Good morning and welcome to Snap-on Incorporated's 2025 Annual Meeting of Shareholders. I am Richard Miller, Vice President, General Counsel, and Secretary of Snap-on, and I will serve as today's parliamentarian. I would like to ask that everybody please silence or turn off your cell phones. Today's meeting is being webcast and recorded. Shortly after the meeting, a replay will be available on snapon.com. I now call the 2025 Annual Meeting of Shareholders to order. We have made the order of business and rules of order available, and I would like to ask that everybody please abide by those rules. It is now 10:03 A.M. on April 24th, 2025, and the polls are officially open. If anyone has not yet voted and would like to do so, cast your vote.
You can ask Abby Cowarth and Fred Papenmeier of Computershare, who are here as our inspectors of election, and they will help you do so. They are in the back of the room. All of the members of our Board of Directors are in attendance at today's meeting. If you could please stand when I call your name. David Adams, Director since 2016 and retired Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer of Curtiss-Wright Corporation. Karen Daniel, Director since 2005 and retired Division President and Chief Financial Officer of Black & Veatch Corporation. Ruth Ann Gillis, Director since 2014 and retired Executive Vice President and Chief Administrative Officer of Exelon Corporation. James Holden, Director since 2007, Snap-on's Lead Director and retired President and Chief Executive Officer of Dana Corporation. Nathan Jones, Director since 2008 and retired President, Worldwide Commercial and Consumer Equipment Division of Deere & Company.
Henry Knueppel, Director since 2011 and retired Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer of Regal Beloit Corporation. W. Dudley Lahman, Director since 2003 and retired Group President of Kimberly-Clark Corporation. Greg M. Sherrill, Director since 2010 and retired Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer of Tecumseh Products Company. Donald Stebbins, Director since 2015 and retired President and Chief Executive Officer of Superior Industries International Inc. Nick Pinchuk, Director since 2007, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Snap-on. Nick will present an update on the company's performance and progress at the end of our meeting. Also here today from Deloitte & Touche LLP, our auditors, are James Stewart and Eric Grundman. They will be available at the end of the meeting to answer any questions. We have an affidavit that notice of the meeting was mailed. As required, it will be incorporated into the meeting minutes.
Since all of the shareholders have had an opportunity to vote, will the inspectors of election please confirm that the ballots have been counted? Thank you, Abby. It is now 10:05 A.M., and the polls are officially closed. 52,417,769 shares of common stock, each having one vote on each proposal, are entitled to vote at the meeting. I've been advised that 88% of the outstanding shares are present, and therefore we have a quorum. Voting results are stated as a percentage of the stock represented unless otherwise stated. We have three items on today's agenda. The first is the election of our directors. The board nominated the following candidates to serve until the 2026 Annual Meeting: David C. Adams, Karen L. Daniel, Ruth Ann M. Gillis, James P. Holden, Nathan J. Jones, Henry W. Knueppel, W. Dudley Lahman, Nicholas D. Pinchuk, Greg M. Sherrill, and Donald J. Stebbins.
Each of those directors received at least 76% of the shares represented, and therefore they have all been elected. Our second item on the agenda is the ratification of the audit committee's selection of Deloitte & Touche as the company's independent registered public accounting firm for 2005. Over 87% of the shares represented voted in favor, and therefore the recommendation of Deloitte & Touche has been ratified. The final item for business is the advisory vote on compensation of Snap-on's named executive officers as presented in the proxy statement. Over 96% of the votes cast voted in approval of the compensation of the named executive officers and is thereby approved. This completes the official business today. It is now 10:07 A.M., and the meeting is adjourned. We will now watch a brief video about the company. Enjoy.
All we know, the lives we live, the homes we build, the comforts we enjoy, the choices we make, the ideas we pursue, the hopes we hold, and the dreams we dare are all shaped by work. We are the people of that work. We reach the many. We meet the critical, solving the common and the unique.
I was dealing with a lot of corroded fasteners, struggling to get them off. John came by the shop. He's like, "Oh, well, our saw cuts are 10 times better. Use them the very next day." They've cut my work in half.
We cover such a wide range of tools, and our hands are in every category.
Everything from diagnostics down to the simple dead blow hammer.
To ratchets to cordless items to diagnostic tools and shop equipment.
Or the stubby little torques that we need to get in to get that tight spot.
Really, the range of tools is endless as far as I'm concerned.
We support our customers like Space exploration, Blue Origin, Lockheed, and Boeing. Every situation has a different challenge that's critical. Our customized kits match the tools to the task, and our customers say it makes all the difference.
We make the essential reliable.
You can feel the difference. You can feel the quality.
Snap-on tools, the quality. They always work.
It just makes my job go a lot easier and more efficient.
The product is amazing.
If you don't know where your tools are, there's a potential risk that the tool becomes foreign object damage. Snap-on's ATC systems solve the problem.
We summon the new out of the now, moving the world forward.
I love the innovation that Snap-on has. We're always testing the waters. We're always pushing the boundaries.
The innovation Snap-on's products have, quite a few exciting tools that have definitely helped me in the course of my career.
The new technology that Snap-on's coming out with, no other company has it, and just having that technology alone sells it to the customer.
The CT 9038, the stubby impact gun, that's been a big seller as well. Guys like the fact they have all that power in a confined space.
I love the long neck quarter-inch electric ratchet. I take that thing everywhere. I love that tool.
This is called the CTR 868. Let's just say, for example, you're doing brakes, you're breaking caliper bolt sleeves, you're breaking caliper bracket bolt sleeves.
Different jobs require different tools. If you're going to take a side detection module out of a rear bumper, you're going to need something that gets in that tight corner. Otherwise, you're going to take the bumper off. Without them tighter tools that you can get in there and access it, you're tearing a bumper off, and that takes more time.
Being on the agricultural side of the United States, Snap-on has it covered with the variety of tools that we offer. Working on anything from big tractors to semis to big trucks, we have a tool for every job to get every job done.
One of the favorite tools in my tool cart is three-eighths drive flex head ratchet and a quarter-inch drive body. That thing allows me to get into really tight spaces. Because of how strong the material is that Snap-on uses to make their tools, I can really put some torque behind it and not worry about it failing on me.
The infrared tools, finding shorts and something as simple as a radio in a truck, drawing the battery down and taking the infrared tool and seeing what's warm, what's drawing power. Things like that are essential to us.
We do things other companies, our competitors, can't touch. Either they don't want to, they don't know how to, or they just don't care.
I truly believe that my customers are able to be more successful at their jobs just by the tools that I provide them.
Being a commission technician, time is money. The tool that you're using and grabbing, you get a count on. That's why the investment in Snap-on is so important.
The guys lack for nothing when it comes to equipment. When they need something, they ask and get it. I like to believe that we're the gold standard when it comes to buying a car. Obviously, Snap-on is the gold standard when it comes to tools. We appreciate the service. We appreciate the quality of it. It's a partnership.
Having the right tool helps the shop operate faster, more efficient, which allows me to do other things and our technicians to move on to the next job and just makes our day-to-day life a lot easier.
We signify the serious.
For example, NASA. They choose Snap-on. They have anybody in the world to choose from, and they choose Snap-on tools.
We mark the professional.
Knowing that I possess skills that a very small percentage of the population has, and I know every day is going to be a challenge, that's what keeps me going.
I grew up in the shop. My dad has a small independent repair shop.
I've been buying Snap-on tools for 38 years now, and I'm still doing it.
There was no daycare. Daycare for me was, seeing Dad and just seeing him take a car, help him push it in, and drive it out. It still excites me. Really, I kind of idolize him. Even to this day, I still idolize him.
I'm very happy that he followed my footsteps.
This job isn't easy at all, but I get such joy in being able to solve a problem and get a customer back on the road and get their vehicle fixed properly and in a timely manner. Snap-on has every tool I've ever needed.
