Thank you. Good morning, everyone. Welcome to the 2017 Annual Shareholders Meeting. I thank you all for taking the time to join us here today. What I would like to begin with is really introducing our board of directors. I hope that you had a chance to mingle a little bit with folks earlier this morning, but I'd start with Gerard Arpey, Ari Bousbib, Jeff Boyd, J. Frank Brown, Al Carey, Armando Codina, Helena Foulkes, Linda Gooden, Wayne Hewett, Mark Vadon, and our lead director, Greg Brenneman. We also have Karen Katz on the line, one of our directors attending the meeting via phone. She is unable to be with us today in person due to health reasons. We're certainly glad that she can join us on the phone today. Next, I would like to introduce our senior leadership team, who is with me on the stage here.
Carol Tomé, our Chief Financial Officer and Executive Vice President of Corporate Services, and Teresa Wynn Roseborough, our Executive Vice President and General Counsel and Corporate Secretary. Before we start, I would like to take a second and say that it's an honor to have one of our founders, Arthur Blank, here today. Arthur. Arthur, we thank you for building an amazing company. We are privileged, absolutely privileged, to continue the growth in this business, to be able to live the values that you instilled for the benefit of our associates, our customers, and our shareholders. Thank you very much for being here. Appreciate it. We also have other members of our senior leadership team that are here with us today in person. I'd actually ask them to stand if we could. I'd like to recognize their efforts.
I'd like to recognize Hector Mojena and Milford McGuirt of KPMG, the company's independent auditors. We will begin today's meeting with the formal business portion. This consists of the election of directors named in the proxy statement, the ratification of our auditors, and consideration of the company's and shareholders' proposals. After that, Carol and I will provide a brief business overview. Then we will actually open the floor for questions. Now I officially call the 2017 Home Depot Annual Meeting of Shareholders to order. Teresa is serving as the secretary of the meeting, and Broadridge Investor Communication Solutions is our inspector of elections. As of March 20th, 2017, which is the record date for the meeting, there were approximately 1.2 billion shares of the company's common stock entitled to vote. A majority of these shares is needed for a quorum.
Over 87% of these shares are represented here today. Therefore, we do have a quorum. If you haven't voted yet and would like to vote today, please raise your hand so that we can give you a ballot. Then we will collect your ballots after the proposals have been presented. If you've already voted, there's no need to vote again today. I now declare that the polls are open for voting. I think we're ready. The first item of business is the election of directors, which is item one on your ballot. The board has nominated the individuals named in the proxy statement to serve for a one-year term through the 2018 annual meeting. Your board recommends that you vote for each of these directors. We'll move to the next proposal.
The next item is the ratification of the appointment of KPMG as the independent auditors of the company for fiscal 2017, item 2 on your ballot. Your board recommends that you vote for this proposal. We'll move to the next proposal. The next item is the advisory vote on executive compensation, also known as Say on Pay, which is item number 3 on your ballot. Specifically, you are being asked to approve the compensation of the company's named executive officers as disclosed in the proxy statement for this meeting. The board recommends that you vote for this proposal. The next item for consideration is the advisory vote on the frequency of future Say on Pay votes, which is item number 4 on your ballot.
In addition to providing you with the opportunity to cast an advisory vote on the executive compensation, we are also offering you the opportunity to cast an advisory vote on the frequency that the Say on Pay vote takes place. The board recommends that you vote to hold future Say on Pay votes every year. We'll move on to the next proposal. The next item for consideration is the shareholder proposal regarding the preparation of an employment diversity report, which is item number 5 on your ballot. Will Miss Ebony Monk, as a representative of the Benedictine Sisters and the Incarnate Word Academy, please step to the microphone and present the proposal.
