One Pilgrim's Progress

Lonnie Pilgrim

• Publisher: Thomas Nelson
• Year: 2005
• ISBN:
  9781418517014
• Topic: Negocios y empresa
• Subtopic: Liderazgo

Bo Pilgrim had no college education, but he did have a big dose of Texas courage and a heavenly calling that led him to start his own business after World War II. Reggie Wallace, who worked with Pilgrim for fifty years, describes it this way: "All we had in the beginning was a two-wheel buggy, a shovel, some burlap sacks, and Bo's big ideas."

Today, Pilgrim's Pride is a multi-billion-dollar enterprise that employs more than 40, 000 people and processes 30 million chickens a week. In One Pilgrim's Progress, Pilgrim shares the essential values he learned as a boy that are the foundation of his business success.

1

I WAS ALWAYS
GOING SOMEWHERE

The deal was the largest in the history of the poultry industry—valued at more than $600 million. It was certainly the largest deal I had ever had anything to do with.

The deal made Pilgrim’s Pride Corporation the second largest poultry producer in the world—almost twice the size of the third-place poultry producer in the U.S. The deal put us into new markets internationally and gave us new potential for growth and development.

The deal to which I am referring is the acquisition of the ConAgra chicken division by Pilgrim’s Pride Corporation in autumn 2003.

The deal took many people by surprise, but in truth, the relationships that underscored its success had been growing for some time.

Through the years, I had met the leaders of ConAgra’s chicken division at various industry meetings. We had developed a friendship, even though we were competitors, and we admired each other’s business principles. At several of these industry meetings, I had opportunities to converse with poultry company executives about our strategy of seeking to add more value to all of our products and services. Bruce Rohde, who was then president and chief executive officer of ConAgra Foods, and Dwight Goslee, who was then executive president for operations, control, and development of ConAgra Foods, seemed to be on the same page with me when it came to the way we approached customer service and business growth and development.

Finding ways to add more value to products and services has been a focus of Pilgrim’s Pride for decades. Through the years, we had grown internally, but we also had taken advantage of several strategic acquisition opportunities that enabled us to expand our product mix and our distribution capabilities—especially when it came to prepared foods. I knew enough from these previous acquisitions to be able to envision numerous ways in which Pilgrim’s Pride and ConAgra’s chicken division might enhance each other.

The discussions about how Pilgrim’s Pride and ConAgra’s chicken division might work together began in earnest in early May 2003. I initiated several telephone conversations with Dwight Goslee, and I specifically asked to meet with him and Bruce Rohde face-to-face to discuss a larger acquisition of ConAgra’s chicken operations than various lower-level executives at ConAgra had been willing to discuss with us. Rohde and Goslee agreed to the meeting, and on May 9, 2003, I traveled with Cliff Butler, our vice chairman, and Rick Cogdill, our executive vice president and chief financial officer, to meet with Rohde and Goslee in Omaha, Nebraska.

At that meeting we laid out our plan for and interest in acquiring all of ConAgra’s chicken operations for approximately $600 million in assets for $100 million in cash, common stock representing approximately 40 to 45 percent of the total consideration, and a subordinated note for the balance, which we asked ConAgra to carry for us. After a few hours of working through various details, we had forged the general framework of an agreement. We discussed the next moves—the required documentation and meetings with our respective boards—and we agreed to move forward to see whether the transaction could be completed.

For the next four weeks, both corporations experienced a flurry of activity. We dispatched our operations people to visit all of the major ConAgra chicken division facilities. We had the legal, tax, and accounting professionals conducting legal and financial due diligence on ConAgra’s chicken business and financial records. We had investment bankers working to render fairness opinions. Banks were lined up to provide the key elements of the financing. Cogdill for Pilgrim’s Pride and Goslee for ConAgra hammered out the structure of the legal agreement.

Then, on Saturday, June 7, 2003, we had a special meeting of our board of directors to consider and give final approval to the proposed transaction. The proposal before our board passed unanimously.

