Fastenal Company (FAST) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning, everybody. My name is Scott Satterlee, Chair of the Board of Directors, and I wanted to welcome all of you to the 2025 Fastenal Annual Meeting of Shareholders. Now before we move on to the business portion of the meeting, I would like to welcome and introduce the former pastor, retired pastor of Faith Lutheran Church, Pastor Mark Dumke to lead the invocation.

Good morning. Well, you may have noticed that the word uncertainty has been getting a lot of mentions recently. It seems to be everywhere from tonight's NFL draft to world politics, so I am grateful for examples of those who have been remained and rooted in core values and done so with Grace and humility and confidence. I'm thinking, in particular, of two. In 2016, I introduced the invocation with an expression of gratitude for Pope Francis and his warm welcome to a delegation of Lutherans who are visiting Rome. I'm grateful for his steadfast example of living according to the command of Christ, which is simply to love God and love your neighbor as yourself. The next year, we celebrated our 50th anniversary at Fastenal, which could not be told without mentioning Bob Kierlin's 10 basic rules about leadership, you have them on your chairs. I am grateful for Bob's steadfast example of living according to his values, living and leading. As we honor and remember these 2 men, please join me in a word of prayer. Creator God, you cause the rain to fall and seed to sprout and grow. You bring forth food from the earth without fail and you nourish your whole creation, sustain our desire to base our decisions and actions on the strong foundation of our values, open doors of opportunity for this corporation and for every person within it as we gather to review our accomplishments challenges and plans for the future, bless the work of our assembly and this corporation. May our work be done not only for our gain but for the betterment for all who we serve, Amen.

Okay. This Annual Meeting of Shareholders of Fastenal Company is now convened. As I stated, my name is Scott Satterlee, Chair of the Board, and I will act as Chair for this meeting. Mr. John Milek, Vice President and General Counsel, will act as Secretary for this meeting. Every year, we like to recognize the 5 founders of the organization. And I'm going to read off their names, John D. Remick, Stephen M. Slaggie, Robert A. Kierlin, Henry K. McConnon, and Michael M. Gostomski. As most of you know, this is a pretty somber period for us. As our founder, Robert Kierlin passed away this February. And my understanding is Mary is in the room and I want to thank her for coming today. It's an honor to have you here, and please accept our condolences. Later on in the program, both Dan Florness and Jeff Watts are going to share a few thoughts about the legacy of Bob Kierlin, but it goes without saying, he was an exceptional human being. His impact both internally to Fastenal and externally to the community is immeasurable. In his book, the power of Fastenal people. He immortalized a number of rules and disciplines that society should follow, not only within Fastenal, but externally. And those rules and those values are things that we intend to continue to honor. Bob will truly be missed. At this time, I'd like to introduce the Board of Directors, and when I say your name, if you wouldn't mind, please standing and acknowledging the crowd. Michael J. Ancius; Stephen L. Eastman; Brady D. Ericson; Daniel L. Florness; Rita J. Heise; Hsenghung Sam Hsu; Daniel L. Johnson; Sarah N. Nielsen; Irene A. Quarshie; and Reyne K. Wisecup. We also had a bittersweet moment in January. Nicholas Lundquist, I know you're in the building, served his final Board meeting. As you can see up on the screen, Nick has had a storied career with the organization. Nick is one of the company's earliest employees, serving more than 40 years before adding his experience to the Board. We would probably need a full day to be able to list all of his accomplishments and what he's meant to this company. But we wanted to take some time to recognize and as Nick is a humble guy, I promised them, I wouldn't embarrass him too much. But Nick, if you wouldn't mind, please stand so we can give you a round of applause for everything you've done for Fastenal. I will now ask Mr. Milek to report on the number of shares present at this meeting and to conduct the voting on the proposals to be considered at this meeting. Following the vote, our Chief Executive Officer, Daniel L. Florness; and our President and Chief Sales Officer, Jeffery M. Watts, will report to you on the company. Mr. Milek?