Good morning, Mr. Chair, members of the board, and shareholders who are gathered here today. I'm Ebony Monk, and I've been asked to represent this proposal by the Benedictine Sisters from Boerne, Texas. I also represent several members of the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility, who are shareholders and co-filers of this proposal. These groups are long-term shareholders of The Home Depot. The proposal on ballot number 5 seeks board review of our company policies regarding disclosure of Equal Employment Opportunity data and public reporting of diversity issues to shareholders. We received 29.99% for last year's proposal. Equal Employment Opportunity is an investment concern. When allegations of discrimination in the workplace burden shareholders with costly litigation and added risk to company's brand, there is an impact to shareholder value. We contend descriptions do not go far enough to mitigate potential risk.
We mentioned in the resolution that The Home Depot has paid out more than $100 million to settle discrimination lawsuits over the past 17 years. Your reports do not give a chart identifying employees by gender and race in each of the EEOC-defined categories. This resolution has been filed over the past several years, focuses on the importance of measurement and disclosure of diversity issues to its shareholders. To manage diversity, companies have to be able to measure it. That is why we have asked the EEOC 1 data which offers investors a measurement tool. An EEO report is submitted annually by The Home Depot to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Providing data to shareholders would not propose additional financial burden. The company actually did provide information one year and then stopped.
In the absence of meaningful disclosure, investors cannot fully assess potential risk The Home Depot faces, nor, for that matter, fully identify successful diversity efforts. In 2015, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission reported that racial minorities comprise 37.2% of private industry workforce, but just 14.01% of executives and management. We feel this is a bottom-line issue affecting the competitiveness and market share. We ask The Home Depot to report diversity disclosure to all stakeholders. We met with the corporate secretary and others to offer a way forward and make concrete suggestions. We continue to hope that management will take us up on the ideas we presented. Thank you for your time, and we ask you to vote in favor of stockholder proposal number five.
Thank you, Ms. Monk. The board recommends that you vote against this proposal. The next item for consideration is the shareholder proposal regarding the advisory vote on political contributions, which is item number six on your ballot. Will Ms. Ebony Monk, as a representative of NorthStar Asset Management, please step to the microphone and present the proposal.
Hi again. I'm Ebony Monk from NorthStar Asset Management in Boston. NorthStar is a beneficial owner of over $6.7 million of The Home Depot common stock, I'm here to ask for shareholder support of resolution number six, regarding political contributions linked to our company. At the heart of this proposal is that whatever the company stands for should be represented in all arenas of the company's public activity, including political contributions. Shareholders want good governance, We want to know that the management team overseeing political contributions is carefully vetting the endpoints of all money that is associated with the company. Unfortunately, we do not have such examination. We argue that thorough analysis is required to ensure that funds are not spent on candidates working at cross purposes with the company's policies or against the interest of shareholders.
For example, fellow shareholders, did you know that our company PAC made a contribution to a political action committee that seeks to fight the bad ideas of Obamacare by electing conservatives who support healthcare freedom? As far as we can tell, this PAC exists purely to repeal the Affordable Care Act and doesn't appear to have any positions on business issues that we think matter to the company. For example, its website makes no statements about trade policy reform, border taxes, or immigrant issues that may affect small business customers. On another issue, The Home Depot has been a long time supporter of LGBT rights. How can our employees feel valued when the company or its PAC supports politicians, which the Human Rights Campaign considers to be faces of inequality in Congress, such as Tom Emmer, Crescent Hardy, Mike Bost, and Jody Hice?
We are concerned because our PAC supported these politicians, who we believe have worked to undermine the rights of our LGBT employees and their families. In 2010, Citizens United case opened the floodgates on corporate political contributions. Justice Stevens commented that a democracy cannot function effectively when its constituent members believe laws are being bought and sold. When corporations are allowed to freely spend on electioneering with zero accountability to shareholders, our only recourse is to actively participate in corporate democracy. Without corporate democracy, company treasury, and PAC contributions become just one more source of power that threatens to undermine our political system, just as Justice Stevens feared in his dissent. When Home Depot engages in behavior that is contrary to our company's stated principles and values, it's up to shareholders to take a stand. We ask you to vote yes for resolution number 6.