The final $600-plus million for which Pilgrim’s Pride Corporation obligated itself now carries a public value realized to ConAgra in return for its chicken division of more than $1 billion in total value, when valuing the stock portion of the consideration at current trading levels. It was, and continues to be, a win-win deal for both companies.

In the deal, Pilgrim’s Pride Corporation doubled its operations in most areas. We jumped to $5.6 billion a year in annualized sales, more than 40,000 Partners (employees), and a market share of more than 15 percent. We added 44.1 million pounds to our ready-to-cook production of chicken—up to 109.1 million pounds of ready-to-cook chicken on an average weekly basis. The producer just behind us produces only 61.8 million pounds of ready-to-cook chicken on an average weekly basis. We have almost twice the people, twice the markets, twice the revenue, twice the distribution of this next-largest competitor. That’s a stretch.

Was I excited about this deal?

I don’t know that I’d use the word excited. Challenged, perhaps. Ready to take on the challenge? Absolutely. In many ways, it felt like the next logical step to take, albeit a large step.

Was I surprised at how quickly and easily the deal fell into place? No, I wasn’t. When things are right—a win-win for both parties—deals often fall into place quickly.

Was I pleased that the deal came about so smoothly? Definitely. Rohde made it clear that the deal came down to a single factor that I’ve come to recognize and value increasingly through the years: integrity. Although integrity might not be considered a financial factor, it’s certainly at the root of all good financial decisions and business choices. Rohde and I had a relationship. We trusted each other. He saw me as a man of good business principles and integrity. I saw him the same way. We could forge a $600-plus million deal in a matter of a few hours because integrity was our foundation.

A $600 million deal would have been beyond my wildest imagination seventy years ago. What would a boy from Pine, Texas—population less than one hundred people—know about business deals of that magnitude? In a word . . . nothing.

Although integrity might not be considered a financial factor, it’s certainly at the root of all good financial decisions and business choices . . . We could forge a $600-plus million deal in a matter of a few hours because integrity was our foundation.

But what would a boy from Pine, Texas, know about integrity—about being true to your word, standing on principle, and developing relationships that transcend the decades?

Everything.

Pine might have been small, but the principles I learned there were lasting and huge. The relationships I developed there continue today. The way I did business there—even as a boy selling soda pop—is very much the way I do business today: honest, straightforward, and at a fair profit.

To understand the success of Pilgrim’s Pride Corporation . . . to understand my personal success . . . you need to understand my roots.

A BOY FROM PINE WITH DEEP ROOTS

My name really is Bo. I was born May 8, 1928, and was officially named Lonnie Pilgrim in honor of my father, whose name was Alonzo, but from my earliest days, relatives called me Bo. It’s the name I’ve always used.

I was the fourth of seven children—two more children died as infants. My brother Harold was ten years older than I. Brother Aubrey and sister Mary Katheryn were also older. Billy, Sue, and Margaret were younger siblings.

We lived in Pine, Texas, a community of eighty-to-one-hundred people during my growing-up years.

We were poor—but so was everybody else. In fact, the whole nation was poor in the early 1930s, but one of the poorer places in America was East Texas. People were trying to scratch out a living by growing cotton and potatoes, and raising cattle, but neither was very profitable in those days. Most people who raised cattle also grew a little corn to feed them, and in a smaller garden, they grew crops for their own table.

For a small town, Pine actually had a significant amount of industry. It had a sawmill, a shingle mill, a cotton gin, a potato house, a school, two stores, a post office, and a railroad going right through the center of the town. The community was organized in 1884 and was called Pine Tree because of all the pines in the area. Earlier, the small town was called Cannon Switch in honor of the Reverend Burell Cannon, who built what he called the Ezekiel Airship after the description of a flying machine in the biblical book of Ezekiel. Later, the town was called Cannon Ball because of the train station and tracks through town. In 1884, however, the name was Pine Tree, and a few years later, the Tree was dropped.

