Thank you, Lindsay, and good morning, everyone. We would like to begin our discussion today by offering our support and encouragement to all of those who have been impacted by the recent hurricanes. I am proud of the way our team has worked together to support our teammates and the communities we serve and the aftermath of these disasters. The Rollins Relief Fund has processed over 250 emergency grants for teammates in need, and we continue to direct truckloads of food, water and other necessities to impacted areas. Our efforts will continue in the days weeks and months ahead as these communities begin to recover. Turning to our financial results, our team delivered another solid quarter, reflecting consistent execution of our operating strategies and continuous improvement in our business. Our team delivered these results despite some operational disruption caused by Hurricane Harvey, which occurred during the last week of the call. Mr. Our financial performance for the third quarter was highlighted by an increase in revenue of 9% to $916 million, and we delivered healthy organic growth of 7.7% in the quarter. Overall, we continue to see solid revenue growth across all major service lines. We continue to invest in growing our business and adding to our customer base at the markets we serve remain strong. We invested significantly in incremental sales, staffing and marketing activities in Q three, and we're well staffed to convert quality leads and sales efforts into new customer growth, which results in the quarter reflect on the commercial side of the business. We continue to make long-term investments to capitalize on the growth opportunities in a multi-billion dollar B to B market. Our commercial division continues to strategically add feet on street to our sales force. And we are leveraging data analytics and training to better and eight, their success investments to drive organic growth are complemented by strategic M&A. We closed 32 tuck-in deals in the first nine months of the year, and the M&A pipeline remains healthy. We're actively evaluating acquisition opportunities, both domestically and internationally and remain on track to deliver at least 2% of growth from M&A activity in 2024 beyond growth. Our dedication to operational efficiency and continuous improvement is an important part of our strategy and culture. Kim will discuss in more detail, but investments we made to support long-term growth objectives did temper margins a bit in the quarter, but we remain on track to deliver healthy margin improvement and profitability for the year. In yesterday's release, we also announced the planned leadership transition at our Board of Directors in accordance with the company's long-term leadership succession plan. Gary Rollins will transition from Executive Chairman to Executive Chairman Emeritus, and John Wilson will succeed him as Executive Chairman of the Board. Gary was elected to a three year term during our 2024 annual meeting and will continue to be an active and engaged member of our Board. John has been with our Company since 1996 in various positions of increasing responsibility. I've known John for 20 years and is experiencing guidance have been invaluable to me. I have transitioned to the role of CE. over the last two years. I look forward to continuing to work with John, Gary and the rest of our Board as we position our Company for continued success in the future. In closing, we're excited about where our business stands today. Our markets are solid, staffing levels are healthy, and our team is focused on driving continuous improvement and profitable growth. I want to thank each of our 20,000 plus teammates around the world for their ongoing commitment to our customers. I'll now turn the call over to Ken. Ken?
