Earnings Labs

Fastenal Company (FAST)

Q1 2014 Earnings Call· Fri, Apr 11, 2014

$44.53

+1.91%

Key Takeaways · AI generated
AI summary not yet generated for this transcript. Generation in progress for older transcripts; check back soon, or browse the full transcript below.

Same-Day

+1.12%

1 Week

+0.24%

1 Month

-3.45%

vs S&P

-7.61%

Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good day, ladies and gentlemen and welcome to the Fastenal Company First Quarter 2014 Earnings Results. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later we will conduct a question-and-answer session and instructions will be given at that time. (Operator Instructions) Please note, today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to (indiscernible). Ma'am, please go ahead.

Unidentified Company Representative

Management

Thank you. Welcome to the Fastenal Company 2014 first quarter earnings conference call. This call will be hosted by Will Oberton, our Chief Executive Officer; and Dan Florness, our Chief Financial Officer. The call will last for up to 45 minutes. The call will start with a general overview of our quarterly results and operations by Will and Dan, with the remainder of the time being open for question and answers. Today's conference call is a proprietary Fastenal presentation and is being recorded by Fastenal. No recording, reproduction, transmission, or distribution of today's call is permitted without Fastenal's consent. This call is being audio simulcast on the internet via the Fastenal Investor Relations' home page, investor.fastenal.com. A replay of the webcast will be available on the website until June 1st, 2014, at midnight, Central Time. As a reminder, today's conference call includes statements regarding the company's anticipated financial and operating results, as well as other forward-looking statements based on current expectations as defined by the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements may often be identified with words such as we expect, we anticipate, upcoming, or similar indications of future expectations. It is important to note that the company's actual results may differ materially from those anticipated. Information on factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from these forward-looking statements are contained in the company's periodic filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission and we encourage you to review those carefully. Investors are cautioned not to place undue reliance on such forward-looking statements, as there is no assurance that the matter contained in such statements will occur. Forward-looking statements are made as of today's date only and we undertake no duty to update the information provided on this call. I would now like to turn the call over to Will Oberton. Go ahead, Mr. Oberton.

Will D. Oberton

Management

Thank you, [Jen] (ph). I'd also like to let you know that Lee Hein, our President, is also with us this morning. I'd like to start off by thanking everybody for joining us on the call today and I'm happy to report that we had a good first quarter of 2014. Our sales growth of 8.7% for the quarter was moving in the right direction sequentially. We had a very strong March at 11.6%, so we're very encouraged by that and believe we're moving in the right direction with adding our more selling energy in the stores. Very sequential improvement -- excuse me -- very good sequential improvement overall in the business, but what we're really excited or especially excited about is the improvement in our older stores. If you look at the March number of almost 10%, that's very strong. And historically, this has been a very positive indicator for both future growth and profitability. So, that's one number that gave us great encouragement. On the earnings side, the story really is year-over-year margin. It's very difficult, if not impossible, to grow our earnings relative to sales, when our sales are in the single-digit, and our margin was down almost 100 basis points. With that being said, our margin is moving in the right direction and we're very focused on improving that. So, directionally, we feel good about the margin. It's just at a lower point than it was last year and it made the earnings growth very difficult. The thing on the earnings, from an expense control, everyone did a very good job. I'm really proud of the Fastenal team. The extreme weather that we had caused expenses to go up in more areas than you can imagine. Simple things like snow plowing, you know, the fuel, all…

Dan L. Florness

Management

Thanks, Will, and good morning, everybody. At Fastenal, we've never been known for brevity in our earnings releases. We try to explain the business as thoroughly as we can for the outside world; plus, we find it useful for our folks internally. They get a chance to understand better and learn more about their business and where it's going. This quarter, I think we could have had a release that was about a half page long. I think the number that matters is that first line on that first page of 8.7% topline growth. And when you look on, as Will touched on, the pages where we dissect the stores of varying ages, the fact that our oldest group of stores is close to 10% growth is a tremendous feat. And what that really does for us, it allows us, over time, to continue to leverage the business through the pathway to profit because we're driving up the average store size, over time and our largest, most profitable stores are continuing to grow. Sequentially, very strong February to March. January and February were both heavily impacted by the weather, as Will touched on. But a very, very solid step up to get us back to where the business inherently is as opposed to where it was getting pounded down to because of the weather. One item that I note that's positive and there's a lot of questions as far as how reliable the ISM has been as a predictor of our business over the last several years. Historically, it's been a very good predictor; the last several years, not quite so well. But we're seeing, as we go into 2014, a continuing improvement in that number, which I believe ultimately is only good for our business. End marketwise, last year,…

