Greetings, welcome to the Celsius Holdings, Inc virtual annual meeting. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A question- and answer session will follow the formal presentation. You can ask questions at any time by pressing the button on the left of your screen. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce your host, Dale Bergman, counsel for Celsius. Thank you, Mr. Bergman. You may begin.
Thank you. Good afternoon, everyone. I'm Dale Bergman of Gutiérrez Bergman Boulris, the SEC counsel for Celsius, I'd like to welcome all of you to the annual meeting of shareholders of Celsius Holdings, Inc. Of course, we're holding it virtually for the first time given the COVID-19 pandemic, we appreciate your being here. At this time, I'm going to call the meeting to order. As Doug mentioned, there is going to be a recording of the proceedings so we can have a transcript for shareholders, other stakeholders, which will be posted on the company's website. At this time, I would like to call John Fieldly, Celsius CEO, to introduce members of the company's board of directors and senior management.
Thank you, Dale. Hello, everyone. Hello, shareholders. Thank you for joining us today. Our board of directors, we have two co-chairs. We have William H. Milmoe, Tony Lau, are the representatives of the co-chair committee. We also have Kevin Harrington, a director, Nick Castaldo, Tom Lynch, Hal Kravitz, and myself, John Fieldly on the board, and we do have a Caroline Levy, a director as well, who's a candidate for the upcoming position, which is currently vacated from Regan Ebert. In addition to our management, we have myself, John Fieldly, the CEO. We have Edwin Negron-Carballo, our CFO.
We have Kyle Watson, our Vice President of Marketing, Sandy Telsaint, our Vice President of Operations, Jon McKillop, our Executive Vice President of Sales, North America, Randy Smith, our Senior Vice President of National Accounts, Robin Lybeck, our Managing Director, Europe, Ronnie Char, our Managing Director, Asia, Thorsten Brandt, our CMO and strategy of Europe, and Toby David, our Vice President of Business Development. I'll turn the call back over to Dale Bergman.
A copy of today's agenda and the proceedings we will follow have been made available to you via this online meeting portal. Each of you should have previously registered to attend the virtual meeting today. If you would like to ask a question during the meeting, please remember, click the Ask Question button on the left side of your screen, type in your question, and hit Submit. We ask that questions be relevant to the matters that are going to be under discussion and the presentation. We thank you for being here and for your cooperation. At this time, we're going to get into some of the mechanics of the meeting and get it out of the way before the business presentation. We'll proceed to establish that the meeting has been duly called and a quorum is present for the annual meeting.
The company's board of directors previously fixed June 10th, 2020, as the record date. For determining shareholders entitled to vote at this meeting, an affidavit was prepared by the Inspector of Elections attesting to the fact that the notice of meeting, proxy statement, and Celsius 2019 annual report to shareholders were made available to all shareholders of records as of June 10th. A copy of such affidavit will be filed with the records of the company. Emily Watson, a representative of Direct Transfer, our transfer agent, has been appointed to act as the Inspector of Elections at this meeting. Ms. Watson is available and present by telephone. She has submitted a voting report to us that indicates the following.
On the record date, we had 69,389,985 shares of common stock outstanding, and the holders of 51,093,031 and a fraction, and I didn't know we had fractions, shares of common stock are present at this meeting in person, via online participation or voted by proxy. Therefore, since the holders of a majority of the issued outstanding shares of common stock are entitled to vote at this meeting are present, I declare that a quorum is present and the meeting may now proceed. The meeting is duly convened, and we're going to go to the two proposals. The polls for each matter on this meeting will be open when all the proposals have been presented and will close immediately after all the votes have been collected.
The first proposal is the election of a slate of seven directors to serve until the next annual meeting of shareholders and until their successors are duly elected and qualified. Each of the nominees' qualifications we describe in the proxy statement. Based on the recommendation of our governance and nominating committee, the board has nominated for election the following persons as directors of the company. John Fieldly, Nicholas Castaldo, Hal Kravitz, Kevin Harrington, Tony Lau, Thomas E. Lynch, and William H. Milmoe. The second proposal to be voted on is the ratification of Assurance Dimensions to serve the company's independent registered public accounting firm for the fiscal year ending December 31st, 2020. Finally, we will transact any other business that may properly become before the meeting, if there is any. Are there any questions regarding the foregoing proposals? If anybody has a question, we'll answer that question now. Okay.
