Pleased to have with us today Sysco CEO, Kevin Hourican, CFO, Kenny Chung. We'll start with some commentary from Sysco, and then we'll come back with some Q&A after that. So pass it along to you guys.
Okay, great. Thank you, Lauren. Good morning, everyone. We appreciate your being here, and for those that are joining us virtually, we appreciate your joining as well. Forward-looking statements form behind me. I'm not gonna make any other comments about that. You understand what that means. So if I could just jump right in. We're really glad to be here in Paris at the Deutsche Bank Conference. Our opportunity to be able to tell our Sysco story, and we thank you for joining us today. Kenny and I recently hosted an Investor Day in New York City, where we rolled out a 3 year growth algorithm, which Kenny will talk about those financial statistics in just a moment.
What I'll do before he comes on stage to talk about that is explain the how of the components that will drive that growth algorithm.
In a nutshell, we talk about it in two ways: driving our core of our business, which is approximately 90% of the statistics that he will convey, and 10% of the growth will come from something we call our recipe for growth, which I will explain what that means in a minute. We intend to grow our business profitably and win market share for each of the next 3 years. This morning, we will convey to you the specific initiatives with clear deliverables and specific measurables on how we will get that done. So let's go ahead and jump in. The slide behind me, you know our space. It is a big industry that we compete within. Specifically, we have the highest market share within the space.
This chart, to be clear, because we are in Europe, is a U.S. version of our business, and I'm gonna explain the global number in just a moment. So our largest business, U.S., is a $370 billion total addressable market, of which we have 17% share, which is the largest in the industry. We operate facilities, including delivery trucks with sales reps, boots on the ground in 10 countries worldwide. And if you include the other nine countries in the U.S. mix, it increases the total addressable market to $470 billion. A big pie, a pie that gets bigger each year, and we are taking a larger slice of that pie. Expanding pie, expanding slice, creates compelling opportunity for Sysco to grow profitably.
Why we are winning? In a nutshell, it's scale players in this industry are winning at large. Purchasing scale, distribution scale, our ability to ship on time and in full, and Salesforce scale, which I will talk about in a minute. I'm also gonna double-click on our specialty businesses, and I'll explain what specialty means. We, Sysco, specifically, are growing the specialty channel significantly faster than the overall specialty business. So when you take those two pieces together, broad line scale and specialty expansion, that is why and how we are taking market share profitably. Many in this audience know us well, very familiar faces in the room.
There are some new faces in the room. So if I could just provide a quick story about, you know, who we are that are a little bit less familiar. As I mentioned, largest in the space, number one, market share. We have the most distribution centers worldwide, over 300+. We have the most multi-temperature trucks. Yes, I said those words, multi-temperature trucks. Our trucks have a refrigerated zone, a freezer zone, and a dry zone. It is a very difficult-to-replicate delivery model for those that are trying to enter the space. We have the largest supply chain colleague population and the largest professional sales organization in the food away from home space. We are roughly 70% U.S., with the remainder being international, but that international business and segment, one other segment we have.
So the other 30% is 10% segment and 20% international. But international is growing top and bottom line faster than the overall company, and that will continue for the 3 years of our growth algorithm. So let's talk about growth. I love this chart. It shows for the 54+ year history of the company, the consistent growth of Sysco on the left-hand side.
In fact, there's only two periods where we did not grow, and that was the 2008, 2009 U.S. financial crisis, and obviously, COVID, because we were in the food away from home business, had a significant impact. One of our banking partners, though, pointed out something interesting on this chart to us, which is the consistency of the upward curve. Even with the disruptions that occur, we get all of that business back and more from a recovery perspective. We don't see a reduction and then slowly grow from there. We snap back strong when we do come out of that period, and the main point is this is a consistent growth business.
Roughly 60% of the business that we do is in the restaurant space. We have number one market share in every business that we compete within, except for healthcare.
In the healthcare, we're number 2, and we are meaningfully growing that large and profitable business. We also like to call out that several of our businesses, education, healthcare, and government specifically, are more recession resilient, and they complement our overall business very well. Let's talk about a little bit our international profile, and I'll explain the chart first so that you can understand better the communication that I'll convey forward. The green bar is our 2019 market share for each of the countries that are highlighted. The blue bar is our 2023 market share. The little circle next to each country is the total addressable market from each of these countries. The punchline is we're growing market share across the globe. I'll start with the U.S.