Operator

Operator

Thank you. (Operator Instructions) Our first question comes from the line of Adam Uhlman from Cleveland Research.

Adam William Uhlman - Cleveland Research Company

Analyst · Cleveland Research

Hi, guys. Good morning.

Will D. Oberton

Management

Hey Adam.

Adam William Uhlman - Cleveland Research Company

Analyst · Cleveland Research

I guess first of all to follow-up on the gross margin comments that you were making, Dan. It seems like the transportation utilization problems from weather were probably a big drag in the quarter. It doesn't seem to have come through on the gross margin. Should we expect that to pick up more in the second quarter?

Dan L. Florness

Management

Well, definitely there was drag in the first two months. But one thing you have to keep in perspective, part of our issue in the first two months was -- in the case of January, we had our largest distribution center shut down for a number of days. State of Indiana, the interstate system was shut down for at least a day and a half, two days, and so our trucks weren't even running. And so -- and because they weren't running, product couldn't get through and sales couldn't occur. But when they are not running, we're also not incurring expenses, operating expenses. Obviously, we still had the payroll to the people, but not the direct operating. So, I wouldn't look at that in the vein you are. I think we saw the leverage that we would expect to see because we're moving. Basically every time the semi goes out, the simplest way I think about it, it has more boxes on it. It has more revenue going through it, and we're better leveraging that fixed cost.

Adam William Uhlman - Cleveland Research Company

Analyst · Cleveland Research

Okay. Got you. And then on the SG&A side, the transfer costs were a big driver of the 9% overall cost growth, should we be thinking of that growth rate as pulling back?

Dan L. Florness

Management

You're talking about the transportation, you said?

Adam William Uhlman - Cleveland Research Company

Analyst · Cleveland Research

Yes.

Dan L. Florness

Management

Yeah. I believe that will improve. I know -- if you think about, when it's 10 below zero, and we had a lot of that in the Northern states of the country this year. There's a lot -- we have roughly 5,500, 6,000 pickups scattered across 2,700 locations. Lot of times where a pickup stays running, a lot of times where things -- when it's cold, all of our vehicles you see our miles per gallons drop off because more of the energy is going towards heating and getting cold oil to move than it is about locomotion. And so we'll see some improvements just because of the severity of the weather not being in the numbers and we saw that in March.

Adam William Uhlman - Cleveland Research Company

Analyst · Cleveland Research

Great. And then what was your guess at the impact to --

Will D. Oberton

Management

Adam that's -- now three, Adam.

Dan L. Florness

Management

Adam, I'm going to get you back in queue.

Adam William Uhlman - Cleveland Research Company

Analyst · Cleveland Research

All right.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Ryan Merkel from William Blair. Ryan Merkel - William Blair & Company L.L.C.: Hey guys, nice quarter.

Will D. Oberton

Management

Thanks, Ryan.

Dan L. Florness

Management

Thanks, Ryan. Ryan Merkel - William Blair & Company L.L.C.: So, I'm going to be picky though and ask about earnings leverage because now that we've caught up on sales hires and you're in the process of optimizing vending, can we expect incremental margins to rise back in that mid 20%s range if you continue the topline growth at 13% to 15%? Or do we need stronger, faster growth and a little inflation to get there?

