Followed by Q&A. For those of you that have a question, you know, could type that into the Q&A box within the Zoom screen at the bottom. I'll read the question out loud after management's prepared remarks. And so with no further delay, Barry, the floor is yours.
Great. Thanks, Anthony, and on behalf of myself and Tex, we're delighted to be at the Sidoti conference again. To be able to talk to the investor community. And of course, it's always enjoyable to be able to present Global Industrial Company, which I'm excited to talk about today. So just to give folks a kind of heads-up in terms of what the business looks like, in 2023 we did just under $1.3 billion in sales. The company itself operates within a fairly fragmented industrial distribution SMB market.
We've got about 7 distribution centers across the U.S. and Canada, and the product set that we really focus on, you can see here, storage and shelving, furniture and decor, carts and trucks, safety, security, janitorial and facility maintenance, is really what we call our core. The organization has evolved. We've been around for 75 years. We have over 1,800 employees in the business today, and we affectionately call ourselves the Experts in Big and Bulky because we ship a lot of large items, storage cabinets, pallet jacks, things like that, that can't necessarily go small parcels. So we've built some expertise in this area, and I think that creates somewhat of a helpful competitive moat for us in the market. As I mentioned earlier, the SMB segment itself is really about a $50 billion segment.
So there's plenty of share and opportunity there for our, for Global to operate in, and we'll talk a little bit about more how we do that going forward. But we are a top 15 supplier within the MRO industrial distribution space and what's unique about our business as well, which we'll get into, is we don't just buy direct from manufacturers and resell. We actually produce a lot of our own products. In fact, over half the volume itself is what we kind of call private brand or exclusive brands, and we will talk about that. And certainly from an financial perspective, we are proud to say that we've returned over $600 million to our shareholders since 2018.
So I'll talk to you a little bit about the foundation, how we're positioned, how we go to market, and we'll close with some of the financials. We have been on a trajectory since 2019, in our strategy framework called ACE, and that stands for Accelerating the Customer Experience. And that really does serve as the foundation for our growth engine. It is a philosophy we have in the business, that we focus on our customers. And anything that creates friction in the purchase and service cycle for our customers, we look to fix on an everyday basis, and it's part of the continuous quality environment that we have in the business. But the strategy itself is really fixed around five key principles. One, maximizing our capabilities and generating revenue and customer growth.
Ensuring that we have the right, most innovative products and assortment solutions for our customers. We have a keen focus around overall end-to-end operational excellence in terms of fulfillment, service, and the end-to-end experience. We have a keen focus around our customer experience, and we like to call it frictionless. So as I mentioned earlier, we look to take out any friction or issues within the buy and sell process, and that is a huge cornerstone of our strategy, and certainly around cost efficiency and productivity for the business. And we align everything we have in the organization around these primary pillars.
Now, just to give you a little bit of overview of how we kind of look at our customer set, you know, today, you know, we have a very broad customer base in once again a large, fragmented market. We center and have quite a focus around manufacturing and retail construction, and you'll see later we've expanded into hospitality and healthcare quite a bit as well. We have a stronghold within the government sector, we call public sector, and a number of other end market cases. But we've got about over 400,000 customers, and the nice thing is we're fairly diversified, so no customer really represents over 2% of our sales.
From a market opportunity perspective, we've got about 2% of our addressable market, so plenty of room for expansion and growth in our business. All right, one second. All right, so a little talk about our product offering. As I mentioned earlier, you know, if you take a look at some of the key categories, our core was really founded around material handling, helping businesses move materials within manufacturing and distribution centers, as well as retail environments, and that's a cornerstone of our business. But we have a significant assortment into furniture. We also have a very strong and expanding growth platform in HVAC and fans, and also workbench and shop desks.
So it's a wide breadth of assortment, and our focus has been really around expanding into new adjacent categories: healthcare, hospitality, and even subcats like pneumatics, where we're developing unique products for the market there. So each year we're generating new products, and we're constantly evaluating items that we can become a real valuable supplier for our customers. So we're constantly looking to expand into new products and verticals, and where we find opportunity in the market with national brand products, we will sometimes look to identify items that we can convert and manufacture ourselves. So to give you an idea, you know, when it comes to private brand, we have, in a sense, a moniker called Made to Exceed.
