Good morning and welcome to the 2021 Annual Shareholder Meeting of Brunswick Corporation. I would now like to turn the call over to Nancy Cooper, Non-Executive Board Chair of Brunswick Corporation.
Thank you and welcome, everyone. Thank you for joining us today, in part because of the pandemic and for health and safety reasons, but also because we believe this format allows us to be more inclusive and reach a greater number of shareholders. We are again hosting our meeting virtually. As is our custom, we will conduct the business portion of our meeting first and answer questions at the end of the meeting. It is now 9:00 A.M. Central Daylight Time on May 5, and this meeting is officially called to order. In addition to the members of the senior management joining us today, I would like to introduce the other members of the board joining us for today's meeting. The first is David Everitt. Dave is the Chair of our Human Resources and Compensation Committee. Reginald Fils-Aimé, Lauren Flaherty, David Foulkes, our CEO, Joseph McClanathan, David Singer.
Dave is the Chair of our Audit and Finance Committee. Jane Warner, Steve Whisler. Steve is the Chair of our Nominating and Corporate Governance Committee, and Roger Wood. Also on the phone and available to answer questions concerning Brunswick's financial statements during our question and answer session is Brad Garrett from Deloitte & Touche, our independent auditor. You may ask questions related to the proposals presented at the meeting, and we will pause to address those questions, if any, prior to voting on the proposals. In addition, after the formal portion of the meeting is adjourned, we will provide time for general questions. Only validated shareholders may ask questions in the designated field on the web portal. Ask questions in the designated field on the web portal. This means that you must be logged into the virtual meeting website using the 16-digit control number found on your proxy materials.
Out of consideration for others, please limit yourself to one question. Please note that this meeting is being recorded. However, no one attending via the webcast or telephone is permitted to use any audio recording device. Now, I would like to introduce Chris Dekker, the General Counsel and Corporate Secretary of Brunswick. Chris will act as Secretary of the Meeting, and I will turn the meeting over to Chris to report on the proof of notice and quorum.
Thank you, Nancy. The Board of Directors fixed 10 March , 2021, as the record date for determining shareholders entitled to vote at this meeting. An affidavit has been delivered attesting to the fact that either a notice of internet availability of the notice of the meeting, the proxy statement, and the 2020 Annual Report to Shareholders, or the documents themselves, were mailed on or about 19 March , 2021, to all shareholders as of this record date. This will be incorporated into the minutes of the meeting. The proxy statement and 2020 Annual Report are available now on the web portal as well. The shareholder list shows that as of the record date, there were 77,971,976 shares of common stock outstanding and entitled to vote at this meeting.
There are represented in person or by proxy shares of common stock representing 72,574,755 votes, or approximately 92% of the voting power on the record date. Since this represents more than a majority of the voting power of all issued and outstanding stock entitled to vote on the record date, a quorum is present for purposes of transacting business. Nancy will now review the proposals up for vote.
Thank you, Chris. Now, I will present the matters to be voted upon. The first proposal is the election of directors named in the proxy statement for terms expiring at the annual meeting in 2022 or until their successors have been elected and qualified. The board recommends a vote for the election of the following directors as directors of the company: Nancy E. Cooper, David C. Everitt, Reginald Fils-Aimé, Lauren P. Flaherty, David M. Foulkes, Joseph W. McClanathan, David V. Singer, Jane L. Warner, J. Steven Whisler, and Roger J. Wood. The second proposal is the advisory vote to approve the compensation of our named executive officers as described in the proxy statement. This vote, which is often called a say-on-pay vote, is required as a result of the Dodd-Frank Act.
Our shareholders have voted that their preference is to hold such a vote on an annual basis, and the board elected to do so. It is a non-binding vote, although the Compensation Committee and the board will certainly consider the results of the vote when making future compensation decisions. The board recommends voting for the say-on-pay proposal. The third and final proposal is the ratification of the audit committee's appointment of Deloitte & Touche LLP as the company's independent registered public accounting firm for 2021. The board and the audit committee recommend a vote for the ratification of Deloitte's appointment. If any shareholder would like to ask a question or make a comment regarding any of the proposals, please submit your question or comment through the web portal at this time.
We do not have any questions or comments specifically relating to the proposals on the web portal and will respond to the general questions at the end of our meeting.
Shareholder voting on the web portal has been open since 8:30 A.M. Central Daylight Time on 5 May , 2021. Any shareholder who hasn't yet voted or wishes to change a prior vote may do so by clicking on the voting button on the web portal and following the instructions there. Shareholders who have sent in proxies or voted via telephone or internet and do not want to change their vote do not need to take any further action. Now that everyone has had the opportunity to vote, I declare the polls for the 2021 Brunswick Corporation Annual Shareholder Meeting closed. Chris, do we have the preliminary voting results?
We do. We've been informed by the inspector of election that the preliminary vote report shows, first, that the nominees for election to the board have been duly elected. Second, a majority of the voting shares has voted on an advisory basis in favor of the company's compensation program for its named executive officers, and that a majority of the voting shares has voted in favor of the third proposal and ratified the appointment of Deloitte & Touche as the company's auditor for 2021. We will report the final vote results in an SEC filing within four business days.
Thank you, Chris. There being no further business to come before the meeting, the 2021 Annual Meeting of Shareholders of Brunswick Corporation is adjourned. I will now turn the meeting over to Dave Foulkes, our CEO, who will give some brief comments followed by our question and answer session.
