Good day, and welcome to the Aramark Annual Meeting of Stockholders. I would now like to turn the conference over to Stephen Sadove. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Good morning, everyone. Welcome to the annual meeting of Aramark shareholders. I'm Stephen Sadove, Chairman of the Board of Aramark. I'll serve as chairman of today's meeting. Assisting me with our meeting is Harold Dichter, Secretary of Aramark. This is our fourth year hosting a virtual meeting. The virtual meeting provides the same rights and advantages of a physical meeting and allows shareholders to present questions online during the meeting, which provides them with a meaningful engagement with the company from any place in the world at little or no cost. I'd like to begin by introducing members of our board of directors and our one director nominee. Our directors are Susan Cameron, Greg Creed, Bridgette Heller, Kenneth Keverian, Karen King, Patricia Lopez, Kevin Wills, John Zillmer, and our director nominee, Brian DelGhiaccio. I'd also like to acknowledge some other guests attending our meeting today.
Certain members of Aramark's leadership team are with us today, as well as representatives of Deloitte & Touche LLP, our independent public accounting firm. Now let's get to the order of business. An agenda for the meeting and a list of rules and procedures for the conduct of the annual meeting have been posted to the virtual meeting website. To conduct an orderly meeting, we ask that participants abide by the rules. The following business is scheduled to come before this meeting as outlined in our proxy statement: the election of directors, the ratification of accountants, and the advisory vote on the compensation of executives. First, I'll ask Harold Dichter to conduct the business portion of the meeting.
Thank you, Steve. The board of directors has fixed the close of business on December 8th, 2023, as the Record Date for determination of the shareholders entitled to vote notice of, and to vote at this meeting. As of that date, there were 262,292,388 shares of common stock outstanding and entitled to be voted at this meeting. Each share of common stock is entitled to one vote per share. Thus, shares entitled to cast 262,292,388 votes were outstanding on the Record Date. A notice of the meeting and Proxy Statement was mailed on December 21st, 2023, to shareholders of record on December 8th, 2023. A copy is available on the virtual meeting website.
I have an affidavit of mailing establishing that this notice was duly given. Representatives of Broadridge, which has been appointed Inspector of Election, report shares of common stock entitled to cast a majority of the votes that may be cast at this meeting are represented here today. Accordingly, a quorum is present. Any record holder who has not yet voted or sent in a proxy card and is participating may vote now by clicking the Vote Here button on the virtual meeting website and following the instructions provided.
As described in the company's December 21st, 2023 proxy statement, the company's board of directors has nominated Susan Cameron, Greg Creed, Brian DelGhiaccio, Bridgette Heller, Kenneth Keverian, Karen King, Patricia Lopez, Stephen Sadove, Kevin Wills, and John Zillmer for election as directors of the company to serve until the 2025 annual meeting of shareholders or until their successors are elected and qualified, and has recommended that each such director be so elected. Under the company's bylaws, no other nominations may be made at this time. The board has also recommended that the company's shareholders ratify the Audit Committee's selection of Deloitte & Touche LLP as the company's independent public accounting firm for fiscal year 2024, and approve on a non-binding advisory basis the compensation paid to the named executive officers of the company.
As a reminder, shareholders who have sent in proxies need not take any further action with respect to the matters to be voted upon today. However, if you have not submitted a proxy or if you would like to change your vote and you are participating in the meeting on the web portal, you may do so now by clicking the Vote Here button on your screen. The polls are now declared open at 10:04 A.M. with respect to each of the items before the meeting. In case there is any discussion on these three matters specifically, shareholders can submit a question now by typing a question in the Ask a Question field on the virtual meeting website and clicking Submit. There will be time for an open Q&A later.
As noted in the meeting rules and procedures posted to the virtual meeting website, in order to conduct the meeting efficiently and ensure everyone that would like to ask a question has that opportunity, we will limit each shareholder to two questions. Are there any questions on the three items being voted on? Again, there will be time for general Q&A later. We will pause for a moment to allow for any additional questions to be submitted. Okay, it appears that the voting is complete. I will now close the polls at 10:05 A.M. I will now ask the Inspector of Election to read its preliminary report.
Based on the preliminary tally of the inspector of votes entitled to be cast, each of the nominees of the board has been elected. The selection of Deloitte & Touche LLP as the company's independent public accountant has been ratified, and the compensation of the company's named executive officers has been approved. A final report containing the precise tally will be submitted to the Secretary of the company for inclusion with the minutes.
Based on this preliminary tally and subject to the delivery of the inspector's final report, the 10 nominees have been elected to serve as directors until the 2025 annual meeting of shareholders or until their successors are elected and qualified. The audit committee selection of Deloitte & Touche LLP as the company's independent public accountant for fiscal year 2024 has been ratified, and the compensation of the company's named executive officers has been approved. Now I will turn the meeting back over to Stephen Sadove.
Thanks, Harold. The secretary will file the report of the Inspector of Election with the records of the meeting. Those records may be reviewed by shareholders by contacting the company secretary. We'll now allow time for general discussion and questions.... As we did previously, any shareholder wishing to submit a question should type a question in the Ask a Question field on the web portal and click Submit.
Okay.
There's a two-question limit per shareholder.
Okay, we actually have two questions, which I think are from two different shareholders. So do we wanna have John come over to-
Let's see what the questions are, yeah.
The first question: Were there any unanticipated difficulties with the Vestis spin-off?
This is Steve. I'd comment. I think that the Vestis spin-off went extremely well. The teams on both parties performed in an exemplary manner. Our advisors, the company was very well advised, and I think that it went very smoothly. John Zillmer, our CEO, do you have any comments?
No, I would... Well, I would second what you've already said. I thought the process went very smoothly. The feedback post-spin has been very positive about the spin process itself and the way it was executed. So no, no additional response at this time.
Okay, we have a second question, which is: Are you having any ongoing supply chain issues, and if so, in what categories? Keep up the good work.
Yeah, this is John Zillmer. We continue to see progress in the supply chain, continue to see normalization of product availability, and continue to see a moderating inflationary environment that we've discussed over the last couple of months. And so we see the significant progress compared to last year at this time.
I just echo John's comment and just wanna thank the Aramark team for responding and working remarkably, being agile and working extremely well in what was a very, very difficult period of time for everybody in the industry.
Okay. We have a third question, which is: Who oversees sustainability for the company, and how can I contact them? Thank you.
Sustainability is overseen by the supply chain organization. Autumn Bayles , who's our Senior VP of Supply Chain, manages that part of the organization, and directly responsible is Alan Horowitz. Feel free to reach out and contact him directly.
Okay. It appears there are no further questions.
Thank you very much. That concludes our general Q&A session. Thank you, Harold. Thank you, all of you, for being in attendance and your continued support. The meeting is adjourned. Have a good day.
Thank you, everybody.
The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation, and you may now disconnect.