Earnings Labs

W.W. Grainger, Inc. (GWW)

Q1 2015 Earnings Call· Thu, Apr 16, 2015

$1,145.19

-1.29%

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Same-Day

-1.05%

1 Week

+1.00%

1 Month

+1.88%

vs S&P

+0.58%

Transcript

Laura Brown

Management

Hello. This is Laura Brown, Senior Vice President of Communications and Investor Relations. With me is Bill Chapman, Senior Director of Investor Relations. The purpose of this podcast is to provide you with additional information regarding Grainger’s First Quarter 2015 Results. Please reference our 2015 first quarter earnings release issued today, April 16th, in addition to other information available on our Investor Relations website, to supplement this podcast. Today we also announced a permanent change to our capital structure and our intent to buy back $3 billion in stock by the end of 2017. In just a moment, we will provide some additional commentary regarding this important communication. Before we begin, please remember that certain statements and projections of future results made in the press release and in this podcast constitute forward-looking information. These statements are based on current market conditions and competitive and regulatory expectations, and involve risk and uncertainty. Please see our Form 10-K for a discussion of factors that relate to forward-looking statements. Our capital structure announcement details our plan to repurchase $3 billion of our stock over the next three years. This represents approximately 19% of today’s market capitalization. Year to date, we have purchased $150 million in shares. The additional repurchases will be funded with a combination of $1.2 billion of internally generated cash and $1.8 billion of new, permanent debt over the next three years. Here are some important points to keep in mind. The cost of debt is at historic lows. The issuance of permanent debt will increase the efficiency of our balance sheet and will lower our cost of capital. We expect to issue $1 billion in long-term debt in June to help fund the program. Our new target debt ratio of 1.0 to 1.5 times EBITDA was chosen specifically to preserve…