AD reported sales for all its members, across all seven divisions and three countries, grew by 2 percent in 2015. Performance within AD’s operating segments ranged from +10 percent to -3 percent.
Bill Weisberg, AD’s chairman and CEO comments on the results, “Our diversified business strategy, operating across seven industries and three countries, allowed us to capitalize on high growth areas of the economy and offset the negative impact of commodities, oil and gas and major industrial markets. The efficiencies afforded by our scale, along with the prudent management of investments and operational costs allowed us to deliver over 100 percent of rebates to our independent member distributors and to cover 100 percent of our expenses.”
Weisberg continued, “Consistent with our strategic plan to leverage our overall size to cost-effectively deliver added value to every division, we expanded our service set to include AD eCommerce Solutions and AD HR Services. We believe that the collaborative financial investments made in 2015 put our membership in a strong position to capitalize on the opportunities in 2016.”
Doing their part for the economy, in 2015 AD members across all divisions hired 5,569 new employees, opened 319 new locations and made 33 acquisitions.