Now, since I don't believe there are any questions on that, the polls are open for voting. If you've already sent in your proxy or voted by Internet or telephone, your shares have been voted in accordance with your instructions, and you don't have to take any further action. You don't need to vote today unless you're voting for the first time or you, for some reason, want to change your vote. If you are voting today, as we mentioned, you may click on the Vote on My Shares box on the left side of your screen and follow the applicable instructions. Okay. The time period to submit votes has now ended, so the polls are closed. Of course, if you're in the process of voting, you can complete that, and we'll tally it at the end.
While we're waiting for the tally of our votes, I'm going to call on John and his team to the management presentation and Q&A.
Thank you, Dale. Before we begin, we're going to read our safe harbor disclosure. This presentation may contain statements that are not historical facts and are considered forward-looking in the means of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward-looking statements contain projections of Celsius Holdings' future results of operations and/or financial position and state other forward-looking information. In some cases, you can identify these statements by forward-looking with words such as anticipated, believe, could, estimate, expect, intend, may, should, will, or would, or similar words. You should not rely on forward-looking statements and Celsius Holdings' actual results may differ materially from those indicated by forward-looking statements as a result of a number of important factors.
These factors include, but are not limited to, general economic and business conditions or business strategies for expanding our presence in our industry, anticipated trends in our financial condition, and results of operation, the impact of the competition and technology changes, existing and future regulations affecting our business, and other risks and uncertainties discussed in the reports Celsius Holdings has filed previously with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Celsius Holdings does not intend to or undertake any duty to update the information contained in this presentation. This document includes certain non-GAAP financial measures. Management considers GAAP financial measures as a result of such non-GAAP financial information and its evaluation of the company's financial statements and believes these non-GAAP measures provide useful supplemental information to assess the company's operational performance and financial position.
These measures should not be viewed in addition to or in lieu of the company's diluted earnings per share, operating performance, and financial measures as calculated in accordance to GAAP. Now moving to the presentation. I would like to welcome everyone again to the call. Thank you. I would also like to thank all of our shareholders for their support and interest, and I would like to thank our great team members, board members, partners, and customers, as without them, our great achievements would not be possible. In 2019, we saw significant momentum across all fronts, driven by exponential growth in our portfolio, which was represented by our eighth consecutive record year of increased revenue. Consumer demand in the beverage industry continues to trend towards the pursuit of healthier alternatives versus conventional beverages.
At Celsius, we are capitalizing on that trend to deliver rapid revenue growth, positive cash flow, and increases in shareholder value. With our increasing number of routes to market and expanding portfolio of products and flavors, as well as a brand that is more widely recognized now than ever before, we have strong momentum exiting 2019 and are poised for a successful 2020 and beyond. As we are all aware, consumer traffic and purchasing patterns were severely disrupted in the first two quarters of this year in 2020, as traditional shopping patterns gave way to increases in online ordering, curbside pickup, and pantry purchasing while consumers complied with the stay-at-home orders. These extraordinary times present challenges to all of us, and our condolences go out to all those who have been affected by the pandemic.
The health and safety of our employees, customers, consumers, and partners remains our top priority. We continue to monitor the environment and implement contingency plans to mitigate risks through our business. Despite these disruptions we're experiencing through this COVID-19, the disruptions were met with demand, and we maintained a relatively smooth flow of products through the market. With a strong brand and a diverse and growing network of retailers, distributors, and partners, and a strong balance sheet, we have been able to rise above the challenges. In the first quarter of 2020, we set another sales record, with increases across geographic regions while expanding gross profits and reporting positive EBITDA and net income. We continue to build upon our mission to be the global leader of a branded portfolio, which is proprietary, clinically proven or innovative in its category, and offers significant health benefits.
Our 2019 financial results grew revenues to over $75 million. Revenues grew 43% on a consolidated basis. Domestic revenues increased 53% to a record $59.7 million, and international revenues increased 13% to $15.5 million. Our improved gross profit margins increased 49% to a record $31.3 million, and we had reported net income of approximately $10 million, inclusive of a $12.5 million gain associated with the change of our business model in China to a licensing royalty model. In addition, our non-GAAP adjusted EBITDA was reported at approximately $4 million, an improvement over the prior year in 2019, or 2018, of $2.2 million. In addition, our stock performance throughout 2019 increased by over 40%, and the market value of Celsius increased to $125 million approximately throughout the year. As we entered 2020, the momentum has continued.
