MIAMI — Watsco Inc. has announced its board of directors has approved a 19 percent increase in its annual dividend to $5.00 per share on each outstanding share of its Common and Class B common stock. The increase will be reflected in the company’s next regular dividend payment beginning in July 2017.
Grainger recently held its annual shareholder meeting in Lake Forest, Illinois. Grainger Chairman Jim Ryan presided over the meeting and Chief Executive Officer D.G. Macpherson provided an update on the state of the business and offered a recap of 2016 full-year and 2017 first-quarter performance.
In today’s modern world of technology, people look to their smartphones for nearly everything, including banking, shopping, fitness tracking, home security and of course managing indoor comfort levels.
As part of our follow-up, we did deep dives with nearly two dozen distributors, in four lines of trade (HVACR, industrial, electrical and automation, and building supplies). Clearly, distributors are struggling to get to a compensation plan that drives the right behaviors. And thoughts on commission extended past outside sales.
Finally, and at long last, we are entering a time of high growth. This information comes not just from anecdotal reports from distributors across the country but also from some pretty respected economists. While speaking to the National Association of Wholesale/Distributors Executive Summit, economist Alan Beaulieu of ITR Economics confirmed much of what distributors were noticing in their local territories: business is expanding.
Executives in every industry are forced to confront the immediate future, and yet, they must ensure that the longer view — a strategic plan — is in the mix to ensure the business thrives. And the glue to all this planning is, unsurprisingly, the finances.
Newport News, Va. — Ferguson’s parent company Wolseley plc, an international distributor of plumbing and heating products to professional contractors, announced its financial results for the first half of the 2017 fiscal year alongside a name change and the upcoming retirement of CEO Frank Roach.
"Our biggest challenge and a goal I had set for the company was to shift as large a percentage of the new construction part of our business, nearly 95 percent, to the add-on and retrofit part of the industry. We have been very successful in doing so because 40 percent of our business is now retrofit and add-on."
Even though the theme, workforce, is not our yearlong focus in Distribution Center, I still find the topic one of unending fascination. It’s not surprising that we have a regular stream of stories that I hope are helpful on this topic.
There is nothing new about distributor compensation issues. As far back as the 1960s, wholesalers have been concerned about innovative approaches to motivating salespeople. The environment back then was different; warehouses were smaller, inside sales were untrained, and phone systems were inefficient.