So one of the things we do when we contract manufacture these products is we look to identify some unique service feature that we can modify, or add, to any product that we go ahead and develop, and we call that our extra chip differentiation. Meaning that, you know, we could look at a pallet jack or a floor sweeper, and we might identify some small feature that makes life easier for the customers that are operating it, and that's been the secret sauce behind how we look at our product assortment on private brand. But effectively, today, it is over half our volume. We've got about a 20% premium, you know, in our margin profile relative to national brands, and it's been one of the fastest-growing areas for us over the last 5 years, cresting 16% growth in this channel.
So it's been a terrific differentiator for us, and it's been a way for us to drive expanding margin, you know, throughout the lifespan of the business. Now, when you take a look at our overall growth and margin expansion, we've been pleased with this as well. Revenue-wise, we've seen almost 8% top-line CAGR growth for the business. At the same time, we've had about 60 basis points improvement each year in our overall operating margin. So as we continue to expand products, we invest in sales and marketing to be able to help drive those products to market, but we also have discipline around our bottom line and our spend structure. So to give you some things that we see from a, I would say, from evolving the market.
You know, the MRO market has evolved significantly over 5-6 years, and there's a lot of trends that are affecting industrial distribution companies. Certainly, you know, we look at Amazon and the impact that it's had on customer expectations. So in terms of our digital small business today, service through the website, we have very much of a consumer-like experience. So somebody that's in a professional environment can come to us and be very familiar with our website. It's very easy to use. We leverage other areas to create an advantage for ourselves.
We do a lot in terms of online price transparency, and being able to kind of adopt more of a price intelligence model within our business that helps us to drive improve margins over time and maintain great selling, competitive selling prices in the market. We've been a huge adopter of data analytics in our business that we use to kind of analyze and all aspects of the business to kind of look where we have opportunities for growth. We know that the industry itself, right, has been expanding.
And so when we look at our e-commerce, you know, we continue to increase our percentage of total e-commerce transactions, and I think we have a very sophisticated digital and multi-channel marketing platform that enables us to deliver messaging and products to our customers based on their unique needs. When I think about global and how we've kind of driven our business along with the evolution of the whole industry, I think we've been at the cutting edge of that curve, and we continue to stay out in front on it. We've got some very unique capabilities that some of the larger players and probably to a lesser extent, the smaller distributors can't really replicate.
I talked a little bit about private brand, our quality capabilities and shipping large items, but also our robust e-commerce capability and our powerful digital marketing funnel and how we go to market there. So, some great capabilities that I think will continue to be developed and honed with the Global Industrial for many years to come. So when I think about how we generate demand and how we go to market, acquisition is a really key component. Every business has to drive new customers, and we have a couple different ways that we do that. You know, we do it digitally for website web customers that find us on Google and all the major search engines. We're very strong there.
We also have a capability to acquire large enterprise customers through our managed sales group as well, and I think that is a nice, healthy source of new business. But then, once those customers are onboarded, we provide a range of personalized campaigns that really reach these customers with the right products, for the right need at the right time. And then, as customers, for example, from our smaller SMB business, that's primarily operating through our inbound and web channels, we'll tend to graduate those customers to a managed sales motion as those customers get larger, and that allows us to kind of expand our share of category wallet within those customers. And that's, in a sense, our model.
So when you think about, you know, how we go to market, the different capabilities we have, a very strong one-to-one managed sales group. You know, over 200 inside sales reps, and they've got very unique market subject matter expertise around our products. We have an expanding outside sales team that can actually be on site and help customers in terms of finding solutions. We have enterprise acquisition capabilities for GPOs that allows us to introduce ourselves to larger customers. And as I mentioned earlier, we've got a world-class e-commerce website and inbound capabilities that enable us to transact very quickly at a low cost. So those are the main components of how we go to market.
If you think about our customers along a continuum or a journey, you know, many of them start out very small, you know, and then we're grooming them effectively through many of our campaigns, and as those customers get larger, we'll apply a direct one-to-one selling resource. As those customers get to be large enterprise, we have the ability to put feet on the street to walk into those accounts. We have kind of a model in terms of how we look at customer growth. You know, it's an area where our organization is built around continuing to optimize revenue and margin at each step of the purchase cycle for our customers. Now, when it comes to our financial profile, certainly, well, it's very strong.
You know, cash for us is has always been a strong component. You'll notice, you know, $29.9 million in terms of current cash as of Q1, you know, 0 debt in the business, so that gives us a lot of dry powder to go out and leverage in terms of the capital allocation priorities that we have, inventory that in terms of value are very solid for the business. So all the economic components and financial components of the business are extremely healthy, and that gives us some flexibility, and that's really important in today's world. So I talked a little bit about capital allocation, but for the most part, it really falls into three areas. One, in terms of our overall investment for growth.