Dan L. Florness

Management

If we're getting the sales growth -- right now, the challenge in the first quarter and we all knew this coming in the first quarter, is the challenge now that we've been doing a lot of investing. We also have a pretty ugly gross margin comp to grow over in first quarter. I mean we were down roughly 115 basis points. As we go through 2014, that picture changes. It's still tough in the second quarter and getting great incremental margin in the second quarter is challenging. But with the added sales number, I believe we can see attractive incremental margin as we go into the second quarter, which, to me, means I believe we get into the -- get back to the 20%s. And then it's really in the second half of the year, it's more akin to what we would expect where that number is mid to upper 20%s. With -- and depending on the strength of the increase, the year-over-year basis gain in the gross margin, we'd like that ultimately to be in the 28% to 33% neighborhood. But definitely believe, as we go through the year that will move up nicely. And I believe it will improve in the second quarter. Ryan Merkel - William Blair & Company L.L.C.: Perfect. Okay. And the second question is I just want your read on if the industrial economy is truly picking up. You mentioned easier compares were part of the sales acceleration and then, of course, we have the Easter shift and we have weather. But if you put those factors aside, is the answer, you're getting a little help from light and medium manufacturing, but heavy is still tough, especially given the fastener number this quarter -- March was better, but in the quarter, the fastener number was still weak, is that fair?

Dan L. Florness

Management

Yeah. I mean if you think of our book of business and we think of our self as a growth machine. We add selling energy into our stores to go out and sell additional items to existing customers and find new customers every day. But we have a tremendous book of business that's established right now; close to 30% of our business is OEM fasteners. A rising tide is incredibly powerful in what it can do for us.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of David Manthey from Robert W Baird. David J. Manthey - Robert W. Baird & Co. Incorporated: Hey, guys. Good morning.

Will D. Oberton

Management

Hey Dave. David J. Manthey - Robert W. Baird & Co. Incorporated: First of all, Will, you mentioned in your monologue about your headcount goals for the year of adding 15% people, not necessarily dollars, of course. But I'm wondering, as T hub continues to ramp and you continue to get efficiencies in productivity on the vending side, are you planning on pulling back on the FTEs at the store level, or are you just continuing to reallocate those folks?

Lee J Hein

Analyst · David Manthey from Robert W Baird

Yeah, Dave, this is Lee. No, we -- I just put a video out to our folks talking about the fact that we're going to continue to add. And we're going to be wise about it and look at the stores and the different markets. But it does something to the sales force when they have confidence that we're not going to add, then pull back, add, then pull back. They like the fact that we're going to continue to pour into the store. And my whole deal with this, when I talk to our people, it's why we're adding people is to maintain a high level of service and to have someone out seeking customers every day. That does something to our people and it puts us in a position to take market share, so we're going to continue.

Will D. Oberton

Management

What we're really saying, Dave, is that, if we can afford it, continue to increase our incremental margin, as Dan said, up into the upper 20%s, maybe low 30%s. Take the rest of the earnings and put it into sales drivers. And if our stores become more efficient, we would expect higher growth rates than we historically have gotten because there's more energy our selling and less energy packaging orders. David J. Manthey - Robert W. Baird & Co. Incorporated: Right, okay. Thank you for that. And sort of as a follow-on here, as you're thinking about 2014 and even beyond that, I'm just interested because on Wall Street, we tend to get a little myopic here in terms of quarterly and monthly data and things and I was hoping you could give us a little bit of a longer term view. What do you think in terms of three to five years, five to seven years? How do you view the future of Fastenal in terms of just growth and profitability? I understand pathway to profit and so forth, but I mean, are there still some good days ahead of you here?