Thank you, Jerry, and good morning, everyone. We are now nine months into 2024, and we've delivered solid financial results. Year to date, we've delivered double digit improvement across all major P&L metrics year-over-year and EBITDA margin improvement of 50 basis points, despite making significant investments in the business here and key three cash flow continues to be strong, with free cash flow growing nearly 12% year to date, enabling a 10% increase to our dividend, which we announced earlier this week. With this increase, we have raised our regular dividend by approximately 65% since the beginning of 2022, while continuing to meaningfully invest in the growth of our business. This is a reflection of our disciplined and balanced approach to capital allocation. Our own ongoing commitment to return capital to share holders and the confidence we have in our future. Looking closer at the third quarter, our team executed exceptionally well and delivered Q3 revenue growth of 9% year over year, with organic growth of 7.7% at the high end of the 7% to 8% range we've discussed this year. We delivered good growth across each of our service offerings. In the third quarter, residential revenues increased 6.4%. Commercial Pest Control rose 9.4%, and termite and ancillary increased by 14.5%. Organic growth was also healthy across the portfolio with growth of 4.9% in residential, 8.1% and commercial and 13.7% in the termite and ancillary area of our business. Turning to profitability, our gross margins were 54%, up 20 basis points versus last year. We continue to be positive on the price cost equation. Pressures from incremental people. Investments were offset by leverage and materials and supplies as well as fleet quarterly adjusted SG&A costs as a percentage of revenue increased by 100 basis points versus last year. This was primarily driven by incremental investments in people to support our growth initiatives and the uptick in advertising spend that we expected and previously discussed. During our Q2 earnings call, Q3 GAAP operating income was $192 million, up 8.3% year over year. Operating margins were 20.9%. Down 20, our adjusted EBITDA was $219 million, up over 5% and representing a 24% margin. Margins were down 80 basis points versus last year. And adjusted incremental EBITDA margins were 15 for 15.1% in the quarter, reflecting incremental investments in people and growth programs during the quarter. The effective tax rate was approximately 26.1% in the quarter, and we continue to expect the ETR of approximately 26% for the year, which implies a rate that is just over 27%. For the fourth quarter, quarterly GAAP net income was 137 million, or $0.28 per share, increasing 7.7% from $0.26 per share in the same period a year ago. Accounting for Certain non-GAAP adjustments. Adjusted net income for the quarter was $140 million, or $0.29 per share, increasing nearly 4% from the same period a year ago. Despite a higher level of interest costs and the investments we are making and growth-oriented initiatives, we remain on track, deliver healthy profitability for the full year, driven by solid growth and an improving margin profile. We continue to focus on driving further improvements while investing in our business and capturing growth in our various attractive end markets. Turning to cash flow and the balance sheet. Quarterly cash flow was 139 million, up a very healthy 16% versus last year. Free cash flow conversion was 102% for the quarter and 110% year to date. We made acquisitions totaling $24 million and we paid 73 million in dividends in the quarter. Year to date, we have made acquisitions of $106 million and returned 218 million to shareholders through our dividend. Additionally, we had just announced a 10% increase to our dividend earlier this week. This represents over two decades of consecutive increases annual dividend payments. Debt to EBITDA leverage is well below one times on a gross and net level. Our balance sheet is healthy, and we are well positioned and committed to continue to maintain our balanced approach to capital allocation. In closing, we continue to focus on investing for growth while executing on our Continuous Improvement and Modernization initiatives. We are starting the last quarter of the year with healthy organic demand, and we remain committed to investing in our people and providing our customers with the best customer experience . With that, I'll turn the call back over to Jerry.
Operator
Thank you, Ken. We're happy to take any questions at this time.
Jerry Gahlhoff
Thank you. We will now be conducting a question and answer session. If you'd like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue, you may press star two to remove yourself from the queue For participants using speaker equipment. It may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the star stocking. We also ask that you do we do all participants asking a question to limit yourself to one question and one follow-up only four times. Our first question comes from the line of Tim Mulrooney with William Blair. Please proceed with your question. Yes,
Tim Mulrooney
Can, Jerry and good morning. Greetings from past world. Good morning. Wish we were there at that again, adding see as Rob here to go away. We're not having any form without Jim, Bob. So while residential organic, I wanted to ask about that at 0.55, 5% year to date at still indicative of a healthy market, I recognize that you'll maybe slightly below what we've seen over the last several years. So I'm just curious how would you characterize the health of the consumer today? And could you maybe break that growth down between the recurring revenue stream and one-time sales?
