UPS celebrated its 102nd birthday last August but it marked another milestone earlier this month—10 years as a public company.

The company’s celebration was fairly low key, although Chairman and CEO Scott Davis and members of the UPS Board of Directors and Management Committee traveled back to the New York Stock Exchange to ring the opening bell, just as another UPS CEO had done on Nov. 10, 1999.

The CEO who did the honors a decade ago was Jim Kelly, who guided the company through the laborious process of issuing an Initial Public Offering. Davis is the 10th chairman and CEO in UPS’s 102-year history and the third to spend time guiding the affairs of a “public” UPS. (The other was Mike Eskew.)

UPS, founded as a Seattle messenger service in 1907 by a 19-year-old named Jim Casey, was owned privately by employees, retirees and various foundations until that November day in 1999.  It issued 109.4 million Class B shares representing 10 percent of the company’s outstanding shares at an IPO price of $50 per share.

At the time, the $5.47 billion raised was the largest domestic IPO ever. Over the ensuing 10 years, public ownership of UPS has grown from 10 percent of the company’s stock to 70 percent.

The IPO marked just one of many milestones in UPS’s 102-year history, but it was a big one because it allowed us to leverage our financial strength to expand the business. Ten years later, UPS offers a broad range of logistics, supply chain, freight, customs brokerage, financial and retail services, all designed to help customers do business anywhere in the world.

As Davis told reporters in New York City: “I firmly believe that going public facilitated execution of UPS’s strategy to become the leading global transportation solutions provider. UPS is better positioned today than at any time in its history.”

And that was the point of marking the IPO’s 10th anniversary—the strategy that led us there is more relevant than ever.