Thank you, Nancy, and good morning, everyone. Over the past year, we've all been affected in many ways by the COVID-19 global pandemic. On behalf of the board and management team, we thank you for joining us today, and we hope that you and your families are safe and healthy. In 2020, Brunswick delivered outstanding financial and operating performance while prioritizing the health, safety, and security of our employees. We transitioned thousands of office employees into remote working arrangements and implemented stringent health and safety measures to safeguard employees working at our facilities. We also expanded benefits for employees affected by the pandemic. The high demand for socially distant recreational activities, which began in Q2 of 2020, generated a surge of retail demand for boats, and we saw a record number of first-time boat buyers enter the market and engage with our brands.
Wholesale demand followed rapidly, causing us to ramp up our production facilities quickly and safely following a number of weeks when production was halted in March and April. Our operating performance, coupled with strong demand, allowed us to set several sales records across our businesses. Despite the challenges posed by the pandemic, we continue to move forward with our strategic priorities. For example, in 2020, our businesses launched many new and award-winning products, and we earned a record seven Boating Industry Top Product Awards and multiple National Marine Manufacturers Association Innovation Awards. Freedom Boat Club added more than 40 new locations and close to 10,000 new memberships. Mercury Marine established new or enhanced relationships with 70 OEM customers, including BRP, the Jeanneau Beneteau Group in Europe, and Crownline.
We had an award-winning debut at the Consumer Electronics Show, and we had our first virtual boat show and many successful virtual trade shows. We had an 11th consecutive year of adjusted EPS growth in 2020, with EPS of $5.07, up 17% over 2019. Our consolidated net sales of $4.3 billion represented an increase of 6% over the prior year, and we generated record free cash flow of $629 million. You can find comparable GAAP measures and a reconciliation in our fiscal year 2020 earnings release, which is available on our website, www.brunswick.com. We did all this while deploying $182 million for product development and capacity expansion, executing share repurchases, retiring debt, increasing our dividend, and maintaining our investment-grade credit rating. We also continue to reinforce our commitment to sustainability and to diversity, equity, and inclusion, which we believe is critical in this dynamic environment.
This year, we created a DEI Council to continue to prioritize opportunities for all Brunswick employees to succeed and thrive within our company. We are proud to say that Forbes recognized this commitment and named us to its list of Best Employers for Diversity, Best Employers for Women, and Best Employers for Veterans. Early this year, Forbes listed us in the top 10 of America's best large employers, amongst and ahead of some of the largest and most well-known companies in America, and ranked us number one in the Manufacturing and Engineering category. In addition to the Forbes Awards, Newsweek included us on its list of America's most responsible companies. We just released our second enterprise-wide sustainability report, which is online and which we encourage you to read. In terms of governance, 2020 also saw changes to our board and senior leadership team.
Our longtime director and non-executive board chair, Manny Fernandez, retired, and the board elected Nancy Cooper as the new board chair, the first woman to hold this position in Brunswick's 175-year history. We also enhanced our executive team in 2020 with exceptional new talent, and we're excited to see the progress they're already leading this year. The board remains committed to delivering long-term sustainable shareholder value as our communities recover through 2021. With strong retail demand and record levels of field inventory, wholesale demand is expected to remain extremely strong throughout the year, and we believe our company is uniquely positioned to capitalize on these market conditions. We thank our more than 15,000 global employees for their continuing dedication to meeting and exceeding the needs of our global customers, and we enter 2021 with strong momentum and tremendous excitement about the long-term future of our company and the marine industry.
Before we take questions, I also want to welcome you to view Brunswick's Next Wave virtual investor event on 10 May 10th. As we've done with past investor days, we've gathered our business leaders to provide you with an update to our 2022 strategy that was originally presented in February of 2020 in Miami, as well as to discuss certain longer-term initiatives that will grow and differentiate Brunswick through the next decade. The prerecorded content will be available Monday morning, 10 May , on Brunswick.com, and it will be available to view at your leisure all at once or in bite-sized chunks by topic. We will also hold a Q&A session for investors to ask questions of our management team on Monday, 17 May , at noon Central Daylight Time. All of this information is available in the press release that went out on Monday.
Just a reminder that while we will not be providing a full financial update during this event, we will be providing an abbreviated update on our 2022 financial targets, which will include further details regarding the substantial increase of our 2022 EPS target to between $8.25 and $8.75 per share, as discussed last week in our Q1 Earnings Call. Now we would like to open things up for shareholder questions and comments submitted today on the web portal. Lee Gordon, our Vice President of Global Public Relations and Communications, will facilitate the Q&A portion of this meeting.
Thank you, Dave, and thank you, Nancy. We do have one question about the company's compensation plan and if it is properly aligned to the company's particular circumstances and its unique long-term strategic business plan.
Dave Foulkes, will take the question. Thank you very much for the question. Our board regularly reviews our compensation plans, and as you know, they contain both an annual component and a long-term component to ensure we balance the initiatives that we address. I think our compensation plans are reviewed against our peers and have seemed to be extremely competitive, and as you will have seen from the say-on-pay vote, they are well supported by our investor base. So I believe we're in good shape, but we will obviously continue to review and ensure that our compensation plans align well with our strategic initiatives and annual performance objectives.
Thank you, Dave. There are no further questions for this morning.
Thank you, everybody, for attending the meeting and for your questions.