Good morning, everybody, and welcome to the Snap-on Incorporated 2024 Annual Meeting of Shareholders. My name is Richard Miller. I am the Vice President, General Counsel, and Secretary of Snap-on, and have the honor of being the parliamentarian for today's meeting. I would like at this time to ask everyone to please turn off or silence your cell phones. Today's meeting is being webcast and recorded, and a recording will be available on our website shortly following the meeting. I now call the 2024 Annual Meeting of Shareholders to order. We have made the order of business and rules of order available to everyone, so please abide by these rules. It is now 10:06 A.M. on April 25th, 2024, and the polls are officially open. If anyone has not yet voted and would like to vote, our Inspectors of Election, Abby Cowart and John Cuoco of Computershare are in the back of the room and will record your vote. Attending today's meeting are the following members of our Board of Directors. When I call your name, please stand. David Adams, Director since 2016, and retired Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer of Curtis s-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, Chief Administrative Officer of Exelon Corporation. James Holden, Director since 2007 and Snap-on's Lead Director, retired President and Chief Executive Officer of Daimler Chrysler Corporation. Henry Knippel, Director since 2011, and retired Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer of Regal Beloit Corporation. Dudley Lehman, Director since 2003, and retired Group President of Kimberly-Clark Corporation. Greg Sherrill, Director since 2010, and retired Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer of Tenneco Inc. Donald Stebbins, Director since 2015, and retired President and Chief Executive Officer of Superior Industries International Inc. Nick Pinchuk, Director since 2007, Chairman of the Board, President, and Chief Executive Officer of Snap-on. Nick will present an update on the status of your corporation and the performance at the end of the meeting. Also here today are James Stewart and Owen McCormick, representing our auditors, Deloitte & Touche LLP. They will be available to answer any questions following the meeting. We have an affidavit that notices the meeting was mailed as required, and it will be entered into the meeting minutes. Since all shareholders have had an opportunity to vote, will the Inspectors of Election please confirm that all votes have been tabulated? Thank you. It is now 10:08 A.M., and the polls are officially closed. 52,838,375 shares of common stock, each having one vote on each proposal, are entitled to vote at this meeting. I've been advised by our Inspectors of Election that we have a quorum with more than 89.5% of all shares outstanding represented at the meeting. Votes are stated as a percentage of those voting unless otherwise noted. We have three agenda items today. Our first is the election of directors. The board nominated the following candidates to serve until the 2025 Annual Meeting: David C. Adams, Karen L. Daniel, Ruth Ann M. Gillis, James P. Holden, Nathan J. Jones, Henry W. Knippel, W. W. Lehman, Nicholas D. Pinchuk, Greg M. Sherrill, and Donald J. Stebbins. Each of the nominees received votes in their favor of at least 77.9% of the shares represented, and each has therefore been elected. Our second item is the ratification of the Audit Committee's selection of Deloitte & Touche LLP as the company's independent registered public accounting firm for 2024. Over 90% of the shares represented voted in favor of the proposal, and therefore the Audit Committee's selection of Deloitte has been ratified. The final agenda item is the advisory vote to approve the compensation of Snap-on's named executive officers as presented in the proxy statement. With over 92.7% of the votes cast voting for the approval of the compensation of the named executive officers, the non-binding resolution presented in the proxy statement is affirmed. That completes the official portion of our meeting. It is now 10:10 A.M., and the meeting is adjourned. We will now watch a short video. Please enjoy. We are the people of work. We are those who make. We are those who fix. I've been doing this for 40 years. Learned it with my dad. He was a self-taught mechanic. I was able to work in mining and then the oil field and then semis because I always loved working on diesels. Hand wrenches, you went with Snap-on. It's the only wrench that wouldn't break. If you want to get a job done right, you got to have the right tool. We wield insight and experience. It's not hard to sell the difference between the tools. There is no competition. They just have everything figured out down to the ratchets or the way the angle of the wrenches are. We shape the steel, harness the power, and marshal the data. Cars got computers, and to speak their language, you got to be able to read the codes and look at live data. You name it. A lot of the technicians I see have mission-critical jobs. They need to rely on their tools, and they know Snap-on will be there. Snap-on helps us elevate our diagnostic skills with the evolving cars and helps us get through the cars quicker, and we can get on to the next customer and keep everyone happy. If I don't have the tool to do the job, I can't do the job. If I can't do the job, I can't earn a living. We create the now. I was in the Air Force as an aircraft mechanic, and I worked with Snap-on Tools. Working on the flight lines in deployed locations, you want to get the job done. We summon the future. Time is money. I got to get these cars out as fast as possible. It feels really good to make customers happy. It's like going to the doctor's office. You know, I'm their doctor for their vehicle. We make the minutes count. The days special. A Snap-on guy is really important. It gives you a reason to go out on the truck. You know, it's a great thing having a good Snap-on man in our town. And the years rewarding. My wife and I, we both are franchise owners. Started with a single truck, and it just started growing from there. Five years later, here we are, and I love it. All of my employees started out as an assistant, and then they've grown into being store managers. Watching them grow in personal life and professional has been a lot of fun. I mean, I can own a property like this out here. It's provided a good life for us. We are the bearers of pride and dignity. It's not just a tool. It's a lifestyle. I mean, obviously, look at the tattoo. You know, we eat, breathe, and sleep Snap-on. You wouldn't believe how many of these tools I already have inside my box. Started out as a small shop, 8,900 sq ft. It progressed to what we are now, just under 20,000 sq ft. I'll always be with Snap-on. You'll see me buying Snap-on stuff until I'm out of this gig. We all take pride with the customer, getting the car out right, and Snap-on helps us get the job done right the first time. The soldiers tell us they depend on Snap-on every day. They believe in the work they do, and they're proud of the tools they use to accomplish their mission. Growing up, my father was a heavy equipment mechanic. My dad would bring home socket sets. That's how we got started in knowing that Snap-on's got the tool that you need. When you're working with them every day, if it doesn't feel right, I don't want to use it. Anyone who's thinking about getting into this field, I would strongly recommend to get the right tool the first time, which is Snap-on tools. No questions asked. We are the deliverers of dreams. I like opening my toolbox and looking down into that drawer, just kind of like jewelry in there. You know, all that chrome and the nice wrench sets. There's nothing better than a Snap-on tool. Quality isn't expensive. It's priceless. I really love what I do. What I get excited about is seeing smiles on people's faces. It's not about the money. It's not about, you know, the cool car thing. I get positive, good feelings and good vibes when customers are happy, cars perform as well. We all put in a lot of time, and we put a lot of love and care into the business. It started out as one truck, and together we have built this huge business, and I'm very proud of what we've accomplished as a family. Make yourself a business that you can pass down to family. You know, you can build generational wealth starting here. To me, it's a backbone of our