Thank you, Mr. Satterlee. And good morning, everybody. Before starting, I want to remind shareholders of the rules of this meeting, copies of which are available at the registration desk. Most importantly, if you wish to speak, please raise your hand and the microphone will be brought to you. Upon being recognized, please state your name clearly and limit your statements to no more than 3 minutes. There are 3 management proposals to be voted upon. Management's position is already stated in the proxy statement that you received. The record date for the determination of the holders of the company's common stock entitled to receive notice and vote at this meeting was fixed by our Board of Directors as February 24, 2025. I present to this meeting a certified list of the holders of shares of the company's issued and outstanding common stock as of the record date. This list will be kept open and subject to inspection by any shareholder during this meeting. I also present to this meeting an affidavit of a manager of Broadridge Financial Solutions, Inc. attesting that the notice of the meeting, together with a proxy statement, a proxy card and certain other documents were mailed on or about March 14, 2025, to each holder of record of the company's common stock as of the close of business on the record date. The affidavit of mailing of the notice of this meeting was attached in the minutes of this meeting as Exhibit A. The certified list of the holders of the company's common stock will be filed with the books and records of the company. As of the close of business on the record date, there were outstanding entitled to vote at this meeting, 573,451,114 shares of common stock. Each share of common stock is entitled to 1 vote. For a quorum to be present, a majority of the 573,451,114 votes entitled to cast must be present in person or by proxy at this meeting. On a preliminary count, there were represented at this meeting, either in person or by proxy, a majority of the votes entitled to be cast at this meeting. Therefore, a quorum is present for the transaction of business today. Is there anyone present who has not submitted a proxy or a registration form? A record of the proxy submitted to this meeting and the ballots of the individuals appointed proxies and the shareholders person at this meeting will be filed with the books and rents of the company. Ellen Stolts has been appointed to act as the Inspector of Election with respect to all matters to be voted upon at this meeting or any adjournment thereof. The oath of Inspector of Election has been administered and will be attached to the minutes of this meeting as Exhibit B. We hereby make available to the Inspector of Election the list of shareholders, the registration forms and the record of all proxies submitted to this meeting. Copies of the minutes of the last annual meeting of the company held on April 25, 2024, are available at the registration. We will, therefore, dispense with the reading of the minutes of that meeting. All shareholders of record as of the close of business on February 24, 2025, may vote on the matters to be considered today. If you wish to vote by ballot, please raise your hand when I ask you to do so and the ballot will be brought to you. Shareholders who have appointed others as proxies to vote their shares, whether in writing or by telephone or over the Internet and have not revoked their proxies should not vote by ballot. We will administer 1 ballot covering all matters to be voted upon at this meeting rather than separate ballots for each matter. We will now take up the business of the meeting. We have 3 matters to be considered by our shareholders today. The first is the election of directors for this coming year. The Board of Directors of the company has nominated the following 11 persons for election to the Board to serve until the next regular meeting of shareholders or until their successors are elected and qualified. Scott A. Satterlee; Michael J. Ancius; Stephen L. Eastman; Brady D. Ericson, Daniel L. Florness; Rita J. Heise, Hsenghung Sam Hsu; Daniel L. Johnson, Sarah N. Nielsen; Irene A. Quarshie and Reyne K. Wisecup. I will now open the floor to a motion to formally place before this meeting the nomination of these individuals. I recognize Mr. Rick Zarneke.

My name is Rick Zarneke and I'm a shareholder of the company. I move to formally place before the nomination of the 11 individuals identified for election to the Board of Directors to serve until the next regular meeting of shareholders or until their successes successors are elected and qualified.

Thank you. As no other nominations have been made in accordance with the procedures established in the company's bylaws, I declare the nominations to be closed. The next matter for consideration today is the ratification of the appointment of our PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP as our independent registered republic accounting firm for fiscal year 2025. I would like to introduce Mr. Ryan Lepper, a partner with PwC LLP and Ms. Lauren Carew, a Director from PwC LLP; and Ms. Carrie Person, a partner with KPMG LLP, who are here today to answer any questions that you may have. I will now open the floor to a motion to formally place before this meeting a resolution concerning the ratification of the appointment of PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP as our independent registered public accounting firm for fiscal year 2025. I recognize Mr. Bob Stroinski.

My name is Bob Stroinski, and I am a shareholder of the company. I move that the following resolution be adopted, resolved that the appointment of PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP as independent registered public accounting firm for the company for the fiscal year ending December 31, 2025, be and hereby ratified.

Is there any discussion of this motion? It has been moved that the appointment of PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP as independent registered public accounting firm for the company for the fiscal year ending December 31, 2025, be ratified. I will now open the floor to a motion to formally place before this meeting a resolution concerning the approval of executive compensation. I recognize Mr. Mike Crum.

My name is Mike Crum and I'm a shareholder of the company. I move that the following resolution be adopted, resolved that the shareholders of the company approve on an advisory basis, the compensation of the company's named executive officers as directed in the compensation discussion and analysis, compensation tables and the related disclosures contained in the section of the proxy statement for the 2025 Annual Meeting of the Shareholders captioned Executive Compensation.

Is there any discussion of this motion? It has been moved that the compensation of certain of our executive officers be approved. Now if you wish to vote on these motions by ballot, please raise your hand and a ballot will be given to you. If you have appointed another person as proxy to vote your shares and have not revoked that proxy, you should not vote by ballot. After you have executed your ballot, it will be collected and tabulated. The polls are now closed, and the ballots will be counted. While the ballots are being counted, Mr. Dan L. Florness, our Chief Executive Officer; and Mr. Jeffery M. Watts, our President and Chief Sales Officer, will report to you on the company. After the conclusion of their reports, we will answer any questions that you may have relating to the company and its activities. Thank you.