We have seen so far through July 29th, 2020, our stock performance has increased approximately 200%. Since the COVID-19 impact as of March 17th, 2020, the company has reached all-time highs and now has been valued at over a billion-dollar market cap. Significant achievements has been made as we continue to lay the groundwork and framework for future growth. The company is operating in some of the fastest-growing categories in food and beverage. We operate in the energy drink category, which is anticipated to grow by 2025 at a 7% CAGR to over $84.8 million. In addition, there's things happening in the energy drink category. There's transformation taking place and an evolution. The traditional energy drinks were powered with really marketing cues of race cars and dirt bikes, and really a different type of energy.
With Celsius being born in vitamin specialty gyms and health clubs, we're bringing performance to the performance energy category, it's authentic. The energy of today is seeing cues about improving oneself, improving one's body, ultimately driving your peak performance. That's really what energy drinks are about. We continue to capitalize on these trends with our fitness forward position into mass retail as health and wellness trends continue to grow. The evolution in the energy category is now. With the 85% growth rate and anticipate the global category to be $84.8 billion, we have a mass of opportunities. In addition to the shifts we're seeing in the energy drink category, we're seeing millennials over-index in energy drink consumption for these better-for-you performance energy products. In addition, the traditional energy drink consumer is aging. They're attracted for better ingredients, better products that are more aligned with their health and wellness goals.
Consumers are demanding products with less sugar, better ingredients, and functional benefits. When you look at the momentum, we just reported some of our results for 2019. Those were our sell-out numbers. Now, what about our sell-through numbers? We're seeing good results with channel sell-throughs, and a big opportunity we have at Celsius is in the convenience channel. As I mentioned, we were born in vitamin specialty gyms and health clubs and made our journey out into grocery. We've entered mass, and we've entered the drug channel. We started to penetrate the convenience channel right around late 2017, mid 2017 with the launch into 7-Eleven. We continued to grow in those retailers, and the latest scan data as of March 22nd showed that Celsius is growing at a 49% growth rate, outpacing the category by over 6.8 times with only a 12.6% ACV. Shows the opportunity we have.
We are hearing from retailers as they update their retail sets, they will be looking for products like Celsius that offer better-for-you functional options as they update their sets for the new energy drink consumers today and tomorrow. Unfortunately, due to the pandemic, a lot of these retailers have delayed their resets. Time will change, the wave will curve, and the retail category and the energy category will continue to evolve. As I mentioned, we're pioneering this position as a proven fitness drink. We are a cross between conventional energy, healthy energy, and functional energy. Celsius is the energy 2.0. We all know about the masses that are left to sugary sodas, to sparkling waters and functional waters. The next category under disruption that's heading into the evolution is the energy category, and Celsius is here with a point of differentiation with better-for-you options. We have the products.
We know our position. We're gaining placements. We're up to about 65,000 locations nationwide in North America. We understand our promotions. We're creating meaningful online and offline experiential connections with consumers, of lasting consumers as we build the Celsius community. You look at some of our channels of trade. 2019 was a monumental year for Celsius. We continued to build upon our convenience channel. We brought on Food Lion, further penetrated into Kroger, and are very well positioned for further growth and convenience. In addition, we solidified our relationship with CVS and Rite Aid. In 2018, we started to test in Rite Aid and CVS. We succeeded, and we continued to build upon them with that account, CVS and Rite Aid, and now we have national authorization with multiple SKUs authorized in the energy category. In addition, in late 2018, we partnered with Target with a test.
The test went successfully. Now we have over four flavors or SKUs authorized nationwide in Target and are running an end cap program right now for our first time when we're partnering with them. We expect the mass market channel to be very successful for Celsius. Just recently in 2020, our successful test at Walmart was successful, and we started to enter Walmart for the first time. Lots of opportunities as we continue to grow and scale in a variety of markets. We all know that COVID has impacted many of these channels. In the first half of this year, our fitness channel has struggled. Our vending business has struggled and our markets. We have seen other markets continue to grow as mass has changed their shopping patterns, as well as growth on e-com, convenience, conventional grocery, drug, and mass.