country. It's pride and service. I see this doing until I retire. I don't see me doing anything different. We are Snap-on. We are Snap-on. We are Snap-on. We are Snap-on. We are Snap-on. We are Snap-on. We are Snap-on. We are Snap-on. We are Snap-on, and we shape lives. I didn't think the lights were ever going to come on there for a minute. Welcome to the annual meeting again this year. You know, I always enjoy these things. They're great events for us. We get to meet old friends and make new ones. It's really special. You know, I'm standing here thinking, what does it mean when your Chief Legal Counsel blows your title on the introduction? Does it mean something? I don't know. Chokes when he's giving you a title, huh? We may need more rehearsals next time, you know? Maybe. Look, it is a great event. We always enjoy it. I always enjoy telling you about Snap-on in our past year. It's a unique corporation. And when you say those words, corporation, that word, corporation, I think it's worthwhile thinking about what does it really mean? It means a lot of different things to different people, but I'll tell you what it means to me and to the people of Snap-on. It means that a corporation is a place where people come together from all over to create a value for themselves and for others that they couldn't achieve individually. That is why we have these annual meetings. We gather people from all over, investors and associates and franchisees and customers and community representatives of the community and retirees on whose shoulders we stand as we reach further. I'm here to tell you that as we come together, I'm happy and pleased and proud to announce, proud but unsatisfied, I'd say, but proud to announce to you that your company, our company, your enterprise has never, ever been stronger. My job today is to tell you of the story of the past year and how we've all come together to create that strength and reach new heights. Before I do, I know that you saw the board of directors here, but I want to tell you that one of the groups that does influence our trajectory forward and provides counsel and support and advice and gravitas to our corporation is our board of directors. They are eminent and terrific people, and they have helped us make the way. I would like you to give them another round of applause. Now, in this particular event, it's probably the only one that I appear at or talk at, my Chief Legal Counsel is sitting to my left, and therefore I must show you this cautionary statement here, which I urge you to study and understand. That's enough. Okay, on to the next one. Okay, Snap-on is a unique company. I think part of the uniqueness is we keep reinforcing it every day because we know who we are. We have this placard up in every major location, every major room in the company, across the company. It talks about our mission. We provide the most valued productivity solutions in the world. It talks about our beliefs and our values and our aspirations, you know, our goals and our beliefs. We believe in safety. We believe in quality. We believe in connecting with the customer. We believe in innovation, and we believe in rapid continuous improvement. That means improving every day. We hold values. I think these values are just table stakes for being a human being, but we place them up there to remind ourselves that we should act decently. We believe in integrity, and we believe in teamwork, and we believe in telling the truth, and we believe in listening, and we believe in respect. We aspire to be the interlocutor of choice of all we touch. This is who we are, and we see it every day. One of our great advantages is sometimes when things get dark and you do not know where you are going, knowing who you are is a guiding principle. This helps us. We were founded a long time ago, 104 years ago now. You know, it really did, we say this, it really did start with a spark. A spark was an idea, and the idea forged a dream, and the dream shaped lives, and it reached across a nation and a world, and we all know it is true. That spark, that idea was five handles brought to us by an engineer from Milwaukee, Wisconsin. His name was Joe Johnson. We moved here in 1929. We started in Milwaukee. We moved here in 1929. I think we show the 1929 first office. Some of the structures are still standing here. We've kept them restored. That engineer named Joe Johnson, he said, "I can revolutionize tool sets. I can help mechanics. I observe them working, and I know I can help them." He took five handles of different sizes, different configurations, a T, a crank, and a lips, and put them together with 10 sockets of different dimensions. It was an innovation, an idea, a spark that revolutionized tool sets all over this country. We had four founders, but Joe Johnson, we have ties, living ties to those founders. We have here with us, once again, for every annual meeting since I've been officiating at these annual meetings, a living tie, the living ties to our founder, Joe Johnson, the guy who had the spark and the idea, the grandson and granddaughter-in-law of Mr. Joe Johnson, Greg and Kathy Johnson. Stand up, please, and let's give them a round of applause. Greg is not only, it's not every company that has a living tie to their founders and is what makes us, we think, special. Thank you for being here, Greg and Kathy, because you do make us feel special when you come here. Greg's not only the grandson of Joe Johnson. He's a Snap-on guy himself. He was with us almost 30 years. He worked in Australia for us. He worked in the United States a long time, worked in Australia, was the Director of Internal Audit, and was our Corporate Controller for a period of time. We thank him for his contribution. We stand on his shoulders. Snap-on is a company founded all those 104 years ago. It was dedicated to a timeless proposition, the respect for the dignity of work. It was enlisted in the idea of helping working men and women perform critical tasks easier. This is a cause which is as relevant today as it was, you know, 104 years ago. You know, the idea is that we celebrate those people, what we call the makers and fixers. Historians have said that because America has had more makers and fixers from its very birth, that is why America has been ascendant over all other countries in the Western Hemisphere, why it's most successful. It is true. The makers and fixers are the essential people of our environment, of our society. We have seen it play out many times, in good times and bad, many times through many wars. We saw it most recently in an existential threat we called the pandemic, where the makers and fixers were called to stand their posts in the factories, in the distribution centers, on the vans, in the garages, in some cases in the offices, standing their posts so that our society would not disintegrate while we engaged and defeated the COVID. We were all witnesses. We are part of that because we are the people of work. We are those who make, and we are those who fix. We wield insight and experience. We make the days special, the minutes count, and the years rewarding. We are the bringers of prosperity and satisfaction. We are the bearers of pride and dignity. We are the deliverers of dreams, and we are the shapers of lives. We are those who make a difference. These are the words of the video. For Snap-on people, they ring with truth, and they scream with emotion. Like I say every year, we do not make these videos with outside people or marketing consultants. We use inside people because only the people who live the Snap-on experience would understand that truth and emotion. I have here with us today the, basically, the producers, the directors, and the writers of this year's video, which I thought was pretty good. Over here, Ms. Bridget Correa from the marketing department. Over here, it pains me to have them stand up, but I am going to have them do it anyway. Mr. Sam Bottom, please stand up. Let's give them a round of applause. You know, I love that video. I'll tell you what. The guy I love the best is, I think his name is Patrick McGimann from Shelbyville, Kentucky. He stands there, the guy with the beard, he says, "If I don't have the tools to do the job, I can't do the job. If I can't do the job, I can't make a living." Do you remember that quote? It's one of my favorites. I've seen the video like 100 times, so therefore I have it written on my shorts, I