It's category specific, and of course, M&A, you know, existing, anything one of the benchmarks or KPIs you're looking at is a good transaction to a done transaction or a safe trade, right? So you can't always control that environment, so if you look at getting into adjacencies, you know, one of our core competencies is product development and design, and you get into adjacencies like pet is something that we've gotten into on our own. B ut that is a good example that we're likely buying, because we don't, our brand, Farberware, phenomenal brand, does very, very well for us, but we're not gonna go and develop a line for Farberware, and we have some real lifestyle brands like S'well that we can, you know, it's gotten us a toehold, you know, into the food design, a toehold into the pet world. That's something that really our brands don't play there.
And it's something that we're better off acquired. And then, as I said, in this environment, there's tremendous opportunity to day one create a very accretive transaction by buying something where we can use our infrastructure to fold in a lot of what they've done, particularly on the sizable basis using a bigger fold-in. And there's a lot of those types of acquisitions which are highly financially accretive day one.
One of the big assets being the ability to plug and play into the distribution system, the network that you have. I assume that's a critical part of making an effective M&A strategy is to be able to fit it, to take these product lines, put them into the existing infrastructure.
Absolutely. I mean, when we acquire businesses, for instance, you know, a lot of your products are coming from overseas. And we have long-term contracts with, or freight contracts, I should say, in terms of ocean freight. And we can bring things in cheaper. So there are always synergies in that. But you don't need multiple distribution centers. You know, we have, because of our size, we're pretty much the only one in our industry that has an internal sales force. So we've got 20 people in Bentonville, in service in Walmart. So, you know, if we wanna sell products in Walmart and we get something new, even though we're in 20 different departments, we don't need to hire more people to sell to Walmart. So our distribution infrastructure, finance infrastructure, supply chain infrastructure can all be used. And it becomes tremendous financial savings opportunity.
Great. And Project Concord, for those not familiar, maybe walk through a little bit about what that is. Provide any updates if you can.
So the bulk of our business is North America. We do very well in North America. And that's the bulk of what we do. Prior to my involvement, Lifetime made three different acquisitions in Continental Europe. That was the core of our international operations. And most of that's in the U.K. When I got on board, the business was losing a lot of money. So we aimed at turning it around. And one of the things is we blew up the U.K. operation, which was 90% of our revenues internationally. But we had eight different distribution centers. So think about it. You're a retailer. And you buy from us. And you could get eight different invoices, eight different shipments. Highly cost inefficient, just highly difficult to deal with. So we blew that up. We had one build-to-suit facility.
And we got the business to a great degree of leverage, which was one of our goals. We also got rid of several hundred people where there was redundancy. And they were selling product that didn't add any gross margin. So, you know, make it up in the volume as it's spent. So we fixed that business. Then Brexit hit, which tremendously impacted the economy and the overall market in the U.K. And we went cash negative again. So we launched what we called Project Concord. And that's what you mentioned. And we talked a lot about the P&L basis, particularly in a more challenging economic environment, you know, when we were growing 20%. And there were a lot of things that were funding for growth initiatives. And the growth and the opportunity to grow internationally is real.
But Project Concord was aimed at getting our existing business as it is today to break even or eliminate the business, which frankly, if you looked at last year, you know, we would've made $9 million more in EBITDA if we didn't have that business. So we made a commitment to the public. But the Concord is actually the work that we're doing is to get to a level of break- even, run rate by this year, or we'll terminate or sell that business.
Great. Thanks. As part of the improvement, operational efficiency improvements, I know you're making some changes on the East Coast distribution center. What is that? How's that going to help? So an update there for investors.
Yeah, so basically, over the last 10 years, with a tremendous acceleration over the last five years, industrial real estate costs have gone through the roof, so if you look at our existing footprint, where our major DCs are in Robbinsville, New Jersey, which is kind of Philadelphia-ish, and Rialto, California, so Southern California, and it made sense from a distribution perspective when it was set up, but a, the cost of industrial real estate, the labor cost of the real estate in those markets have changed over years, so it's no longer cost-efficient, so we went and did analysis of where we can maximize our distribution footprint, and combined with the state of Maryland graciously offering us $18 million in incentives, are moving our large Robbinsville, New Jersey facility to the Hagerstown facility.
So that will keep us at a cost-neutral basis, but will avoid a tremendous increase in cost if we stay broken.
