Good morning, and welcome to The Home Depot's 2020 Annual Shareholders Meeting. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Craig Meniere, CEO, President and Chairman of the Board of Directors of The Home Depot. Mr. Meniere, please go ahead.
Thank you and good morning. Thanks to all of you for joining us this morning. We hope that you and your loved ones are safe and healthy And our thoughts and prayers are with all of those that have been directly impacted by COVID-nineteen. On behalf of our Board of Directors and the entire team of associates, I would like to welcome you to the 2020 Annual Shareholders Meeting. As you know, we are conducting our annual meeting virtually via the Internet this year due to the concerns presented by the COVID-nineteen pandemic.
We appreciate your flexibility on this format of the meeting as we work to protect your health and the health of our associates and directors. We miss seeing you in person and plan to return to a physical in person meeting next year. On that note, I would like to take a moment to thank our associates and supplier partners for their hard work and dedication to serve our customers and communities, especially the hospitals, healthcare workers and first responders in this challenging time. Before we start the meeting, I'd like to make a few introductions. It is my pleasure to introduce our Board of Directors who have joined us telephonically for this meeting.
They are Gerard Arpi, Ari Busby, Jeff Boyd, Frank Brown, Al Carey, Helena Foulkes, Linda Gooden, Wayne Huett, Manny Cadre, Stephanie Lennart and our Lead Director, Greg Brenneman. I would also like to recognize Scott Flynn and Randy Edelton of KPMG, the company's independent auditors who have also joined us telephonically. Finally, I would like to introduce 3 members my senior leadership team who are on the line with me Richard McPhail, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer Teresa Wynne Roseboro, Executive Vice President, General Counsel and Corporate Secretary and Isabel Jansy, our Vice President of Investor Relations and Treasurer. I now officially call the 2020 Home Depot Annual Meeting of Shareholders to order. Teresa is serving as a secretary of the meeting and Broadridge Investor Communications Solution is our Inspector of Elections.
I'll now turn over to Teresa to outline our process for today's meeting.
Thank you, Craig, and good morning. Today's meeting is scheduled for 1 hour. We will begin the meeting with the formal business portion. This consists of the election of directors named in the proxy Statement, ratification of the appointment of independent auditors and consideration of the company and shareholder proposals. Each shareholder proponent will have 3 minutes to present their proposal.
After we complete the formal portion of the meeting, Craig and Richard will provide a brief business overview. We will then open the floor for questions and we'll use the time remaining in the hour to answer questions that were submitted by shareholders in advance of the meeting and questions submitted by shareholders during the meeting. Shareholders who have logged into the web portal for the meeting using their control number may submit their questions over the portal. Please refer to the meeting rules of conduct posted on the web portal for additional guidance regarding the procedures for the meeting and the question and answer session. Please note that this meeting is being recorded.
A playback of the meeting will be available within 24 hours after the meeting. No one attending via webcast or telephone is permitted to use any device to record the meeting. As of March 23, 2020, which is the record date for the meeting, there were approximately 1,070,000,000 shares of the company's common stock entitled to vote. A majority of these shares is needed for a quorum. Over 85% of these shares are represented today and therefore, we have a quorum.
I now declare the polls open for voting. At this time, any shareholders who logged into the meeting using their control number and who have not already voted and would like to vote today can do so electronically by clicking the vote here button on your screen. If you've already voted, you do not have to vote again. Craig, back to you.
Thank you, Teresa. There are 7 proposals to be considered at this meeting, all of which were described in detail in the proxy The first item of business is the election of directors, which is item 1 on your ballot. The Board has nominated the individuals named in the proxy statement to serve for a 1 year term through the 20 21 Annual Meeting. Your Board recommends that you vote for each of these directors. The next item is ratification of the appointment of KPMG as the independent auditors of the company for fiscal 2020, item 2 on your ballot.