Will D. Oberton

Management

Dave, we think the days ahead of us are as good as -- or better than, the ones behind us. When you look at the overall market and you look at our share of the market being -- who knows exactly what it is, but it's no more than 3%, even 4% if you really go crazy on it and say it's only $80 billion or so. So, we're a very small player in a large market. We know that many of our stores can be three or four, five times bigger than they are based on their current size, so there's a tremendous amount of opportunity. We have some of the -- we have the best service in the industry we believe. We have some of the best systems with our vending, with our distribution, with our FASTCO Trading Company. We have the ability to buy well, move it efficiently, and deliver it on time, almost every time. And -- so, we're very focused on the future. Can we grow the business at 20% every year, year-over-year? I mean, the future will tell us that time; time will tell us, but we're going to invest to that level as long as we can afford to. We know that the profitability will go up. Even if the gross margin goes down some, if you look at our bigger stores, their average gross margin is lower, but their operating margins are much higher. So, we're not super focused on the gross margin -- we're focused on it, don't get me wrong, but that's not the real measure. The measure is way further down on the sheet, the operating margins and the return on capital. So, we believe the company will continue to grow well above inflation or GDP. We believe the business will continue to grow above most of our competitors, if not all of the large competitors hopefully, and we believe that the profitability will continue to improve year-over-year. And as I said earlier, sometimes you take a step back to get two steps ahead and sometimes that is caused because we make some bad decisions, like pulling back on labor too much as we did in the past. But overall, the future, we believe is very, very good. A couple things that are going in the direction of us and our large competitors -- more and more of the industry is getting bought up by bigger companies, the Danahers and all those companies, the GEs of the world. And what they want to do is they want to buy from fewer suppliers. At the same time, there are fewer big brands. The Stanleys are buying the DeWalts, and so on, and they want to sell to big distributors because it's easier and more profitable. So, the larger distributors, not just Fastenal, we all have an advantage in that situation and we think that we can leverage that advantage.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question --

Will D. Oberton

Management

Does that help?

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Hamzah Mazari from Credit Suisse. Hamzah Mazari - Crédit Suisse AG: Good morning. Thank you. Maybe if you could --

Will D. Oberton

Management

Good morning Hamzah. Hamzah Mazari - Crédit Suisse AG: Good morning. Maybe if you could comment on how we should think about pricing in 2014? I realize inflation is low; demand may be picking up. A competitor of yours put through a moderate midyear price increase. I realize you don't overlap 100% with them, but maybe give us a sense of how we should think about pricing?

Dan L. Florness

Management

I think pricing, generally speaking is going to be pretty quiet this year. There's always some movements we'll see on the steel side of the business, on the stainless steel side of the business. But I think generally speaking, it'll be relatively quiet. So much -- if you think of some of the things that are growing our business today, so much of it is about we have a better offering, a better means of delivery. I mean we talk constantly about the vending portion of it, but it's really on the MRO side, it's so much about, I need this, and I'm buying it in nominal amounts. Hamzah Mazari - Crédit Suisse AG: And then maybe a longer term question, I know it's not in your DNA to do M&A, but as you look out longer term, does that ever change for you guys? And how do you think about sort of diversifying to becoming more of an MRO business, relative to being tied to the production assembly line?

Will D. Oberton

Management

As far as diversifying, the second half of your question, we're comfortable with being tied to the assembly line. We like the MRO business, don't get me wrong, but there's a tremendous amount of opportunity, so we're happy playing in both of those markets. As far as M&A, going forward, it's not that we don't want to do it. In the past, we have never had to do it. So, it's really about what the greatest opportunity is. If the right opportunity came along, or if we found a company that would allow us to go into a new market, we're open to that. So, it's really about understanding where we want to go and understanding what is the fastest and the most accretive way to get there.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Sam Darkatsh from Raymond James. Sam Darkatsh - Raymond James & Associates, Inc.: Good morning, Will, Dan, Lee. How are you?

Will D. Oberton

Management

Good morning, Sam. Sam Darkatsh - Raymond James & Associates, Inc.: A couple of quick questions here. Actually, piggybacking on Hamzah's last question there, you called out specific deflation in fasteners themselves, is that competitive pressures? Is that commodity based? How long lasting do you think that might be? And would it get to the point where you need to really start focusing on inventory turns and protecting gross margin or we're not at that levels yet?

Dan L. Florness

Management

Okay. Sorry, I was talking more -- I was talking generically more about the steel has, over time -- steel and stainless steel has over time some deflation and inflationary periods. Right now, everything is pretty quiet. Sam Darkatsh - Raymond James & Associates, Inc.: Okay. What percentage of your total machines installed now are FAST 5000 machines? I know with the changing in the definitions, it's a little bit more challenging for us to get at that number.