Another great opportunity we had, and we started in 2019, was building a national DSD network. We announced that in June of 2019, and we've continued that progression. We closed the year in 2019 with over 100 key marquee DSD direct store delivery partners. Some of these distributors we brought on were the likes of Big Geyser, one of the largest in New York. In addition, we brought on multiple Anheuser-Busch distributors, current Dr Pepper, Pepsi, Molson Coors. We see great opportunity on leveraging a DSD network. We flipped over several key accounts in the New York metropolitan market where we saw sales more than double in those markets being serviced by DSD. Our goal is to flip over the routes to market to more DSD partners as we continue to fill out the DMAs.
We're currently talking to many of our key account partners and switching over to this preferred route to market in the back half of this year and into 2021. This DSD model does a variety of things for us. Number one, Target, Walmart, CVS, Rite Aid, and many key accounts can't keep up with the high velocity of Celsius. You do see sporadic out of stocks. The direct store delivery will keep us in stock, improve our in-store execution, improve our SKU placements, and ultimately improving our velocity, and also increasing our distribution in several small formats throughout a given market, further increasing our ACV. In addition to the foundation that has been laid in the growth seen in North America, we made several strategic initiatives and actions that we took in 2019 on a global basis. We acquired Func Food, our strategic distribution partner in the Nordics.
Celsius is one of the top selling fitness drinks in Sweden. By acquiring our partner, it gives us foundation in the market and a beachhead for European expansion. In addition, it was an accretive transaction to our earnings and solidifies our position in the marketplace. The same trends in North America are happening in Europe, and they're also happening in Asia. The strategic initiative that we took in Asia in 2019, it was in January when we changed to a licensing royalty model in China. Changing to this licensing royalty model in China had several advantages for us. Number one, it recaptured our previous investment in prior years, in 2017 and 2018. It solidified changes the licensing to a royalty model and allows us to continue to participate in this enormous market of opportunity, but also continuing to leverage our partner's expertise in the marketplace.
This new model mitigates our risks, but also allows us to continue to increase our market share in China. We further grew within Hong Kong, as well as further expanded into Malaysia for the first time. Our initiative at Celsius and our roadmap is to continue to build upon our core. Build upon our product lines with new flavor launches. Most recently in 2019, we launched a great tasting new Peach Vibe flavor, which has been extremely well received. In addition to an expansion into adjacent categories. Late in 2018, we launched our CELSIUS HEAT line, our proven performance line. In 2019, we further expanded with our BCAA recovery line, which fuels muscle recovery and allows us to continue to sell within this fitness channel and keep our unique position. Disrupting the market with new products that are innovative and targeting health-minded consumers.
We have strategic objectives. Our growth roadmap revolves around our teams, brand building, and supply chain. Our teams are focused, disciplined, results-oriented, and purpose-driven. We're building brand equity, increasing our portfolio breadth, and expanding our channels of trade and driving our ACV gains. The supply chain we continue to improve upon, improving our margins, driving and leveraging data analytics. We are operationally focused, and we are transforming our organization for scale. Everything we do revolves around shareholder value. Identifying, creating, and building and nurturing our brand position, implementing strategic investments, continuing to innovate in the category, drive superior sales performance, optimize with cost savings, marginalize our run rates. Everything we do revolves around shareholder value. I'll now turn the call over to Edwin Negron-Carballo, our Chief Financial Officer, for a financial review.
Thank you, John. Celsius has had excellent financial performance, and this is seen here in our continued compounded annual growth. If you look at our results for the full company, we're performing at around 45% compounded annual growth over the last three or four years. If you further drill down, you can see that domestically, we've been performing even better at over 60% compounded annual growth. In international, we have performed at around 20%. International, for the most part, has been led by Europe or European results. Therefore, if you look at the right side of the screen, you'll see that there has been some lumpiness in the results. Now that we've made the acquisition, we expect that there will be a much smoother type of performance in terms of revenue.
One of the key aspects that we also want to highlight, and it's important for our shareholders to understand, is our performance as it relates to gross profitability. Despite the fact that obviously 46% profitability is very respectable, if you compare us or you want to benchmark us with other competitors such as Monster, who excludes the freight out from their cost of goods sold, if you normalize that due to the fact that in Celsius, we include that as part of our cost of goods sold, then you would see that our pro forma gross profitability would actually translate to over 50% performance. We further expect that to continue to improve with the consolidation of our European business and also as we continue to drive cost savings and synergies in our performance. Lastly, to give a financial snapshot of what has transpired.