When we see our customers struggling with a special problem, we use that insight to design a tool to solve the problem.
We prevail in difficulty, and we proceed with confidence.
Times are tough in today's world, but people count on Snap-on because they know that they're buying the best.
It's hard to keep up with everything happening in today's world, but Snap-on gives me confidence now and in the future.
Having the right tools for the exact jobs that I need, it just makes it so much easier.
This is the tool that I grab first thing out of my toolbox, and it doesn't go back in until I go home at night. These are so valuable just because they're so lightweight and they're powerful, and the batteries last forever. The quality of the tool pays off.
I always seem to find something on the truck I can't live without, and it makes my job quicker and easier.
One thing with using Snap-on is I never have to worry about my tool. There's always that security of, okay, I know I have what I need.
We are the people of work.
I wanted to go into business for myself, and I knew Snap-on was a great segue to do that. Twenty-three years later, it's proven to be good. I am very proud to be part of the Snap-on family.
We have expanded our operations because we know the demand for our tools will grow as the world becomes more complex.
We get up every day and think about how we can do better. We get together in our CI teams and really make it happen. It makes me proud that we pave our own future.
We enable hands.
You can feel the difference. You can feel the quality. You can feel the fineness of the teeth. You can feel the screwdrivers, the way they feel in your hand. You always want to make sure that you're using quality tools to make your life easier.
We engage minds.
Technology has always been paramount in wheel alignment. It's a complex spatial relationship, and Snap-on has the decoder for every car's problems.
I enjoy what I do, so it makes it easy to get up in the morning and know that when I go to work, more often than not, I'm going to actually make a customer's day.
We enlist hearts.
A lot of dreams have come true for me now that I'm in Snap-on and being a franchise. I got to build the building of my dreams. If I wouldn't have been with Snap-on, I know that I wouldn't have been able to do that. Snap-on has been very good to my family and I.
I started at Snap-on in 1974. It feels good for me and for this plant to know that Snap-on boxes are helping mechanics and they're helping the service members. We see them everywhere. We build them for just about every different industry. It makes me proud.
We are Snap-on, and we make a difference.
We make a difference.
We make a difference.
We make a difference.
We make a difference.
We make a difference.
We make a difference.
Every day.
Every day.
Every day.
Every day.
Every day.
Every day.
Every day.
Every day.
Wowza. You know, every time I see that video, it gives me chills. Gene Householder. We see our equipment, we see our boxes all over. It makes me proud. Makes me proud to see her. Look, welcome, everybody, to our—what is it?—our 2025 annual shareholders meeting. You know, I always love these meetings. You know, it's fun to come here, see old friends, meet new people. It is always a great event. My job here is to, of course, report to you on the status of Snap-on. You know, wow, these are interesting times. I do not think we have seen uncertainty like this in a long time, but I am here to tell you without equivocation, without qualification, without question that your company, our company, my company, all of our companies is still strong. I am going to tell you about that in the next several minutes.
It's a story of unusual uncertainty and angst, I suppose, all over this nation and all over the world. It's also a tale of the tremendous strength that your company has. It's a tale of the idea of our resilient business models that are rooted in the critical. It's a tale of the, I guess, the extraordinary strengths and advantages that we have. Most of all, it's a tale of the capability and commitment and energy and possibilities of our team. You know, it's going to take a long time, but I hope for me to speak, but I hope that when you go away from here, you will carry one thing. If you carry anything, you'll carry this: that Snap-on is a company that is built to prevail in difficulty.
Because we know of the advantages that we have and we see the people who sit around us in this room, we proceed with confidence for whatever eventualities may come. Before I do that, I think I'm going to take a moment to recognize a particular strength that we have, which people always do not recognize. It seems structural. One of our strengths is our board of directors. By enlisting their eminence in our enterprise, they demonstrate to the world that this is truly a special company. People know Snap-on is a strong company simply by looking at the array of our board of directors. By lending their experience to us on a regular basis, they help guide us through any fog.
I think probably the most important thing for the people in this room is by the commitment to all things that means that is Snap-on, they reaffirm to us that we are in a special place, and they're sharing it with us. Ladies and gentlemen, one of our greatest strengths, the board of directors, let's give them a round of applause or down here. Before I start to say anything else, I have to show you this cautionary statement here. I've been told by my attorneys to look at it, read it very carefully. That's enough. Okay, let's go on to the next thing. Did you notice, by the way, that I was asked to show the cautionary statement after I made the comments about the board of directors? You know, that means that what I'm saying about them, you can take as absolute truth.
Okay, look, Snap-on, one of the things that distinguishes Snap-on, and I know a lot of companies, I've been in some great ones in my life, but Snap-on is distinguished by the fact that we know who we are. We actually know really well who we are. Part of the reason why is we remind ourselves every time by placing these placards in almost every major room in the company. It says, it makes a statement that we make the most valuable productivity solutions in the world and talks about our belief, and we believe in safety, keeping ourselves safe and our customers safe. It's very important. We believe in quality because people depend on the repeatability and reliability of Snap-on.
We believe in customer connection because we have a great advantage because we are in the workplaces for more hours, for more days than any other company on this planet. We take that insight and create innovation. Innovations, otherwise known as products, that solve critical problems and make work easier, makes work easier and move the world forward. Most, probably most important, among the most important of these things is we believe in improvement, rapid continuous improvement. We get up every day and try to make sure that we do today better than we did yesterday. This is written in the black letter law of Snap-on, and it is written on our shorts. What we know is that we do not proceed by transformative items, by any particular technology that delivers us from evil. We proceed by our own hand applied every day, and we believe in it.
We have certain values. You know, these values, I think, to be part of the human race. You know, we believe in integrity and truth and respect and teamwork. We believe in listening to people. You know, we have an aspiration. We have our goals. Really, it's about we want to be the partner of choice for all we touch. See, we know who we are in all of those aspects. Now, this is the 105th year of Snap-on. It was founded all those years ago. You've heard the story. Some of you may not. I am going to tell it again because I love telling it. You know, the idea was we were founded in 1920. In 1920, there were seven and a half million vehicles on the road. For your information, there are like 288 million vehicles on the road today.
It was very different. No one knew what a mechanic's skills would be or what tools they were going to use. Comes an engineer from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and he gets the idea to put five handles of different dimensions, different configurations, a T and ellipse, a crank, and puts them together with 10 sockets of different dimensions and fashions them so they snap on interchangeably. They say these five tools do the work of 50, and they did, and they revolutionized tool sets all over this nation. He made them of highest quality steel. You can see them in the museum. If you picked one up, you'd realize, boy, if you put yourself back in 1920, this would be, you can imagine, this is high quality steel. He did something. He did something that's worthwhile of hushed tones.
He laid those tools out, those 10 handles and those five handles and 10 sockets on green felt as if they were as precious as surgeon's knives, telling his salesmen not to go through distributors, but to go right into the garage, right to the work, and lay those tools out on a green felt, implying that if the technician used those tools, he would declare to the world he was doing something as special as a surgeon. The idea that Snap-on tools, the use of Snap-on tools or the display of the Snap-on brand is the outward sign of the pride and dignity working men and women take in their profession is with us today. You see, we say it really did start with a spark, and the spark was an idea. Five do the work of 50.
The idea forged a dream, the Snap-on company, and the dream shaped lives, and it reached across a nation and a world, and so it was. We are the stewards of that spark and the keepers of that dream. That is part of the theme of the video. It focuses on the makers and fixers. You know, this company was founded 105 years ago, and we still have, it was founded by four men that were the founders. One of the cool things about Snap-on is we have living links to our founders every time we have meetings like this. It is one of the real advantages. Not many companies are able to do this. We have a few of them here in our audience right with us. I would like to introduce some of them to you.