Jerry Gahlhoff
Sure, Tim, thanks for the questions. We appreciate that when we dive in and we look at the the overall growth of the business, we continue to remain very optimistic, very confident in our outlook. We talked about seven 8%. We delivered 7.7% here in the quarter and 7.7% organic growth year to date. When you look closer at the residential business, it's an area that we're also pretty pleased with the performance, especially when we look at the recurring revenue in the business back in September, we we've spoken a public webcast and talked about the fact that we were seeing six plus percent recurring revenue growth coming through the residential sector. And that's where we finished. That's where we've been for the better part of the year. And so we're pretty pleased with that level. Of recurring revenue growth, especially in the residential sector. When I look at the business in the quarter, Jerry pointed out the fact that that unfortunately we had to deal with the effects of the hurricane late in the quarter. But if you set that aside and you look at what happened as a result of that, hurricane was probably had about I had 2 million or so impact on revenue growth. And so we would have probably delivered organic growth that would have been slightly higher than the 7.7 closer and closer to the high end, the 8% that we have talked about in the business. So overall, we remain very pleased with the performance of teams doing an exceptional job at delivering yet another quarter and the health of the residential consumer does appears fill strong to us . We see good growth in termite and ancillary on a good acceptance of our cross-sell campaigns and other things. So if there's anything that's been more inconsistent and the one-time pace and the rest of the residential recurring, what we're really investing in with marketing, trying to drive quality leads, that's what we invest in the door to door. And any other type of channel that we go to is to create recurring revenue streams. And the investments we made in the in the third quarter will pay off for us in the fourth quarter and the first quarter of next year as our customer base bigger as we head into the into the back at back end of the year. Okay. That's a lot of helpful color. Thank you. I'm just going to switch gears really quickly because Ken, I think I remember having a conversation with you a couple of months ago about really like etc. When you're looking at incremental margins and really trying to hit that in that target range, not a particular quarter. But like if you look at it on an LTM basis, write-ups, kind of how we're analyzing the business, thinking about it from that standpoint. So I guess my question is yes, if we look at incremental margins on an LTM basis, do you expect them to be essentially in line with your target range for the full year this year? Or might that be different given that the incremental investments? Thank you. Thanks for the question, Tim. We continue to remain confident in our outlook on incremental margins with a business that's generating gross margins of 54%. We feel like the contribution or the incremental margins should be approximating 30% level. And in fact, when you look at the quarter and you peel back the performance, you unpack the performance a little bit and look at it a little bit closer. What you see is that we spend we spend more in selling and marketing. We saw an opportunity and a very attractive growth market to invest and grow our businesses. And just alluding to what Jerry just spoke about facade, along with some of the investments we made on the tech side to accelerate the start rate that we have in our business did see an incremental margin that would be right around 30% here in the quarter. So we continue to remain confident in our ability to deliver 30% plus incremental margins longer term, yes, there's this quarter is more of a timing issue more than anything that as we indicated at the end of Q2.
Operator
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Toni Kaplan with Morgan Stanley. Please proceed with your question.
Toni Kaplan
Thanks so much. I also wanted to ask about margin and you mentioned the growth investments in hiring more people. Should we expect further investment in future quarters? Or was this more of that catch-up to where you want to be? And just if you could talk about which segment you're investing in metastatic that became.
So thanks for the question, Tony. When we look at the investments, this is a this is a growth business. That's a growth market. We continue to see great growth opportunities. So we're going to continue to invest in the business. When I go back and unpack the investments we made this quarter, I would look at them through two or three lenses. one is on our service side and our service technicians because we know the importance of getting out and starting our lead, getting our lead converted into starts. We have certainly invested in the service side of our business. That's probably about a 30 basis point headwind on gross margins in the quarter. The second area that we made investments here is in our sales and our lead or sales engine in our sales people. We've talked about the fact that our commercial business remains a very important area of our business, combined with our residential. And so we're investing disproportionately in the sales end of our business. And and you saw that come through along with the increased advertising spend that we had here in the quarter to the tune of about 100 basis points. So you probably don't expect that low level of investment every single quarter. But you're going to see us invest in this business following the various strategic initiatives that we talked about back at our Investor Day back in May. Of that, a little