We're up 170 basis points in market share in a very, very large total addressable market over that span of time.... Go up to Canada, which is our second biggest business. We've grown our market share 120 basis points, but more importantly, we've meaningfully increased our local business. Historically, our Canadian business over-indexed in large corporate customers, which have a lower profit profile than mom-and-pop independent customers. We're really pleased with our local growth in Canada. Jumping across the pond, Ireland. Yes, it's a small Ireland, island country, easy for me to say, but we are killing it in Ireland. Up 330 basis points. We have the highest market share on the independent local customer basis of any country worldwide that we compete within. And the why is because in Ireland, we are running the full Sysco play.
What does that mean? Modern warehouse, modern technology, full suite of selling systems, broad product range, including a most recent produce acquisition that we just completed in Ireland. Our business in Ireland looks just like the composition of our business in the U.S., and we're winning meaningfully. Great Britain, we're up 260 basis points with big progress being made in local. And last but not least is France. France is the one country that's essentially flat-ish from a market share perspective. What I call out, though, is the opportunity of the total addressable market. At $23 billion, the French country, or France, the country that we're in, offers the second largest opportunity in our entire book of business portfolio.
If and when we replicate what we have done in Canada, in France, we have the opportunity to grow our business in France by $ billions and to do so profitably. The how is we need to run the Sysco play, and we'll have an opportunity to talk more about that in just a few moments. Let's go ahead and get started. This chart is the 90/10 that I talked about just a few moments ago. The left-hand side, we call Drive the Core, represents 90% of our business. The right-hand side of the chart is our recipe for growth. It's a circle, it's a growth wheel, has five compelling growth initiatives, and I will come back and explain in more detail those initiatives.
The punchline for investors and the punchline for our colleagues is we need to do both of these activities and do them well, and when we do, we will deliver our financial return. Drive the core, the 90%, innovate through growth for the remainder of the 10. So if I could, I'd like to start with driving the core. We talk about it as the top, the middle, and the bottom of the P&L, left to right on this page, and I'm gonna double-click into each of these three drive the core activities right now. So let's start with the top of the P&L.
We measure the business health through the volume of growth that we are producing within our business, and these are the four things that we have communicated to our investors that we're gonna do better, stronger, and differently to drive our local case growth performance. It starts with sales headcount. As I mentioned earlier, we have the largest sales force in the industry. I'm gonna talk more about that sales force in just a moment, but we're gonna meaningfully increase our headcount within local sales. A net 400-500 incremental colleague headcount each year, every year for the next 3 years. These colleagues will come from competition, they will come from restaurant customers of Sysco, and they will come from culinary backgrounds. All three of those backgrounds result in a very successful colleague for Sysco.
We will enable their success through the CRM that we use to help guide the selling process at Sysco. We've invested meaningfully in our CRM to provide every colleague what we call a next best action for each sales visit that they go on with each and every customer, a prompted selling guide, if you will. We are going to enhance their success through something we call Total Team Selling, which I'm gonna show you what that is in just a moment. And last but not least, we are optimizing and updating our compensation program to motivate our colleagues to work even harder for those things that matter most to our customers and matter most to Sysco.
So let's talk a little bit more about the sales force headcount and the quality of our sales force, 'cause it is the most significant contribution of growth over the next 3 years in our algorithm. Our salespeople are a differentiator in the marketplace. They are the best in the industry, and I'll use empirical data to communicate that, not our personal opinions. We are making, as I mentioned a moment ago, a very large investment, a 20% increase in our headcount. If there's one thing 4.5 years that i've been with the company, and one thing I would do differently if I could go back in 4.5 years, we should have begun hiring, increased sales force headcount about a year earlier than we did.
During COVID, our business declined, we reduced headcount, and we deployed meaningful improvements to technology. We've grown our business since then by over $15 billion, and we've not needed to add back in headcount because of the technology improvements that I just referenced. But now's the time. Our business has grown such that what we call our territory sizes are a bit larger than we would like them to be. In straight talk English, that means our sales reps each have more customers than we would like them to have because we expect and want for them to be in every customer every week. So by adding more incremental headcount, we can reduce the number of customers that each sales consultant services, which will increase the stickiness of that relationship that they have with our customers.