One of the founders, the second president of Snap-on, was Stanton Palmer. Stan Palmer was the second president. He was one of the most influential people in the corporation. He was president for 10 years. We have his great grandsons with us, Blake and Aiden Callahan. They're right here in the audience. Stand up, gentlemen. Let's give them a round of applause. I don't know, the representatives of the founders are getting younger. This isn't a, I don't know, isn't a good, but we have also Joe Johnson, the guy who had the original idea, five do the work of 50. We have his great, his grandson here with us, who's often with us, Greg and Kathy Johnson, and his wife, Kathy, Greg and Kathy Johnson. Greg was with us for almost 30 years.
He worked in Australia for Snap-on after in the United States, came back and was the Vice President and Controller when he left. Greg and Kathy, our old friends, stand up. Let's give them a round of applause. Thanks for being with us. You know, this company was founded on a timeless principle, the respect for the dignity of work, enlisted in making work easier for serious professionals and moving the world forward, a cause that is as relevant today as it was 105 years ago. That was what the video was about, the makers and fixers. We saw all that testimony about what it meant to those people, associates and franchisees and customers to be part of the Snap-on nation. I love the video. I love the words of the video. I think it kind of places it in perspective.
You know, all we know, the lives we live, the homes we build, the choices we make, the comforts we enjoy, and the ideas we pursue, the hopes we hold, and the dreams we dare are all shaped by work. If there's anything at the bedrock of this company, it's the importance of the makers and fixers. You can see it in the words that are causing us problems now, but in reality, the idea of building the makers and fixers of America is a gigantic good, and it's a gigantic strength. When you hear this video and you hear these people talk about the idea of the hopes we hold and the dreams we dare, I start to get chills about this. I think everybody who's Snap-on gets chills. This video rings with truth, and it echoes with emotion for all of us.
We do not, as I announce every time at these meetings, we do not make these videos with outside firms. This video was written, directed, and produced by the Snap-on production team, and they're here with us. I'd like you to recognize them now. Ms. Bridget Correa back here and Sam Bottum here. Stand up. You know, as we proceed and as we live today, I talked about the idea we're able to stand tall in a storm. One of the reasons is we leverage our inherent advantages and advantages built up over the years and advantages in which we keep investing in today. We leverage our advantages in product and brand and in people. We have advantages in product, and you can see it. It's reaffirmed all the time. We have 85,000 SKUs. Almost no one has that many SKUs as a manufacturer.
We do because we're the masters of small, small production runs. You look at this. This year, we were recognized by a number of external publications. You know, Motor Magazine recognized our Solus+ among other products as one of the top tools of 2020, last year, 2024. The P10, the Professional Tool and Equipment News and Innovation Awards, recognized our Cummins software. That same magazine, P10, has a People's Choice. The best of that, we had a dozen of those awards, things like our Cloud9, particularly Epic Toolbox was awarded. We have particular strength in product. We also have a strength in brand. Like I said, Snap-on brand is the outward sign of the pride and dignity of working men and women using it, taking their profession, and you can see it here. It goes throughout life.
For example, people put Snap-on on their cakes for their birthdays. You can see it here. I have many of these pictures. People tattoo with Snap-on. Some of our board members have sat next to people with Snap-on tattoos. I know this for a fact. Other people do have Snap-on tattoos that you might not think. People put Snap-on in their weddings. They get married on Snap-on trucks in front of Snap-on boxes. In front of, we have weddings, not weddings itself, but the bride and groom roll up here and get their picture taken in front of our monument in front here. People put Snap-on wrenches in the hands of their newborns, believing that because the family believes that whatever the child, the newborn touches first will influence their life for better or worse. They choose Snap-on as the thing that should touch them.
We have people regularly ask us to give them boxes, smaller boxes, so they can enshrine their loved one's ashes in them. We have here one of the latest. I just got one yesterday, actually, but one of the latest just before that, Heather Kremer of Ocean City, Maryland. I'm going to tell you about her later. Our brand is still strong. We have, I would call it a defining brand. It literally defines who are the serious professionals. Our product enables people to make work easier, and our team is differentiating. This is a picture of, I think it's the Elizabethan with its 50th anniversary. We have a terrific group of people, you know, and we have people of great, one of the things about Snap-on, the Snap-on team, capable, committed, energetic, but also experienced.
We have some of our more experienced people here with us. I'd like to recognize, first, I'd like to recognize Kai Kazarian, who's the Director of Sponsorship and Events for the Tools Group. Kai, stand up, please. I'd like to recognize Lynn. Save it for the end. Save it for the end. Okay, you can applaud. Go ahead. Give them some applause. Okay, thank you. Thank you. We'll do it this way. Okay. Lynn Ernst, who is, Kai's been with us, by the way, 43 years. Lynn Ernst has been with us 47 years, and she's the Supervisor of Item Master right here in this building. Lynn, please stand up. This Lynn kind of reminds me of a particular rocky time when I came here because I remember for the first six months, I thought Item Master was a person.
I didn't realize it was a computer program or something like that. It was pretty embarrassing when I found out. And then we have Mr. Gary Henning. Stand up, Gary Henning, 51 years with Snap-on. Who's had his, who's basically, I would characterize him as the metallurgical magician of Kenosha, who has had his hands on virtually all our operations throughout this organization. So 51 years, I think he deserves another round of applause. Give him. Okay, that's sort of our strengths and what we leverage. Let's talk about moving forward. We will talk about what happened in 2004, 2024. I can tell you it's the tagline there. I think the best description is we prevailed in the difficulty, and there was difficulty. You know, what's up with the new Coke? You know what's on here? It says dude. Have you noticed the new Diet Cokes?
They got dude on here. I don't know. What does it mean? All I know is mine says dude. Rich Miller says, recycle me. I don't know what that means. Isn't it? It's kind of crazy. I don't know. I saw one the other day. It said sis. Then the other one said partner. I have to find out about that. Maybe we're missing something in terms of marketing. Okay. Anyway, when we look back to last year, you know what? It was a difficult year. I am telling you this year, before we heard of things called tariffs, there was a lot of uncertainty. There were two wars at the Middle East and two hot wars, by the way. There was a sort of half war with the Houthis.
There was a tick for talk with China. People were looking at prices and saying, hey, beef is up 44% before pre-pandemic levels. Is it ever going to go down? There was uncertainty, and that daunted the idea in our van business. Therefore, technicians were, you know, reluctant to invest in what we would call bigger ticket items and tie themselves to longer paybacks. There was a kind of shift. The tools group pivoted for that and tried to pivot toward, you know, quicker payback items to match technician preferences that it did, but they could not completely keep up. There was that kind of downtick, particularly in the tools group. CNI and RSNI had pretty good years, so we created that balance. The net of it was that in 2023, our sales were $4.73 billion. That is $4,730 million.
Last year was $4.71, down slightly. If you look at the OI margin, it was a little bit better. The operating income margin, that is the amount of money we made on every dollar of sales. In 2023, it was 22%. Last year was 22.7%. There were some things like, you know, legal settlement in this situation, but it was still pretty good in terms of the turbulence. That was contributed and created, I believe, and I know, and I'm confident by our management team. I'd like to introduce them to you now. First, right here in the first row. I can't see that well. There's a lot of glare coming out of there. Okay. Our Senior Vice President of Finance and Chief Financial Officer and my friend of over 40 years, Mr.
Aldo Pagliari. Stand up, please. From Scranton, Pennsylvania, by the way. We used to announce that when Joe Biden was president. It's no longer so much cachet. Okay. Now from South Jersey, the Senior Vice President and President of the Repair Systems and Information Group, Mr. Tom Ward. Now from Kenosha, Wisconsin, a lady who from this moment on is raised to the title of Senior Vice President, Human Resources, and Chief Development Officer, Ms. Mary Bowersmith. Hail to the chief. Now, Mary, stand up again. Give her another round of applause. You don't become a chief very often. Not loud enough. Louder. Mary, do you have a lunch later? You know, Mary's always out to lunch with somebody. You know, she's kind of the Secretary of State for Snap-on. Okay. Why are you laughing, Tim? You're the guy who's down. You know? Okay.