Thank you, Ms. Monk. Your board recommends that you vote against this proposal. The next item for consideration is the shareholder proposal to reduce the threshold to call special shareholder meetings to 15% of outstanding shares, which is item number 7 on your ballot. Will Ms. Ebony Monk, as a representative of Mr. John Chevedden, please step to the microphone and present the proposal.
Back again. Shareholders ask our board to take steps necessary to amend our bylaws and each appropriate governing document to give holders in the aggregate of 15% of our outstanding common stock the power to call a special shareholder meeting. This proposal does not impact our board's current power to call a special meeting. Dozens of Fortune 500 companies allow 10% of shares to call a special meeting. This proposal is only asking that 15% of our shares be enabled to call a special meeting. Special meetings allow share owners to vote on important matters, such as electing new directors, that can arise between annual meetings. Share owner input on the timing of share owner meetings is especially important when events unfold quickly and issues become moot by the next annual meeting. This is important because there could be 15 months or more between annual meetings.
This proposal topic received 42% support at The Home Depot 2016 annual meeting. This level of support means that more than 51% of Home Depot shareholders informed on corporate governance matters voted in favor of this topic proposal. This proposal is more important to Home Depot. GMI analysts said that Home Depot board included three directors who were flagged due to their prior service on boards of other companies which filed for bankruptcy. Karen Katz, who received 11% negative votes at The Home Depot 2015 annual meeting, was overextended and overbooked. Home Depot disclosed related party transactions that included employment of a son of former Chairman and CEO. Please vote to enhance shareholder value, special shareowner meetings proposal number 7.
Thank you. Your board recommends that you vote against this proposal. Now, if you have received a ballot, I'd please ask that you mark your votes and sign it where is indicated. When you've finished, if you would please raise your hand and one of our volunteers will collect the ballots. Okay. I believe all the ballots have now been collected, and the poll is now closed. Oh, wait. Do we still have one more back there? Still have one. Anyone else finishing a ballot? Okay. The ballots have been collected, and the polls are now closed. Now I will ask Teresa to review the preliminary voting results.
Thank you, Craig. The preliminary voting results for the company proposals are as follows. All of the director nominees named in the proxy statement have been elected by a majority of the votes cast. Approximately 98% of the votes cast have voted in favor of the ratification of the appointments of KPMG. Approximately 98% of the votes cast have voted in favor of the compensation of the company's named executive officers, and approximately 91% of the votes cast have voted in favor of holding annual Say on Pay votes. For the shareholder proposals, approximately 34% of the votes cast have voted in favor of the shareholder proposal regarding the preparation of an employment diversity report.
Approximately 6% of the votes cast have voted in favor of the shareholder proposal regarding an advisory vote on political contributions, and approximately 42% of the votes cast have voted in favor of the shareholder proposal to reduce the threshold to call special shareholder meetings. Based on the preliminary vote count, all of the nominees for the board of directors have been elected, the appointment of KPMG as the company's independent auditors for fiscal 2017 has been ratified, a majority of the votes cast approved our executive compensation, and a majority of the votes cast voted in favor of holding annual Say on Pay votes. None of the shareholder proposals have been approved. Please note that the ballots collected at the meeting will be verified and tabulated by our Inspector of Elections, and final results of the vote will be available in a Form 8-K, which we'll file next week. Thanks, Craig.
Thank you, Teresa. This concludes the formal business, and I declare the meeting adjourned. Now we'll move forward with an overview of our business, and then afterwards, we'll take questions. I'd like to ask Carol to start us off with a financial review of the company.
Thank you, Craig. Good morning, everyone. It is so wonderful to see so many shareholders here this morning. We are very glad that you joined us. Before I get started, I would like you to take a look at this chart. I am not going to read it, but please note that some of our comments may be forward-looking. 2016 was a great year for our company. We reported the highest sales and earnings in our company history. Looking at this chart, you can see that our sales grew over $6 billion to $94.6 billion. Our net earnings grew by approximately $1 billion to $8 billion, and our diluted earnings per share grew by 18.1% to $6.45. Our company continues to generate strong cash flow. We have a disciplined and balanced approach when allocating our cash.