color that when I look back at Q3 of 2023 compared to 2020 for our staffing levels, I'm just thinking just peeling back to organize itself. Do you think on the commercial side, we are looking at the data to say, hey, where do we have adequate coverage given the market? And we're going to continue to invest where that opportunity is there. If it gets difficult to scale for the data says that we've got good penetration, the penetration that we need and we have the right people in the right places for the opportunities are that will certainly slow down. But will you let the data and then how we're doing operationally from a scalability standpoint out will help us dictates that. And then on the residential side, selling termite, cross-sell, ancillary business, those kinds of things that staffing is up double digits is just like the commercial side is as we continue to make those investments there and the opportunities there, the consumer is taking the services and buying the services that you see in our results. And we find that to be a very worthwhile investment will continue to do that as long as so long as the market holds. Perfect. And wanted to ask about pricing as we approach the end of the year and thinking about your strategy into next year, I think we've been in a little bit of a unique environment in the last couple of years in terms of we had the inflation and then it's been cooling. So I know it's been a little bit on the higher side on price in the past couple of years. Do you see that sort of higher than normal price level of increases continuing into 2025 when you're looking at your data and stuff like that? Just how you're thinking about it. Yes. So Ken and I just recently spent hours in a room together reviewing those data from our price increase results this year. And there's not been anything in there that are in the data from what we see and what we understand about the consumer that that scares us off of continuing to come. I get a fair price for our service. And if we're doing a good job, we should reward or will be rewarded for that in our technicians in the field should be rewarded for that as well . So we've not seen anything in the data that would cause us to change course, from anything that we've already indicated to sell both internally. It also externally, when you look at CPI., we've consistently talked about CCIA. plus level of improved pricing and CPI. coming back roughly 2.5% recently gives us you have no reason to step back on the pricing and pare that back. And we feel like this is an essential service and we should be able to be rewarded and we should be able to reward our service technicians with the pricing that we've seen the last couple of years.
Very clear.
Operator
Thank you. Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Jason Harris with Wells Fargo. Please proceed with your question.
Jason Harris
Hey, guys, this is our Ash Carter on for Jason pass. Thanks for taking our questions. I wanted to ask on the commercial side, just any update there in terms of the strategy around splitting the brands and adding to the sales force, I think there's an eventual plans to create a second division communication minus there of the margin opportunity being able to capitalize on multiple branches across a single digital media channel. Thank you.
Yes, we still continue to have a pretty long runway on the commercial side and how restructure that business, how we open new branches add to your point about opening another division, those types of things that overall we're still in the probably in the first two are the earnings of what's possible there. On the commercial side, we're going to continue to invest, invest in those opportunities. And even from a from a margin since standpoint, the commercial side tends to drive some stickier customer base and of it a very appealing margin opportunity there as well as on that side of the business. So we see nothing but good things from the future on that commercial strategy. And we're seeing, like I said, still in the early stages also, it's great to hear on. And then just if you can maybe talk about the trends you're seeing in commercial between the national accounts and SMEs, and just wondering your guys' take on advertising for SMEs relative to the R&D side of the business may be differences or similarities that you would call out there? Thank you. I don't know, I think there's been anything of any sort of a significant shift in that space. How would how some of, from a competitive standpoint? I think we've been we've been making a more conservative effort, especially within the Orkin brand to focus on the commercial side and our marketing strategy there. And we've allocated more dollars into the commercial space to ourselves to do that. But competitive environment or anything along those lines on from an advertising standpoint or a go-to market strategy that we've seen, the team continues to do well. You know, Scott, we were setting up our business and Orkin and the commercial side, and we're seeing nice results there. But also I was just talking to our business leader, Rob Quinn yesterday up in Canada, and he is talking about the good performance we're seeing coming out of our Canadian commercial business in the Wellesley. I can Coronado business substantially all of commercial. And so really good results across across both of those markets.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Ashish Sabadra with RBC Capital Markets. Proceed with your question.
Ashish Sabadra
Hi, this is David page on per share on. Congrats on the results. A question on the termite and ancillary or just other maybe untapped potential in the residential space that I guess that the companies looking to capitalize outside of the current offerings that you have?