So think about onboarding those headcount. We start them off with a small little starter business, and we expect them to go win net new business through what we call prospecting in order to grow their business. That many boots on the ground, knocking on doors, winning new customers to Sysco, will provide a compelling return on investment. Let me talk a little bit about what's on the right-hand side of the page, which is the empirical data that conveys that we have the best team in the industry. So this is essentially a net promoter score question, but on a 1 to 10 scale of their satisfaction with their sales rep.
And we score roughly a 9 on a 10-point scale, which on the far right you'll see is a full 90 basis points better than those that we compete with in the industry.
What's equally powerful, though, is the bullet right below it, which is the technology tools, the digital experience. It, too, is a meaningful differentiation point versus those that we compete with in the industry. And we've got quality competitors in this space, led by quality management teams. But what we put forth respectfully is the following: There's not a company in this industry that can match the size, the scale, and the quality of our sales force, coupled with best-in-industry technology. And that's what our customers need and deserve. They deserve the best in tech and the best from a food service sales perspective, and no one can match the investments that we're making in those two fronts. If I could talk about the next chapter of growth for our company, it's what we call Win with Specialty.
Let me convey the where we've been, and then I'll move towards where we are going. We've grown our specialty business, and I'll explain what it is in just a moment, from $3.8 billion just a few years ago to $9.3 billion. Market share growing from 6%-10%. Let's pause there, though. I said a moment ago, our total company market share is 7%, which shows in specialty, which are the businesses on the right-hand side of the page, we have an enormous opportunity to continue to rapidly grow this high profit margin business. We're just getting started. Platforms that we will expand are the Italian platform, which we call Greco. We acquired the Greco business a couple of years ago.
We've essentially doubled the size of that business since we have had it, and we are still not in more than half of the states domestically in the United States. We intend to take that business across the northern border into Canada. We intend to take the product assortment across the pond to win with Italian globally. We own a small little Asian business in the upper Midwest part of the United States with a compelling assortment. We have a call center that speaks five different languages, and we have tremendous market share in the geographies where we offer that product assortment and the unique selling proposition. We are gonna take that business and scale it coast- to- coast across the United States, leveraging Sysco's vast fulfillment network.
Billions of growth opportunity in Italian and Asian as we scan those capabilities. And recently, we purchased Edward Don & Company, the largest or one of the largest equipment and supplies distributors to restaurants in our industry. We view it as an extremely complementary product assortment, and we have an enormous cross-selling opportunity now that we own the Edward Don & Company to introduce their product capabilities, their selling skills to existing Sysco customers. In fact, we have over 100,000 customers who are not buying that product from either Sysco or Edward Don & Company today, and that conveys the growth potential of penetrating further that category.
As Kenny says all the time, we don't buy businesses just for Sysco to get bigger. We buy businesses that we can scale, and we can scale profitably with a high ROIC. Huge opportunities to grow specialty at Sysco, $ billions of incremental top line.
Another compelling growth opportunity we have is something we call total team selling, which is taking those specialty businesses I just mentioned and sell with their broad line generalists. So let me explain this chart because it is a powerful representation of what's possible when broad line and specialty sell together. The blue line is our broad line sales to a customer. The lines next to it are when you add one single specialty business. So think about a restaurant buying broad line goods from Sysco, delivered on a Sysco truck, and we introduce FreshPoint, our produce business, roughly $5 billion business. If we introduce FreshPoint to that account, our business with that customer goes up 3x. If we add two of our specialty businesses, so produce and our specialty meat business, our business goes up 6x.
And what's really interesting on the chart is that the broad line business goes up at exactly the same time, which was a pleasant surprise. And the why actually is very explainable, 'cause when you kick a specialty distributor out of a customer account, you win all of the business that that specialty distributor was selling to that customer. And those specialty companies, over time, have essentially snuck their way in to some broad line businesses. Think paper and disposables as an example. A produce distributor selling paper goods to that or chemical to that customer, we get them out of the account, we win more.