We spend a lot of time here in terms of where we invest. We invest quite a bit in our e-commerce capabilities, customer acquisition, development of new products, and finding ways that we can speed fulfillment and service to our customers. As you guys are aware, about a year ago, we purchased a company called Indoff. That was an acquisition we made last May in 2023. So acquisitions is a component of our strategy, where they make sense, where there's synergy, where we can leverage further expansion of our private brand label business, and at the same time, where we could also leverage our e-commerce capabilities to enable another company to increase growth and speed transactions. And of course, the third major piece is around just returning capital to our shareholders.
So certainly, you know, our dividend performance has been terrific. We will occasionally declare a special, and certainly, you know, we've been able to repurchase shares with excess cash, as we find it necessary. So you take a look at our quarterly dividend performance, you know, 14% CAGR since 2017, very strong. You know, we return quite a bit of cash to our investor community, completing out in 2024, where we reached $0.25. So, you know, once again, I've talked a little bit about the $600 million return, the current payout ratio, very healthy from an industry perspective, and we have the ability to purchase shares as we need it. So in terms of...
You know, we get asked quite a bit, you know, "How do you kind of see the future relative to what your, financial goals are?" I mean, certainly, we look at a 500 basis points outperformance, number, against the market, so that's, something we, we believe that, Global Industrial's capabilities can drive. We're always looking to, try to increase our overall, operating income growth and certainly maximize, our overall total shareholder return. So these are really important pieces to us that kind of guide our financial plans each year, and, we have alignment across the organization, the management team, and the board with, with those objectives. So that's a little overview of, of Global Industrial.
We were delighted to be able to present today, and certainly, I'll make myself and Tex available for any questions that we have at this time.
Very good. Well, thank you very much, Barry, for sharing the Global Industrial story here. As a quick reminder for those in the audience, if you do have a question, you can type it into the Q&A function. So I guess I'll kick off some questions here. You know, can you guys, you know, talk about the you know pricing and volume trends? What have you seen lately, and kind of, how should we think about this dynamic going forward?
Mm-hmm. Yeah, it's kind of interesting, you know, particularly on some of the news today that came out around, you know, inflation starting to moderate a bit. It's been kind of whipsaw for a while. I mean, I think back all the way to, you know, post-pandemic, where we started to see this, right, this massive mountain of inflation growth. And companies had to adjust because the cost structure was just becoming ominous, particularly if you're shipping overseas and bringing in imports like we do. So that necessitated a lot of price increase. But I think as the market started to normalize, we started to see pricing started to come down, but it was fairly stubborn.
So we were at a point where, you know, you'd see kind of a plus-up on price and a, you know, a plus down on volume, and that has started to moderate, you know, much more in the short term. I think that we've always been a company that has always been priced at market. So in many cases, because we're a web business and for most of our for a good portion of our volume, we're able to kind of look at the market, and we have to price where we're at. So we started to look at price becoming much more kind of focused on a neutral position, and in some cases, getting it almost to where it negative.
So I think, you know, right now, we're starting to see maybe a little bit of pricing coming down relative to the inflationary market, and we'll always play at a competitive space with price. But look, economically, you're also seeing some costing coming through, particularly on the freight side of the world. Freight in general across the industry is, you know, is also seeing some increases. So, you know, we'll continue to be, I would say, where we need to be to be competitive with our customers. But right now, you know, you still have a little bit of inflation flow through in the market, what we're seeing right now, and hopefully, that continues to moderate down from a customer perspective.
Gotcha. Yeah, thanks, Barry. And, you know, so as far as, you know, revenue, you know, you talked about, you know, your, your core products. You touched on a little bit about private label, which we'll get into, you know, a bit later here. But I guess, like, when you look at your business, you know, how much of your revenue typically comes from core versus new product, so just be curious to get your take on that.
Yeah. I mean, the majority of our business comes from our core business. I mean, we had, you know, the majority comes from core sales. I mean, it's very hard to be able to live off of new, new products alone.
Mm-hmm.
So we can produce, you know, we can produce up to 500 new products a year. But there's always kind of a forecast we have and how we look at new product growth. If it's new to world, which we don't have as much of, you know, we're developing more off of what we see works in the marketplace. And so I would say it's the new product component of our assortment is obviously much lower than what we see in core. So we went off our core, and then we continue to create excitement through new products.
Right. Right. And then just, just to follow up on the new products, so has that increased with your, under your leadership as far as the focus on new products? Has, has that percentage increased, over the, you know, the few years that you've been in charge or, or, and do you see that, you know, getting more important as far as, you know, new product development?