In fiscal 2016, we generated approximately $9.8 billion of cash from the business, and we used that cash, as well as proceeds from $2.5 billion of new long-term debt issuances to invest $1.6 billion back into the business, pay $3.4 billion in dividends, and repurchase $7 billion of our outstanding shares. It is important to note that since 2002, we have repurchased over $65 billion of our shares at an average price of less than $52 a share. The power of our company can be seen in our cash flow generation. Let us turn and look to our outlook for fiscal 2017. We continue to believe that the U.S. home improvement market is healthy. That, coupled with modest GDP growth in the United States, provides continued tailwind for our business. We just reported our first quarter results, and we had a good quarter, with sales and earnings ahead of our expectations.
For fiscal 2017, we expect our sales to grow by about 4.6%, which includes positive comp sales and six new stores. For earnings per share, we now expect our fiscal 2017 diluted earnings per share to grow approximately 11% to $7.15. As Craig will detail, our strategy has not changed. In 2017, we will continue to invest in our business to support our strategic efforts, while at the same time remain focused on creating value for our shareholders. Part of creating value for our shareholders is paying a dividend. In 2016, our dividend grew 17%, and in February of this year, our board announced a 29% increase in our quarterly dividend, which equates to $3.56 annually, increasing our targeted dividend payout ratio from what had been 50% to now 55%. With that, let me turn it back to Craig.
Thank you, Carol. Before I share with you the strategy that helped deliver these results through 2016, I want to begin by highlighting what these strong results have meant for our shareholders from a stock performance standpoint. From 2012 through 2016, The Home Depot stock price has appreciated 209%, outperforming both the S&P 500 and the Dow Jones Industrial Average by a significant margin. Of course, first and foremost, our business starts with our culture, a culture that comes from our founders, Bernie Marcus and Arthur Blank. Our culture begins with a unique management construct, that is the inverted pyramid, where our customers and our associates are at the top of that pyramid.
Our culture comes to life as we live our core values that serve as the foundation for our business and the guiding principle behind the decisions that we make every single day. We believe that our culture sets us apart and is truly a competitive advantage in the market for The Home Depot. Our customers always have been and always will be at the heart of our business, which is why they're positioned at the top of the inverted pyramid. Excellent customer service is also the first value as you work your way around the values wheel. We monitor our commitment to customer service on an ongoing basis, seeking direct feedback from our customer satisfaction surveys as well as independent third parties like J.D. Power and Associates, where we received an 11-point increase in customer satisfaction scores in 2016.
Customer service extends beyond our customers in the aisles to taking care of the communities that we serve. We're focused on building relationships and being great neighbors in the communities that we do business in. We believe that this is an essential part of our job. In 2016, The Home Depot Foundation enhanced more than 6,000 veteran homes and facilities in 1,000 cities across all 50 states with more than 1,300 nonprofit partners. Last year, we announced that the foundation was going to grow its commitment to veteran-related causes to a quarter billion dollars by 2020, and I'm proud to say that we're well on our way to achieving that goal. As you can see, giving back is one of the core values of the company.
Our founder, Bernie, often said that if you take care of your associates, they'll take care of the customers, and everything else will take care of itself. That statement holds true today. Today, we have over 400,000 associates living our values. Our associates are the key to meeting our customers' needs, and they take pride in putting our customers first. These associates are the greatest asset that we have and a competitive advantage, and we must continue to invest in those that wear the orange apron. We recognize our hourly associates through our success-sharing bonuses, and we have paid out over $1 billion in bonuses over the past five years. Additionally, we have The Homer Fund, our nonprofit charity that supports our associates. Through both associate and company matching contributions, The Homer Fund has donated more than $150 million to associates in need during times of crisis.