We have a huge opportunity to grow our business profitably through total team selling, wiring our sales reps to work together, collaborating on that account, and we've updated our compensation system to make that worth their while. And now we're gonna go to the middle part of the P&L. So that was volume drivers of growth. The middle part of the P&L is about gross profit expansion. We have a meaningful opportunity to continue to succeed in expanding our gross profit. We spoke with some investors this morning. During the period of hyperinflation, we were able to expand our GP dollars per case shipped to a customer.
During a period of deflation, we were able to expand our GP dollars per case to our customer. We have proven in a very dynamic environment, hyperinflation followed by deflation, we can grow our profit regardless of the environment. And the why is through the great work that our merchandising teams do to provide value to our customers through the levers that are behind me on the screen. The one I'll talk briefly about is Sysco brand.
I wanna be very clear, we care about national brand product. Our customers care about it. Many of our great supplier partners, like McCormick, who was on stage earlier this morning, work with us. We are a great partner of McCormick, and McCormick actually produces the Sysco brand spice product line, which you may or may not know. So they win with us in multiple ways. Our customers want national brand. We will always carry in-stock national brand, but what we do is we provide them choice and optionality. And if they want same product quality at a better value to them, oftentimes, they choose Sysco brand. In fact, almost 50% of our cases to a local customer are Sysco brand. We take immense pride in the portfolio of brands that are behind me.
Sysco Classic alone does over $5 billion of business, and if you add up the portfolio on the left, it's actually bigger than some household consumable product group names that attend conferences just like this. Sysco brand matters meaningfully. We make substantially more money per case shipped when the customer chooses Sysco brand. And to be clear, it's the customer's choice. We give them that optionality, and we're getting better and better and stronger over time at managing the Sysco brand portfolio. I'm now gonna go to the bottom of the P&L, which is expenses. We have a very large distribution network that delivers on time and in full to our customers.
We need to drive continuous process improvement within our supply chain so that we can return appropriate value to our customers. In a nutshell, what am I talking about here?
That is, wages go up on an annual basis. We need productivity improvement at minimum, to offset that annual wage pressure that occurs, so that we can, in fact, be the lower cost provider from a supply chain perspective to the end customer, and again, drive value for our investors. The one thing I'd call you to within supply chain is retention. When you do the thing on the left of this page, everything else on the page improves. Having a higher tenured colleague reduces shrink, it reduces accident rates, and increases productivity, and we are meaningfully hyper-focused on improving colleague retention within our supply chain. It's meaningfully improved from where it was at this time a year ago, and this chart shows you that math.
So left-hand side, retention is up 13% year-over-year, and you can see the domino positive impact it has on the other metrics on the page. Essentially, all of our supply chain metrics are up to the right, except for shrink, which is down to the right, 'cause you want shrink going down, and that is a good thing for our P&L. Every investor asks us, "Are you back to 2019 levels of productivity yet?" The answer is not yet, but we're well on our way, and there's no structural impediment that will prevent us from getting back to 2019 level of productivities. In fact, we will get beyond 2019 levels of productivity with some investments we're making for the longer term. So everything I just covered falls under the category of drive our core, which is 90% of our business.
I'm gonna pivot now to the growth side of our business, which we call the recipe for growth. So I don't steal Kenny's thunder and time, I'm gonna do this page at pace, and we're happy to talk to any of you individually if you'd like more detail. Let me start with why it's a wheel. There are five components that work together, focusing on what's in the center of the wheel, which is our customer and our colleague. We firmly believe that if you serve the customer better and your colleague better, your business will grow, and it'll grow profitably. Again, it starts in a wheel. We started with digital on the top right of the page, and when I 4.5 years ago, we had functional technology, but it wasn't technology that was easy enough for our customers to use.
Our website was essentially a one-size-fits-all for customers. We have a website now that is an n- of- one website, where each individual customer has a personalized, customized experience just for them. It's a business-to-business website, so to enter it, they have to log in with their user ID and password. If they're an Italian customer, everything about that site experience will be tailored to their product needs. If they're an Asian customer, they're gonna see a completely different product assortment, a completely different deals for them tab. You get the drill. A large investment in our capabilities.