Good morning, everybody, and thank you for joining us today. The -- John, just for future reference, Jeff gets kind of weird when he's referred to as Jeffery. I don't know if that's a thing between he and his mom, but he prefers Jeff. So a couple of years ago, Jeff spoke to the group as well, and he said, hey, any advice for me? And I said, here's the advice I've always gone by. First, I talked to my wife to see what she recommends and the thing she says every year. Brevity is a beautiful thing, Florness, be brief. The second thing is be candid when you talk to our shareholders in any setting and our employees. The nice thing about being candid, you don't have to have a great memory if you always share the truth. And the third one is one I shared with them a couple of years ago. I said before I get up to the podium. Check your fly. Just -- you don't need an embarrassing moment to distract you. But with that said, a quick overview of the business. So a similar view. I think you'd flip one more slide, please. Oh, we're doing the milestones first, sorry. So every year, we a new set of milestones occur somewhere in the business. And we celebrate milestones. And a handful that occurred this year is -- and we talked about this last April, a key part of our ability to grow is an event we hold every year. In recent years, we've held it in Nashville, Tennessee because it's a centrally located spot, and they have some really big facilities to accommodate a big group. But when we went through COVID, we had to shut that down for a few years. And it slowed us down. And some of what you saw in 2023 and 2024 when our growth slowed was a direct outgrowth of not being able to engage with customers in the same way in 2020 and 2021 and even 2022, but it slowly grew, and we had a big oops last year, and that was we wanted to see if we get back to our 2019 show and how many people were ready to travel again, and we left the invite list open a bit too long, and we scrambled. We booked, I think, every Airbnb in the city of Nashville last year, and we had Fastenal employees 5, 6, 7 people staying in an Airbnb for a few days that week because we wanted our customers, our guests in the hotels that were close to the facility. And so we had a record turnout last year. And as I'll touch on later in the talk, we had a great turnout this year. We were down a little bit because we didn't leave it open too long because it was too chaotic last year. But that's a good problem. From a longevity standpoint, several of our business units hit milestones. Our business unit in Chile, Poland and Sweden celebrate 10 years as being part of the Fastenal Blue Team family. Our folks in the Netherlands celebrated 20 years and our folks up in Canada celebrated 30. And if you recall from a few years ago when Jeff first spoke, Jeff's been with Fastenal about 29 years. So he was an early, early member of that Canadian business unit. From a sustainability standpoint, in some of the recognized raters that are out there, EcoVadis being 1 of them, awarded Fastenal with a silver medal, and I'll touch on that a little bit more later in the talk. And then finally, because of our growth, we opened a new 100,000-plus square foot facility in Monterrey, Mexico, and I had the opportunity last summer to go down for the ribbon-cutting as we welcomed and congratulate our team on their accomplishment. Industrial Services, which is part of the event today, after the meeting and after lunch, we invite you to stop over at -- a lot of people in town referred to it as the old JCPenney building. I hope people soon refer to it as the new Fastenal industrial services building. And I think you'll be really impressed with what you see, and I encourage you to stop over and visit it. From a productivity standpoint, 2024 was a record year for FMI device installs. Now that's everything from -- so Fastenal managed inventory. It could be a vending machine, it could be a Kanban system with embedded RFID that we deploy into a customer's facility. Today, we have about 130,000 devices deployed in just over 20,000 customers scattered across 25 countries. So an incredible achievement. We had a record year last year. From an investment standpoint, I remember back in the late '90s, we started Fastenal 401(k) plan for our employees. Several years later, we started a similar program up in Canada up there, it's referred to as an RRSP. That employee-owned 401(k) broke $1 billion in investments. About 30% of that is tied up in Fastenal stock. So our 24,000 employees within Fastenal are aligned with everybody in this audience from the standpoint we're shareholders, too. And then finally, we announced last -- several years ago, we elevated Jeff, who is at the time leading our international business to -- I see I'm almost running out of time on my first slide. I have to pick it up, use my wife's advice, but we elevated Jeff to President, and I'm really excited for Jeff to present after me and share not where we are, but where we're going. So now as I pick up the pace on the next slide, not a lot to say here, a view of the business. We did add some information in the lower right, and that's -- or lower left, excuse me, that's the only thing I'm going to really touch on is most people don't appreciate this, but Fastenal having started in a community of 25,000 people in Southeastern Minnesota. We've expanded geographically, but we've expanded in our ability to engage with customers in urban areas, in more remote areas, country to country. And what you see there in Canada, about 40% of our revenue is in metropolitan areas with more than 0.5 million people. In Mexico, about 70% of our revenue. Now Mexico is a much more urban population than U.S. or Canada. And so that follows suit. And in the U.S., just over 52% of our revenue is in areas like Minneapolis, Chicago, Madison, Milwaukee, et cetera. The other 48% is in communities like Winona. So we're successful in both markets, which is a great opportunity when you ultimately want to have the largest potential market available to engage in. Our digital footprint, the only thing -- I'm going to skip that one. Other -- and we'll go to the digital footprint one because otherwise, I am going to go way long. So if you could give me 1 more slide, please. So digital footprint, again, this is about