think. In any case, it's quite a video. Look, as we go forward in Snap-on, we believe, I'm going to talk about 2023 in a minute, and I think we can call it a success. Why we are able to go forward in good times and bad is we are powered by advantage. This is from the annual report. That is what we declare in the annual report. Just a little more specificity about that advantage, we are powered by deciding advantage. Product, brand, and people buy it. What we mean by deciding means when things are important, when people are making a choice, when interlocutors like we had in Who we are decide who they want to do business with, these things tip it in our favor. We have defining product, or not defining product, but delivering product. What I mean by that, our product, we observe work, we get insights from that, we create a product that will allow the essential people, the makers and fixers of the world, to perform critical tasks. That is the tasks that are important, that where the penalty for failure is high and the need for repeatability and reliability justifies a Snap-on level product. We have up here some of our products in the awards. We have got three magazines. Motor magazine gave us two top 20 awards. P10 Innovation Awards gave us six awards. When they asked the technicians what their favorite tool was, eight of our tools got the favorite tool of the year. We do have delivering product. In other words, it moves the world forward. We have defining brand. We have up here some examples of the brand, you know, newborn babies with Snap-on wrenches in it, wedding cakes, and a number of different things, people burying their ashes in Snap-on boxes. What the defining brand really is, is that people want to put the Snap-on brand on their chest to declare that they are a serious professional. It is today the outward sign of the pride and dignity that working men and women take in their profession, and it has been since our very founding when Joe Johnson and the other founders got the idea to put those five handles and 10 sockets out on green felt as if they were as precious as surgeon's knives. Maybe the most important advantage we have, though, is differentiating people. Snap-on people are capable. They are dedicated, and they are experienced. You know, I'm showing up here, the Challenger Factory in Louisville, Kentucky, who had just hosted successfully the Smart Manufacturing Summit, where over 150 CEOs came, hosted by Chief Executive Magazine, to see a factory that was advanced in manufacturing. Now, we have robots, but we aren't particularly advanced. How we made our, how we impressed them that day, and they said it was the best factory they ever saw, was based on the idea that our people keep improving every day, not based on technology, based on the people. I have some examples of this in the audience. I'd like to ask you to stand when I call your name. First, Mr. Joe Schwan. Joe Schwan is the ATC, the automated tool control guy. He's like the guru of this, the wizard of this. He has led us to have thousands of these all over the country. I learned today that years ago he was one of the original designers or innovators around custom foam tool organizers. Joe Schwan has been with us 48 years. Give him a round of applause. And next to him, I've got Ms. Louise Pitch from our IT department. Louise, stand up. Louise started all those years ago. Are you standing? Okay. You look like you're hiding there, Louise. Right, right. Louise started all those years ago as a librarian, and then she became a programmer. I have had the, you know, almost intent to have her ride her Harley into the room today, but she didn't. She's been with us 50 years. Give her a round of applause. Now, from Algona, Iowa, our plant in Algona, Iowa, of the shipping department of Algona, Iowa, I have a man who many years ago, I think it was in 1984, applied for his father's position. His father had worked here and had worked at Algona for 24 years. He applied for that position, and he got it. He's been working in the shipping department, driving a forklift truck for all those years since then. He was at Snap-on before then. Mr. Dwayne Hayes, 52 years with Snap-on. Give him a round of applause. I think he's here with his wife over here, Ann and Chris, and his two sons, Chris and Joe, are here as well, I think. Therefore, thank you for coming. Boy, 48, 50, 52 years, differentiating people. Experience counts. Now we'll talk about 2023 results, or overview. Okay, overview. Anyway, it's results. Let's talk about sales. Sales last year reached $4.730 billion. I don't know about you, but it sounds like a lot of money to me. It compared to $4.49 billion the year before. That's an increase of 5.3% as reported. Organically, if you adjust for currency, it was like 5.6%. If you look at the profitability, what we call the operating company, excluding finance, the OI margin, in other words, the profitability, we reached a profitability, a record profitability for a year of 22%. That compares to 20.9% the prior year. That is up 110 basis points in a place when people would sacrifice part of their digits to get 10 basis points. Your team got 100. I have the management team right here, out here. What I am going to do is ask them, I am going to call out their names. I am going to ask them to stand up. I ask you to hold your applause, if any, to the end. Okay. First, I have a man I have known for over 35 years from the home of Joe Biden and Aldo Pagliari, our Chief Financial Officer, Mr. Aldo Pagliari. All right. Okay. Give him a round of applause. No one can stand. No one can stop. Can't hold back. People can't hold back. Right. Okay. Next to him from, I think, North Jersey, a fan, maybe it's South Jersey. I'm not sure. South Jersey, sorry. South Jersey. My accent was a little off. He's a fan of All Things Philadelphia. The President of our Repair Systems and Information Group, Mr. Tom Ward. You got to give him applause now. You've crossed the Rubicon. After that, I've got from Parts Unknown, otherwise known as Iowa, Mr. Tim Chambers, the President of our Tools Group. Stand up there, Tim. Tim, I think you got to work on your wave. Okay. Okay. Next to him, I have the President of our Commercial Group from the Basque country of Spain, Mr. Jesus Aregi. After that, from Shanghai, China, a man who during the pandemic spent over 150 days in quarantine without ever having the COVID. He has attended several of these by Zoom. He attended our 100th anniversary by Zoom. Today, like last year, he's back here with us. I'm introducing from Shanghai, China, live from the forge, Mr. James Ong. That wasn't good enough. I think I need more. I like that. Live. I'm practicing for Saturday Night Live. Right. Next to him, the man who, by the way, played basketball, Division I basketball for Marquette, the Marquette Warriors. At that time, the Warriors, now the Golden Eagles. He is the man who scored the last point of the 1980s for that team. I'm not sure. He told me once it might have been the only point he scored. President of our repair systems business, Mr. John Wolf. And then newly appointed Senior Vice President of Human Resources and former quarterback of our, one of the quarterbacks for our response to the pandemic, Ms. Mary Bauerschmidt. Okay. I guess I'm on the earnings per share. Last year, the earnings per share was $18.76 compared to $16.82 the year before, up 11.5%. Now, you know, it isn't just the management team that's helped us. You know, when you have these kinds of things, it's other people. I just want you to remember that everyone in the audience has contributed to this. It just isn't last year. We have a trend of performance. Let's look back to 2011. In 2011, the sales for the corporation were $2.850 billion. The year after, they were $2.940 billion. It was 3.06, 3.28, 3.35, 3.43, 3.69, 3.74, 3.73, 3.59 in the pandemic. It went to 20. It went to 4.25. It went to 4.49 in the aforementioned 4.73. If you look at the margins, the margins back in 2011, we could go all the way back to, we are going to show you a slide later that goes all the way back much further into the single digits. By 2011, we were at 14.5%. It was 15.2% and 15.8% and 16.6% and 18.1% and 19.3% and then 19.3%, 19.4%, then 19.2%. In the pandemic, it was 17.6%. It went to 20%, 20.9%, and then the aforementioned 22%. You know, everybody who looks at these trends knows that I am simply the fortunate beneficiary of greater predecessors. I have the living link of one of those predecessors here. The seventh president of Snap-on was Mr. Norm Lutz, who actually was the president who brought us public. We have his daughter here from Libertyville, Ms. Susan Lutz Kenyon and her husband, Bill Kenyon. They always join us every year. Please stand up. Let's give them a round of applause. Welcome back. Now, we have a man who needs no introduction, but I'm going to give a little introduction. He's the guy who literally saved the company. We were on the way down, and he turned us around. He taught us who we are. The placard you just saw is his brainchild. He was the one who put the name on rapid continuous improvement and started on the path to be enabled by that improvement going forward. He's here today, as he has been many times, but he's here today, especially and newly with his new bride, Jane. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back the legend, Mr. Jack Dwayne Michaels. Okay. We have, I guess we have earnings per share up next. No, yeah, earnings per share up next. You can see way back, $4.71, I guess $5.20, $5.20, and $5.93, then $7.14, then $8.10, then $9.20, then $9.54, then $11.87, then $12.41, then $11.41. The year after, starting out of the pandemic, back to $14.92, $16.82, and then last year, $18.76. To the extent we reach higher, as we reached higher for that $18.76, we stand on the shoulders of our retirees. We have three of them here with us today. First of all, I'd like to have stand Mr. James Gamble, who was 20 years with us in the Milwaukee plant. James Gamble, please stand up. Let's give him a round of applause. He's here with his wife, Stella. We have Pete Schwabe, 33 years from Snap-on in the quality department. He's with his wife, Alice. Pete, stand up. Is he here? Okay. We have retirees with us. We have a dividend. We have dividends started $1. In 2011, I think they were $1.30, $1.40, $1.58, $1.85, $2.20, $2.54, $3.41, $3.93, $4.47, $5.11, $5.88, and this year, $6.72, up, I think, 14.8% year -over -year. We have two retirees over here that I'd like to especially welcome back. First, our former general counsel, Mr. Erwin Scher. Erwin, stand up. We have someone who, I guess, once again, needs no introduction, the former President of our tools group, Mr. Tom Kassouf. Tom Kassouf, Tom, stand up. Tom, stand up, stand up, stand up. Right. Actually, you know, it's funny. I was reminded of Tom because, you know, I don't know if you know this, Tom, but in the Kenosha paper, in the Kenosha paper Sunday, they credited you as being, they recognized that you were awarded a patent for the mini plater. Once again, so congratulations. Let's give him another round of applause. Just to finish it all off, I'd like to have Mr. Jim Basler and his wife, Kathy, stand up. They've been with us 32 years. Stand up, please. Now, that's the past. How are we going to go forward? The way forward for us is runways for improvement and runways for growth. You know, we can't do this without the support of our community. We say we're here in, we're in many communities, but we're fortunate to have our headquarters here in Kenosha. We always talk about the power of place. We have here with us the new Mayor, David Bogdala. We have here John Morrissey, the City Administrator. We have here the President of local Carthage College. We have the President of Gateway College, Mr. John Swallow, the president of local Carthage College. We have the president of Gateway College, Ms. Nurita Raju. We have the new chancellor of Parkside College, Ms. Lynn Achey. We have community leader and old friend of mine, Mr. Tim Mahones, who is a great community leader and rumored at Snap-on to be a former Green Bay running back. Actually, we have a resume for him, and we got on there somehow, and somehow he, you know, objects to being taken off. All right. Let's give them a round of applause for all the support the community gives us. Okay. When we say runways for improvement, everybody in Snap-on knows this, and we call it Snap-on value creation. Safety, quality, customer connection, innovation, and rapid continuous improvement. This is the process by which we move forward every day. Let's talk about safety. You know, people ask me, when I meet with investors, they say, "Why are you talking about safety? You know, does it make any money for you?" And I'm like, "It isn't that". If you make, first of all, you want to keep your people safe because they are most important. They are a differentiating advantage for us. Secondly, because if you make things for people who do things for work, for a living, you want to make sure that you keep your own people safe. Safety. 83 locations last year had no lost time accidents out of the 105 locations we have across Snap-on. Our people are, if you compare it to maybe 15 or 16 years ago, our people are 90% less likely to have an accident. Safety, quality. When you look at quality, we ask, there are a lot of different ways you can think about quality. You can think about, oh, I do not know, factory critical defects and assembly critical defects and a number of different things. We just ask customers. We ask Frost & Sullivan. In a blind test, ask people what their preferred form of tool was, what their preferred tool was. When they ask them, "What's their tool of choice?" When we ask them, "What's the most innovative tool?" When we ask them, "What's premium quality?" When we ask them, "What tool will get the job done?" Because you got to make a living if you don't have the tool to get the job done. You can't make a living if you don't have that job. You don't have that tool. If you look at the numbers, Snap-on was between 55% and 60% of all people, 60% in all four of those. For all those questions. Number two was between 15% and 20%. That's number two. There's a big gap there, and we still have quality. Then we have customer connection. Customer connection is about going into the work and observing it and getting insights from that that will make work easier. We do that all the time. We have 4,700 franchisees that help us do that. We have multiple direct sales forces. We're in 700,000 garages in North America and Europe. We have 2.7 billion real fixed repair records that we share with technicians that allow them to fix cars. We're in 3,700 community colleges or schools, technical schools. We have 4,000 visitors to the innovation works right out here every year. That gives us insight and connection with customers. The result is significant innovation. Those insights allow us to create innovation. One of the themes of this is, of what I'm trying to tell you today is we have a lot of new products. Look at these products. We have some of the people who authored these products. Please stand up when I call your name. Hold your applause to the end here on this one. I have Jeremy Zones, who is responsible for our microlithium aircraft drill. We have Adam Brown from Jeremy's right here in Kenosha in the power tools business. We have Adam Brown from Conway, Arkansas, for undercar equipment. And he helped design what we call the Tru-Point Calibrator. Now, you may not know what this does, but if you recognize that you have advanced driver assist systems like iterative cruise control or adaptive cruise control or lane departure warnings or blue or blind spots, they all need sensors. When those sensors get disrupted, they need a calibrator. This will put you right on target for all makes and all models. If you doubt this, get in an accident, slightly dent your bumper, dent your bumper, and see what the bill is. You will see that disrupting that neural network of sensors is not cheap. All right. We also have Peter Grupfeldt, who helped design our torque control system that allows, that enables from Stewart of Enrichment down in Carol Stream, Illinois, that allows us to manage and keep quality along an assembly line. We have Dial-Tow from Milwaukee, who helped design the triple joint pliers. The triple joint pliers allows us to remain parallel, tightening, or getting a tighter grip on anything you feel without a lot of pain in your hand. We have Chris Hale, the engineering manager from Elizabethton, Tennessee, who helped pioneer our new Synergy Ratchet, 100 tooth ratchet, which means it's only 3.6% arc. It means you can get in tight spaces and tighten it, and it is powerful as any other ratchet. You know, we have Adrian Robillard, who