Due to these increased capabilities, we are seeing higher click-through rates to conversion, we're seeing higher customer retention, and we have increased the percentage of customers placing their order themselves from 30%, four years ago, to over 80% today, and that number will go up further over time.
You can see, you probably read it behind me as I've been talking, so I'm gonna, for time's sake, not read each of them. I'll just call it in the supply chain, something I've not yet spoken about. Right now, Kenny and I have approved and are underway 10 worldwide construction projects. One of the most recent ones was an announcement of a property in London, Hemel Hempstead, right outside the city, to enable Sysco to be able to better serve London, to be able to take our market share up meaningfully in what is a robust, compelling opportunity of growth for Sysco. Those 10 new distribution centers will enable us to profitably grow and deliver against the financial algorithm that Kenny will talk about in just a moment. So when I pull it all together, I'll wrap up with the following on: Why Sysco?
Why should Sysco be a compelling opportunity to invest or to retain your investment if you already invest with us? First of all is the industry itself. Food away from home is a good industry, a consistently growing industry. And the why is food away from home is taking market share from the grocery channel each and every year and has done so consistently for decades. That's a secular trend. Second point is that Sysco is a growing, profitably growing, with industry-leading margin return profiles, company within that growing industry. Growing pie, bigger slice. Our balance sheet, which Kenny will talk about in a minute, offers us the opportunity to return value in a compelling way to our shareholders.
We're a dividend aristocrat. Only a small number of companies can say that attending this conference, and we will consistently grow our dividend over time. Our strong free cash flow also offers us the opportunity to invest in our business, support M&A, and return value to shareholders through stock buybacks. We're led by a talented and motivated, engaged team that's focused on making the long-term decisions to ensure continuous improvement and strong return over time. For our next 3 years, we have a financial algorithm that I want you to hear this directly from me, is achievable, and that we will consistently deliver against over time, year after year. So honored to be here. Happy to hopefully answer a couple of questions when we're done. Without further ado, I'll invite Kenny up on stage. Kenny, over to you.
All right. Thank you, Kevin. Good morning, everyone. It is great to be here with all of you in Paris. Now, I've been at Sysco for over a year now, and I am more excited today than when I first started. So why is that? Two reasons. First, whether I am in Paris, Houston, or in the field, I am continuously impressed by the passion that our team has to deliver world-class service to our customers. Now, this world-class service not only reflects and shows up in our leading NPS score, as Kevin talked about, it also shows up in our industry-leading margins and profit. That's reason number one. Reason number two, here at Sysco, we have the fundamental building blocks to win at this space.
What are they? There's five of them. First, investment-grade balance sheet, the only one in our industry.
2, ample cash and liquidity driven by strong conversion rates, which I'll talk about in a little bit. Third, really important one, number one in our industry, leading position with number one industry-leading profit and margin. Size and scale matter. Number four, our people, 74,000 strong, world-class globally. And last but not least, Sysco, iconic and well-established brand. Now, let's take a step back and speak to Sysco's achievement and attractive return profile. On this page, you can see between 2019 and 2024, net sales and operating cash flow grew 6% and 5% CAGR, respectively. Now, this is strong, stable performance in the past 5 years, despite unique headwinds in industry. We are the market leader in a growing industry, and our leadership position is actually reflected in our financials.
On a growth margin standpoint and EBITDA margins, we are approximately 1.3x and 1.5x over our average core peer. We plan on generating over $3 billion in operating cash flow this year. Last, our lens through ROIC, coupled with our investment-grade balance sheet, is a key differentiator in this space, meaning it allows us to deliver today, invest for tomorrow, reward our shareholders, and weather any storms that pass us through. Now, moving on, how we frame our growth algorithm. You heard Kevin just talk about the importance of focusing on the core, driving Recipe for Growth, unlocking merchandising capabilities, and executing on supply chain efficiencies. These four items correspond directly to our growth algorithm, and it's based on sustainable growth, operational excellence, against a backdrop of a balanced return that yields a compelling TSR.
We will leverage our competitive advantage to drive growth in our core business through local, specialty, and international, and we will continue to focus on accretive bolt-on M&A acquisition to drive growth for us. Furthermore, we have short-term and long-term programs, which will also contribute to sustainable growth. Now, turning to operational excellence, our strong margin management performance will continue to depend on us driving supply chain efficiencies, and we will continue to drive global cost-out programs. We will optimize Gross Profit dollars through our merchandising capabilities and leverage our size and scale to continue to bring down cost of goods sold through strategic sourcing.