how we deploy devices into our customer business unit. And think of it as we took a 3-foot chunk of a shelf in a branch. We wrapped it in a metal box. And we said, you know what, rather than the customer coming in the front door of our branch or coming to a tool crib in their facility. What if we move the product out closer to the point of use. Because for our customers, the biggest expense for them isn't what they're buying from Fastenal, the biggest expense for them is the waste around the product. In other words, you're going through too much of it or that employee spends 20 minutes walking over to the tool crib to get something and 20 minutes walking past and they're probably waiting 10 or 20 minutes when they're there. So think about an employee and what they cost per hour. And if they spend half an hour or an hour to go get something, what does that mean to the cost of that $10 pair of gloves? And so what we do is we deploy close to the point of use. So when we talk to our teams internally, when they're designing systems and they're conveying it with the customer, we focus on that right-hand column that you see in front of you. And in there, we talk about where are we going. So on the bottom half of that slide, we talk about how much of our revenue do we think someday will go through some type of FMI program. We believe it's 2/3 of our revenue when we study how our customers use products and things that are highly repetitive. So what this shows is over the last roughly decade, how that has evolved from being about 20% of our revenue to just over 40% of our revenue on our way to that ultimately being 2/3 of our revenue. The upper half looks at it and says, there's stuff that people don't use in vending machines or don't use in a Kanban system that's more infrequently purchased. There it's having a great electronic connection with the customer, so it's convenient for them to raise their hand and ask for something. So what you can see is, we believe, ultimately, about 70% of our business will be the customer communicating with us electronically to either ask or confirm they need something. A decade ago, that was about 5% of our revenue. Today, it's just over 30%. Again, we believe it ultimately doubles again within Fastenal. But a piece of that is merely double counting the stuff that's already in an FMI machine. So what you see here is if you take out that double counting, we think about 30%, so most of that non-65% will be a customer engaging with us electronically. And whether you're in IT or in distribution or in supply chain or in our branch or on-site network. You're always keyed on. This is where we're going, and we're building capacity to, how do we share that story with our customer and engage in a different way and be special in the marketplace in a different way. Next, talk a little bit about our customer Expo. And in there, you can see this year, we had about just over 3,100 people there. We include Fastenal employees and suppliers, there's about 4,600 people there. And it's a great opportunity for our customers to see firsthand and talk to our experts behind the scene, everything about supply chain our vendors, our suppliers are there to engage about specifics on products. And you can ask detailed questions about how the vending machine works from not your local rep, but from the people that design the system and it's a different way to engage with our customer. And as Scott mentioned earlier, Bob passed away in February. And one of the things that -- there's a lot of things of memories I have of Bob. I remember a May back in -- a May morning back in 1996 when Bob called me up and offered me a job. And when I mentioned it to my wife, she said, remind me where Winona is again because my wife is not originally from Minnesota. And 2 months later, we moved here in 4 kids and 30 years later, she hasn't left me and we're still here and still part of the Fastenal family. But one of the things that was a hallmark and I shared just a comment with the Board yesterday is that Bob and I would -- in that last 30 years, a couple of times every decade, our stock would have gotten to a point where we're in the 60s. And I remember on a trip with Bob years ago, he kind of explained to me why we would split a lot of times the stock in the 60s. And it got to be almost a joke between us, who would go into which office first and say, I think it's time to split the stock. And most companies don't do it anymore in electronic trading in today's world. It really isn't what it was a decade ago. But I opened this talk by talking about milestones. And so a stock split for us internally is a milestone. It's an opportunity for us to say that 24,000 people, you've demonstrated success. And the marketplace has recognized that success by raising the price of our stock. Let's mark our latest turn of success and split the stock and share that internally and with our shareholders, it's a celebration event. It doesn't change what you have. You now have twice as many shares that are theoretically worth half as much. But the future potential you have, I think, is great. And that's what that stock split is about. I think Bob is smiling right now because Bob really enjoyed the stock split. Even though it doesn't really say anything other than it's a point in time recognition of success. So my congratulations to the Blue Team and Fastenal that we had the opportunity to recognize that success and split the stock. As mentioned, afterwards, there will be a tour back in February of 2024. I went over and did a tour of facility. And I was amazed how many things we do in the Fastenal industrial services building for our customers that I never imagined we did. And so I said to Bob, you might want to go over and pay a visit. And true to form, Bob went over the next day, and he came back almost giddy about the things he saw. And so we wanted to share it with everybody in this room. Please take the opportunity after the meeting and after lunch to go over and visit the facility down the street. I think you'll be really impressed and amazed by some of the things you learned that we do within the Fastenal organization. Finally, let's hear from Jeff, not Jeffery from Jeff, a bit about the most important part of today's discussion, where are we going and how we get there. Thank you.