You should be hoping we have a little distraction today. All right. Now, from parts unknown, which is Iowa, the Senior Vice President of Snap-on and the President of the Tools Group, Mr. Tim Chambers. He was thinking about wearing a mask today, so he couldn't be identified. Okay. Next to him, from the best country of Spain, the President of the Commercial Group, Mr. Jesus Arregui. Rumored to be on the short list for pope, since you don't have to be a priest to be that. We're not sure. Okay. I always do this every year. I apologize because I am so happy that I can introduce the next guy because for several years, he couldn't come because he was in quarantine in China. From Shanghai, China, the President of our Asia-Pacific operation, live in the Forge, Mr. James Ong.
Next to him, the President of our Repair Systems Group business, Mr. John Wolf, who once again, I have to announce or remind everybody, holds an all-time record that will stand forever, will stand forever for the Marquette Warriors basketball team. Unbelievable. He scored the last points in the decade of the 1980s. Of course, I think that might have been the only points he scored. John Wolf, please. I am not going to ask him to stand, but I am going to roll down. We have Sam Bottum, our Chief Marketing Officer. We have June Lemmer, our Chief Information Officer. Then we have Raul Colon, the master of ceremonies and Vice President of ESG. Let's give them a round of applause. Sam, I was going to stand you up, but you only get one in this meeting, right? Okay.
Those are the folks of last year. If you look at it in trend, it looks pretty good. If you go back to 2011 and you look at our sales, back to 2011 was not that long ago. I remember it pretty well. At that time, our sales were $2,850 million, $2.85. Next year was $2.94. Then it was $3.06. Then it was $3.28. Then it was $3.35. Then it was $3.43. Then it was $3.69. Then it was $3.74. That is $3,740 million. Then it was $3.73. The pandemic hit, went down to $3.59, and we roared out of that $4,250 million, $449, $473, and the aforementioned $471. If you look at the profitability, remember I said the profitability was 22.7% last year, but it started out all that time ago at 14.5% in 2011. Was not that long ago.
It went to 15.2, and then to 15.8, and then to 16.6, and then to 18.1, and then to 19.3, and 19.3, and 19.4, and 19.2. In the pandemic, it went down to 17.6, but we came roaring out again, 20 flat. Sounds like a racetrack time. 20 flat, then 20.9, then 22.0, then 22.7. You know, when you think back and you look at this history, you think about those who were here before. I think sometimes about the presidents. We have representatives. We have former presidents or former representatives of former presidents here with us. Let's focus on the seventh president who put us on the New York Stock Exchange, Mr. Norm Lutz. We have his daughter, Susan Lutz Kenyon, and her husband, Bill Kenyon, all the way from Libertyville, Illinois, right here. Stand up.
Take a round of applause. Now, I have to introduce a man who needs no introduction. The man who gave us and taught us who we are. The man who took the fence down around this campus and changed it physically. The man who coined the name rapid continuous improvement, and the man who saved Snap-on when it was at its weakest moment. I'd like to introduce to you my former boss, my current counselor, and my ongoing friend. Welcome back, Mr. Jack Duane Michaels. Jack, stand up. No change. No change over all these years, Jack. You know what I mean? No change at all. Okay. We talked about those numbers. Let's talk about the earnings per share. The earnings per share in 2022 were $18.76. Last year, they were $19.51. There was some legal benefit in this, but it's still up.
This was up 4%. If you look at the trend of earnings per share, again, it looks pretty good. If you go all the way back to that 2011, I think is what we're showing here, it was $4.71. Then it was $5.20. Then I think $5.93, right? Then it was $7.14. Then it was $8.10. Then it was $11.87. Then it was $12.41. Then it was $11.44. That was in the pandemic. Then it rolled up to $14.92, $16.82, $18.76, and most recently, as I said, $1951, $19.51, up 41%. The people who contributed to this are retirees. We say we stand on their shoulders. We have several of them back here. I'd like to introduce them to you because they've come back.
We always love the retirees to come back because we owe them so much for the legacy they give us. First, let's have them stand up all together. Terry Pringle, who was the Director of HR for the Tools Group, she was with us 37 years. Then we have Rich Shepard, who was with us 38 years, who was with the Diagnostics Group. Then we have Kurt Sauer, another metal magician. Stand up, everybody, and let's give them a round of applause. Thank you all. We stand on your shoulders. All of this, all this trend, the trend of sales, the trend of OI margin, the trend of EPS allows us to pay a dividend, to return something to our shareholders. You can see the dividend trend here.
If you go back to 2011, it was $1.30, then $1.40, then $1.58, then $1.85, then $2.20, then $2.54, then $2.95, then $3.41, $3.93, $4.47, $5.11, $5.88, $6.72, and $7.72, up 15%. 15.1%. I do not want to miss that 0.1. This is a great event. We have some other people who helped us make this, and I want to point out they are here with us, my old friends. Over here, the former General Counsel of Snap-on, Mr. Erwin Scher, Mr. I.M. Scher. Please stand up. Let's give him a round of applause. A friend of mine also for 40 years, the former President of the Tools Group, a guy who knows that whatever happens, it will be good for Snap-on, Mr. Tom Kassouf. These are the numbers in the past. Let's look out for a minute here.
I think we can say here that one of the things that gives us opportunity in the future is the fact that that dividend was uninterrupted and unreduced. We have paid a dividend since 1939, and we have paid one every quarter since 1939, and we have never reduced it, which means it's the most, it's the longest, we believe, it's the longest record of unreduced, uninterrupted dividends on the New York Stock Exchange. If anything gives people confidence in the future of Snap-on, it's looking back in the past and seeing that dividend because we're able to do that from heck or high water. This is high water, so they have to have confidence in us. Now, let's look at where we think we're going in the future. I think this is it.
Because we have certain strengths, because we have these strengths, we believe we proceed with great confidence. One of the strengths we have, actually, is the support of our communities. You might not think of that, but we have great support for our communities, and we have community leaders here with us. We have David Bogdalla, who is the mayor of Kenosha. We have John Morsey, who is the city manager. We have Samantha Kirkland, who is the county executive. We have Stella Riff, who is the head of CABA. We have John Swallow, the president of Carthage. We have Jeff Hill from Hertzinger. We have Lynn Agee from Parkside, the president of Parkside. Let's give them a round of applause. Thank you all for your support. Thank you all for your support.
When we move forward, we like to say we have runways for growth and runways for improvement. One of our runways for improvement has to do with what we call Snap-on value creation. These are a set of processes which we believe if we invest our energy and our capital in, we will move forward: safety, quality, customer connection, innovation, and rapid continuous improvement. Let's talk about safety. You know, investors ask me all the time, "What do you worry about safety?" You do worry about safety because if you keep your people safe, this is good for the corporation. If you make tools for working men and women and you can't keep your own people safe, what does it say about their own safety when they use your tools? We think this is important.
Our safety record's been pretty good. You look over since 2005, people at Snap-on are 90% less likely to have an accident than they were then. Last year, 92 over 121 locations had no lost-time accidents. We think of quality. Quality is important for Snap-on because it's a company that inherently is about repeatability and reliability. This is an important thing for us. We think about that. There are a lot of ways to measure quality. You could do factory-critical defects, assembly-critical defects, a lot of different things. We like to ask the actual customers. We sent Frost & Sullivan, an independent agency, out to ask the customers again this year. They asked them questions about, "What's your first choice for a tool? Which tool do you think is the—which tool company do you think is the most innovative?
Which has the highest quality? And which will make work easier? In each one of these cases, the number one company was Snap-on. At around 60% of the people choosing us first. And the number two company was in the 10-13% range. So quality is still alive and well here. But one of the most important things we have in this is customer connection. I said we're in the garage observing the work. And this is one of our key principal value-creating mechanisms. And we have so many ways to do this. We have 4,700 franchisees who call on working men and women every day. And in fact, we call on almost 1 million technicians, vehicle mechanics, and mechanics who do repair work every week. 1 million every week. It's why we're always asked about the economy because we're right in touch with this.