helped design our new Air Hammer, you know. What this does basically is it saves technicians' arms by virtue of they had to bash on things that with a hammer, this thing will do 3,500 hammer blows a minute. There are a lot less sore arms in garages who use this. We have Fred Severson, who helped design our new SOLUS+. SOLUS+, who are you waving to there, by the way? Oh, okay. You know somebody in the back? Stand up, stand up. You guys all stay standing. Stand up again. Good. It looks good like that. Okay. Fred Severson, who helped design our SOLUS+, our low-end but achievable for starting techs diagnostic. It's faster. Two seconds moved up. It's smarter and it's easier to use. Finally, I have Rich Boffman from the power tools and Fred from Lincolnshire down here in Illinois. I have Rich Boffman from our power tools business, who helped design our stubby 18-volt impact, 525 foot-pounds of breakaway torque power in a five-inch compartment accessing power at the same time. We have a lot of new products. These guys are the reason. Let's give them a round of applause. We have rapid continuous improvement. Part of the legacy of Mr. Jack Michaels. You know, you look at rapid continuous improvement and we adopted a new badge this year. You can see it, I think, on the left of the slide. It has, if you look around, it says rapid continuous improvement. It says Kaizen. What that means is we look at the situation. We analyze the difficulty. What we do is we summon maybe some technology to do that. What we do is we train the people in the technology. We make an advancement and we celebrate it. The most important thing here is people in the center. You see, when we conduct rapid continuous improvement, we are doing it to make the most of the people who are working in that area. Our most important, one of our greatest advantages, probably our most important advantage is our people, our differentiating people. Therefore we look always to make the most of their hours. We do not try to replace them. We try to use those hours to better advantage. This is what rapid continuous improvement is about. You can see the motion from way back when our OI margin, our margins were in the 6% range, all the way up to 22% last year. This is an improvement of 1,550 basis points, an average of 85 basis points a year. It is all due to rapid continuous improvement. One place where we are able to put it on display was for the Chief Executive Magazine Smart Manufacturing Summit. They call me up and they say, "We want to go to your Louisville plant. We want to see what you do because we know you are a great manufacturer." What they were looking for is how we used robots or how we were using AI. We use all this stuff there. In reality, what we told them is there is no one item that will deliver you from evil. You need to keep improving every day. What they did when they got there, these 150 executives got there, is they saw that every cell, every department, every division of that plant expected themselves to improve every day and thought about it every day. Rapid continuous improvement, advantage, expansion, improvement, Kaizen, technology, training driven by the people every day. What we have in the background here, if you can see it, is that picture I showed you earlier of the people of Challenger celebrating after the people, after the chief executive people had left. I have back here the plant manager from the Challenger operation, Mr. Brett Mitchell. Stand up, Brett. Let's give him a round of applause because it's quite a feat. If you're a Snap-on person, you should feel good about this because the people left and the editor of Chief Executive Magazine called me up and said, "You know, I'm confident you got some new shareholders out of that. I'm confident you got some new customers." This worked well for us. Okay. Those are the runways for improvement. Now, one of the things you step back and you think about Snap-on. We thought hard and we thought a lot hard about Snap-on over the years a nd Snap-on had a great heritage. We were the company that made great wrenches and sold them through vans to technicians a nd we did it great. That was only a narrow description of what we really did. What we really did, and Snap-on broadly described, is that we observed work in those shops. We took those insights and we turned them into tools that would make work easier for critical tasks, make it done easier, move the world forward. What that meant was we had to observe the work. We observed the work and the tasks have to be critical, but we can use a wrench or a piece of software. We sell through the vans and we do great, but we do not have to sell through them. We can sell directly through distributors. We do not have to sell to car mechanics alone. We can sell to anyone who is working on a critical task where the penalty for failure is high and the need for repeatability and reliability justifies a Snap-on level product. This is what we learned. What we learned is in doing that, we could bring more products into the fold a nd we did. I have up here 16 brands. You can see the latest one. You can see Baco and Snap-on and so on. We are not necessarily a single brand house. We are a house of brands. We just added one called Mounce. It is critical. It does solve critical problems in a low torque position, sort of a pulse tool, pulse power tool business in North Carolina. We know it is going to do well for us. We have a number of other brands like Carlyle and others. That has done great things for us. Go ahead. I think I just want to emphasize this here. It sort of comes out of Snap-on more broadly described. This is our principal value creating mechanism. What it is, is it's observing work, using insight to make a particular item, a particular tool, a piece of software that will make work easier and that make critical work easier. The interesting thing about that definition is if you're an investor or someone who wants to think about where the company's going, I said our principal value creating mechanism are those things. They do not depend on a type of technology. All technologies apply. They do not depend on a distribution system. All distribution applies. They do not depend on a particular industry as long as it's critical. It can be aviation or oil and gas or mining or anything else in that way. This is one of the things that drives us forward. Go ahead. Okay. Runways for growth. We had runways for improvement. Now we have runways for growth on the way forward. There are four here. Enhance the van channel, expand with repair shop owners and managers, extend to critical industries, and build emerging markets. Let's talk about enhance the van channel. This is the tools business, the van business. It's the business where it all started. We look at trying to make sure that the van drivers are healthy. We look to try to make sure that they have the products they need. We look to try to make sure that enhancing that they are productive and therefore can reach more customers. We have with us now, this is a channel that's under a little duress these days because customers or technicians seem to be cash rich but confidence poor based on environment. We have with us one of our best franchisees from Indianapolis, Indiana, Mr. Denny Sears. He has six franchises under his tutelage. Please stand up, Denny. Talk to Denny outside. And he says to me, I said, "You've been with Snap-on 35 years." Yeah. And he worked in the company and as franchisees a couple of times. I said, "What do you think about that? What should I tell the audience?" Here's what he told me. He said, "Snap-on is my home. I'm proud of being associated with this company. I can't imagine myself doing anything else." The outward sign of pride and dignity indeed. That is one runway for growth. We have expand with repair shop owners and managers. This is selling to van drivers sell to technicians. The guys and gals who actually twirl the wrench, hit the keys, or punch the screens. Repair shop owners and managers are people who kind of organize the shops. This is the repair system information group. In that, we want to leverage what we know about auto mechanics or vehicle repair because there are 600 people in this building and 300 of them think of themselves as senior mechanics or advanced mechanics. I understand last night at the board meeting, somebody was solving one of our associates was solving one of the board