rock. What other questions? Yes, sir.
Sir.
Sure. Okay. What we decided to do is, prior to the issuance of those bonds, we had basically most of our debt was floating. We went out in anticipation of borrowing $300 million. We actually were so oversubscribed, we upsized it to $500 million, and we fixed a portion of that debt over a 10-year period for 4%. What we did is we have about half of our debt today is fixed, the other half is floating. The fixed took out some of the other permanent debt that we had because we had some other bonds. The rest is, I like to call it like an accordion feature with the bank, not the bonds, but the other capability to borrow. That enables us to invest in either acquisitions internally or in terms of return to shareholders.
Basically, it was making our capital structure more permanent, fixing a 4% interest rate over a 10-year period, which we thought was very attractive, and we pushed out the maturity of the debt, and that's what we did with it. What other questions? Hearing none, I'd like to say that you heard my father talk about our 75th anniversary. We are going to bring in a cake. We're going to have a picture with the cake with the board. Everybody can have a piece of the cake. We encourage everyone to please stay around. Don't go anywhere because my assistant, Mary, has assured me this is a wonderful cake. I'm looking forward to seeing it. This is the 75th anniversary cake. We're going to take a picture. We're going to send this out to all of our teammates.
That's good. Tell you what. Do that. If I could get the entire board to please come up, we'll have a picture. We'll cut the cake. Mary says it's edible. We'll see.
Looks very cool on top. Looks very cool on top.
Full marks.
All right. Thank you. Blow the candles out. We stand in adjournment.
That concludes today's conference. Thank you for your participation.