Riggs Report - V8 - Aug. 2023

RIGGS

Riggs Team,

I hope this message finds you well. I am pleased to share some exciting news regarding our company in the second quarter of this year. We have achieved exceptional results, lost a few legends to retirement, and look ahead to a strong rest of the year. I would like to express my gratitude to each and every one of you for your hard work and dedication that has contributed to a great first half of 2023.

Notable Retirements:

Mark Cooper - 47 Years

Randy Vergason - 44 Years

Eddie Rhodes - 38 Years

Bob Vogeltanz TX - 36 Years

Economic Update:

We are seeing significant industry growth in all areas of our business. The Arkansas market for New Equipment has increased by 14% over the Prior Year. Unemployment remains extremely low at 2.7%, 4th in the nation. We are seeing Inflation begin to fall as well. Current projections show an expected annual inflation of 4% for 2023. Down from roughly 7% in 2022.

Safety:

Heat and Humidity - Arkansas summer is officially here. I am thankful for the mild start. But now it is time to focus on hydration and staying cool. For all of you working outside, please take the necessary precautions to prevent overheating. It will sneak up on you fast.

5S - Sort. Set. Shine. Standardize. Sustain. - Our 5S journey inched forward slowly through the first half of the year. The second half of the year will see an increased focus. Our safety team, new project manager, and branch leadership will be focused on completing this initiative to create a more efficient and safer work place. More to come.

Branch Scorecard Winner:

In case you have not heard, there is a new ‘Branch Scorecard’ containing 20 metrics ranking our 8 Tractor locations on overall performance. We not only use this scorecard to drive focus on key performance metrics, but also to drive a fun competitive spirit amongst our Branch teams. If you see your Branch Manager leave for two days to visit another Branch, its because that Branch won the Quarterly competition and thus hosts the Quarterly meeting. Make sure you quiz your BM on what it will take for your store to get to host the next trophy ceremony!

In Other News:

Riggs was ranked #40 largest private companies in the State of Arkansas for results achieved in 2022. Congratulations to everyone and thank you for the work you do each day to care for our customers. They continue to do business with Riggs and that is because of you. We won’t chase after this Ranking but will continue to stay focused on doing the right thing every day.

Our Chaplain in Little Rock, David Carr, has proved to be a tremendous asset for many employees. We are looking to expand the Chaplaincy program to a few more stores in the 2nd Half of the year.

Looking ahead, we have ambitious plans for the remainder of the year. Building upon our Q1 & Q2 success, we aim to continue our growth trajectory by focusing on our core values, customer satisfaction, and delivering value that cannot be matched in our industry. Together, we will accomplish this through our pursuit of excellence and integrity. Excellence in our work - being the best and going beyond expectations. Integrity in our actions - building trust by doing the right thing every time.

George Cress President & CEO

News

Mark Cooper Retirement 47 Years

Randy Vergason Retirement 44 Years

Milestones

Chuck Ellis Anniversary 30 Years

Mike Kingrey Anniversary 30 Years

Scholarship Winners

Stella Parker

Daughter of Bryan Parker

Stella is graduating from Brookland High School and will be attending Lyon College majoring in Psychology.

Nicholas Ellis

Son of Chuck Ellis

Nicholas is graduating from Glen Rose High School and will be attending ASU Three Rivers majoring in Health and Physical Education.

Katy Gass

Daughter of Tim Gass

Katy is currently attending North Arkansas College but will transfer to the University of Arkansas to earn her Bachelors in Exercise Science and minor in Psychology.

1,000,000+ Meals Donated!

Safety

If I asked you all one question about Safety, what do you think it would be?

Why do you work safe?

Why do you want to?

What I would say, will go way deeper than that.

I want you to think about the one that is there when you go home. You son, daughter, wife, husband, significant other, grandson, granddaughter, etc. Think about one of these people having to tell the others you are hurt, in the hospital or worse, not coming home again.

I want to challenge everyone to think about what you will do in the next 10 seconds to keep yourself safe. Then the next 10, and so on... so that at the end of the day, you will go home safe to your love ones.

Used

Waterfowl

We were proud to sponsor this year’s Delta Waterfowl Duck Hunters EXPO!

The WINNER of our cooler and duck call giveaway was a customer of ours — Mr. Kennedy from Marianna Arkansas!

Rental Team!

Caterpillar’s Houston District Manager, Young Liu presented the 2022 Rental Excellence GOLD Award to our team!

This award measures the strategic and operational capabilities of Cat® dealers on an annual basis.

