Thomas C. Gallagher - Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
Management
Thank you, Carol. So that will conclude our prepared comments on 2015. And in closing, we would say as mentioned earlier, that it was a challenging year in many ways but a gratifying year in other ways. Our revenue production in local currencies was solid across our Automotive businesses as it was in Office Products, but Industrial and Electrical found it more difficult. We were pleased to see strong operating margin improvements in Automotive and Electrical, but we had operating margin declines in Office Products and Industrial. We were, however, able to show a 10-basis-point improvement for GPC overall despite the Office Products and Industrial challenges. Gross profit was down 12 basis points for the year, but good work was done on the SG&A side, and SG&A was down 20 basis points. As a result, pre-tax income was up slightly, but due to the higher tax rate that Carol explained, net income was down slightly. On the balance sheet side, the progress was more consistent, with cash from operations and free cash, both setting new records and working capital was reduced once again in 2015. And we returned well over $600 million back to shareholders through a combination of dividends and share repurchases. And we reinvested over $225 million back into the business through a combination of capital expenditures and acquisitions, and we expect to invest an additional $125 million in acquisitions over the next few months. And these CapEx and acquisition investments are intended to drive revenue and profit growth in the quarters ahead. Now, turning to the year ahead, as a general statement, we would say that we remain quite cautious in our outlook. The general economic conditions look a bit fragile and perhaps tenuous both domestically and globally. And as mentioned earlier, this is already having a significant impact on certain segments of our customer base, primarily in Industrial and Electrical. Conversely, we think that the outlook for our Automotive segment is generally favorable, but the currency impact will once again be a headwind to our Automotive growth in 2015. With all of that said, at this point, we would expect our 2016 revenues to be up 2% to 3% in Automotive with a currency headwind of 3%; Industrial, up 1% to 2%; Electrical, up 1% to 2%; Office Products, down 1% to up 1%; giving us a total GPC revenue expectation of being up 1% to 2% and up 3% to 4% before the currency impact. And with revenue growth at these levels, we would suggest an EPS range of $4.70 to $4.80, which will be up 1.5% to 3.5% after currency exchange impact of approximately $0.08 per share, and before the currency exchange impact, would be up 3% to 5% on a constant currency basis. At this point, we'd like to address your questions, and we'll turn the call back to Chris.