Employee Ownership

In today's challenging environment, creativity and initiative are critical elements in solving customers' problems. We believe employee ownership is the spark that motivates higher creativity and initiative along with better performance for customers, and higher levels of customer satisfaction.

Employee ownership works when employees see how their actions directly contribute to both the company's financial success as well as their own. All TWD employees gain stock ownership through company contributions on their behalf to the ESOP retirement plan. In other words, the employees don't have to contribute anything to become owners. Each year a minimum of 10% of employees' compensation is contributed by the company to the ESOP on their behalf. This contribution is over and above each employee's regular salary. Since TWD stock is not traded on a national securities exchange, the company's share value is established annually by an independent third party appraisal firm.

Because the ESOP is an ERISA qualified retirement plan, taxes on the contributions, as well as any appreciation in the stock's value, are deferred until the employee receives a distribution of his/her vested account balance. Employees become eligible for distribution once they turn age 65, or when they leave the employ of the company. Employees become vested in their ESOP participant account balance over a period of 5 years at the rate of 20% per year.

Additional details about the Plan can be found in the Summary Plan Description as well as the Plan Document.