Yes, up, um, we're always looking for new services and new opportunities, US, but around the home that we can maybe expand to and some of those or geographic in nature based on construction type of the house or certain types of parts and things like that. So there hasn't been anything. There's nothing revolutionary that we've seen other than some of the the continue continuing of adding more sales staff to increase the number of customers with more than one service for for us. That's why we continue to be so successful, adding our home sales inspectors to offer those types of ancillary services. And another another great opportunity is selling more recurring termite. We have a lot of customers that have pest control that don't have termite control that we can continue to offer that service to through cross marketing cross selling campaign. So we're pretty pretty good at sticking to what works on. There's so much opportunity there, and we're just continuing to invest and drive that point out of the business. Okay, great. Thanks. And just a follow up on in terms of inorganic investment. Given the robust free cash generation in the low that leverage from any anything which keep in mind for there in terms of verticals or geographies that you're targeting? No, nothing noteworthy there. Other than we're going to continue to deploy capital and M&A, we continue to have a focused on delivering 2% to 3% of revenue growth from M&A. Each year. Markets remained very healthy at an incredibly attractive market. As so you certainly do have competition from time to time, but we've been able to separate ourselves by how we treat the acquisitions that we bring into the fold and how we treat the 10s in the brands. And and that's a meaningful difference for us in our markets. But in terms of new markets, we see so much opportunity is such a fragmented such a large and growing market. The past control market that we're going to continue to remain committed to that area.
Thank you. Next question comes from the line of George Tong with Goldman Sachs. Please proceed with your questions.
George Tong
Hi, thanks. Good morning. You mentioned seeing disruptions to operations from hurricane to lean during the last week of the quarter. Can you discuss which parts of the business this impacted the most and whether you expect any spillover effect in 4Q?
So is really a this obviously, the Southeast United States, the coastal areas of Florida, where we have a broad, a strong presence, both in the Orkin brands as well as brands like a home team and Northwest, all of the West Coast of Florida, parts of the East Coast of Florida to that storm going to push through and add tornadoes and on the southeast central part of, although the eastern coast of Florida. So there was a there was a lot going on there. We had a lot of branch closures for several days. We focus on making sure we're prepared for the storms as they're coming and letting our people prepare. We know that the more people prepare the faster we can respond and get back to work mark if people are in a good place themselves. So we had a lot of branch closures for several days. We got back up on our feet up after Hallein. And then when you get another one of that cause is significantly more challenges talking to our people in the field. Number one, it happened. It happened very early in the quarter in the fourth quarter. So it gives us plenty of time to respond and recover. I'm sure there'll be some customer losses along the coastal or the immediate coast, um, but I don't think that's anything too severe that we can't count recover from of. We have a look at our forecast for October and the future. And there's really there's really nothing there, Ken, that we've seen in the Southeast U.S. that that gives us a lot of pause about the fourth quarter. Is there? No, not the outlook. I'm not really impacting the outlook all that much, but the but the quarter you look at Southeast, it was probably on the slower growing regions in the quarter on because of the hurricane impact late in the quarter. The earlier question we had on the call. I do think that if we did not have the impact of that hurricane last couple of days, we probably would have seen organic growth even stronger coming through as opposed to the 7.7. So so did impact us. But do you think about the outlook? We feel like, as Gary said, we have enough time left in this quarter to make up for what we had in October. Got it. That's helpful. And then as it relates to your growth investments, can you elaborate on what you saw this quarter that prompted you to step up the spend? How would you assess the possibility that growth investments will remain elevated at 3Q levels going forward if market conditions supported? I think the thing that gave us the most hope was the fact that we were seeing 8% organic growth coming through leads. We're strong market was very healthy. So we continue to see that. And it is the provided Jerry and I and the business, here's Pat and Stanford, the the the level of confidence to invest. And it's not that we're investing in every single one of our brands at the same pace, but we did certainly were able to identify certain areas and make more significant investments in certain areas. And so that that's really what came through as far as the outlook and next steps go? Yes, we're going to we can't say what pace we're going to invest in it at this point, but we certainly are going to continue to invest on. We firmly believe this is a growth market, and this is a growth opportunity. And in order to the most successful, we've got to invest in our people and capturing additional customers for them. As you know, the you want to acquire customers and the second and third quarter builds your base because for phones are ringing, there's much in the fourth quarter and the first quarter as they do in peak season. So in Q. two Q. three, here's where you grow your recurring customer base and that that's your bread and butter as you go into the fourth quarter and here in the first quarter of 2025 is having a significantly higher customer base which to serve. And so that that makes me very comfortable with outlook, knowing the customer base is healthy and strong.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Adi strengthen with Stifel. Please proceed with your question.
