Good morning, everyone. Welcome to the annual meeting of Aramark shareholders. I'm Stephen Sadove, Chairman of the Board of Aramark. I will serve as chairman of today's meeting. Assisting me with our meeting is Harold Dichter, Secretary of Aramark. We're continuing our practice of having 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 meaningful engagement with the company from any place in the world at little to no cost. I'd like to begin by introducing members of our board of directors. Our directors are Susan Cameron, Greg Creed, Brian DelGhiaccio, Richard Dreiling, Bridgette Heller, Kenneth Keverian, Karen King, Patricia Lopez, Kevin Wills, John Zillmer, and myself. 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 these rules. The following business is scheduled to come before this meeting and outlined in our proxy statement: the election of directors, the ratification of accountants, and the advisory vote on the compensation of executives. First, I will 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 12, 2025, as the record date for determination of the shareholders entitled to notice of and to vote at this meeting. As of that date, there were 262,808,032 shares of common stock outstanding and entitled to be voted at this meeting. Each share of common stock is entitled to 1 vote per share. Thus, shares entitled to cast 262,808,032 votes were outstanding on the record date. A notice of the meeting and proxy statement was mailed on December 22, 2025, to shareholders of record on December 12, 2025. 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 have 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 22, 2025 proxy statement, the company's board of directors has nominated Susan Cameron, Greg Creed, Brian DelGhiaccio, Richard Dreiling, 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 2027 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 2026, 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 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. As 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 the 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. Our 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 11 nominees have been elected to serve as directors until the 2027 Annual Meeting of Shareholders or until their successors were elected and qualified. The Audit Committee's selection of Deloitte & Touche, LLP, as the company's independent public accountant for fiscal year 2026, 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 will 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. There's a two-question limit per shareholder to allow us to answer questions from as many shareholders as possible.
Okay, there are two questions here. Let's see. The first is a question for the Nominating Committee: Could you give an update on the committee's succession planning for the Chief Executive Officer position? From an individual shareholder.
Thank you very much for asking the question. This is Steve. As you know, we have a wonderful Chief Executive, John Zillmer, who has been serving the company exceptionally well, and we're thrilled to have him as a part of the team. As of right now, John, there is no plan for John to be leaving the company in the near term. We feel very happy with the job he's doing, and we expect him to continue to serve in that capacity. Having said that, we have a robust pipeline of senior executives that are capable and are growing and developing, and over time, capable of taking on the leadership role of the company. Obviously, down the road, we'll determine what the appropriate timing and next steps would be relative to succession planning.
But as we look to the near term, we feel very comfortable with John's leadership.
Okay, the next question, which may be more for John: Are you having any supply chain issues or impacts from tariffs? Thank you, and keep up the good work.
Yeah, this is John Zillmer. Happy to answer this question. We have an excellent supply chain team managing this environment for us. We've had very little disruption with respect to our supply chain over the course of the last several years, and we feel very comfortable in our ability to manage through any particular shortfalls in supply and/or disruptions as a result of tariffs. Right now, I would say it's safe to say that the results of the tariffs have been negligible in terms of their impact on our supply chain or on our financial results.
Okay, the next question is: How does Aramark evaluate its animal welfare guidelines? Do you have an animal welfare advisory council, and if so, who are its members? I don't know the best person to answer that.
Yeah, we do, I will say this: We continue to engage constructively with a broad range of NGOs. We regularly evaluate approaches with respect to animal rights and to product safety, and, we continue to evaluate the opportunities for the company to get even better in that respect. It's something that we take very seriously.
Okay, thank you. That's all the questions.
Thank you very much, Harold. That concludes our general Q&A session. I'll turn back to Harold, myself. We just want to thank all of you for joining us today. And with that, our meeting is concluded. Thank you very much.
The meeting has now concluded. Thank you for joining, and have a pleasant day.