members' problems just by him describing the noise. This is advanced vehicle repair. Look, that's true. We have tried to expand that. What we've done is we keep expanding the products we have. Carlyle was a reasonably recent acquisition. We just acquired Dealer-FX, a software company to do shop management for dealerships. We're expanding the products and expanding in that base. That business, the RS&I business, went up in the quarter 5.8% organically. Extend to critical industries. This is basically what this is. It's rolling the Snap-on brand out of the garage to places like military, aviation, education, oil and gas, mining, any place where tasks are critical. The military is a classic example. I mean, to me, it's critical if the 50-caliber bullets are going overhead and you have to repair your vehicle, you want to have the right tool. We have expanded that business. This business grew at 16.5% last year in terms of the critical industry business. We keep doing that. We keep expanding that business by building a greater and greater number of products that will solve those problems and embracing a number of different customers. It's the reason why we expanded out here. The new expansion was for this business. It's worked. Now, build in emerging markets. James Ong is here for this. Basically what we're doing there is building the physicals, building product lines, building manufacturing, and building distribution because those people need critical tools as well. Those are the runways for improvement, our runways for growth. Another thing I want to tell you about our business. We are going forward, expanding down our runway for improvement, enabled by improvement, and down our runways for growth. We have something on our side that is our markets are resilient. We have resilient markets because critical markets, just like I talked to you about the pandemic, why do you think the people, the makers and fixers had to work through the pandemic? What they did was critical. It was essential. Society would disintegrate without it. That means that our markets are resilient and resistant to almost any external problem. You can see this in some ways. Let's just talk about the vehicle repair market. Vehicle repair market, the number of cars. The number of cars keep growing. The cool thing about it is they keep aging. Look back to 2001, the average car in the United States was 9.5 years old. This year it's 12.5 years old, I believe. I think it may be going to 12.6 pretty soon. Cars keep aging. They need more repair. It's true across the garages. The warranty repairs and the regular repairs are carrying a bigger dollar content. You can see it in the Bureau of Labor Statistics because technician wages are up, the technician count is up, the technician hours are up, and the amount of cash that people spend on repair every year is growing. These are good news for us. Now, we're going forward for the future. I introduced you to a number of people in the audience who are part of our company. We have some, and we talked about the 50-year people and 48, 50, and 52 down here. We have some people who are newly joined us. I'd like to introduce some of those to you. They are, after all, part of our future. They're over here. All right. First person I'd like to introduce to you is Ms. Chelsea Riesterer. She's with us only a year and a half. I first met her, the retirees in this audience may relate to this. I first met her in a German-garbed outfit. I wasn't in the German-garbed outfit. She was in the German-garbed outfit in our Oktoberfest retiree event. Next to her, I have Evelyn Newman. She's been with us about a year and a half. She is from benefits in HR. Evelyn Newman is from HR as well. She is celebrating today her second anniversary with Snap-on. She is in HR as well. Next to her is Jenna Gilliland, who has been with us three years. She, against all odds, is from the legal department. Next to him, I have Mr. Vibolt DeLuca Verlay, who has been with us two and a half years. He is an industrial designer helping us create the silhouettes that you saw on all these products. They are our future, ladies and gentlemen, man. Thank you for being with us. Let's give them a round of applause. One last thing about resilience going forward. One of the things that drives us, and one of the things we always tell investors about us, is the demand for our products just keeps going up because cars just get more and more complex. In the 1990s, you could measure the number of trouble codes on a car in the dozens. Now there is almost 100,000. This is a complexity that makes car repair one of the most advanced sciences in the world, a combination of art and science. Technicians have trouble keeping up, and we can help put them right on target. That is my story about 2023. I think we will move on to 2024 first quarter results. Of course, these are turbulent times. There is a lot of difficulty in the land and our principal customer base, the technicians. We find our cash rich because the garages keep rolling, but their confidence is poor. They don't know what's going to happen in the next six months. Our sales were flat in the first quarter, but what we're happy about is the profitability. The profitability, look at the OI margin, it was 22.9% versus 22% last year. Now, the 22.9% had a legal benefit in it. We had a great legal win courtesy of, your name is? Rich Miller, I guess. Yes. Thank you. All right. That'll teach you to get my title wrong. Okay. Courtesy of Rich Miller in the legal department. Still, even without that benefit, this was one of our best quarters in terms of profitability. Our EPS was $4.91 versus $4.60 of last year. Of course, even with that, it had the legal benefit in it, but without it, it was $4.75, which is substantially above, 3.5% above last year. We had a great 2023. We had momentum into 2024 against the wind. Your company has never, ever been stronger. In sum, I guess I'd like to say to you that, look, this is a unique company. It has a storied past, exciting now, and a promising future. These are turbulent times. You're going to see it. I mean, today just came out GDP. The GDP was 1.6% today. Big disappointment. I think we've been seeing it a long time in the faces of the technicians who are now thinking about what's going to happen in the next six months. Every time I go to buy food, it's a little bit higher, or it seems to be a little bit higher. There are two wars now in which we are involved in. The border, I guess you could describe it charitably as in chaos, not as ordered as it had been in years before. You can talk about the Red Sea that's getting bombarded and interdicting problems. Everybody's thinking about the election, and I don't think I'm partisan in any way by saying that it's probably the election with the most uncertainty we've had in decades, at least in my lifetime, in truth. These things have created a kind of worry. On top of it, on top of it, the temperature today in Kenosha will reach 49 degrees Fahrenheit. It will reach 50 degrees Fahrenheit and 53 degrees Fahrenheit in Anchorage, Alaska, and Juneau, Alaska. This is not good, huh? Why are we here? No, we have a power at this place. This is a great place. Okay. Look, it is a turbulent time, but we believe that we will be able to rise above that. We believe we can encounter any challenge and go forward. We believe that is so because we are enabled by improvement, rapid continuous improvement, depending on the people, the Kaizen, the technology, and the training spread across the corporation, people coming to work day by day thinking we are going to advance. We believe that we will rise above any challenge because we are powered by advantage, decisive advantage by delivering product, the product you saw that makes critical work easier, allows us through customer connection to summon the future out of the now and move the world forward. We believe we rise above it because we are powered by defining brand. People actually do believe in our product. People wear our logo on their chest. They ascribe it to their families. They want to associate with it. Denny Sears says it's so. We believe we will rise above any challenge because we have a special people, differentiating people, people who make a difference. We believe that empowered by improvement, enabled by all those advantages, we will keep creating value as a corporation, creating value for ourselves and