Adi strengthen
Hi, good morning. Thanks for taking my questions on. Just going back to sort of the price on how the price cost spread trend in three to 24 versus, let's say, 2024? And on a recurring basis, what sort of margin expansion would you expect from just that spread alone? And and would you expect a similar trend in FY 25?
Hard to say what 2025 will be at this point just yet in terms of margin opportunity and spread. But when you're getting 3% to 4% price increase in this business, have you should can you should see margins improve on? If I look at the quarter and I unpack the quarter, we had 20 basis points of improvement in gross margin, but we invested 30 basis points in our service area. So when you set that aside, you had about 50 basis points of leverage coming through in the quarter and gross margin, it was good to take on and we're hopeful that we'll be able to continue to deliver that pace of improvement going forward . But the but you know, as well as I do that from a quarter-to-quarter basis, things can shift. Sorry, I think. And just to follow-up on your growth has been pretty strong because of the investments you've been making. And I know you see this sort of high single digits growth organic growth in 2025 as well. Just just because of what you've done already and the sales and sort of Aspen that you've been investing into that business? I think to answer that question, we would look at what we communicated at Investor Day back in May. And really our plan and our hope is to see the commercial business grew at a faster rate than our overall business. You might see rising a little bit slower from time to time, but your overall commercial business should be accretive to the overall organic growth profile of the business. As we think about the near term and the investments we're making, I think taking the questions. You're welcome. Thank you.
Operator
Thank you. And as a reminder, if anyone has any questions, you may press star one on your telephone keypad to join the queue. Again to ask to limit yourself to one question and one follow-up. Our next question comes from the line of Josh Chan with UBS. Please proceed with your question.
Josh Chan
Staggering, Gerry Cameron, and thanks for taking my questions. I guess now it's up to. Hi, good morning. And in terms of your decision to hire people at this juncture of the year, could you just talk about the timing where you're trying to address a little bit of a shortage or are you trying to get people time to ramp up for next season? Just maybe unpack that and the timing of the house hiring. That's great. Thank you.
Yes, I don't know when you think about from a sales staff values, are you talking more on the sales staffing or the? Um, the technology front, it sounds like your investment in both by so we think would be curious your thoughts on kind of hiring people in the third quarter as opposed to maybe yields in the spring, something like that? Yes. So if you have the right amount of growth and you have route splits and branch openings and things like that, that were and you're trying to maintain the right balance of the number of customers on, say, a service technicians, route, things like that will always added. And usually that that is that could occur toward more toward the indices and in the third quarter where we do route splits and things along those lines. And that's the right time to add those customers are add those technicians. On the sales side, um, we have over the last several years, have taken and hired really year round and continuing to we're cognizant of is that one of the things I mentioned is like how fast can you scale? How fast can can you can you train the right amount. So we're trying to take a balanced approach rather than hiring a bunch of one-time and you're trying to train, let's say it's easier to of train 20 people in a class that you have four or five class of the year, you're adding 100 dentists to trying to add 60 and a quarter and ramp it up. And so it gives your success rate of hiring 60 versus hiring 20 and putting the time and attention to them in that you need is more a little more challenging. So we've taken a more balanced approach to how we onboard and how we time those hires and add strategically over time. And that means we will be making hires throughout the year. I will say generally speaking, no, when we get it into the fourth quarter, we do tend to, especially on the home sales inspectors on the residential side, there's a lot less of that hiring and usually begin again in the January, February time timeframe before we had in the season. On the commercial side, it's a little bit more every year around type of events. It's interesting. You say that and you finished with that, Jerry, because could you just look at the quarter, what we saw was we gain leverage in those areas in September. And so more of our significant more significant investments were made in July and August. We didn't see as much investment coming through in September as it did earlier in the third quarter. That's that's a good point. Can get a lot of that in the quarter was very front end loaded in the early part of Q2 three, and then we began to wind down. Yes. Okay. That makes a lot of sense. I really appreciate that color there. And then on the