It is not being in touch with the economy. It is being in touch with the work. We have several direct sales forces that add to those vans. We have a database of 3 billion repair events by which we can guide technicians in terms of big data analysis. When they are looking at a car and they say the car is saying this, what is wrong, they do not have to spend a lot of time thinking about it. They only have to refer to our database, and we will tell them what the likely problems are. We call on—we are in 3,700 technical or vocational schools. This place, the innovation work, gets more than 4,000 visitors every year. This is touching the customer. It is connecting with the customer. That creates insight, which allows us to be innovative and bring out new tools.
By that observation of the work, we say, "What can we help? How can we help people, whether it's a piece of software or a wrench?" Snap-on has a—let's look at innovation. Innovation shows a bunch of different products, and it comes back to engineering. Back here, I have some of our engineers. I have Jordan Krebs. Stand up, Jordan Krebs from Conway, Arkansas. He's a product manager down there, and he helped design the V4400 here. I have Maktar Syed, the director of engineering for the diagnostic groups who helped design the Apollo and worked on the Apollo Plus, the quickest payback entry to the Intelligent Diagnostic Orb. In other words, the use of that database I just described. We have Matt Werber from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, who's an engineering manager at Milwaukee and the three-position slip joint pliers, which they helped design.
Milwaukee has been a great place in that. I have Nick Gabby, who is the advanced research administrator and has helped a number of things in the tools group when we have up here the flip-top toolbox. Now, all four of you, stand up. Let's give them a round of applause. Engineers at the light road. Safety, quality, customer connection, innovation, and rapid continuous improvement. Let's talk about rapid continuous improvement. If you doubt the value of this, look at this range. Where do we come from? 6.5% in 2006 or 2005 to 22.7% last year? This is 1,620 basis points. In other words, Snap-on has improved its operating income, its profit margins, 85 basis points every year in this period. Something's going on.
The thing that's going on is people getting up every day and working on rapid continuous improvement, figuring out how to do their job better. This is what creates this. I have some people here who are rapid continuous improvement devotees in the audience. By the way, they're also in the video. They're video stars, Mr. Mark Gordon, who's here from the industrial business, which is a hotbed of our rapid continuous improvement and a great advancement, seeing its profitability going up. You might remember in the video, he says, "Oh, you know, tools that get lost present a great risk to foreign object damage." Yeah. You know what he means? You don't want to leave a bolt or a wrench in an aircraft engine after you fix it. Bad things happen. He says that our ATC products fix that difficulty.
And then we have from Milwaukee, the Milwaukee plant, Ms. Frieda Warrior, who says, "We get together in our CI teams and really make it happen. I'm proud that we create our own path." Mark and Frieda, stand up. Let's give them a round of applause because they're the soul of Snap-on. Thanks for coming, everybody. Thank you, guys, for coming. Thank you. Now, looking forward, I think it's worthwhile to pause here for a minute and think about what Snap-on heritage is because Snap-on has been a great company for a long time. You can see it here that we were a company that made great hand tools, sold them through vans, the vehicle mechanics. We did it well. Great. We did it great. If you step back, you can see greater possibilities.
Snap-on, more broadly defined, is a place which, just as I described to you, observes work and figures out from those insights, from those observations, how to make it easier. We do that, whether it's a wrench or a piece of software. We know we can do it using the vans, but we can also use it through distributors, our direct sales force. It doesn't have to be a vehicle mechanic, but it has to be someone who is working on things that are critical. What's the definition of things that are critical? That the penalty for failure is high and the need for repeatability and reliability justifies a Snap-on-level product. This is the basis on which we go forward. We've gone forward for years. You look at now, you say, "Well, what's happening now?" You can see it right here. It's shown in these numbers.
I said before that last year we had a lot of uncertainty. And it was uncertainty. There were two hot wars. There was the half war with the Houthis. There was the tick-for-tock with China. There were the prices that did not seem to want to come down. But then after the first of the year, there was the rapid-fire initiatives from Washington, the tariffs, we would call them, lately talked about in tariffs. The hits just keep on coming. Every day you get up and you look at your newspaper or so on, you figure something is going to happen today. Now, look, I think it is not for me to say national policy or anything like that. That is not what we are here for. We are here to adjust to whatever happens. And we do. We do. But these are particularly uncertain times. And you can see it in the consumer sentiment.
Consumer sentiment is an index that's been done for decades. Since December, which was already uncertain, which was already below pre-pandemic levels by a lot, it came down 30% to the second lowest all time. We are in a particularly turbulent environment. Particularly turbulent. If you go forward, the biggest thing today is tariffs. Now, if you don't think tariffs are important or are on everybody's mind, let me just give you a little view. Last Friday in The Wall Street Journal, sorry, two weeks ago from tomorrow, we looked at The Wall Street Journal, and tariffs were mentioned 254 times in that newspaper. This is a lot. It's a lot if it's mentioned 20 times, if anything's mentioned. This is 254 times. Everybody's obsessed with tariffs.
You look at these numbers and you say, "Wowza." Canada's 25%, but you look at China, 147% or 170%, and some things are going to be tariffed at 270%. You do not know what is going to happen in Mexico or Taiwan or Vietnam or a number of other countries. This is a level of uncertainty that we have not seen. What I want to tell you is we ain't shaking in our boots. A lot of people are. Snap-on has some inherent advantages for this. Go ahead. You can see this here. One is our principal value-creating mechanism. That is we are in markets everywhere.
We do that because the way we make money, the way we do things for people, is that we're at the workplace, so you have to be there observing the work and figuring out how to make it better. This is really the whole thing, how to make it easier. Our principal value-creating mechanism gives us a distributed activity, which makes us particularly resilient in this. We have multiple brands. You can see the brands we have. Our brands are very significant. Now, we all know Snap-on. Snap-on's a nonpareil brand. It's a great brand. I've always said it's the Albert sign of pride and dignity to working men and women taking their profession. We have Bahco in Europe.
Bahco in Europe, if you want an adjustable wrench, if you want a pipe wrench, they say they don't say, "Give me the pipe wrench." They say, "Give me the Bahco." You look at Norbar. Norbar is the top name in large bolting across the world. You look at Car-O-Liner. It's the number one name in collision equipment and so on. We have a lot of areas where we have different positions which we can adjust to and mix and match. Finally, we make in the markets where we sell, so we have factories all over the place. We have factories everywhere. We have 36 factories around the world, and 15 are right here in America. Most of what we make here in America, most of what we sell here in America, we make here. We make in the markets where we sell.
What's important about that is whatever the array of tariffs that gets applied, we can adjust. A lot of people, a lot of companies can worry about this because they're dependent on a faraway factory. We are dependent on no faraway factory. We may have to adjust. We may buy sometimes from faraway factories. Everything we sell in the United States, we're making a version of it here already. We don't have a know-how gap. When people say it's going to take us three to five years to relocate to the United States, that ain't us. We can do it. In the fog, I would say I would call this period the fog of tariffs. It's sort of like the fog of war.
Klaus Schwartz talked about the fog of war, and what he said was, "There are so many independent variables that are unknown, it's hard to say what's going on." That is true for us. What we know is we have a fundamental infrastructure with our principal value-creating mechanisms, our wide range of brands, and our factories so that we have facilities in the United States that can do everything, and we have people in the United States that know how to do everything. That does not mean we are immune to impact from the tariffs, but we are certainly resistant and advantaged versus others. We are not shaking in our boots in this situation. We are on alert, but we are ready. Okay. Let's keep going. I talked about runways for improvement. Having said that we are resistant to the tariffs, let's talk about our runways for growth.