Two summers ago, we restructured our approach to strategic planning, and the first thing that we did was we identified potential disruptors into our business, and we refer to this as our war games. The second thing we did is we held discussions on ideas around how we could expand growth and improve productivity over the next three to eight years. It was a pretty eye-opening experience and reminded us that we have to continue to evolve with our customers as they change. As a result of this planning in 2015, we came away with two very simple objectives and five key strategies to achieve our goals. The first objective, grow market share with pros and consumers. Second, deliver shareholder value. The five key strategies to support these objectives are driven by what our customers and our shareholders expect from The Home Depot.
First, we must continue to connect our associates to the needs of our customers, empowering them to deliver industry-leading customer service, enabling them to differentiate and do that through staffing models, tools, and organizational support for our associates. Second, we must strive to be the leaders in product authority, connecting product and services to the needs of all of our customers, pro, do it yourself, and do it for me. Our merchants work to connect assortments to the customer's needs by curating local assortments for the customer, and we will continue to do so going forward. Third, we must optimize the flow from supplier to shelf to customer location by connecting the business end to end. Fourth, we remain focused on the interconnected experience, connecting our stores to our online properties and our online properties to our stores, providing a frictionless customer experience across all channels.
Finally, we will connect our activities to cost out by continuing to innovate our business model and value chain to support the virtuous productivity cycle and enhance overall value to our customers. As the customers increasingly engage with us across both the digital and physical worlds, we remain focused on collaborating more closely, both internally and externally, to create the one Home Depot experience. This gives us the ability to drive growth, value, and productivity for our customers and our shareholders. Now let me talk about growth. Looking ahead, we see significant growth opportunities in two areas, pro and in interconnected retail. We recognize that our pro customers' needs go beyond those of the traditional in-store offering. We have invested in several key initiatives aimed to improve the customer experience for our pros.
We completed the rollout of an enhanced delivery offering to all continental U.S. stores, made improvements to our special order process, extended credit terms on our private label pro card. We believe that the work that we're doing to strengthen sales support, assortments, fulfillment capabilities for our pro customers continues to resonate. We're excited about the opportunity to see the future strength of our relationship with this customer grow. One of our key initiatives to grow the pro centers around MRO or maintenance, repair and operations. In fiscal 2016, it marked the one-year anniversary of our acquisition of Interline Brands. Through this acquisition, we established a platform in the MRO market where we serve primarily the institutional customer, hospitality, and national apartment complexes. Collectively, The Home Depot and Interline owns less than 5% today of approximately $50 billion addressable MRO market.
We believe there's lots of room for growth. We exceeded our one-year integration goals, and in 2017, we will continue to focus on migrating the customer experience to the one Home Depot approach, a seamless frictionless experience for all of our pro customers, serving them when, where, and how they want to be served. This focus of the one Home Depot experience is the foundation of our interconnected retail strategy and extends to all of our customers, pro and DIY alike. The retail environment is evolving and the blending of the digital and the physical worlds remains a common theme. The team made great strides in 2016. We substantially completed the homedepot.com redesign with enhanced features around search and faster checkout. We upgraded the mobile app. We introduced a dynamic estimated time of arrival feature to provide customers a faster and more accurate delivery date based on location.
We measure the success of these changes by the increased traffic and conversion rates that we see across our interconnected platform. For the year, our online business grew 19% versus fiscal 2015. While we are seeing significant growth in our online business, our stores have never been more relevant. As a testament to this, our online sales made up 5.9% of our 2016 total sales, but 45% of all of our online orders were picked up in our stores. Our digital presence is driving business to our stores, and our stores is driving business to our digital site as customers want to shop across multiple channels, including buy online, pickup in store, buy online, ship to store, buy online, return to store, and now buy online, deliver from store enhanced with a delivery option that was fully rolled out in all of the continental U.S. stores in fiscal 2016.
