Mr. Wood: The company originated back in 1940, when Joe Weider - who's alive and well today, I might add - and his brother Ben had a consuming interest in health and fitness, and started a publishing business for bodybuilders. Their bodybuilding activities stimulated an interest in sports nutrition and the nutrition side of the Weider empire. The nutrition business, along with its sister companies, publications and sporting goods, really developed when they began selling products to their subscribers. Fast-forward to 1997, Weider Nutrition International went public. Then in October 2005, we changed our name to Schiff Nutrition International to align with our strategic commitment to grow the Schiff brand.
When the company went public, nutritional supplements, especially the joint care category, were growing very rapidly within the mass market. We launched Move Free(r), our flagship brand then known as Pain Free, into the mass market and achieved significant distribution. In addition, over the years the company had made several small acquisitions, primarily in sports nutrition. 1997 was a period of rapid growth for the company, although not necessarily all profitable growth. By 1998 the whole market went through a contraction period, where retailers concluded they had overshelved supplement products and the growth rate stalled, declining from 15% to 20%, down to essentially zero. The industry went through a rationalization process that resulted in a lot of returns from retailers to reduce high inventories and excess capacity that had built up. Our company was no exception. In 1998 our debt peaked at $133 million and our position, along with others, was a little bit tenuous. In 1999 the board implemented change and installed the current management team, including myself.
Since then, we've really focused on organic growth in our core profitable business, the Schiff(r) brand and Move Free in particular. At the same time, we completed a number of divestitures of the nonstrategic and noncontributing businesses, and got our debt under control. As a result, by 2007 we had eliminated all of the debt and actually accumulated a cash balance of approximately $80 million. This represented a positive swing of about approximately $213 million in terms of our balance sheet and the cash flow generated, most of which came from operational improvements as opposed to asset sales. With our improved position, in 2007 we declared a special dividend of $1.50 per share. We have continued to focus primarily on branded growth and organic growth in new products, and we've added another approximately $37 million in cash between 2007 and our fiscal year 2010 third-quarter reporting period, which was reported to the Street on March 17. In total, from 1999 onward we generated a total of approximately $250 million in cash, approximately $213 million coming from operations and approximately $37 million from asset sales. During that same period, we paid approximately $58 million to our shareholders in the form of special dividends. On March 17, we announced we will return to our shareholders upwards of an additional $15 million in April in the form of another special dividend.
In summary, the story has been one of consistent, profitable cash flow, managed organic growth producing top- and bottom-line growth, and a consistent improvement in our competitive position over that period. The company today is just under $200 million in sales on a rolling basis, and has a significant double-digit operating margin and EBITDA margin. We have a 400-plus SKU portfolio, which stands for stock-keeping units - that contains both our branded and private label components. We manage the business out of our Salt Lake City headquarters, which houses our administrative office, two manufacturing plants, warehouse and distribution center, and our R&D and analytical lab. We employ just under 500 people and are ranked number 10 among U.S. supplement companies, according to Nutrition Business Journal.
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