Good morning. I tried to follow your first step by asking my wife for advice and her advice was just ask Dan. So I guess I'm kind of on my own at this point. Regardless, today, I'm excited to present an overview of our company's strategic plan and provide some insights into our future direction. In recent years, particularly after the easing of the COVID pandemic, we started to notice market dynamics changing. And our customer needs and wants were increasing. They're encountering more complex and more demanding business environment with greater emphasis on efficiency with on speed and more importantly, the reliability of their supply chains. Now these demands prompted us to do a thorough evaluation of ourselves and update our strategic plan because we believe it's essential to not only meet our current customer needs, but also anticipate and address future challenges. Our plan really focuses around 3 main pillars: The first pillar, more effective selling. It's important for us to make sure our branch teams. Our teams in general, our sales teams can get out in front of our customers spend the time they need not be stuck inside doing mundane task. Enhancing our services. When I look at all the solutions and the services that we provide, making sure that our services are up to date with today's market needs, but also our future needs and expanding our total addressable market. For each objective, we performed a comprehensive analysis to determine where are the areas that we needed improvement. We looked into feedback from both our employees and our customers. And also, we did some necessary self-assessment, which is often challenging. But eventually, it became clear to what we needed to do to adapt and to change to the market, ultimately meeting and exceeding our customers' expectations. So today, I'm briefly going to cover 5 accelerators aimed at doing just that. These include adopting artificial intelligence, enhancing our e-commerce, updating our 360 -- FAST 360 platform re-platforming our FASTCrib. And finally, launching our employee engagement application. Now before discussing these initiatives though, let's just take some review of what our feedback from our customers were. Now today, our customers see us, they see us as a world-class solutions provider and a global supply chain partner, delivering high-quality goods and services. I believe this is a direct result of our focus on getting closer to our customers, getting as close as we can as possible through our solutions, our on-site models and our international expansion. However, our customers also highlighted some areas of growth opportunities that we're not fully realizing today. And these opportunities really make up the accelerators that I previously mentioned. So let's begin with the first one, artificial intelligence. If John Soderberg is in the room head of IT, he's probably cringing right now. He's not sure what I'm going to say about this because I tend to go off on tangents on AI. But artificial intelligence, it's a crucial component of our strategy. It's going to impact all of our systems and all of our offerings today. And our customers want improved supply chain insights, advanced data analytics and to be given the options for realizing real value. And our employees, our employees want -- they want us to provide more efficiencies in their daily routines and access to broader information faster. The AI-driven tools we're developing today, they're going to allow Fastenal to analyze vast amounts of data rapidly something that literally would take us weeks before now takes us minutes. A recent developed tool that we released to the field was a quoting and sourcing tool. And this tool could take a quote with thousands of line items on it, and it could make us recommendations in a matter of seconds. That same code 3 or 4 months ago from the guys in the room for Fastenal will now, this might take us days or even weeks to accomplish. In areas like our FMI solutions, these new tools will allow us to predict inventory needs more accurately, reduce stock-outs, identify overstocks while optimizing delivery and replenishment for our customers, again, giving us more time in the field to sell. These insights will also allow our customers to analyze their own data and view suggestions for better products and solutions for their -- to make better decisions in their business. AI applications enhance our customer service by placing information at our employees' fingertips. They provide instant information or support through virtual assistance. And our internal AI system, we call it Blue, takes in thousands of inquiries a week and provides immediate solutions on everything from part sourcing to quoting even insights on Bob's book, the power of Fastenal people. I could go on for a long time about the hours -- go on for hours on the topic of AI. But what I really wanted to take away from it is that as a company Fastenal, we've been an early adopter of AI and what it can do for our company. I believe today, we're a driver in that area. On e-commerce, updating our e-commerce platform is essential for addressing the various needs of our customer base. And this is also an area where, historically, we've underinvested in. As you might imagine, our customer base spans many different industries, different product lines and different needs based on the size of our customers' business. Manufacturing today, a manufacturing customer today with 2,000 employees, they have a much different need and much different expectations than maybe a smaller contractor looking for a couple of boxes of anchors. But both of them are important to us. Both of those customers are important to us, and they need a site that works for them. Now for our larger customers, like I said, maybe that 2,000 employee manufacturing site, their need for robust order visibility and efficient fulfillment process is crucial. These customers rely on a seamless digital experience to manage extensive inventories and complex procurement cycles. And our enhanced e-commerce platform will provide them with the tools they need to streamline their operations and reduce the lead times, ensuring timely deliveries. The midsized customers, those in that $5,000 to $10,000 a month category, they're going to benefit from improved search capabilities, a user-friendly shopping cart. Features that allow them to quickly find products, place orders, track shipments and provide a much smoother business transaction. I want to talk about maybe that smaller contractor, our smaller customers, they're going to appreciate simplicity and accessibility of upgraded e-commerce experience. These customers often seek a very simple straight process that minimizes effort and maximizes convenience. Really what our customers want is an e-commerce site that is more personalized towards them and one that's more tailored toward their need. This investment for us, it's more just a technological upgrade. It's a commitment to meet the expectations for all of our customers regardless of their size. By doing so, we reinforce our position as a market leader in dedicated provider customer-centric solutions. FAST 360. Our FAST 360 portal today, it currently delivers analytics to our customers. It's a separate site from our e-commerce site and the other services that we provide. But what our customers are telling us, they want one home. They want a digital front door with a single sign-on that gives them personalized experience that's tailored to their business. They want a home that has advanced AI-driven analytic tools. Customer and user management options, accounting, personalized e-commerce and the ability to digitally interact with our solutions and services, and they wanted it in one