We are very excited about the opportunities that lie ahead. The Home Depot is the number one home improvement retailer in both Mexico and Canada, with 120 and 182 stores respectively. Our Canadian and Mexican businesses are great sources of ideas for the United States, and we collaborate with the teams in several areas to drive productivity and efficiency. The power of the interconnected retail strategy continues to gain traction in our international businesses as digital sites in both of these countries have recently been updated, driving both sales growth and a positive response from our customers. We're excited about the opportunity and the prospects ahead to continue the growth in both of our international markets. Where is all this growth and initiatives going to take us?
We believe that the growth opportunity and strategic framework that we've outlined will help us achieve our target of $101 billion in sales by 2018, with a 14.5% operating margin and a 35% return on invested capital. The key to attaining the $101 billion in sales is executing our plan within the framework of our culture that our founders gave us. We truly believe that if we put our customers and our associates first, everything else will take care of itself. With that, I'd like to thank you very much for attending the meeting today. At this time, be now happy to take whatever questions you may have. If you could please step to one of the microphones, we'll get started.
Hi there. Thank you very much. I'm Lindy Miller. I'm a shareholder and hopefully one day a second-generation shareholder as well.
Thank you.
I was very pleased to hear about all the growth and all of the revenue. I think it's very exciting. I also wonder how the geopolitical risks are playing into your strategy. I'd like to understand what kind of function you have to research and understand and then interact at the policy level. I didn't hear anything here about risks. You show Canada and Mexico, and yet we know fund politicians who are openly against NAFTA. I'd like to understand a little bit about how you consider geopolitical risks in your strategic planning.
Thank you very much for the question. We obviously monitor the environment. We have a small five-person team in Washington that stays connected with what's happening in the political environment. Quite candidly, we do modeling, but most of what's happening right now, quite honestly, is theory. There's nothing proposed, we look at what potentially could happen, but in our mind, it's premature to spend too much time worrying about that. The most important thing for us is to stay focused on our customer and continue to drive for them the value and the convenience that they're looking for from The Home Depot. Clearly, we try to stay in tune with what's happening. Our key focus, as it relates to Washington, is to focus on things that help create jobs and drive value for our shareholders. That's really where we put our energy.
Thank you. Yes, sir.
Good morning.
Good morning.
I'm Jack Edwards, a 30-plus year stockholder of The Home Depot. It's been great. Several years ago with the turmoil and the ouster of the then CEO, and the disposition of most of HD Supply. At the time, I thought it was a knee-jerk reaction. It was not a wise business decision. With the acquisition of Interline, I believe that some of that business is a duplication of what we had with HD Supply. Is this an admission that the disposition of HD Supply, most of HD Supply, was not a wise business decision?
Thank you for your question. I'll explain it. There were two pieces of the HD Supply business that, quite candidly, when we sold it, we didn't want to get rid of, but we had to get the deal done. One was a company called Crown Bolt that was basically built with The Home Depot to service our fastener and builder hardware aisles. It was a very nice business, and we actually were able, a couple of years ago, to get that business back from HD Supply. There was a second piece of the business that was called Maintenance Warehouse, and Maintenance Warehouse was essentially focused in the space that Interline is focused, which is hospitality, institutional, and multi-family. We would have loved to have been able to retain that piece of the business as well because it was a very nice business.
We couldn't get the deal done by holding on to that. The rest of HD Supply, quite honestly, is outside of where our expertise lies. It's a right decision to exit that business to focus on the core. When we saw the opportunity with Interline to better serve, in particular, the multi-family housing environment, which has been the majority of household growth over the last five years, it gave us capabilities that we didn't have to properly serve that pro segment of the market. We jumped at the opportunity to get back in.
Thank you.
Yep, you betcha. Yes, sir.
Good morning, Craig. My name's Gary Patton. I'm a 25-year employee.
Congratulations on the 25 years, by the way.
Thank you. I'm of store 1104, thanks to Derek and some other people. A couple of years ago, I mentioned it was closer to my house and more convenient and found myself transferred.
Awesome.
Thanks for that.
You betcha.