Dan L. Florness

Management

I believe it's around 47%. It's just under 50%, I know that, Sam. But I don't have the exact number right in front of me, I'm sorry. Sam Darkatsh - Raymond James & Associates, Inc.: Okay. And if I could sneak one quick one in there, when will store person sales productivity begin to stabilize in your view?

Dan L. Florness

Management

Well, as we go -- right now, we're in that mode of adding around 15%, 16% FTE in an environment where our topline is growing in the 8% to 9%. As Will touched on, our goal is to get us into -- start moving us into the teens, low-teens, potentially --

Will D. Oberton

Management

No guidance.

Dan L. Florness

Management

…as we get into the year. And so we're investing at a 15% clip with belief that we will move above that number as we go into later in the year, so third and fourth quarter.

Will D. Oberton

Management

But again, I have to make clear, if you look at our labor cost, it didn't go up even close to 15%. We're adding in part-time hourly labor, and it's not -- to correct an earlier question, it's not 15% heads, it's 15% more hours.

Dan L. Florness

Management

FTE.

Will D. Oberton

Management

FTE. And so we're adding at a lower cost. We're managing it very well and so I'm actually very pleased with what the teams been able to do to get the labor in there without hurting expenses.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Holden Lewis from BB&T. Holden Lewis - BB&T Capital Markets: Great. Thank you very much. Had a question for you. It looks like the fastener growth was relatively consistent with Q4, which was -- they are all a little bit better than sort of the previous quarters. But I mean of the acceleration, it looks like it's coming more from the non-fastener mix. And I guess what I'm curious about is, given the people that you're putting in place, which is aimed at sort of freeing up sales to go out and sell, I guess I would have thought that fastener growth would have been one indication that the initiatives that you have in place are beginning to gain traction and bite. And I guess I'm just wondering the degree to which the fastener performance is a bit disappointing and what does that say about the state of the initiatives, if you will?

Dan L. Florness

Management

One thing you have to keep in perspective, Holden, is -- my way of thinking of our fasteners, about two-thirds of our fasteners are more production-centered. And additional selling activity, in a three or a six-month period, doesn't necessarily change that gob of business because you just can't influence enough. It's too long cycle. You can't influence it enough in the short-term. The MRO piece of our business, on the other hand, is like the non-fasteners in that it's MRO and selling activity can improve that. That business did improve in the first quarter. I don't have the stats in front of me for that subset of the business. But the MRO side of our fastener business did improve which to me, lines up perfectly with the added selling energy in the store. Holden Lewis - BB&T Capital Markets: Okay. Got you. And then on the vending machines, as you noted, the growth of the customers that use them has been going up. I was curious, are you having more success in getting sort of the $2,000 per month, or whatever it was, from customers that are putting that in place? I know in the past, you've sort of talked about maybe you weren't meeting that aspiration. Is part of the growth that you're seeing or the improvement in that metric just you doing a better job farming the incremental revenue that you've been wanting to get?

Dan L. Florness

Management

I think it's a little bit of each, but keep in mind that the $2,000 number that we have out there is a commitment on total business with that customer. We're doing quite nicely in that regard. The second piece of it -- we also look at it every day from the standpoint of -- this customer, their business went from $10,000 to $12,500, so we went up $2,500. They have completely met their commitment to us of increasing their business. But we might look at the vending machine and we say, but the vending machine is only doing $1,000 or $1,100 or $1,300 or $800 and we challenge ourselves, internally, to understand -- that machine, we believe, can do more revenue. And when we have a machine out there doing $800, are we providing the best service to our customer? Because, if there's a bunch of coils in that machine that aren't turning, the machine brings tremendous usage, both point-of-use access availability, so it's closer to where the employee is working, and it lowers consumption. But if we have a bunch of coils in the machine that aren't turning because we don't have the right product in there, we're not providing the greatest value to our customer. And I'd love to be in a position where we add $400 to that machine because we're providing more value. By the way, our sales just went to $2,900 of growth rather than $2,500. But as far as getting the growth, we're getting the growth from the customer.

Will D. Oberton

Management

And your question, yes, we're getting more, and that's why our growth just keeps moving up over the last three quarters through those customers.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Robert Barry from Susquehanna.