Last, we have a balanced approach to capital allocation, which is first investing in our business while maintaining an investment-grade balance sheet, and then any excess cash returning back to shareholders via our growing dividend and share repurchases, which is all included how we thought about the growth algo. These factors combined will help drive compelling returns for our shareholders. On the next slide, here's Sysco's algorithm for growth. The following is a 3
year algo between FY 2025 and FY 2027. We have deep, deep confidence and ability to deliver consistently against these targets, which are the following: left-hand side, sales growth, 4%-6%, which includes both organic and inorganic growth. Adjusted operating income of 6%-8% growth per year, which includes positive leverage in our P&L. Now, there are below-the-line non-operating items that factors into FY 2025.
This is due to global minimum tax impacting 2025 by roughly 50-100 basis points on a year-over-year basis, and higher interest rate expense as we continue to deploy capital into high ROIC projects, while maintaining our net leverage ratio of 2.5x-2.75x . Due to these items, adjusted EPS growth will be 6%-8% per year, in line with our adjusted operating income growth. Last, we value our dividend aristocrat status with a yield of approximately 3%. If you add them all together, this renders a TSR profile of 9%-11% per year. Now, before I dive into the line item details, as Kevin said, we believe this algo is achievable and one that we can consistently deliver on ongoing, on an ongoing basis. Let's double-click into our sales outlook.
We assume 3 things: one, stable macro environment; two, historical return on commodity rates; and last but not least, gaining shares. As the market leader in most of the markets that we serve, we have a large base. The incremental sales in our algo will come from 90% from core drivers and 10% from growth initiatives. We plan on achieving our 4%-6% through the following assumptions: inflation, 2%; volume growth, 1.5%-3.5% growth; and roughly 50 basis points of M&A growth. Now, the inflation assumption is in line with historical norms for our industry of 2%. And oh, by the way, we're seeing that right now. Let's talk more about the volume assumptions. Our core, core growth volume will come from 3 main growth vectors.
First, local and chain, contributing low- to mid-single digits sales growth through the four initiatives that Kevin talked about. With local, if you combine M&A with our growth initiatives, total local sales growth will be roughly mid-single digits. Second, specialty, contributing high single-digit sales growth, especially with our push into Asian and Italian, given that is a growth driver for our business. And the last but not least, international, contributing mid- to high single-digit sales growth, leveraging the global operating models that we've deployed. These growth ranges are informed by three things: one, historical performance; two, current inputs; and third, our view on the forward. Lastly, initiatives such as Sysco Your Way, Perks, personalization, those will contribute double-digit growth on a year-on-year basis. They are providing dividends today, and we expect them to provide further dividends down the road.
Over the next three slides, we will break down the core drivers into further detail. Starting with customer mix, we value both national and local customers, as we're able to leverage benefits from both group. Let's first talk about national customers, including Sigma. We're able to obtain route density, which allows us to serve our customer at a lower cost per delivery. Next, our national customers have multi-year contracts in place, which actually drives recurring and consistent free cash flow. National customers provide portfolio diversification, which is really important. Roughly t2/3 are restaurants, and 1/3 is what Kevin talked about, these resilient segments, such as healthcare, education, and government, and the likes. Moving on to the right side of the page, which is local customers. These customers are higher margin by nature.
We have a higher Sysco brand penetration with these customers, where we offer value through price points and high-quality ingredients. We also can unlock total team selling through this lever as well, local customers. As Kevin highlighted earlier, when you combine broad line with 1 specialty company, the average ticket goes up by 3x . When it's combined with 2 specialty companies, the ticket goes up by 6x . Last, due to the non-contract nature of local customers, we have the ability to pass on at a spot moment, meaning being right on price immediately. So if you look at the bottom part of the page, the benefit from scaling our fixed cost comes from our sourcing and purchasing decision, as well as scaling our supply chain of delivering costs.
These scale benefits are exactly the reason why we must grow both national and local customers.