Great. And I'm gonna combine a couple of questions as it relates. Talk about China, of course, big topic for everybody, tariffs, everything related to that, and your overall supply chain strategy. So big question, but I'm sure you have a lot to talk about on that.
You know what answer to that.
Yeah, I'm sure.
So politics and other macroeconomic influences aside, if you were looking to make a consumer good, you're gonna make it in China. And that's why everyone from us to Apple and everyone in between is making all of their consumer products in China. There's a tremendous ecosystem and infrastructure. There's tremendous support infrastructure. And, you know, there's a tremendous supply base infrastructure. So if you're making something in China and you need a component, you could just pick up the phone and you can call 10 different factories and you can get that component made, you know, in a hurry. But the macro or the political environment has been such. And we recognized over two years ago that China and the West have, in our mind, decoupled.
The opportunity for a repeat of that decoupling in the near term or even the medium term is unlikely. Our manufacturing strategy is we don't invest in the plants because it's not the best return of capital because our manufacturing market is small. But we use third-party manufacturers. However, these third-party manufacturers that are all China-based, or the majority of them are China-based, we control 80%-100% of the output. So we're really controlling those footprints. A few years ago, we met with all these factory owners and said, "Look, you need to diversify away from China. And you need to put up the capital and the management to do so, because if you don't, that's okay. It's your choice. But we're not gonna be able to work with you anymore." Now, it's gonna cut their ties to China completely. So obviously, they all started working.
Therefore, you know, we've moved to a distributed basis, mostly in Southeast Asia. We're in Malaysia now. We're in Cambodia. We're in Indonesia. We're in Vietnam, which gets a lot of press. It's only a country—you know, these countries are only so big. But we've been in Vietnam for well over a decade. We're the largest flatware company in the world. And a lot of flatware, you know, for over a decade has been made particularly the higher quality in Vietnam. So anyway, so we distributed that footprint. As the trade war has been implemented with starts and stops and different changes, today, from a tariff perspective, China is an advantageous place. So we have been moving stuff to a lot of geographies. And we still are moving that long-term. That's where it makes sense from a geography perspective to make our goods.
But today, we're actually moving stuff out. So we had told the public we have 80% of our supply out of China by this year. And we would've been. We were on that track. But we're moving more into China now, back into China. Factories are still there, because it's cheaper, right? And we can go to where the cost is. We'll continue, but ultimately, it will continue to move out, to a distributed basis. So it limits your just supply disruption that day.
Great, and I have a few more questions. But I'll just ask one more to see if we have something from the audience. Capital allocation. When you talk about M&A, obviously, forefront in investors' minds are, you know, cost of capital, getting capital, using it in an M&A strategy. Can you discuss a little bit more about that and access to capital and how you're using it in terms of allocation?
Sure. So I'll let Larry comment on something, but you know, we have a dividend. Our intention is to maintain the dividend, and it gives, you know, good yield to people. A lot of people like it. Some people don't, but you know, that's how many dollars a year?
Two thousand, yes. Yeah, we have.
But if you look at, you know, going back to the core company, you know, we have a very established business that generates in good times and bad good cash flow. And if you look at, like, we make more can openers than anyone else in the world, right? We import maybe 10 million units of can openers a year. And, you know, just asking you, you know, times are bad or it is an inflationary environment, are you going to find your toolbox and take out a hammer and screwdriver to open a can? No. Same thing. $6 to make it $7 or $8, you're buying one of our can openers. So if you look at, you know, go back to the recession of 2008, pretty deep recession, companies still made money. Companies still generated cash, right?
You know, if you look at this year, you know, the second quarter, there was a huge disruption when tariffs went up to 145%. You know, everyone shut down. And you know, Liberation Day, right? You know, we still generated plenty of cash. So you know, our cash flow is very dependable. Our ability to borrow money from the bank at a very reasonable basis in the debt market is very, very easy. You know, nothing's easy, and we have ready access to capital. You know, we're very focused. We own over 40% of the stock. You know, we're not looking at selling stock for $4 because we think that the inherent value of our stock is way above that. So we think that's not in, you know, stakeholders' best interest. But ultimately, we will increase the liquidity of the stock by getting more stock out there.
You know, the float isn't great when you're in 42%. So, you know, we think that M&A is a good use of capital. We are an asset-light model. So there's not much capital that we need. We'll pump up a little in terms of capital expense because of the new distribution facility that we were just talking about.