Thank you to all the local teams around the state, you are the ones who achieved this award!

Sales

Salesman of the Year

Justin Heslep

SOY Runner Up

Shane Franklin Used Sales Award

Mike Cook

PSSROY

Rental Rep of the Year

Wayne McKinney

Winners!

PSSROY Runner Up

Jeff Dennis

PSSR of the Year

Gregg Ross

Territory Rep of the Year

Reuben Brown

BCP Rep of the Year

Flint Price

Emery Sapp

COMPLETED APRIL 2023

Montgomery County

Tristate Iron

Tristate Iron

COMPLETED JUNE 2023

Training

& Safety Training

Riggs Hosted the 2023 North American Cat Governmental Training and Safety Days Event. Dealerships from all parts of the US brought customers in to tour the NLR Cat Plant and Riggs organized a machine demo area which gave these customers the opportunity to operate the newest machines available and learn about the new features they offer.

Training

Service Training

In this class our technicians learn about the system operations and troubleshooting methods necessary to diagnose faults in today’s complex engine emissions systems.

Training

Sales Training

This quarter’s training agenda consisted of a competitive model comparison with Cat 306 vs. Takeuchi 235-2 and a Cat 289 vs. Bobcat T76. Our sales personnel had the opportunity to put all of these machines through their paces and learn the differences between the Cat machines and the competitor’s machines.

Counter Training

Counter Training

We brought the entire parts counter team to Little Rock in two separate groups for 2 day training sessions. We covered Built to Serve, Cat Next Gen 306, and several different computer resources and scenarios that our parts counter people deal with every day.

I T

Recently Completed Projects: IT Helpdesk Area Remodel: We have completed a remodel of our IT Helpdesk area. This has allowed better communication and performance among our expanded Helpdesk Team. For those that missed it, we have increased from 2 Helpdesk Technicians to 3 Helpdesk technicians as of January 1.

Palo Alto Prisma SD-WAN: To improve reliability between Little Rock and our Branches, We have deployed a new SD-WAN infrastructure that replaced our old MPLS infrastructure. This new technology allows us to automatically switch between our primary, backup, and cellular internet circuits at each location to decrease network downtime.

Palo Alto Firewall Refresh: Along with our new SD-WAN infrastructure, we have centralized and upgraded our Firewalls in our Primary and Backup Datacenters. With this transition, we reduced our threat landscape from 11 firewalls to 4 firewalls. Our Palo Alto Firewalls are our 1st line of defense in securing our infrastructure from malicious actors among providing multiple internal services that are utilized across multiple platforms.

Aruba Wireless Access Point Refresh: Another major project completed has been the complete replacement of our entire wireless infrastructure across the entire company. We made the decision to move away from our legacy Aerohive (Extreme Networks) equipment and move to HPE Aruba Wireless equipment. We

Updates

currently have 97 Wireless Access Points across the company so this has been quite a large project that required trips to every branch. Along with better coverage, we now have WIFI 6 coverage for faster speeds that newer hardware allows us to utilize.

Print Toner Management: Earlier this year we moved from Captial Business to CDW for providing our Print Toner. This move has went smoothly and CDW seems to be delivering a great product/ service. We now have 100% of our printer fleet monitored for toner replacement. As an added service, they provide free reforesting services to offset our paper consumption. Between 1-232023 and 6-20-2023 we printed 628,184 pages and they have planted 75 trees to offset this use via PrintReleaf.

Current Projects:

Microsoft SQL & Reporting Server Upgrade: We are currently working to upgrade our core SQL and Reporting Servers from SQL 2014 to SQL 2022. As a part of this, we are consolidating 4 servers into 3 servers. This has been quite the process as nearly all of this code was written by previous staff and multiple vendors have been involved to help correct issues with their code. We hope to have this project completed within the next 2 months.

Microsoft Server 2012 Upgrade: We currently have 5 servers running Windows Server 2012 out of the 80 servers we have in our Infrastructure. We plan to have these 5 servers upgraded to Windows Server 2022 by the end of August.

HR

Parental Leave Policy

Effective Date: July 1, 2023

At Riggs Cat, we recognize the importance of supporting employees during the significant life event of becoming a parent. We are committed to fostering a family-friendly work environment that promotes work-life balance.

This policy applies to all regular full-time employees who have completed one year of continuous service with J.A. Riggs Tractor company.

