Company: AOS
Filing Date: 2025-02-11
Form Type: 10-K
Source: 0000091142-25-000036
Chunk: 51

Company: SMITH A O CORP
Filing Date: 2025-02-11
Form: 10-K
Item: Item 7
Chunk 51
---
 outstanding under the renewed facility and an available borrowing capacity of $470.0 million. We believe the combination of available borrowing capacity and operating cash flows will provide sufficient funds to finance our existing operations for the foreseeable future.

Our total debt increased by $65.9 million in 2024 primarily due to borrowings associated with our share repurchase program and Pureit acquisition. Our leverage, as measured by the ratio of total debt to total capitalization, was 9.3 percent at December 31, 2024, compared with 6.5 percent at December 31, 2023.

In 2024, our Board of Directors approved adding 2,000,000 shares of common stock to our existing discretionary share repurchase authority. Under our share repurchase program, we may purchase our common stock through a combination of a Rule 10b5-1 automatic trading plan and discretionary purchases in accordance with applicable securities laws. The stock repurchase authorization remains effective until terminated by our Board of Directors, which may occur at any time, subject to the parameters of any Rule 10b5-1 automatic trading plan that we may then have in effect. During 2024, we repurchased 3,755,337 shares of our stock at a total cost of $305.8 million. As of December 31, 2024, we had 1,746,125 shares remaining on the share repurchase authority. On January 26, 2025, the Board of Directors approved adding 5,000,000 shares of common stock to the existing discretionary share repurchase authority. Including the additional shares, we had 6,476,677 shares 

22

available for repurchase as of the date of the Board of Directors' approval. We intend to repurchase approximately $400 million of our common stock in 2025 through a combination of 10b5-1 plans and open-market purchases.

We paid dividends of $1.30 per share in 2024 compared with $1.22 per share in 2023. We increased our dividend by six percent in the fourth quarter of 2024, and the five-year compound annual growth rate of our dividend payment is approximately eight percent. We have paid dividends for 85 consecutive years with annual amounts increasing each of the last 33 years.

Recent Accounting Pronouncements 

Refer to Recent Accounting Pronouncements in Note 1, “Organization and Significant Accounting Policies” of Notes to the Consolidated Financial Statements.

Critical Accounting Policies 

Our accounting policies are