Yeah, I mean, I think overall, I mean, if I look back, I mean, we talked today about, you know, how our volume's over 50% of our business today in terms of private brand business.
Mm-hmm.
I mean, it was maybe a third of that, you know, a few years back. So we've put a huge focus on being able to, you know, drive private brand, and because our customers want it. So I think our development process has absolutely improved. We've gotten better at, you know, setting up products end to end from the factory all the way to our distribution centers, to our customers, and I think we've become a lot more innovative in identifying some new areas that we can enter, as well.
Mm-hmm. Terrific. Okay, and then just to follow up on the private label products, so obviously has grown quite a bit, and also it is a higher margin piece of your business. So do you guys have a goal in mind as to like, you know, ultimately where you want the private label to be as a percentage of your sales? How should investors think about that?
I mean, there's definitely upward opportunity, there's no question, you know, upward opportunity, you know, relative to where we could go with private brand. I mean, frankly, our focus is around overall volume growth, you know, for our business. So that to me is the number one piece. I think private exclusive brands are kind of a catalyst to be able to help us get there. But, you know, there are businesses out there in the market that are 100% private brand, and there's others that are 20%. So we certainly see north, you know, north of 50%, but we want to make sure we're developing the right products and getting the right sellers, you know, and getting that done.
Right. Right. Because, yeah, it sounds like to me that you're not just simply, putting on your label on a national brand, you're actually improving that product. You're adding-
Right
... some more features, and, and so, it is a more value-added product. Okay. Gotcha. So as you look out into the future, and you talked about wanting to grow your business 500 basis points ahead of the industry. So as you look forward, you know, like, are there any particular markets or, you know, any of your customer groups or vertical markets that you can speak to that you think will help you achieve that growth? You know, kind of, you know, so just wanting—one, if you could just expand on that.
Sure. I mean, we know, we all know—so when we talked about our end markets, you know, retail, manufacturing, those are all kind of cornerstone markets for us, transportation and other areas. You know, we happen to think that hospitality and healthcare are also great end-use markets with a lot of upside. You know, if you take a look at the healthcare market, and particularly the use case for back office products, they've all got warehouses, always where they're moving trucks and carts, moving materials and equipment all day long. That from a population perspective, right, we're all getting older, and the healthcare market is exploding, so we think there's opportunity there, and we've got a focus there as well. And certainly post-pandemic, we've seen hospitality roar back.
You know, when you take a look at the amount of hotels, you take a look at entertainment, the whole area of hospitality is coming back. And I think we started down this journey a couple of years ago, you know, and being able to see that as a massive use case market. So I think for us, those are two big areas, and those markets are really massive, so it takes a big bit of time to be able to drive some market share there, but we think we've got enough in those two unused markets to carry us for a long time.
Mm-hmm. Gotcha. Yeah, sounds like there's definitely a lot of opportunity there. Yeah, and then just curious, you know, how much of your sales come from consumables now? Just wondering about the opportunity there to grow.
Yeah. So today we don't really, we don't really report, you know, publicly how much of our percentage, you know, comes out of that space, but I can tell you it's definitely growing. It is an important part of our overall mix because consumables create a natural behavior of coming back, you know, to refill, you know, whether it be strapping or corrugated or shrink wrap. So we do a fair amount there, and we put a focus around it, but we're constantly looking for new consumables because in some respects, like fixed asset products like a pallet jack or racking, you might sell in for a big project, but at the same time, if you don't have the consumable business, that enables you to get that quick repeat and to accelerate order velocity.
That's something that we do focus on with the products we have, and we've definitely seen some continued nice growth, which I think has helped some of the order volume.
... Mm-hmm. Gotcha. And then, as you look out to grow the business also through acquisitions, can you speak to the opportunities there, you know, to expand your capabilities? Are you looking, you know, just in the U.S. or would you, I know you have a small presence in Canada, but just overall, help us maybe better understand your acquisition strategy, and types of multiples that you're looking to pay for any deals, that I think that would be very helpful.
Yeah. So I would definitely say that North America would be kind of the target zone for us. So as you mentioned, we do have a business in Canada. It's doing quite well, so we have opportunity there, you know, and we've seen a lot of acquisition activity in Canada recently. You know, from our standpoint, because we've got a strong financial position, great cash flow, no debt, look, we could be kind of intentional, but kind of cautious about what type of business we buy and integrate it to Global Industrial. So there's a few key tenets that we look at. First, you know, we have to understand the business. That's really important.