To be eligible for parental leave, employees must meet the following criteria:

1. Have completed a minimum of one year of continuous service

2. Be the biological parent, adoptive parent, or legal guardian of a child

Eligible employees are entitled to up to 40 hours of paid parental leave for each qualifying event, as outlined below:

1. Birth of a child: The leave can be taken within the first 30 days from the date of the child’s birth.

2. Adoption: The leave can be taken within the first 30 days from the date of the child’s placement with the employee.

Leave Usage and Scheduling:

1. Employees must provide reasonable advance notice of their intention to take parental leave. The notice should be submitted in writing to their immediate supervisor or the HR department.

2. Parental leave may be taken as a continuous block, subject to approval by the supervisor or HR department.

3. The leave should be scheduled in a manner that ensures adequate coverage and minimal disruption to departmental operations. Whenever possible, employees and supervisors should collaborate to develop a mutually agreeable leave schedule.

4. If both parents are eligible employees of Riggs Cat, they may each take parental leave.

5. Eligible employees will receive a maximum of 40 hours of paid parental leave per birth or adoption. The fact that a multiple birth, adoption or placement occurs (e.g., the birth of twins or adoption of siblings) does not increase the 40-hour total amount of paid parental leave granted for that event. In addition, in no case will an employee receive more than 40 hours of paid parental leave in a rolling 12-month period, regardless of

Leave

whether more than one birth or adoption event occurs within that 12-month time frame.

Compensation and Benefits:

1. Parental leave will be paid at the employee’s regular rate of pay.

2. Employees will continue to receive their regular benefits during the parental leave period.

3. Accrued vacation or paid time off (PTO) may be used to extend the duration of parental leave beyond the 40-hour entitlement upon supervisor approval.

4. Any unused parental leave hours will not be carried forward or paid out and will expire after 30 days of qualifying event.

5. Paid parental leave taken under this policy will run concurrently with leave under the FMLA; thus, any leave taken under this policy that falls under the definition of circumstances qualifying for leave due to the birth or placement of a child due to adoption, the leave will be counted toward the 12 weeks of available FMLA leave per a 12-month period. All other requirements and provisions under the FMLA will apply.

In no case will the total amount of leave— whether paid or unpaid—granted to the employee under the FMLA exceed 12 weeks during the 12-month FMLA period. Please refer to the Family and Medical Leave Policy for further guidance on the FMLA.

Return to Work:

1. At the conclusion of the parental leave, employees are expected to return to work on their agreed-upon start date.

2. Employees returning from parental leave will be reinstated to their previous position or a comparable position with the same pay, benefits, and terms and conditions of employment.

3. If an employee fails to return to work after exhausting the parental leave entitlement, they may be subject to the company’s policies on leave without pay and/or termination of employment.

Review and Revision: This parental leave policy will be reviewed periodically to ensure its effectiveness and compliance with applicable laws and regulations. Riggs Cat reserves the right to modify or revoke this policy at any time, in its sole discretion.

Golf Events

Golf Tournament

Serve

Built to Serve kicked off 2023 with a mission, vision & purpose of how our company culture and us as individuals directly influence the perceptions that our customers have of Riggs; then how those perceptions directly relate to the experiences our customers receive. Our initial stride for this year was visiting each store and assessing the areas of focus laid out in our long term vision of what BTS is and what it will evolve into as we continue our initiative progression. The outcome was two key areas of focus:

2. Customer Communication

Our three key BTS attributes to help address our need for better communication with our customers are: ENGAGE, SOLVE, & FOLLOWUP. Rodney Dunn will be coming around to each store in the coming months to conduct a month-long training program for all customer facing employees.

1) Facility Appearance and

2) Customer Communication.

1. Facility Appearance

Our enhanced facility appearance projects are coming together at different stages across the state with much more in the works that will be exciting to see in future months. Some of our focus areas include store machine and attachment inventory stocking for display, new retail store signage, and new yard inventory signage. We are also putting efforts towards our lobby retail area including customer accommodations, accessibility, and product promotions. This will help all of us create unmatched value for every customer that we interact with and support in our everyday responsibilities.

Built to Serve is our present & our future. A founding principle of BTS is ‘TO LEAD IS TO SERVE’. The Executive Team put a dedicated focus towards this leadership principle in a companywide management training objective over the past couple of years. The overall goal is to create an environment of motivated employees by exemplifying a willingness to serve and hold our people accountable to achieve greatness. These are principles that can be applied at home, with fellow employees, and with our customers. Our company vision statement is “To be the best by creating unmatched value for our customers, building a home for our employees, and serving our communities and each other”. Let’s work together on building out the incredible qualities that Built to Serve will deliver for generations to come!