Of course, that. No, I mean, I would say all the same things. But I would just reiterate, you know, we're not gonna be innovative like a technology company. We're not gonna grow 20% organically. It'll be low growth but very predictable cash flow. Our products are not expensive for the consumer. Low, very low CapEx. Maintenance CapEx is $2.5 million a year, which is good. So we have predictable cash flow. One thing I'll add, you know, we talked about is that we have the ability to deleverage. And, you know, we start talking to people today, "Why is your stock price so low?" Part of it is because perhaps part of it is leverage. So we had a goal to keep our leverage below 3. We did it in 2021. As a matter of fact, we got as low as 2.4.
Our EBITDA has been down, which is hurt. But we continue to generate cash flow. So that's very predictable. So you can sleep at night, you know. We took a better capital allocation. We did buy back stock because the stock price was, we felt, quite low, a few years ago. But there are restrictions on the credit agreements that limit our ability to do that.
I'll just add one thing, you know. So our core consumer business, right, is the GBB bundles. But there's, you know, we've launched into food service, which is gonna grow from nothing to $50 million over the next couple of years. M&A is not. There's a lot of things that will give us an above-average growth. And in this market, when there's a lot of unrest in our end markets, we continue to grow market share. We'll continue to do so. And when there's a rebound, we'll believe we're at a trough. And when there's a rebound, and with that market share, right, we will grow more than the market.
Great. Thank you. Thanks for everything, Rob. Thanks, Rob. Any questions from the audience? Or I can ask one more. Anybody have anything they wanna touch on? Okay. Oh, go ahead. Actually, what were the terms with the state of Maryland?
So, basically, most of it's state, some of it local. Gave us incentives of around $13 million. Most of it is tax and employment related.
So I'll just leave with one more question. What are you guys most excited about? And if you look at it from an investor perspective, you know, it's not really a milestone business necessarily. But if you were to tell somebody these are the key things over the next four quarters that are happening at the company that you need to look for and pay attention to, what would you say they are?
That's a good question, Sean. So really, you know, it's a very disruptive market right now. So we've taken more of a defensive posture and positioned ourselves as things rebound. We're gonna, you know, get much better than average growth. So, you know, if like a year or two ago, you know, we were launching, we're always looking at newness, right? New product innovation. You know, we are agnostic to where the consumer shops. So, you know, we wanna be everywhere. And we always talked about that. But we weren't in the dollar channel. So, we figured, how do we get to the dollar channel and actually make good margin? And we launched with Dollar General because we came up with Dolly Parton, who's just got the most amazing brand equity. You know, people on the far right, people on the far left, you know, everyone loves this lady.
And so we created the whole line. We're in many categories. So it's four of our different categories. And it got us into Dollar General. We're very excited about that. We believe that'll get from, you know, last year we did four.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah. And you know, we think we said we believe that's a $40 million opportunity, and you get other brands. We're in all 24,000 stores, and if you want, it's a public company. Go on Dollar General. Look at their press release. They talk about Dollar General Dolly Parton.
Mm-hmm.
Dollar General pretty much on every press release. It's, you know, they've told us and we've seen it. It's the best product release they've ever done. Again, four different categories. We continue to introduce there. It's a huge new opportunity. That's a, all plus one, right? So we're going from nothing. And, and like I said, we're in all 24,000 stores. And we continue to do so. So that's a very, very exciting opportunity for us. And we continue to do so. And look, we're always trying to, even in this market, you know, we've, we've rearranged a little bit. But we're always trying to innovate. You know, we last year launched something called Build-A-Board by Farberware. And, you know, we're always looking at what's new. So we looked at charcuterie. And charcuterie, we saw it's got this tremendous social media following.
So we launched this basically, we make with a big cutting board. So it's a cutting board with a cover, you know, and you can bring stuff with you. And you look at it online. It's Build-A-Board by Farberware. It's gone through the roof. We can't keep it in stock. And we're selling a tremendous amount except our largest customer, Walmart, hasn't bought it yet. And it continues to grow. And we're now bringing that internationally. So these, you know, plus one opportunities when we bring newness to the market. Or those are the fun stuff. You know, again, a lot of stuff we do is boring, you know. You go into your kitchen drawer and you open it up. And you're gonna find one of our churns or spoons or stuff like that. That's, you know, bulk of what we do.
You know, the other stuff is a lot more fun.
Great. Thank you, gentlemen. That'll wrap it up for today. Appreciate your time. Thanks, Larry. Thanks, Rob.
Thanks, Sean.
Thank you.
I appreciate it.
Good. Thanks, Sean. Thank you.