I'm going to talk a little bit more this time than I have before. I'm a little bit nervous. Good to see Arthur here. I do have a copy of Built from Scratch. I've got Carol's and Bernie's and Frank's and Craig's signature in it. I'd love to have your signature. I didn't think I would see you here today. I wanted to talk a little bit. You're doing a great job.
Thank you.
Everything's continuing on. We're headed toward, dare I say, $200 a share, maybe by the end of the year.
From your lips to God's ears.
I'm optimistic. From the employee standpoint I've seen a lot happen with increasing the pay of the new hires and increasing the pay of new supervisors. Those of us in the middle, kind of reminds me a little bit of the CEO that we had that I've heard mentioned out three or four times out here in a negative way this morning, about how things used to be so bad. We were thankful for Frank, and we're thankful for you that things are now going good, that he's gone. Things are going good now, and we're thankful for that. A lot of us long-term employees, I'm not dissatisfied with what I make, but I'm kind of dissatisfied with the way I see the company treating those of us in the middle, where we've got very large turnover.
We used to have turnover back in the early 90s, which I didn't understand. I thought, how could anybody leave this company? It was a great company. Customer's always right. I worked for retail, three or four other companies, they always said customer's always right. It was never true. They never acted on it. We did act on it. A manager asked me to go to Lowe's to buy something that was definitely theirs to bring back so that we could give a customer the money back on an exchange program because he insisted he bought it from us. That's how much we wanted to satisfy the customer in 92. That was the company that our founder started. Customer was always right. Now we're kind of being hollowed out from the middle. Employee of the month used to be something big for employees.
It became something to where we got a Homer badge and a plaque. Now we get a Homer badge, and that's it. I was just employee of the month two months ago, got a Homer badge, and that was the end of it. I'm not complaining about that as much as I see the middle going away. There are grocery stores in our town, Walmart in our town, that are paying the same that we're being paid, new hires. There's a lot of people, eight, nine, 10 years with the company that are leaving to go other places. The bonus, maybe you could bring the bonus back, the longevity bonus, maybe cut it in half of what it used to be. An employee just left that had been nine years with the company. He was a great employee. He's leaving next week. He's a great employee.
If you had a 10-year longevity bonus instead of the five it used to be, the $250 or something, he would probably stay. We're going to $101 billion we're looking toward. Why don't we share some of this money a little bit more with the employees? It just hurts a little bit to see the employees in the middle not being treated the way we used to be treated, and I wanted to bring that up. I know the opportunity for growth is there. To give a heads-up to Carol, and I'm sure she knows about this, the Atlanta Reserve, on the way down yesterday, I heard is estimating 4% growth this quarter. We're looking for 4% growth in the housing market. The Home Depot is best positioned in America. You said Canada and Mexico. I think we're number 1 home improvement market in America also.
That's right.
I don't know why that slide wasn't up there also. There's a lot of opportunity that I see coming, and I just, for the fifth time, want to mention that we're kind of feeling left out. My ASDS are people that, she hasn't said anything to me, but I do know that from different stores, there's a lot of turnover out there that there shouldn't be. It's hard to find employees when you're competing, I would think, with Walmart and with grocery stores, Aldi, and [the grocery store of Lowes] , and things like German stores coming in. We're bringing in 16-year-olds and stuff like that, which we didn't used to do.
Nothing against them, in a lot of ways, the culture of our company, which people here in Atlanta, in that tower over there, which I'd like to come there for lunch today, and I'd like to see the museum. I'd like to see that, too. You may not know. I just wanted to voice my opinion on that, and maybe you could think about the employee side of it a little bit more for sharing some of this great wealth that we're getting to increase the dividends. Thank you. Things like that.
Yeah. Gary, no, thank you very much for your comments. Appreciate it. There is no question. You're absolutely right. There is compression that has been taking place in the retail environment. It's something we're working on, appreciate your comments. Thank you very much. Okay. Well, it looks like that is the end of our questions. I thank you all very, very much for attending the session here today. We appreciate it. We appreciate the support as shareholders and look forward to seeing you again next year. Thank you.