The runways for growth are four: enhance the van channel, expand with repair shop owners and managers, extend to critical industries, and build in emerging markets. Let's talk about enhance the van channel. Everybody knows the van channel. We have about 3,500 vans in the United States, 4,700 worldwide. It's the business model that fell from Saturn. Not doing so well now because it's suffering. It's marked by the uncertainty today. This is a strong channel. Our goal here is to make sure that our franchisees are healthy, to work with them to become more productive so they can do more business with the same hours that they have, to make sure they have the right product lines, and make sure they understand the products that are going to meet the complexity of the ever-changing vehicle market.
We have another video star with us, Mr. Kevin Rill and his wife, Melanie, who in the video, he says, "I enjoy my work. I get up every day with a positive view because I know that more often than not, I'm going to make a customer's day." You may remember that. Kevin Rill from Somerset, New Hampshire, whose stepmother, whose father, and three uncles were also Snap-on people. He's a Snap-on guy through and through. I think you probably enjoyed his comments in the video. Let's have him and his wife stand up, and let's give them a round of applause. Stand up, Kevin. Do you have a coat? Stand up again. Do you have a coat and tie on? Whoa. You're looking good, boy. Whoo. Fantastic. Make sure we get a picture later. I want this memorialized. Thanks for coming from New Hampshire. Okay.
Enhance the van channel. Expand with repair shop owners and managers. This is selling to a customer that stands right to the technicians. The van drivers sell to technicians. They're the guys who twirl the wrenches and punch the keys. There is another customer who loves us just as much as the technicians and stands right next to them. It's the repair shop owners and managers. This is where RS&I, Repair System Information, plays. They had a great year last year. They had a great first quarter.
This is a business where we're trying to leverage our understanding of repair, which we've developed for decades and decades and getting stronger with it, expand our product line to help these managers and owners be able to deal with the complexity of the current cars and to teach them a little bit more about both the technical and business aspects of the business. That business is doing pretty well. This was John Wolf and Mr. Tom Ward's business that we talked about. They had a great quarter. Great quarter and a great year. Now, let's extend to critical industries. This is the commercial business and the Asia-Pacific business. This is about sort of rolling a Snap-on brand out of the garage to other places where it's still critical where the penalties for failure are high.
We do not know as much about this as we do auto repair, so we need to expand our understanding of this. We need to build out a product line, and we need to develop the relationship, and it is happening because that business also had a fairly good year and a reasonable quarter in which they set record level of profitability, in other words, OI margin. Then build in emerging markets. Everybody would say, "What are you doing in emerging markets these days? Isn't China embargoed?" Yeah, maybe it is. Maybe there are 147% tariffs on China. We still sell in China, and we still have 1,500 people in China working for us, and they are a great advantage to them. We are going to wield them in any weather to our greatest possibilities. Those are the four runways for growth.
Now, if we look at, well, should we be positive about the future? What's positive about our future? You can take a look at this. One of the things that's really positive about the future as we roll forward for growth is the fact that we operate in the critical. What does that mean? The need for repeatability and reliability is necessary and justifies a Snap-on-level product. It also means that it has to happen. People need their cars repaired. People need jet engines fixed. People need oil to flow. That's an important thing. I think this is one of the things rooted in the critical. Our markets are relatively resilient, not completely immune to change or uncertainty or so on, but they are relatively resilient.
If you look further, if you look at vehicle repair here, you look at the whole thing about vehicle repair, the car park's getting bigger. Now it's up to 288 and change in terms of size. If you look at the age of the car park, it went from 9.5 years all the way up recently to 12.6. Twelve point six years and it's getting older every day. You look at the metrics for our main customers, that is, one of our main customer bases, that is, technicians. The metrics are pretty good. The number of technicians, it's been up. It was flattish in the last two months, but it's been up for a long time. You look at the wages. The wages are up mid-single digits, which is nice. I think they were up 14%. No, not 14%.
4.7% year over year in the last rolling 12 months. The household investment in vehicle repair went up 10% year over year, which means this is a good place to be. We really like being in this situation. One of the things that drives our business really is change. If anything's changing, you may not realize this if you just look at casual, but anything's changing, it's cars. There are so many vehicle technologies that are rolling out there. If you think about this, okay, we got electric cars. Yeah. Different powertrain. Electric cars are sometimes, I think, Hertz had a study that said they needed 48% more maintenance for electric cars than anything else. I'm not surprised because already 80% of the repairs on a car are not made on the powertrain. They're made on some of the electrical components.
You have plug-in hybrids and super hybrids. That goes together with internal combustion engine. This multiplies the need for tools. That is a good thing for us. If you think further about the whole idea of autonomy of a car, you are going to press a button. Okay. Press a button and have self-park. That is autonomy. If the car is out of alignment, bad things are going to happen. You need more precision in this thing. This all means that our future, in terms of the markets where we play, is going to be by and large positive, and we are ready and structured to take advantage come heck or high water. This is our 105th anniversary. I introduced an awful lot of people here to you, but I would like to introduce one more group.
That's some of the newer people who came to us. They're going to be with us, I think, for the 105th anniversary, I hope. Let's introduce some of those. There's some interesting characters in this group. Over here, Mr. Andrew Sparks, who's been with us just over a year. He's from South Africa, and he's one of our industrial designers. Stand up, Andrew. Okay. Next to him, we have Morgan Stahl, who's from Kenosha and is in our custom kitting. She's a custom kitting designer for us there, and she's been with us just over three years, just new. Then we have Evan Fry, who came to us from Crystal Lake and is at the National Counts in the industrial business. He's been with us a couple of years. Then we have Nick, great name, by the way. Great name. Nick-D.
Claris, who is the Tools Group, one of the product managers of the Tools Group, been with us a couple of years. He came from the South Side of Chicago. Finally, we have Shardane Muhammad, who's a homegrown lady from Kenosha, who's been with us 1.2 years, I think, and is with EQS as a marketing person. Let's give the future of Snap-on a round of applause. Thank you all. Okay. 105 years. Let's talk about the first quarter. The fourth quarter was not our best. Again, we were not withered by this. We were not happy. The sales in the first quarter were down 2.3%. I think it was $1,141 million, down 2.3%. The profitability, overall profitability was 21.3%, down 160 basis points. About 90 of those basis points were due to the legal benefit we got last year. 21.3% was not bad.
It's not chop liver, as they would say in New York. The thing about 21.3%—I want to tell you that I was on TV 18 months ago, and I got a lot of accolades for our performance in that quarter. It was lower than 21.3%. This is a step back, but not a thing that should cause us a lot of angst. In other words, we're on alert. The positive thing about this is I want to decode this a little bit for you. If you look at the gross margin, which is really the gross margin is what you sell and how much you make on it. Gross margin was 50.7%. That was up 20 basis points. How the heck is that up 20 basis points? We're down 160 basis points at the bottom line. The reason is we kept investing.
See, most companies, when the volume goes down 2.3%, they cut back on the investments. We believe in tomorrow. We kept investing because we proceed with confidence. That is my message. These are turbulent times. We were talking about uncertainty last year before anybody talked about it because we saw it in the technicians. We were sort of like the canary in the coal mine. We were out there calling on a million technicians every week. That uncertainty, I hope that is in order. Okay. Okay. We can use it. All right. Last year, and you think about this. When is the last time we had two active wars and we were involved? When is the last time we were bombing another group of people outside like the Houthis? It seems like the drumbeat with China has gotten bigger and bigger.
People have reasonable worries about the cost, the cost of eggs and the cost of beef. I'm not saying it's something they need to just abandon all hope, but it has some information. The problem. What happened is we got a new administration. The new administration has a bunch of ideas about things. Every day you get up and the hits just keep on coming, like they used to say in the 1960s radio station. Every day you get something new. It's almost like we've entered some area where we're on Space Mountain. You're on, you're going on Space Mountain. You get on the thing. You're in the dark. I think when you walk through the garages, a lot of people think we're going to the right place. Our technicians think we're going for the right place.