Again, revenue growth up 95% to $28.8 million. Profitability also at $13 million, up 128%, again at 46.1%, again, with outbound freight and excluding outbound freight, that would translate to over 53%. We also provided or were able to obtain $546,000 of net income and a very good result in adjusted EBITDA of $2.8 million. In our balance sheet, we have a very good cash position at $19.1 million, that also with the investment that we've made regarding inventory in order to make sure that we can properly service our accounts during these uncertain times. All in all, very good performance, very solid performance, not only in our P&L, but also in our balance sheet. We will now turn it over to Q&A, feel free to provide us with your questions via the website.
Well, thank you, Edwin. We'll pause for a second for Q&A questions. There is a Q&A section on the website where you're able to type in an instant message or question. We'll pause for a second. Okay, we have our first question from Greg Fizer asking, "Will the transition to DSD affect gross margin?" Thank you, Greg. Great question. On a consolidated basis, we feel there's going to be a marginal impact on the gross profits in regards to moving over to this DSD preferred model. There's a couple areas where we'll be saving in regards to better logistics, freight savings. Also, many of our wholesalers and direct to retail customers currently charge a lot of lumper fees, they're called in the industry, as well as a variety of different handling fees.
When you take into account all of the costs associated with servicing customers through a direct method and/or wholesaler method versus distributor method, we feel there'll be a marginal impact that will take place. Initially, it will be a little bit greater of an impact as we transition the business over. We also pick up a lot of efficiencies as well, servicing many more customers that we couldn't service before, small format, also the much better, greater service that's provided to our key accounts where today you'll see a lot of out of stocks or product not in the proper placing due to relying on store personnel. We do feel in the long run, we will be able to marginalize and it will have a limited impact to margins.
On the short run, there could be potential impacts to margins in the short run, but in the long run much better also gaining efficiencies on supply chain, raw material inputs, and so forth. Thank you for your question. We'll take another brief pause and pause for another question. Okay, our next question is from Dennis Italia. The question comes in: Is there any future plans of entering the alcohol business market? You're seeing a lot of growth currently in the market with brands like White Claw and Truly. Dennis, that's a great question. We have a cross-functional innovation team, and we meet every week and also have a monthly and quarterly review. We're constantly looking for new innovative products, concepts, and ideas, and evaluating them. At this point, we do not have specific plans for an alcoholic beverage to compete with Truly or White Claw.
We have been looking at a variety of other sectors in regards to health and wellness products. Additional thermogenic offerings and immunity products, as well as hydration and recovery products. Thank you very much for your question. We're constantly looking at alternatives. The key is that we remain focused on Celsius, and we're very disciplined in our approach. You're seeing our methodical approach with our CELSIUS HEAT and our Celsius BCAA, very methodical rollout. At the right time, where there's an opportunity, we will continue to add value for our shareholders where we see fit. We'll pause briefly for another polling of questions. We have a question from Jeffrey Ovara. What would happen to our shares if you were acquired by Coke or Pepsi? I guess they would have to be purchasing from them. It would be a process that would take place through a tender offer.
That would take place. Our goal is not too shortsighted on an immediate takeout. As we've stated before on earnings calls, as well as investor presentations, our goal is to be number one in the energy category, continue to build shareholder value, and capitalize on today's changes in the energy drink category. Thank you, Jeffrey, for your question. We'll briefly pause for another polling. All right. Looks like we have no other questions. I truly appreciate everyone's time, interest, and support. On behalf of the management team, leadership team, our employees, and our board of directors, I thank you. I will now turn the call back over to Dale Bergman. Thank you.
Thank you, John, Edwin, and team. Great job. We've been informed by our Inspector of Elections that the proxies and ballots have been counted. Based on the preliminary report provided by the Inspector of Elections, the results of the voting are that all the nominees for election to the board have been elected, and the appointment of the company's auditors has been ratified. There being no further business to come before the meeting, the annual meeting is now officially adjourned. The company's officers and directors would like to express their appreciation to all of you who took the time to attend this meeting, as well as those who submitted their proxies but were not able to be present. We thank you. Stay safe. Stay well.