spot. Additionally, they want the same type of AI assistant that I explained to you that we have in the branches today, one they can answer their questions, provide solutions to their supply chains. These features are designed to provide a comprehensive and user-friendly experience for our customers. It's there to provide them with a new system for them and we're calling it -- we're going to keep the name FAST 360 and replatform it is the new Fastenal FAST 360. Now at a recent customer show, the initial demo was out -- it was one of the highlights of the show. It was one that a lot of our customers come up and talk to us saying, thank you. We love this but here's -- like always, when is this ready? When is this going to be deployed? And positive for us, it's coming for them shortly coming in Q2, Q3 this year. In FASTCrib. FASTCrib is inventory crib management software. Today, our FASTCrib software service is close to 200 customer sites globally, and it's worked well for us over the years. But our customers are asking for more than what the current system can provide. So because of this, we're investing in modernizing the software to meet their needs. And the FASTCrib needs -- it needs to be -- it needs to be able to integrate within their systems. And today, it doesn't. It needs improved data and intelligent reporting capabilities, and it needs the ability to extend components from our FMI solutions and technology for all of their products, not just the Fastenal supply products. This isn't a small endeavor, but the importance of FASTCrib in Fastenal's future growth, it can't be overstated. We're bringing the ability for more -- better monitoring, better controls and more inventory tracking, enabling both Fastenal and our customers to make informed data-driven decisions and streamline their supply chains. This will not only strengthen our relationships, but also position Fastenal as a leader in providing a complete and innovative technology solutions. Our employee engagement platform, every year -- everywhere we send out a survey, an employee survey and the one thing that's become more and more frustrating for me is the communication score that we get back from our employees. And the reason it's frustrating is because we really try to overcommunicate. It's something that we think we're doing well, but the message seem to not be getting through. And not long ago, my son using college and he called me, he asked me to send him something. And I sent it to him in the next morning, he called me and he said, Dad, are you going to send that? And I said, I already send it. And he said, Well, how did you send it? I'm like e-mail. He kind scoffed me he's like e-mail. Who uses e-mail? And I'm like, well, the business world and he goes, no dad, the old business world. And I tried not to take it personally. But as I thought about it more and more, a lot of our employees today they are used to social media, the world of social media and they get most of their news, their updates and their communications from a similar type platform. So our new employee engagement application is designed to enhance communication and collaboration within the company. It includes a personalized communication platform, social media features, personal KPIs and goals, AI insights and assistance and many other features that are going to help us engage with our employees and help drive productivity. And our culture is very important to us, and it's something we believe in protecting by empowering and informing our employees, they adapt swiftly to the changes and challenges like we're dealing with today with tariffs. Moreover, the platform facilitates a seamless integration of feedback and insights, allowing us to better make decisions that enhance both employee satisfaction and business performance. The ability to communicate effectively is essential to ensuring that our workforce is fulfilled and committed to driving the success of the company. So finally, it's important to point that part of our process and the strategic planning was the need internally to really understand how we look at and evaluate our customer base and its performance. In the past, we've used basically individual account numbers in dollars per active accountant. And that system worked well for us for many years. But as we've grown, we needed a better way to gauge our business, better way for planning and setting realistic expectations in the field. So instead of just tracking account numbers, knowing that many of our larger customers today have multiple account numbers in one site, we've combined them. We got a better view -- a single view site to provide us a more accurate understanding of what our customer sites look like today more at the single site location. When you consider this view, and you can see since 2017, our customer sites with revenues of more than $10,000 per month, they have grown an average of 40% annually and make up almost 78% of our revenue, but only represent 5% of our total customer sites. The smaller segment of that, the customers that are doing more than $50,000 per month. These sites represent over half -- almost half of our revenues have grown by 18% annually and only represent 1% of our total customer site. And I think the success in these 2 categories, it really features how we highlighted our focus and strong growth performance with our Onsite and our FMI solution. But as we look at the smaller categories, the $5,000 to $10,000 a month and the under $5,000 per month, we see that the growth is slowing and the under $5,000 is actually contracting. Now these accounts today represent 30% of our revenues, but 92% of our customer sites. And we use this information really to develop the plan to become a more customer-centric in our planning, focus and allocation of our resources. And it allows us to address our largest customers' need for growth while also understanding how these investments are going to support our smaller accounts as well. Now let me be clear about this. We all -- we value all of our customers, and we're working very hard to enhance every aspect of our business relationship with them. I know that I'm running out a little bit of time here, but I hope -- I hope going through that, a quick overview shows you how we're creating solutions for our customers and our employees and the wants and the needs that they want from us today, distinguishing us from our competitors in solidifying our reputation as an innovative and forward thinking company. Now the last slide I have is for Nick. I think Dan gave me the slide because he thought I was going to tell a funny story or maybe an embarrassing story about Nick, but I think the picture on the far left is plenty. But I believe I can speak for a number of us here today from Fastenal. I want to say that, Nick, you've been instrumental in so many of our careers. I was providing feedback and support when needed, and sometimes even when we didn't think we needed it. But speaking for myself, even if I didn't agree with you with some of your feedback, and I hate to admit this to you, but you're mostly right. When I make decisions now, and I was talking to you guys about this in the last couple of days, when I'm making decisions for the company now and our success moving forward, it's often Nick's voice hear in the back of my back of my head talking about is trying this, but really questioning, are you making the right decision for the company? Are you making the right decision for our employees and the right decision for our customers? And Nick? I speak for all of this when I say we all strive to never disappoint you. So with that, I just wanted to thank you for all you've done for me and for the company as a whole. And I'll pass it back over to Dan.

