Who Owns Dollar General Now? (Walmart or China? Read Now)

Do you know who owns Dollar General? Well, you are at the perfect place to find the answer to such a question.

Dollar General calls itself America’s neighborhood general store with over 18,000 stores across 46 states. Are you wondering who owns Dollar General and whether Dollar General is a private or a public company?

The Dollar General Corporation is a publicly-traded company listed on the New York Stock Exchange as DG. This means that Dollar General is owned by its shareholders. There are numerous Dollar General shareholders. Around 95% of Dollar General shares are held by institutions as opposed to individual investors.

In this article, I provide a short overview of Dollar General, describe its major shareholders, and uncover who are the biggest individual shareholders in Dollar General.

Table of Contents

History Of Dollar General Ownership

Dollar General was originally founded in 1939 in Kentucky by the Turner family and was known as J.L. Turner and Son, changing its name to Dollar General in 1955.

Dollar General has had an interesting history in and out of private and public ownership. After around 30 years of private ownership, Dollar General was listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 1968 as the Dollar General Corporation.

In 2007 all Dollar General Corporation shares were acquired by a consortium of private equity investors, including KKR, GS Capital Partners (affiliated with Goldman Sachs), and Citigroup. As such Dollar General was delisted from the New York Stock Exchange.

In 2009 Dollar General filed again for a public share offering taking it back into public ownership.

In 2021 Dollar General enjoyed net sales of $34.2 billion and an operating profit of $3.2 billion.

Dollar General Mission

Dollar General’s mission is ‘Serving Others’.

This means placing customers at the center of everything the company does while delivering good value and convenience.

For Dollar General’s employees, this means being respected and being given the opportunity to develop their careers. The Dollar General mission also aims to support local communities.

Dollar General Merchandise

Dollar General has over 18,000 stores across America and focuses on the sale of frequent use products such as food & snacks, health & beauty, cleaning & household supplies, basic apparel, and seasonal items. Dollar General aims to keep prices low and make shopping convenient by locating stores in neighborhood locations.

Dollar General sells a wide range of products from well-known national brands such as Procter & Gamble, Coco-Cola, Unilever, Kimberly-Clark, and Kellogg’s, as well as a range of private brands.

Dollar General also has its own brand categories including DG home, DG body, DG auto, and DG health.

Dollar General Shares

When the Dollar General Corporation was listed for the second time on the New York Stock Exchange in 2009 its share price launch was $23.

In the twelve years since the second stock exchange listing the Dollar General share price has steadily risen in value ten-fold and in the first part of 2022 was typically trading in the range of $210 – $230.

Who Owns Dollar General?

According to the Dollar General 2021 Annual Report, there were 228,784,867 Dollar General shares as of March 16, 2022.

Dollar General’s latest Annual Report can be found here Dollar general – Investor Relations

Based on information contained in the Dollar General 2021 Annual Report, the largest Dollar General shareowners are all private equity institutions and are shown in the table below.

The largest investing companies each own shares worth more than 4$billion.

Name	Number of Shares	% of Total Shares
T. Rowe Price Associates, Inc.	18,522,760	8.1%
BlackRock, Inc.	18,399,415	8.0%
The Vanguard Group	18,009,857	7.9%
Capital World Investors	15,508,790	6.8%

Around 95% of Dollar General shares are held by private equity institutions and mutual funds. The Dollar General shareholding is spread across many institutional investors – during the previous two years, more than 1,400 institutional investors and equity funds held shares in Dollar General with shareholdings ranging from less than 1% to more than 8%.

Some of Dollar General’s individual investors owning the largest number of shares include Dollar General’s directors. There are 17 Dollar General directors and executive officers who own shares.

According to Dollar General’s 2021 Annual Report, Todd J. Vasos (Chief Executive Officer) holds the highest number of shares amongst the Dollar General employees with around 425,000 shares.

Jeffrey C. Owen (Chief Operating Officer) owns the second-highest shareholding amongst the Dollar General employees with around 225,000 shares.

The total shareholding of the Dollar General directors and executive officers’ totals less than 1% of the total Dollar General shares.

Note that shareholdings are dynamic, and the shareholding totals of private equity investors, mutual funds, and individuals can change on a daily basis as they buy and sell shares, and as new shareholders enter and exit the company’s shareholding.

So, today’s shareholding will undoubtedly be different from that reported in Dollar General’s latest Annual Report.

For up-to-date shareholder information, you can check-in at financial websites such as DG – Dollar General Corp Shareholders – CNNMoney.com

Conclusion

Dollar General is America’s neighborhood general store with over 18,000 stores across 46 states.

Dollar General is listed on the New York Stock Exchange and is owned by a large number of different shareholders. Around 95% of Dollar General shares are held by private equity institutions and equity funds as opposed to individual investors.

The companies with the largest shareholdings in Dollar General typically each own around 8% of the company with a value of around $4billion.

Some of Dollar General’s individual investors owning the largest number of shares include Dollar General’s directors. Todd J. Vasos (Chief Executive Officer) holds the highest number of shares amongst the Dollar General employees. Whilst the shareholdings of individuals are significant in terms of personal wealth, they are small in total company ownership terms, and all represent a tiny fraction of less than 1%.

References

https://investor.dollargeneral.com/websites/dollargeneral/English/0/investor-relations.html