We're going left and right, left and right, left and right. That's a Space Mountain, right? You're going left and right. You think you may go off the rails. The off-the-rails worry for people at work who do not have a lot of cushion makes them very uncertain. It has been very uncertain. You see the drop in the consumer sentiment, down 30% since December. 30% since December, an all-time low. Yet we know we're pretty okay with that. We're not hemorrhaging over this. We bear the marks of this. We know that we have certain advantages. We have an advantage in the resilience of our models rooted in the critical. We have an advantage in our strengths that are enabling and defining and differentiating. We know when we go forward, we should feel pretty good about proceeding with confidence.
Something that people talk about, the tariffs and as a particular situation, it creates an atmosphere which is hard to figure out. The chessboard has all changed in terms of sourcing. What we know is that we should have confidence because we are advantaged in this fog of tariffs. We're advantaged because whatever happens, we have the facilities everywhere to react. We have the people who know how to make things. When you do not have people who know how to make things, you have to take a long time locally to shift production to make it. We do not have to worry about that. In the fog of tariffs, we are not immune, but we are resistant and we are advantaged. We should be confident about that.
The most important thing we should be confident about, which is the real message of this presentation, is I hope when you look left and right and you hear me recognize people all over this room, you realize our real strength. That is in the people of this company. The people of this company who are committed, the people of this company who are capable, the people of this company who are energetic, and the people of this company who get up every day and figure out how to make our business better, be able to do what we do better, create trends like I showed you from 6.5% to 22.7%, 85 basis points in an environment where people will sell their souls for 10 basis points improvement.
We have advantage, and we should be confident by looking left and right and realize that these people are going to work for our collective, like the words of the video, every day, every day, every day, every day, every day. I'm confident that you will do just that. For that, I thank you all. We're going to take questions. I will accept no questions on the Milwaukee Bucks. Enter those. And enter the Fiserv Forum, those who have abandoned all hope. Okay. Questions. All right.
We got one over here.
Thank you. I can't hear you. Sorry. Not working.
Check, check. Hello?
It's working now.
All right. Hi. For a long time, Snap-on has been advocating for upskilling the American workforce. How do you see that progressing?
I think it's getting better. I think we're winning the battle for this. I mean, we have Snap-on certification programs. In other words, we have a Snap-on branded curriculum in almost 1,000 technical schools. They're doing that because we say that part of upskilling is to match, not to create. It's funny when I talk to, I apologize to the universities. Is Ritu Raju here? Are you here, Ritu? Yeah. There she is. Okay. Right. And Matt-Janison, are you here? Okay. This is for you. All right. These are for you. I've been saving you for this. Okay. Look, I think the thing is, no, these are our friends. We love Gateway. They're from Gateway. Part of the tendency is to try to say we want to educate our students for the jobs of tomorrow. Wrong.
You don't want to educate for the jobs of tomorrow. You want to educate. We need people who can do the jobs of today. Tomorrow will take care of itself. People will learn on a job. We'll teach the people to do those jobs. That's one of the most important things. That's why we like the curriculum. We like to match the curriculum to what companies like us, or not even us. We could train our own, in fact, but for smaller companies that really need in this interlude. That's one of the most important things. I do think that the importance of skilled workers is rising. I mean, you can see it in the rhetoric that comes out of Washington, which says we want to bring manufacturing home, and we want to bring technical capabilities home. That's all true.
I believe this was eminently possible. If you didn't think that was true, think about the post-pandemic where we had Shanghai out of ennui, closed Xi Jinping out of ennui, closed Shanghai for six weeks and closed the ports and interrupted supply chains all over the world. It invited the inflation we're still dealing with. What we realized then, I think, as a country is that we couldn't depend on such long supply chains. We needed more manufacturing here. Historians have said this. For example, I talked to Mark Milley. He said, "We won World War II because we had an industrial substrate that allowed us to outgun our opposition." We don't have that anymore. We need to build it up. I think this has become more clear.
It has been underlined recently where people say, "The tariffs, if we put a lot of tariffs on China, it's going to take us three to five years to adjust." If you're doing things, if some of that orb that's in China already or other places that would take you three to five years to build up here is important, is essential, what happens when by natural disaster or by conflict that gets interrupted? It takes you three to five years. You don't want to be in that position. I think the idea of skilled labor has become more important. I do believe that, one, the post-pandemic view of the world should have taught that. I think it did teach it to many industries in the United States.
Two, this interlude with the tariffs in a funny way, as much angst as it's caused and as much as I disagree with general tariffs, it has brought to bear the idea that it isn't easy to duplicate manufacturing in a flash. I think this says you got to have upskilling. At the same time, one of the things about one of the barriers to bringing jobs back is we don't have enough skilled workers. There are 500,000 jobs open now in manufacturing. Unless we upskill the American workforce, it doesn't matter what tariffs we put on, we're not going to be able to bring the jobs back anyway. I do think that technical education is in the crosshairs right now and it's going to be more important in the future. I think we're winning the war. Next.
Hey, Nick, over here.
No Kentucky Derby picks either.
Over here to your left.
Rodriguez.
Anna Whitley.
Okay.
Corporate Treasury Department over here.
Sorry, I couldn't hear you.
It's on.
It's on.
Yes. Anna Whitley, Corporate Treasury Department.
Anna.
Yes.
Okay, Anna.
Mr. Pinchuk, in your opinion, what do you think the future of new technology vehicles will be? Thank you.
You know, Anna, that's kind of floored me there because I think no one's called me Mr. Pinchuk since Sister Frances Loretta in the first grade. I feel that her tone was somewhat different in that time. Okay, the future of new energy vehicles. Look, I would suggest this. That's a trajectory anticipated for electric vehicles that battery-only vehicles is somewhat diminished. I'm not saying they're not going to happen, but I think people are realizing now that there are great barriers to wide adoption of it. Not to mention the infrastructure. Are they good cars? I personally don't think right now the way they're designed, they're very good cars. I don't think people are going to want people who aren't first movers want to put up with it. That doesn't mean they won't be adopted over time.
There was an article today that said that five-minute charging was now available in certain markets. It was not available in the United States. Okay. I do think, though, if you look at China, everybody says, "China, all these new energy vehicles." Last year in China, BYD, which is a big kahuna in China, most of its big portion of its sales last year were plug-in hybrids, not battery vehicles. I do think plug-in hybrids are liable to start to be effective because when you have those, I do not know if you realize this, but you can plug in your battery and it gives you 50 mi. You can drive 50 mi, save you a lot of gas. Most people do not drive 50 mi in a day.
You do not have to worry about running out of battery charge, which is the big thing when you have a battery. You can drive on the internal combustion. It is very popular in China. I think you will see it other places. I think you will see that. I think you will see super hybrids. I also think you will still see internal combustion engines because people like those cars. In any case, there are 288 million of them or 287 million of them on the road now. They are going to take a long time to go away. I do believe new energy vehicles, electric vehicles will roll into the car park, but at much slower growth rates than was anticipated. By the way, this is all good. Tom Kassouf, this is all good for Snap-on, as you know. Right?
The thing is, because even if it's 10% battery electric vehicles, technicians are going to need the tools to deal with that. They're going to need the lifts to deal with the batteries. They're going to need a whole bunch of things. They're going to need special air conditioning monitoring so that the battery doesn't get too hot and therefore go down in miles. It opens up a whole range. The idea of change for us is good. I welcome those changes. I just don't think they're going to happen as fast and as broadly as people first estimated. Anything else? What else do we got? Yes.
Over here, Nick.
Yeah.
My question is, given our current environment, do we plan on building more factories in the United States?