Thanks, Jeff. And yes, Jeff had the fun of seeing -- sharing a few pictures of Nick from over the years. When Jeff was talking, I was distracted for a moment, and I look at this. And each of you have it on your the seat you sat down in this morning. And as I'm reading through the list of 10 rules of leadership that Bob shared with us in this book back in 1997. One thing that struck me and when Nick and I first met back in 1996, in all frankness, I think Nick kind of looked at me and said, who the hell is this guy coming in as CFO and hasn't been with Fastenal about a minute, and over the first -- the next couple of years in '96 to '97, Nick and I really got to know each other. We traveled together. Nick is not an easy person to travel with. He wakes up at like 4 in the morning, turns the TV on and starts reading our internal sales reports. And then he talks to the person next to him. And I told them the next morning when he was talking to me, I said, hey, if you noticed, I didn't respond to you Nick, it's because I was sleeping. I do that at night. But all kidding aside, when I look through this list, a lot of people outside the organization don't know Nick as well because I see #3, stay out of the spotlight. That is Nick to a T. And there is not -- one of the reasons other than having a little fun with the pictures that I asked Jeff to say a few words about Nick was Jeff knows Nick as a mentor first and a friend second. I know Nick as a peer and a friend, although, frankly, over the last decade and for those of you that think Florness should be run out of town and get them out of the organization. If I ultimately am deemed successful in this organization, it's because of a handful of folks in leadership, a handful of folks on the board, 24,000 people in the Fastenal organization Reyne Wisecup and Nick Lundquist because Nick was incredibly good at everybody he mentored of being really cryptic when he would talk. It was frustrating as hell. He'd be so cryptic. And what it forced you to do is it forced you to think about what he had said. And you probably needed to go talk to 3 other people. So what did you learn from Nick? Hey, if you're more collaborative, you can solve problems because you can get input from more people and our organization is incredibly blessed to have had Nick Lundquist associated with it since, I think, 1978 is when he joined the organization. And to give you a perspective on how much the organization has changed. By the time we leave this meeting this morning, and yes, Florness is going to stop talking eventually and we'll leave the meeting. But when we leave the meeting today, we will have done more in revenue in 3.5 hours today than we did in the first 4 years that Nick was with Fastenal. That's how much the organization has changed in those 40-plus years. But a bit about the Blue Team and some -- here's a quick look on demographics. I think 2017 was the first year I shared this at the annual meeting. And maybe with some trepidation because you don't like to always air things about your business and things you struggle on or things you're progressing on and how that works. But for Fastenal to be ultimately successful. We have to do some simple things. We have to go out and we have to find great people. We have to ask those people to join, and we have to give them a reason to stay. And some of the reasons are how you treat each other, how you develop each other. What opportunities that you open up for other people. And one thing I'm pleased to say in an industry that has historically been very male-centric, a lot of our customers are very male-centric environments. The female side of our organization has changed dramatically over the last 10 and 15 years. And the only impediment we had was when COVID came along, and you can see it in our trends. When COVID came along and you closed schools and you closed daycares, what side of the population does that fall upon the most around the globe? And our numbers froze from 2019. I'm pleased to say it started moving north again in 2024. We should be at about 28% right now, not 24.1%. 50.3% of the working age population is female. And if we create a really incredibly open environment, we're finding the absolute best talent and society regardless of gender. Moving further over I mentioned earlier about how much of our business is in metropolitan areas, how much is in the upper Midwest and how much is scattered across the country. And that right-hand column, I always figured it was more about -- we have a lot more presence in states outside the upper Midwest where the demographics are different. About 1/3 of the number trend there is because of demographics changing where we operate. 2/3 of it is Fastenal is really great at welcoming people into the organization because we remember those 10 simple rules that Bob has shared with us and that means everybody has a shot at being successful within the Fastenal organization. And it's funny, 38% of our district leaders started with Fastenal part time. They didn't know what it was, but they run college and they needed some money for food, maybe for stuff you have in the evening at a bar, they needed a little cash. And they joined this organization because maybe a parent told them about it or maybe a friend told them about it. And they realize, well, these are some great people. I'm going to spend my career here. That's why we have an incredibly young population, but have a ton of tenure within the organization. Speaking of tenure, here's a quick snapshot of our organization today. And it looks at -- if you could flip one more ahead, please. We have close to 800 people in the organization today that have been with Fastenal for more than 25 years. About 300 of that group has been with Fastenal more than 30 years, about 90, 35 years, and we have 21 employees that have been with Fastenal for 40-plus years. If you include folks that have retired, we