for the great number of people who depend on us. We will keep creating that value for many decades and many days to come. Thank you all. All right. I think as a tradition, I'm supposed to take some questions. Let's ask for some questions. Thank you. Good morning. Thank you, Nick. Great participation. Okay. Meeting. My name is Sandy Jones. I'm a retired. Sandy Jones. Are you wearing green? No, not today. Oh, yes, I am. My green coat. Sorry. My question is. Sandy, you don't know what color you're wearing? Right now, I'm looking at myself, and I'm wearing this and a black sweater, so. I saw you on the way in, right? I know. Yes. Okay. My question is, we've all been in love with EVs. However, the press lately has been rather negative. My question to you, Nick, is what is the outlook for Snap-on currently when it comes to electric vehicles? Look, I mean, electric vehicles are part of the complexity we're talking about. One of the accelerations we saw in complexity was the changing of the powertrains, the idea that the internal combustions were getting more and more efficient, the idea that electric vehicles were starting to rise, the idea that people were starting to look at plug-in hybrids, which have both an electric battery to do the first 30-40-50 miles, and an internal combustion engine, and then super hybrids, which a lot of people like Toyota have said are going to come forward to fruition. All those things create different requirements in a garage. When they say different requirements, I say it's music to our ears because it means more tools. Electric vehicles coming on, it just means more tools. What we know is that 80% of the repairs today are not done on the powertrain anyway. The powertrain itself does not drive more. When you change everything, you need more tools, and electric vehicles will do that. Plug-in hybrids will double down on that, and regular hybrids will do this. We do not anticipate internal combustion engines going away very quickly. It is kind of a complex answer. I think the fate of electric vehicles does not really mean that much because if the world does not take full electric vehicles, I am pretty sure they will take plug-in hybrids. China seems to be these days electric vehicle headquarters. Last year, China added more plug-in hybrids than they added electric vehicles. They are turning to preference for plug-in hybrids. The reason is there is no range anxiety. You get in, you get your 50 mi on a battery, the battery gives up, you got your gasoline, you do not have to worry about where a charging station is. It seems to be an efficacious solution, and I think you are going to see more of that going forward. In any case, all this is good news for us. We are going to keep every one of these things are going to need new tools. Just think about electric vehicles or plug-in hybrids. They all need different lifts because the things are heavier. They need insulating tools because you do not want to be poking around in the battery with a tool, with a steel tool, you will fry yourself. They need a bunch of different things to deal with the motors. To the extent they are more electronic, they drive more repair. How does your computer work compared to your car? Just think about that for a minute. Or how's your phone work compared to your car? The more electronic, the more software-driven it is, the more problems you have. You turn on your phone, it doesn't work. Oh, there was a change in software. I don't know how it works. How would you like that if you were going and driving your child to school? You wouldn't like that. People want that repaired. I think it's good news for us. All right. Next. Rich Caskey. Huh? Retired. Retired Retired 13 years. I thought you retired like 30 years ago. It's debatable. My question is an international environment question. Given a war in the Middle East and a war in Europe and tensions growing between China, U.S., and Taiwan in Asia, how does all that affect Snap-on and my pension? People have asked me this question before. Rich Caskey has a pension? I thought you had to do work actually in the company to have a pension. No, Rich and I are very old friends. In fact, he's one of the guys I worked with when I first came to Snap-on. He made great contributions to us, particularly in the power tools business. We wouldn't have the power tools business we have today if it wasn't for him. International, boy, there's a lot of variation. It's what I meant about the idea that people are confidence poor these days. It's a deterioration in the international environment, both in China and the Middle East and Eastern Europe and so on. The advantage Snap-on has is that we tend to make in the markets where we sell. If a particular market gets a difficulty, yes, we lose the sales in those markets, maybe, or it's attenuated. We usually don't get sourcing problems. This is part of our advantage during the pandemic, and it's children of the idea of inflation and supply chain problems. We're able to get all over that because we didn't really get affected by it. I think we're pretty well positioned for this kind of thing. Let's say China and the U.S. have some conflict over Taiwan. I don't think we'd have too many sales in China, an American company. We already see some attenuation of government businesses not wanting to buy. That tends to weigh on you. On the other hand, we do provide things that we're all over the sometimes the economy tends the economic activity tends to shift. It's hard to predict how that is. I don't think we would be affected catastrophically by it because of the way we go to market, that is, making in the markets where we sell. Therefore, any impact on any particular geography doesn't affect the whole system as much as it does in other companies. Okay. Next question. Morning, Nick. Chad Sheets. The question I've got for you is you've talked in the past about mainstream economy and financial economies and the differences between those. And being a legal guy, you kind of get into definitions a little bit. So I was curious a little bit more about how you differentiate those and how they impact Snap-on. Yeah. I have a lot of experience explaining things to the lawyers. Look, here's the thing. We've seen this over about the last 18 months. I've talked about it on TV quite often. It does seem to be a divergence between the financial community writ large, principally the people who are in places like New York and the coasts, but not only in those places, but people who are paying attention to financial markets like the stock market and interest rates and what the Fed's going to do, and people on the ground, what we call the grassroots economy. I have concluded that they have diverged quite a bit. For example, about 18 months ago, the financial community were like so many Paul Revere saying, "A recession is coming. A recession is coming. A recession is coming." When you walk through the garages or factories, people are saying, "Zippity doodah." They were whistling and stuff like that. They were saying, "Look, I am confident. We got through the COVID. We stood through COVID before even we were at our post when people did not even have masks. I kept working all that time. I am not financially deprived at this moment. I see my garage is filled." They said, "What recession?" They were right. It did not come. After a while, the financial community started to encourage themselves by looking at the actual data and saying, "Look, inflation is getting under control. Inflation is a large basket. There is even inflation that does not include food or gas." The average guy is always looking at food or gas. It depends on what number they are looking at. They started to talk themselves into or not even talk themselves into. They started to see in the numbers, soft landing. No recession. The Fed's going to reduce interest rates three times next year or four times next year. Hey, happy days are here again. The stock market goes up. Everybody's happy. In the garages, almost not quite the same time, but a little bit later, people started to worry about the future more than the financial community. It kind of flip-flopped because the people in the garages don't look at the numbers. They don't look at the Fed. They don't look at the interest rates necessarily unless they're buying a house this year or borrowing something. They don't always do that, particularly in bad times. What they were