Robert Barry - Susquehanna Financial Group

Analyst · Robert Barry from Susquehanna

Hey, guys. Thank you. Good morning.

Will D. Oberton

Management

Good morning, Robert.

Robert Barry - Susquehanna Financial Group

Analyst · Robert Barry from Susquehanna

I wanted to just ask about the 13% growth number, the low-teens growth rate that it sounds like you're targeting for 2Q or later into the year, what are the assumptions behind help from the end markets in that? Or is that really just about kind of firm-specific initiatives?

Will D. Oberton

Management

It's company-specific. What I'm saying is that we work -- Lee's team worked very hard developing the goals, trying to understand the sequential patterns and if we stick with those, we're going to end up just over 13%. It uses a lot of looking at our historical sequential patterns and actually, being just above those, as we go forward, or exceeding those -- not a big above -- not well above, excuse me. And that's really what it's looking at. And that aside, our assumption in the economy is that it will get ever slightly better as we go through the year. We think it's going to improve a little bit. The anecdotal stuff and as I've said, I've been out to see a lot of customers over the last three months. And generally speaking, there's some positive feeling with the customers about things going on later in the year. So, that's making us feel a little better about the business and how we're going to end, or go throughout the year -- stuttering, I apologize.

Robert Barry - Susquehanna Financial Group

Analyst · Robert Barry from Susquehanna

Okay. And then just maybe tying that into the outlook for the incrementals, mentioning it going back into the mid to upper 20%s or even the low 30%s, how much of that is in your control versus how much is about getting help from the end markets? If you are doing the low-teens, which is -- sounds like it's mostly in your control, can we still, under that assumption, expect to see that improvement in the incrementals as the year progresses, based on things that you're doing at Fastenal?

Dan L. Florness

Management

Yes. And I think there's things in life that are we and you -- I mean the market needs to help, or we need to do this. It's there. Again, the really challenging part, as we look at 2014 in general, is the fact that 2013 is kind of like two distinctly different years, from the standpoint of what our fastener business was doing and what our margin was doing. And so, as those comp changes, as we go through the year, it just makes it easier. But I'm feeling -- I like what I see when I look at 2014 for Fastenal's opportunities.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. And our next question comes from the line of Brent Rakers from Wunderlich.

Brent Rakers - Wunderlich Securities, Inc.

Analyst · Brent Rakers from Wunderlich

Good morning. Just two pretty --

Will D. Oberton

Management

Good morning, Brent.

Brent Rakers - Wunderlich Securities, Inc.

Analyst · Brent Rakers from Wunderlich

Good morning. Two quick questions. The first one, I think your insurance costs grew about 20% to 25% last year. First quarter, they were flat. Why don't you give us a sense for how that plays out over the course of the year? And then second question, what's your best estimate of the drag in the March month from -- or the benefit, rather, in the March month from Easter? Thanks.

Dan L. Florness

Management

Lee, you want to touch on the March?

Lee J Hein

Analyst · Brent Rakers from Wunderlich

Yeah, on the March, when you look at it, some of it, Brent, is -- we have to be honest, was pent-up, I think, energy from January and February. Some of it's just the timing and some of it was just we had good weather. But you've got to look at it, and when we see our stores, and our large stores and what happened, we also got an indication sometime in February with five good days, that we knew something was starting to move in the business in a positive way. And we really saw it come to fruition in March and that's really what played out. It was a good month, stripping out weather, stripping out pent-up January and February. It was a good month for our people, and like Will said, great direction for the rest of the year.

Will D. Oberton

Management

I think one other part that gave us some confidence in February is that when we looked at our February results, the areas of the company that hadn't been hit -- south of the Mason-Dixon, basically, because the weather on the north hit us all the way from Seattle to Boston. It covered the country. But the south was pretty clean. And with only one exception, every region in the southern part of the United States hit their goal, and across the south, Fastenal exceeded their goal. So, we had confidence that our selling energy was working. And then March just brought -- proved that out when the weather cleared up, the regions in the north hit goal, so they came back. So, it was very clear on a map to see what was going on and that let us look. As far as Easter itself, we gain a couple million dollars by Good Friday being out of there. It always changes, depending on where it falls in the month. It's a really difficult thing to measure exactly. If Easter falls early, it's easy, and so it's trying to figure that out.