Now, moving on to specialty. Specialty provides a significant opportunity for our business as we have competitive advantage. The collection of the platform provides revenue at a higher margin attachment rate. This year, we expect specialty to be over $9 billion, which with a 5-year CAGR of 11%.... We continue to expect compelling growth rates with high single digits CAGR in the algo. As you can see, all of growth vectors are interoperable and connected. Let's focus on international now. International, it is a growth engine for our business. We expect mid- to high-single-digits growth rate over the next 3 years. Our global operating model is paying dividends, in which we are seeing accretive margin expansion, as well as robust top-line growth based on lifting and shifting our U.S. capabilities to our international markets.
You can see on this page, most noteworthy, sales has grown 25%, and adjusted OI has grown roughly 33%. There is no reason why we cannot continue to improve the margin profile of our international segment. What international can look like in the future is the proof point of our business in Ireland, as Kevin talked about. We are the market leader. Sales has grown 40% between FY 2019 and FY 2023. So how did that happen? We've been able to successfully apply the U.S. playbook and increase penetration through local, apply Sysco Your Way, and also cross-selling with our recent Ready Chef acquisition. Moving on to M&A. Our systematic and disciplined approach to M&A focuses on enhancing our product portfolio, capabilities, and also footprint.
We are primarily focused on tuck-in acquisitions in the specialty space, which will deliver top-line and bottom-line synergies.
Again, M&A will contribute roughly 50 BIPS of growth for us in the algo period. Next, corporate expenses. We will continue to be disciplined on corporate expense. By FY 2027, we forecast corporate costs will be 1% of sales, with each year improving sequentially. Size and scale matters. Let's turn it over to capital allocation. First, we will invest for growth. We expect CapEx to be roughly 1% of sales annually over the next 3 years. This consists of both maintenance CapEx and growth CapEx. Second, we plan on maintaining our investment-grade balance sheet, net leverage ratio, 2.5x-2.75x . And last but not least, we will continue to redeploy and reward our shareholders. From a share repurchase standpoint, we plan, in the algo, an incremental $3 billion of shares within the next 3 years. That's $1 billion per year.
That number could flex up and down, depending on capital needs and M&A activity. On the dividend side, we are committed on growing our dividend each and every year as we maintain our dividend aristocrat status. You can expect a healthy payout ratio of 40%-50% of Adjusted EPS. We have a strong track record of raising our dividends. Over time, you can expect our dividends to grow in line from a rate standpoint as Adjusted EPS. Next, free cash flow and strong conversion rates. Two things here very quickly. We expect to target roughly 50% conversion from EBITDA, and going forward, you can expect very fairly consistent against a normalized backdrop on the environment in terms of conversion rates and free cash flow. This is my favorite part—this is my favorite page here, and I'll go fast on this page.
This page compares our algo to the return profile to the dividend against the consumer staples sector. We're proud to be part of this sector. Why is that? They are known for consistent growth, dividend payer, and low volatility. In fact, compared to the sector, we are favorable against many of the metrics you see on this page. From an EPS standpoint, a revenue standpoint, our ROIC is market-leading, and you can see on the page we are roughly 500 BIPS higher than the market, and we're 2x higher than the average core peer. The bottom line is the right-hand side of the page. Given where we are today and our confidence in our algo, we are this is a very high value proposition for our investor. To summarize, last page here, we like our position.
We are the industry leader that sits in an industry that's growing. We have a balanced and diversified portfolio across geographies, channels, and product mixes, with multiple vectors of growth, including core volume and M&A. Our leading industry margins, balanced capital allocation, and strong ROIC renders a profile of TSR growth of 9%-11%. Said differently, we can deliver value at the spot and play the long game on the 4s. So regardless if you're a value investor, a growth investor, an income investor, Sysco presents a compelling opportunity. I'll end with where I started. We are confident in our algo, extremely confident, and we believe we can deliver this consistently on a go-forward basis. We have the right leadership team in place to deliver against these targets. We are not just about delivering the 3 year, but to continuously improve our financial performance over time.
This is a great time to be at Sysco. There's no other place I'd rather be. Our future is bright, and we are positioned to win. Thank you for your support.
Great! We are out of time, so thank you, Kevin, Kenny. We're glad to have you back at the conference.
Thanks. Thank you.