It needs to have solid synergies, whether it be growing, giving us the opportunity to grow new customers, being able to take our existing products into new customers that we acquire, and potentially adding some new business capability that helps support our assortment and solutions pillar, but at the same time can be sold through our go-to-market model that I outlined today. So we do look for acquisitions that are fairly synergistic. You know, in terms of the multiple target, I would say, you know, I don't think we necessarily have a distinct target in a multiple. We're looking to buy value in many cases, and we're trying to find businesses that have significant long-term upside for us.
Usually, if we identify something, we'll kind of take a look at the strategic value of the business first before we even value what it would actually cost to acquire it, and that's been our philosophy, at least since 2019.
Mm-hmm. Gotcha. All right, and then you guys have also put in some new technology tools. You know, what's been the main benefit of those, you know, and also just kind of looking forward, you know, how should we think about AI, you know, whether, you know, that could have an impact on your business from just a, you know, business intelligence or pricing, the data tools, analytics? Would love to hear your thoughts on that.
Yeah, I mean, technology for us, you know, has been. We've got some core technologies in the business to support, you know, warehouse, ERP, that, you know, have had, you know, minimal needs to upgrade over time. We've got some very flexible back office systems. We've invested in data analytics quite a bit, and visualization capabilities to allow us to get insights from all the data that we harvest within the business itself. We certainly have made investments relative to CRM capability, you know, that we see that kind of as a next frontier for us, to help drive efficiencies in our selling process, our marketing process, and being able to create kind of 360-degree views with our customer service center of our customers.
So that's an area certainly where we have opportunity to expand into. We actually have, you know, I think a very strong internal IT and programming team that in a sense creates a lot of use cases and work around AI. So we do some of our own work internally to identify ways to kind of either resolve some type of service issue within the business to create kind of an easier way to communicate with customers online. We will also look to external sources and suppliers to identify, you know, AI capabilities, whether it be in order automation, whether it be in communication with our vendors, and ways to speed information and programming information to our vendors up and back.
So AI is something that is actually really important to us. We have a small internal team that kind of works through. We have a catalog list of all different types of AI projects we're working on, and it's gonna be clearly something of the future, but it's not something we necessarily want to rush to market because I think there's—we've learned there's a lot to learn and a lot that you don't know sometimes before you launch something. So it is an important capability. You see it blowing up, you know, everywhere, you know, across the both business to business and in consumer side. So it's definitely something that we explore on a daily basis.
Gotcha. Okay, well, well, well, we're almost out of time, but I guess, you know, lastly, just to kind of finish up the conversation here, as investors, you know, look at the GIC here, looking forward, you know, what are some of the biggest kind of swing factors that people should be aware of as you, as they look to evaluate your business over the next 12-24 months?
Yeah, I think an important component is, you know, looking at Global Industrial. You know, it's got a strong, healthy brand, right? It's a company that traditionally has very high customer satisfaction levels. So, you know, in making an investment in businesses that, you know, can't really talk to their customer satisfaction levels and has good track history in terms of servicing their products, to me, that's a huge investment advantage, right? 'Cause that tells me the hard work's being done inside the business. I think the other component is looking at our kind of future around new product development.
That's a huge area of what we put focus on, and I don't think there's a day goes by where you can't tap into our website and take a look at the range of new products that we're bringing to market. So we're a company that's very current. We're staying on the edge relative to what our customers need, and I think, as well as being able to, have a business that has a very strong, focus around our multi-channel go-to-market model. I think we've got a, you know, tremendous employee base within the organization. I'm not sure if you're aware, Anthony, we were just recently certified as one of America's best places to work.
That took a lot of work by our organization, the employees of the company, and our work to create really strong engagement within the business. So I think that is evident of a very strong management team. I think it's evident of an environment that really focuses on productivity, recognition, and rewards, and I think companies who fall on that list, my belief is typically those are the best companies to invest in for the future. So between the financial results, the indicators around the employee base, and the indicators around what's happening with our investment profile, you know, from a sales, marketing, service, quality perspective, to me, those create some of the main drivers of, you know, what creates a good company to invest in for the future.
Well, that's great to hear. Thank you very much, Barry, and Tex, and Mike, for sharing the Global Industrial story. Unfortunately, we are out of time already. Actually, a couple of minutes over, the allotted time. So again, thank you very much, again, also to those listening in and asking questions as well. So we'll wrap it up here, and everyone, have a great day.
Okay.
Thanks again.
Anthony, appreciate it. Take care.
Thank you.