looking at is, "Gee, now there are two wars. Is that going to affect my future? Are we going to have a lot more taxes to fund them? Is there going to be a draft or something like that? The border is chaos. They looked at those macro things. Every day they got up and got bad news for breakfast. They started to worry. They started to say, "Geez, I can't see out more than six months. And therefore, I don't want to get myself or six weeks maybe. I don't want to get myself embroiled in bigger ticket items, longer payback items." You kind of had at one point, the financial community was down here. The grassroots economy was up here. As the financial numbers got better and the Fed started to get more under control, the financial community went up. The everyday community went down because other things happened. It just comes down to what people pay attention to. If you're on Wall Street, you're paying attention to interest rates and how the market is and what the narratives are. You're buoyed. You're supported. You're encouraged by the arithmetic calculations that those numbers show. On the street, you just hear bad things. There are no quantitative numbers that will solve your problem. You worry about them. That's the difference. Right now, we see the street pretty sanguine, pretty positive. You see the everyday person not cash poor, but worried about what's going to happen in the future. In fact, if you think about it, if you consider all those things, this is a time on a macro basis of considerable uncertainty. That's the difference. Okay. Next question. Any other questions? Hi, Nick. It's Tanya Bolanja. Tanya Bolanja. How are you? Green Bay Packer, seasoned ticket holder, by the way. Yes. This makes her a popular person here. Yes. My question is about our factories. We've added on to our factories in America. Are there additional plans to invest further in our U.S. plants? Yeah, there is. I would say, okay, everybody knows here that I goof up all the time. One of my big mistakes, I think, or oversights was not to expand the capacity of our factories earlier. We suffered through it all last summer. It's causing us problems now as we shift to move from long payback items to short payback items. Anytime you shift product lines, it causes capacity havoc in the factories. It would be a lot better if we had more capacity. I didn't do that. In last year, starting last year, we started to expand our factories. You saw this thing out here, the warehouse out here, the place out here for custom kitting. That helped us in the industrial business, a critical industry business. Rolling the Snap-on brand out of the garage. In fact, that business was up 16.5% last year. Baffo. That worked. We struggled a little more in the tools businesses where we did not expand the factories quickly enough. We started expanding last summer in Milwaukee. I think we added like 25% capacity. We are adding 25% capacity in Milwaukee. We are adding 30% capacity in Algona. In fact, that is pretty well done. We are adding 35% capacity in Elizabethtown. We are adding new space in Conway, Arkansas for our undercar equipment business. I think we are expanding now. We have a new view of expansion. Maybe we want to have a little extra capacity. Part of the problem is you would like to optimize your profitability. You would like to have more than that 22.9% we had in the first quarter, the 22% last year. You are trying to run closer to the edge. Maybe we will not run quite so close to the edge in the future. In fact, I love American manufacturing. A lot of people say, we were talking about this the other day about, "Gee, if we onshore things, maybe costs will go up and inflation and that will be bad." I think that's good inflation because the more people that can get involved in manufacturing, there are something like 524,000 jobs open in manufacturing today. We can't find people to do it. If you could convince people that manufacturing is no longer dark, dumb, and dirty and actually was an essential task tantamount to being a hero based on how they performed in the pandemic, we would have people with great livings and great lives. We have to do that. I think sometimes we're too quick to say we want to find the low-cost solution as opposed to the longer path, which would benefit America better. A lot of people say the American worker with all this union activity is the question. I say the American worker is the answer to our future. So we're going to keep investing. Okay. Any other questions? Is that it? Okay. I guess that's it. All right. I'd just like to finish up. It's been a long talk, I suppose. And probably there are people mesmerized asleep out here someplace in the back. So far back that I can't hear the snoring. But look, I believe I have done what I told you I would do. I have told you of a unique company. A unique company that is stronger than it's ever been. A unique company where we create value for ourselves and for others coming together. And in getting started, I told you I would tell you how we got there. Basically, I tried to show you that it was from a number of different people from all over. We benefited to get to today and to go forward in the future from the confidence of our investors, from the commitment of our associates, from the conviction of our franchisees, from the faith of our customers, from the support of our community leaders, and from the legacy left to us by our retirees that we stand on their shoulders as we reach further. This is a great legacy for us that supports us even in this time. This is a company that does create value. In doing so, we have made a difference for ourselves and for many. Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote once that to be successful, he was a philosopher in, I guess, the 18th century, is that "T o be successful is to know that even one person will have lived better because you have done something for them". This is, in effect, saying make a difference. When I was in Asia, I lived in Asia 11 years. I had a chance to spend a day with Saint Mother Teresa of Calcutta. She told me once a story that has never left me. She said she was walking through an alley. She lived on an alley. She was walking down this alley. There was a beggar on the side of the alley sitting in a hovel. He got up. He ran up to her. He presented, the beggar presented Mother Teresa with the coin. By her description, it was a coin of little value. She said, "Do you know, Nick, why do you think he gave me that coin?" Because he wanted to feel he could make a difference for Mother Teresa. Making a difference is everything. Philosophers and eminent people as far apart as Emerson and Saint Mother Teresa have said the same thing, that making a difference is the essence of a life worth living. We have that here at Snap-on. Joe Schwan, 48 years. Louise Pitch, 50 years. And Dwayne Hayes, 52 years. They say it is so. This is an important advantage we have that I want everybody to realize and should hold on to. We have another advantage, which is sometimes not we say we have differentiating people. It is true. We have people here, right here in this room. They weren't hard to find: 48, 50, and 52 years. What we have is experience. Experience may be one of the most underrated characteristics in any business. If you look to the right and the left, I think you'll see people that you can have confidence in and admire and count on. We have people, I think the average person at Snap-on has been here almost 15 years. What that means is we are empowered by the shared experience, the kinds of shared experience by which we say makes friendships. The strength of that is what allows us to move forward and differentiate ourselves. You know it's true. Snap-on has been successful. We go to a promising future. We are successful. You create value. You create that success by your own hand. We are the people of work. We are those who make. We are those who fix. We make the minutes count and the days special and the years rewarding. We wield insight and experience. We bring prosperity and satisfaction. We deliver. We bear pride and dignity. We deliver dreams. We shape lives. We make a difference. This is an important thing. We had a storied past. We have an exciting now. We go forth to a promising future. It all depends on you because you are Snap-on. The message of today is you are Snap-on. You make the way. Thank you all. I'll see you next year.