Maybe. I think we've talked about that. I kind of like expanding factories because Morgan, you probably noticed this, is that you like to expand factories because you already know the community. This comes back to community. You already trust the community, so you like to build up in those places. Sometimes you're landlocked. You can't get land. Or sometimes you figure there aren't enough workers in that particular community, and so you have to go to someplace else. We're kind of in that situation where we're wondering if we can expand. If we could, we'll expand rather than build a new one. I know Tim and I have had discussions about building a new one. He thinks we should. I'm not sure. We'll think about that.
I will just say, I'll just simply say that if you look at our biggest factories in the United States, the largest ones of the 15, we expanded them all in the last two years just now. We have just added capacity. We are kind of propitious in that situation. We have some substantial capacity left over, so we are able to do that. However, I'd be happy if we had enough demand that says, "Okay, we need to expand a factory." A guy like me loves to expand things. All right. Anything else?
Nick.
Okay.
Joe Barabas, Snap-on Credit. What are you doing with the company's Chinese factories?
What am I doing with them? Okay. The first thing is that the short answer is we are, remember that, I think the short answer is we're simply trying to make sure we manage over the next couple of months because things are changing so fast. It would be wrong to take immediate action based on the current situation. I mean, two days ago, they were talking about we're doing a deal with China. Yesterday, Xi Jinping or somebody in China says, "We're not talking to people." Who knows what's going to happen? It's kind of what we're trying to do now, reduce our exposure to high tariffs. That is 147%. We're not going to pay any of that stuff. We're slowing down our Chinese factories and ramping up our other ones. That's a temporary situation.
We positioned inventory, so we've got inventory that has gotten here before the tariffs took effect. After that, we're going to try to mix and match such that we don't pay any of those tariffs. Doing things like, okay, things that China used to ship here, we're going to build here in the United States, and we can do it quickly. We're going to substitute that volume in the Chinese factories by saying things we used to build in the United States that went to England and Australia and other places, we're going to build in the Chinese factories. Remember, I said we have know-how everywhere. This is one of the great advantages of Snap-on. We know how to build everything almost everywhere. We can do that. In the long run, our view is like this.
I look at it through the lens of this. We said here that we have differentiating people, differentiating teams. And you know what? I actually believe it. One of the disadvantages of saying that you believe your people are among your most important strengths is on occasion you should act like it. If you extend that principle, we have 1,500 people in China. They are good people. I do not easily want to abandon their capabilities. I want to use their capabilities for the corporation. It is just how do we figure that out? That is what we are going to do. My job is to, one, try to get people that are great people, upskill them or make them capable, enlist them in the corporation, make them believe in the corporation, and then use them to the maximum no matter where they are. This is the idea.
I've closed five factories in my time. I've started up 17. One of the things I'll tell you about closing a factory, it's kind of a shame of a manager because what it says is the leader of the company wasn't smart enough to figure out how to use the capabilities of the people. That's really it. I refuse to accept that with the people in China. We'll figure out how to use them. I mean, there are a lot of big markets in Asia. There are markets in Europe that don't have tariffs on China. That's what we're going to use them for. We'll build up the United States markets to do the other stuff. This is why Snap-on is advantageous in this situation because unlike most other people, most other companies, we have the capability to do this. Okay. I think all right.
Remember in Vaudeville, they used to have a hook. Sam Bottum over there with a virtual hook. He's telling me to get off this stage. Okay, but they're getting off that easy. Okay. I'd just like to finish with something maybe a little personal. I feel quite fortunate to be here. I feel privileged to be part of Snap-on. I feel lucky to have come to this position and to have worked with you all. When you think about this kind of thing, sometimes you think about I think of Robert Frost. Robert Frost wrote a poem, and the name of the poem was The Road Less Traveled. It ignites a whole bunch of thought about what would have happened if you had gone the other way. I never think about that. Sometimes I never think about those kinds of things.
What I think about is, how did I go this way? How did I get the special providence? How did the Lord guide me to be here? A lot of things I say ended up at Snap-on because I went to Vietnam, and there's some truth to this. When you think about these things, you think about the things that inhabited your life, the chances you had. The chance, for my case, the chance to live in an everyday neighborhood where character meant more than money. The chance to have a wonderful family and great friends. The chance to go to good schools, even though you know in your heart that you were only admitted under some university outreach program to the massively unsophisticated.
The chance to live and work in different places and see where culture and literature influence the basic decision-making axioms of a people or a nation. Among the most unlooked for and probably unexpected chance was to come here to Snap-on, to work with all of you. This was an extraordinary chance in my life. I thank God for it every day. It's tremendous to be in this corporation. You say to yourself, what's so special about the corporation? We say that we are advantaged. I say this, we prevailed in difficulty. We did prevail in difficulty. We had fun last year. The tools group was Mark, but CNI and RSNI brought us on through.
We talked about the idea of the tariffs and how difficult that was and what kind of difficulty it presents to everybody. We know that with our position and facilities and our know-how and our people, we are advantaged in this. In fact, it makes the most of those things. We feel pretty good about that. We can proceed with confidence. You think about, what's the basis of a corporation? Why do we have corporations? Why did we invent this? I've said this many times to all of you. A corporation is a place where people come together to create a value for themselves and, most importantly, to others that they could not achieve individually. We talked about all the people in this video that came together over this.
We think about Snap-on as such a place where we bring together a whole bunch of constituencies. We enjoy things from those constituencies. We enjoy the confidence of our investors, the conviction of our franchisees, the commitment of our associates, the faith of our customers, the support of our communities. Of course, the legacies of our retirees on whose shoulders we stand as we reach forward and go forward. That's an important thing. For all of us, we believe, I hope that you can all see in these trends a value for all those constituencies and for each and every one of you. I do believe there is indication of that. For example, if you saw in the video, you saw Gene Householder, which I said, we see our equipment, our boxes everywhere, and I'm proud.
I go to a drag race in Kent, Washington, and a customer, a technician, comes up to me and says, "Snap-on saved my life." I think, man, I talked to Denny Sears, a franchisee in Indianapolis, Indiana, and he said, "Snap-on is my life." You see, I think based on those data, that data, those testimonies, that we are creating a value for ourselves that makes a difference. What about others? You saw in the brand slide the people of the cakes and the weddings and the babies and the boxes and Heather Kremer, the picture of Heather Kremer. Heather Kremer sends us a note and says, "Can you make a special box for my father?" This is the kind of thing that does something for others.
When you do things for others, eminences of all over the world, in fact, once I had a chance to talk to, here, John Paul II, speak in person, I met him, and he talked about the idea that doing things for others is the fabric of a life well lived, and so it is. Heather Kremer tends to reinforce that for all of you. She asked for the box, and we sent it to her. I get many of these requests, and we often send them. Then she writes me a letter back. Here is what she says. She says, "Thank you for the box. I wanted something for the best, my dad, from the best Snap-on. You helped heal a broken family. You helped give a little girl a part of her dad back. I hope you like it, Dad." This is something special.
Value for ourselves and others makes this an incredible company. Not many companies get letters like that. In fact, I know of none. I feel privileged to be here and to be with all of you. I am proceeding with confidence, and I hope you are confident because I am confident in the strengths we have. I am confident in the structure we have against any difficulty. Most of all, I'm confident of all of you because what I know about all of you is that you may not realize this, but this is absolutely true about the critical we talk about. Without you, vehicles don't roll, oil doesn't flow, cities don't rise, planes don't fly, and I dare say freedom doesn't ring. When you look to the right and the left, as I do, I hope you see that this is a special place.
I'm here, and I believe that I feel quite fortunate to be here. I feel privileged to be here. I believe I've achieved my dream because my dream has always been to work with people that I like, that I admire, and that I can count on. You have worked together, retirees, community, and all the constituencies here to prevail in difficulty. We've done it as a Snap-on company for 150 years. I can tell you, as we proceed to the future, we should proceed with confidence. I'm doing so because I know all of you, and I know that you are Snap-on, and you make the way now and for many years to come. Thank you all for the day. I see you next year.