Dan L. Florness

Management

Your other question about insurance, if you look at our insurance numbers, and I assume you're pulling numbers out of the K, there's really two drivers of that, two components. One is health insurance, and that's the majority of our dollars. I don't have it in front of me, but I'd suspect its 75% to 80% of our dollars, and the rest is general insurance. I think if you look at 2013, the commentary on the delta from 2012 to 2013 is more of a statement about 2012 than it is about 2013, as far as what it means going into 2014. Obviously, we saw some -- our nation is seeing some, let's just say, turmoil, in the health insurance side of the arena. And we've seen sizable growth in there. Being a large employer, there's a lot of tax components that were added to our expense pool, added to our employees' costs over the last several years and 2013 got a full dose of that. I think the delta from 2013 to 2014 will be a little bit more muted, partly because it's maybe a little bit quieter, not a lot quieter, but a little bit, and partly because of the manner in which we're adding headcount right now, primarily through the part-time arena. As it relates to the other side of the insurance, the general, the only thing -- the biggest component for us on that over time is the workers' comp and the fact that we have 6,000 vehicles on the road. They are backing in to a lot of loading docks by a bunch of 20- to 30-year olds. And so, we get a lot of minor fender benders. And if we do a good job managing that over time, we can manage that expense quite well. The workers' comp, actually, some of our distribution automation over the last several years is actually improving that trend.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. And we have time for one more question. Our final question comes from the line of Kwame Webb from Morningstar.

Kwame Webb - Morningstar

Analyst · Morningstar

Good morning, gentlemen. Thanks so much for taking my call today.

Will D. Oberton

Management

Good morning.

Kwame Webb - Morningstar

Analyst · Morningstar

I just wanted to retouch on the topic of vending. I know you guys kind of took the pedal off the metal there just because you felt like you weren't getting the assortment right. Where are you guys on sort of the timeline for figuring that out, making sure that you're getting the economics you want, as well as making sure the customer is getting the benefit they need? Do you feel like you've really cracked the code by now?

Will D. Oberton

Management

I don't know if I would say we have cracked the code, but we have made tremendous improvement. We understand the mix. Our throughput through the machines continues to grow, and we believe we're going to see improved signings. But back to the 2012 numbers, it will roughly take us a long time, if ever, that we get back to those types of signings. When we talk about it internally, we say if we had 15,000 quality signings a year, that would give us tremendous growth through our business and we would take share at a rate that no one else is doing. So right now, without just having a specific goal, we're pretty comfortable where we were in the first quarter with our signings, because with a little improvement, we'll get to the 15,000 quality signings and then we'll grow from there. And we'll be able to manage it. It will not overwhelm the stores. They will be able to manage that and still go out and grow their other business, their construction, their MRO and all the other things they are doing. And the message that Lee is doing a great job putting out to the team is, it's about profitable growth. But to maintain that profitable growth, you probably need to add some new customers, you need to add some vending and you need to do some other -- use some other initiatives that we have. If the managers understand that and focus on that, I think we'll continue to hit goal and grow our business profitably. Vending will be a pretty big component of that. And we just continue to get better -- our packaging, our costs. I was looking at some product lines that are predominantly vending product lines in the reports, quarterly reports and there's just tremendous growth in so many of those. A lot of them are personal safety things, like gloves, dust masks, things like that, that fit so well into that system.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. And we have run out of time for questions. I would like to turn the conference back to Fastenal for any concluding comments.

Dan L. Florness

Management

Thanks. Similar to prior quarters, again, we thank the folks attending this call, our employees, our shareholders and the analyst community for your continued interest in Fastenal. And our annual meeting is coming up here in week and a half. We invite those of you that are able to attend to attend. And in case you might have missed it, last night, we announced our second quarter dividend of $0.25. That will be payable during the quarter. With that, everybody have a good day and a good weekend. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for your participation in today's conference. This does conclude the program. And you may now log off and disconnect. Everyone have a good day.