on the advertising spending that price the track and kind of the returns on advertising, some returns metric related to your advertising spend. And could you talk about whether those metrics have kind of change over the last, call it, six to 12 months or so? Yes, we do have measure return on ad spend or roll off of that. That's the key metric. And that's what makes the particular in the digital channel. So dynamic. And where if you look at Q2, when we spend a little last, you're looking at the market, you're looking at the cost to drive the leads in the digital space and you're making adjustments, you may decide to hold off. May have maybe there's some local regional competitors doing some things. And you just say, hey, I'm going to back off for a while away for this to settle down. And then we're going to then you're going to invest a little bit more later in the season in the third quarter where you can drive your ad spend. So we're always looking at that and we have been able to manage those costs pretty well in that to that point to of slip again, on I know we've said this like a broken record, but we're still going to continue to be disciplined in our advertising spend, such that as a percent of revenue per se on Orkin brand, they're going to spend as a percentage of revenue, a very similar amount as a percent of revenue that we have been committed to create for years that at Mountain. So so McMoRan here two years, the as as the business grows on. But in order to do that, we've got to do we've always got to strive to do to do more with those dollars, acquire customers at a lower cost . So that's a metric that return on that spend is a metric that our team is very focused on. It makes decisions behind.
Josh Chan
Great. Thank you for the color, and thanks for your time.
Operator
Thank you. Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Stephanie Moore with Jefferies. Please proceed with your question.
Stephanie Moore
Hey, good morning, guys. This is Peter Toeman pull interest that the most. Hey, good morning out there. I was just curious, I know you guys talk a little bit about the monetization of SG&A expenses, specifically emanates expenses in 2Q and capacity to give a little bit more context on how those cost cutting initiatives are developing in the progress you guys are making. Thanks.
Yes, we continue to make good progress on. As you know, when you look at the earnings presentation, you'll see that the administrative side continues to improve. And so as a percentage of sales, we continue to see slight improvements in that area and we're pretty pleased with it on in terms of the performance. But we continue to look at ways that we can continue to invest in the modernization of our business and And so but overall, we're pretty happy with the returns we've seen on the restructuring dollars. We spent a little over a year ago now per week basis.
Thank you. And our. Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Alan Davis with we are planning. Please proceed with your question.
Alan Davis
Yes. Good morning, guys. And just thinking into next year, I guess, given the investments you've made, would it be fair to assume you expect to penetrate to kind of accelerate from that 7% to 8% range? You'll see as you kind of becoming more costly to maintain those above market growth rates?
It's not sure if it's a question or comment. But on a from a standpoint of our organic growth of seven to eight, we're pretty happy with that level of growth, especially when you look at the quarter and you're trending closer to 8% as opposed to 7% are pretty happy with the returns we're seeing on. Not sure that we're ready to sign up for increased growth going into next year. But we're pretty happy with the pace of growth we're seeing in the business. And I don't I wouldn't think that the achieve those levels of growth should cost us more to come to drive to drive that growth. I don't see that there's some sort of increased and advertising or selling expense that we would anticipate at this point that that would need to be invested in the business in order to maintain those rates. Okay, great. And then just following on, you mentioned that the kind of investment eased in the back end of the quarter, I guess, is that true? And based at the sales and sort of digital advertising side? Yes, that is true. What we saw is just looking at the numbers here and checking that. But what we saw generally across the board, you saw in September a more leverage come through the model than what you saw in July and August. That's a big reason why when we were on our public webcast in mid September, we talked about the fact that we were investing. We might see a more investment coming through a big reason why is because what we saw in July and August. Great. Thanks very much. Thank you. Appreciate your question.
Operator
Thank you. And there are no further questions at this time. I would like to turn the floor back to management for closing remarks. Thank you, everyone, for joining us today.
We appreciate your interest in our company and look forward to speaking with you on our fourth quarter earnings call. Early next year. Thank you.
Operator
This concludes today's teleconference. Thank you for your participation. You may disconnect your lines at this time.