Good morning, and welcome to the Alico, Inc. 2026 Annual Meeting of Shareholders. I will now turn the line over to Adam Putnam. Adam?
Thank you, operator. Good morning, everyone. I'm Adam Putnam. I'm honored to be the Chairman of the Board of Alico, and I'll be chairing today's meeting. On behalf of Alico, the other members of our board, our management, and all of our staff members, I'm excited to welcome you to our 2026 annual meeting of shareholders. As you know, this meeting will be completely virtual and is being conducted via live webcast. Before I call the meeting to order, I'd like to note that at the end of the call, the management team will be available to respond to questions that are within the parameters described in the meeting rules of conduct, which does not include questions that are irrelevant to the business of the annual meeting.
Only the shareholders who have logged into the meeting using their 16-digit control number that came with your proxy materials are able to submit a question through the question area of the web portal. Let me introduce you to the other members of the board and the officers of the company who are doing such a terrific job and are with us today. My fellow directors here today are John Kiernan, our Chief Executive Officer, George Brokaw, Kate English, Ben Fishman, Andy Krusen, Toby Purse, Hank Slack, and our director nominee, Eric Spyron. In addition, we have today Brad Heine, our Chief Financial Officer, James Sampel, our Chief Information Officer, Mitch Hutchcraft, who's our Executive Vice President of Real Estate, and Mary Molina, our Chief Administration Officer.
I'd also like to introduce Jason Geisler of Grant Thornton, our company's Independent Auditor, who will be available to respond to appropriate questions during the question-and-answer portion of the meeting. The meeting will now officially come to order. We will proceed with the formal business of the meeting as described in the notice for this meeting and in our proxy statement. At this time, let me introduce Beth VanDerbeck of Broadridge Financial Solutions. The Board of Directors has appointed Representative Broadridge to act as Inspector of Election at today's meeting. Ms. VanDerbeck has signed the customary oath of office to execute her duties with strict impartiality.
We will file this oath with the records of the meeting. The polls opened today, February 27th, 2026, at 9:00 A.M. Eastern Time for voting on all matters before the meeting. If you've not already voted and wish to vote, the polls will remain open until we finish presenting the proposals and close the polls. You do not need to vote during the meeting if you've already voted and do not wish to change your vote. On the virtual meeting webpage, you will find the agenda for today's meeting. You'll also find the rules of conduct for today's meeting. Please review these rules carefully.
Note that only shareholders who are logged into the meeting using their unique live meeting link will be able to vote and submit questions at the meeting. We will file the proof of mailing of notice of the meeting with the records of this meeting. All shareholders of record at the close of business on January 2nd, 2026, or holders of a valid proxy are entitled to vote at this meeting. A complete list of shareholders of record on the record date is available on your screen if you have logged into the meeting using that 16-digit control number that came with your proxy materials.
I have been informed that a quorum is present, and this meeting is, therefore, duly constituted for the transaction of business. We have two proposals to be considered by our shareholders today. The Board of Directors recommends that the shareholders vote for these two proposals. The first item of business is the election of myself, George Brokaw, Kate English, John Kiernan, Toby Purse, and Eric Spyron to serve as directors of the company for a term of office expiring at the annual meeting of shareholders to be held in 2027.
The second item of business is the ratification of the audit committee's appointment of Grant Thornton LLP as our independent registered public accounting firm of the company for the year ending September 30th, 2026. If you wish to vote and have not done so already, please vote now by clicking the voting button on the web portal and following the instructions. You do not need to vote electronically if you've already sent your signed proxy or if you voted by telephone or the Internet. We will pause for about 30 seconds before closing the polls. All right. The time is now 9:35 A.M. Eastern Time, and the polls are closed for voting.
Based on the preliminary voting report, George Brokaw, Kate English, John Kiernan, Toby Purse, Eric Spiron, and I have been elected as directors, and the appointment of Grant Thornton as our independent registered public accounting firm for 2026 has also been ratified. The final tally of the votes will be published within four business days in a current report on Form 8-K to be filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Thank you very much, everyone. Our meeting is now formally adjourned. I will now turn the line over to our Chief Executive Officer, John Kiernan. John?
Thank you, Adam. Well done. The management team and I are now available to answer any questions. As Adam explained, we will only be answering questions that are within the parameters described in the meeting rules of conduct. Only shareholders who have logged into the meeting using their unique live meeting link are able to submit a question through the question area of the web portal. Lindsay, are there any questions that have been submitted?
There are no questions.
Okay. Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes our annual meeting. I wanna thank you all for attending and for your support of Alico. We look forward to seeing you all in 2027.
Thank you. That will conclude today's meeting. We appreciate your participation.