My father operated one of the two stores in Pine. The other store was founded by Dr. W. T. Efurd, who had a certificate of medicine but decided not to practice after he opened the store in 1892. Efurd was a teacher, storekeeper, and preacher. The Pine Grocery and Post Office, which was my father’s store, was across the street from Efurd’s Store. Our store offered all kinds of canned vegetables and fruits, as well as canned fish. My father also carried an assortment of dry goods, from tobacco to flour. That certainly wasn’t the only enterprise my father had, however—after all, he had seven children to feed in addition to himself and my mother, Gertrude.

The train that ran through Pine began to stop in Pine after Efurd’s Store opened. A person could take the train six miles away to Pittsburg, Texas, for fifteen cents—or hang onto the side of a freight train for nothing. Unfortunately the train stopped only once a day at nine o’clock in the morning, and it didn’t run back through Pine, so whoever took the train to Pittsburg needed to find another way home. I learned that the hard way one day when, as a boy, I sneaked onto the train and found myself with a real adventure trying to get home before I was missed.

We had a switch track in Pine that ran parallel to the main track, and also a third track. It was on this third track we loaded logs onto railcars. The logs were about four feet long and two feet in diameter. They had been cut to be shipped. Two long “skinned” pine limbs were leaned into a boxcar door from the ground, and then logs were brought into the yard for transport. My father would buy those logs and roll them up the skids into the cars. He didn’t do the work by himself, of course. Hired men helped. I was always amazed at their strength and skill in handling the logs—they could take a log and flip it over on their knees to stack the logs two high in the boxcar.

My father also bought cotton in Pine, and I remember playing on those bales of cotton between the store and the house. Cotton became so cheap at one point that Daddy burned cotton bales because they had no value. I also remember that beef at one time was so cheap that people couldn’t afford to raise cattle—the cost of the feed was more than what they could get for the animal once it was grown.

In addition to the grocery, our family had a large potato house where people would bring their potatoes to be washed, graded, and stored until they were shipped out by train. When I was only ten years old, I hung potato bags in a shop next door to the store. My father bought potatoes in bulk, and I put them into the bags for resale. I made a dollar a week doing that, and I spent that money going to Pittsburg to the picture show where I enjoyed the movies while eating a bag of popcorn.

The church and the school initially were located in the same building, but by the time I was born, the town had a church and a school in separate buildings. The school building had two main classrooms separated by a center hall, and a larger room that served as an auditorium. Two teachers and a principal instructed about forty children total in all eight grades.

Today, the Pine Baptist Church, the Pine Grocery, the Pine Community Center, and scattered chicken houses are all that remain in Pine.

LESSONS IN WORKING AND SELLING

Pine might not have had much to offer in the way of luxury or prosperity, but it did have lots of opportunities for work. I learned how to work as a boy, and I learned how to sell.

We lived two or three hundred yards behind the store, and as I grew up, one of the things I considered a major treat was a Coca-Cola. I frequently went to the store to ask my father for a Coke. When I was only about six years old, my father taught me what it meant to be an entrepreneur. I asked Daddy for a Coca-Cola one day, and he said, “Okay, Bo, you can have a Coke, but what I want you to do first is to take six Cokes down to the gin”—which Calvin Gunn, my grandfather, owned—“and sell those Cokes and bring me back the money and I’ll give you a Coke.” I sold six Cokes, each for five cents, and for that I got one Coke free. I was selling on commission!

Hauling a six-pack of Cokes to the gin was a major effort for me as a boy, so I had a second learning opportunity—to invent something that might make my work easier. I built a little wagon from a set of hand-me-down wheels. I took two two-by-fours and cut them the length of the wheel axles front and back, attached the wheels, and then connected them with two-by-fours. This gave the wagon a turning radius on the front end, guided by a grass rope that I held in my hand. On top of the “wagon” I put a po...