have 35 people that have hit the 40-year mark within Fastenal. That doesn't happen in today's world, especially when you consider that group that started -- so the 40-year group started in 1985, the class of 1985. We weren't very big in 1985, and we didn't have that many employees. Heck, when we went public a few years later, we had over 300 employees. But 40 of those people that joined us prior to -- excuse me, 21 people that joined us prior to 1985 are still with the organization today. And 7, we want to recognize here. So Mike, Steve, David, Paula, Paula is not here. She's in the U.K. I saw her about a year ago, to congratulate her. Bob, Troy and Rick. Can you please stand up and be recognized by the members here today? Congratulations, and thank you for your service to Blue Team members and our customers for the last 40 years. And to the guests of those employees, could you recognize them as well too because they had to put up with us for those 40 years. Earlier, I mentioned in our milestones that we were awarded a silver medal EcoVadis for things that we do. One of the challenges we have as an organization and part of this. Let's blame Bob for it, but it's really an extension of kind of a Midwestern folks in general. We tend not to talk about ourselves. And then in today's world, when you need to share with the world what you're doing as far as good, we don't talk about those things, and that's hindered us in the past. And so here is sharing some things that we do as an organization to help the communities in which we operate. What you see there on the left is the hurricane that hit created devastation in North Carolina, particularly around Asheville. And we had a semi driver going through who got caught up in the weather. And like we typically find somebody in the community lended a helping hand and gave our driver a shelter in the storm. And that's thinking that family for helping us out. But we also reciprocate by we have incredible supplies in our distribution centers to help out and we engage with those communities to help them in the rebuild process. On the right side, personally, my wife and I went through the experience a little over a decade ago where our house burn to the ground one night. And the one thing I remember from that experience, and if I get choked up here for a second, I'll get over it, I am sorry. But I remember from that experience, our 4 kids, the family and our 4 kids and our dog came out unscathed, our house didn't share the same fate. But when the representative from the Red Cross showed up, I gave our 7-year-old daughter, a stuffed animal. All the other stuff in the world didn't matter right then for our daughter Anna. And I'm proud of the Blue Team, we set in our mission, what we call our Blue Team -- Blue Drive and giving back, and we have crushed our goals in the last several years of giving blood. And that's across the planet. Our team in India was probably the most impressive of everybody on the way they step forward and share them themselves with other folks in the committee. Moving on, you see some outreach that we do at various locations about throughout the organization. Now we're not unique in this. There's a lot of good but done a lot of people every day. We just never share it, but we thought I'd share a few things with the folks about the 24,000 people that put on a blue shirt every day and represent you in the marketplace. And then finally, in the environment right now, things like ESG, it's a lot of uncertainty about what that is, but it matters to our employees, and it matters to our customers, particularly our customers in our growing business in Europe. But it matters to our customers around the planet as well, and I'm pleased to say, because we tell the story, this frugal organization, which frugality by its nature, conserves resources. And if that isn't what we should emulate, I don't know what is. We treat each other with respect. That's what we believe it's about, and we've been recognized in the marketplace for it. And with that, I'm going to shut up, I'm 2 seconds over, and open it up for questions. If you could possibly turn the lights up a little bit so we could see the -- it's -- I'm not sure if I can answer a question with a bright light in my face. Either people can smell the lunch, they're looking for industrial services tour or they don't have any questions. Very good. Thank you.

Thank you, Dan. Thank you, Jeff. Okay. The ballots have now been counted, and the report of the Inspector of Election indicates that Scott A. Satterlee; Michael J. Ancius; Stephen L. Eastman; Brady D. Ericson; Daniel L. Florness; Rita J. Heise; Hsenghung Sam Hsu; Daniel L. Johnson; Sarah N. Nielsen; Irene A. Quarshie and Reyne K. Wisecup have received the required number of votes and are hereby elected directors of the company. The report of the Inspector of Election also indicates that the resolution for the ratification of PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP as the independent registered public accounting firm for the company for the fiscal year ending December 31, 2025, has received the required number of votes and has been adopted. And the resolution for the approval on an advisory basis of the compensation of certain of our executive officers has received the required number of votes and has been approved. All ballots and record of all proxies will be filed with the books and records of the company. The certificate of the Inspector of Election will be attached to the minutes of the meeting as Exhibit C. The meeting is now adjourned. Thank you all for coming and invite you to join us for lunch. So we've been waiting for that, which is available outside under the tent and then tours of our industrial services building located at 1858 Service Drive, Winona, are available today for all shareholders until 2:00 p.m. Central Time. Thank you all very much for coming, and have a great day.