The next item is the advisory note on executive compensation to approve the compensation of the company's named executive officers as disclosed in the proxy statement for this meeting. Your Board recommends that you vote for this proposal. We now turn to the shareholder proposals. As a reminder, each proponent will have 3 minutes to present their proposal. The next item for consideration is the shareholder proposal regarding the amendment of our shareholder written consent right, which is item 4 on your ballot.
Operator, would you please open the line of Mr. John Chevedden, so he can present the proposal. Mr. Chevedden, your line is now open and you have 3 minutes to present your proposal. Please go ahead.
Hello, this is John Chevedden. Can you hear me okay?
Yes, we can. Thank you.
Our proposal for initiate meaningful shareholder written consent Cho's request that our Board of Directors take the steps necessary to add these words to our bylaws. Any stockholder of record seeking to have the stockholders authorize or take corporate action by written consent without a meeting shall By written notice delivered to the Secretary of the Corporation, request the Board of Directors to fix a record date. This proposal includes taking the steps necessary to make changes in our governing documents needed to be consistent with the above text. Home Depot now has a version of shareholder write deck by written consent that makes no sense and appears to be 100% excess baggage. Under the current Home Depot written consent, it takes 25% of Home Depot stock to just get management to look at a calendar and assign a date.
Why would anyone go to tremendous effort to gather 25 percent of Home Depot stock just to have management look at a calendar when the same 25 percent of Home Depot stock could obligate management to call a special shareholder meeting. The current Home Depot written consent is thus inferior to its longstanding shareholder right to call a special meeting. The management statement next to this proposal is seriously misleading. When shareholders voted previously on the excess baggage version of written consent devised by management. They did not have the opportunity to opt out of management's excess baggage clause, Plus the shareholder written consent proposal, which previously paved the way for the management written consent proposal, is gaining acceptance as a more important right than the right to call a special meeting.
This seems to be the conclusion of the Intel Corporation shareholder vote at the 2019 Intel Annual Meeting. The directors at Intel apparently thought they could divert shareholder attention away from written consent by making it less difficult for shareholders to call a special meeting. However, Intel shareholders responded with greater support for written consent in 2019 compared to 2018.
Thank you. Your Board recommends that you vote against this proposal. We will now move on to the next proposal. The next item for consideration is the shareholder proposal regarding EE-one disclosure, Which is item 5 on your ballot. Operator, would you please open the line of Sister Susan Micah, the representative of the Congregation of the Benedictine Sisters and other co proponents, so that she can present the proposal.
Sister Mika, your line is now open and you have 3 minutes to present your proposal. Please go ahead.
Good morning to all. This is a little bit different, but I'm Sister Susan Mika and I'm here representing the Benedictine Sisters from Boerne Texas and other members of the Interface Center on Corporate Responsibility, who are co filers of this proposal. All of us are long term shareholders of Home Depot. Proposal 5 on the ballot seeks a Board review of our company's policies regarding disclosure of equal employment opportunity data known as EEO-one data and public reporting of diversity issues to our shareholders. Last year we received 33% for this proposal.
Equal employment opportunity is an important investment concern when allegations of discrimination in the workplace burden shareholders with costly litigation and added risk to a company's brand, there is an impact to shareholder value. We contend that the description Don't go far enough to mitigate potential risk. We mentioned in the resolution that Home Depot has paid out more than $100,000,000 to settle on the importance of measurement and disclosure of diversity issues to our shareholders. To manage diversity companies have to be able to measure it. So this is why we've asked for the EEO-one data, which offers investors this measurement tool an EEO-one report submitted annually by Home Depot to the Equal Employment Opportunity commission, so therefore providing data to the shareholders would not propose an added financial burden.
The company actually did provide the information for 1 year and then stopped. In the absence of meaningful disclosure, investors cannot fully assess potential risks that Home Depot faces nor for that matter fully identify successful diversity efforts that you may have made. We feel that this is a bottom line issue affecting competitiveness and market share we ask Home Depot to report diversity disclosure to all stakeholders. In the past, we met with the corporate secretary and others to offer a way forward and make concrete suggestions. Today, we thank you for your time and ask you to vote in favor of this stockholder proposal, which is number 5 on the
Thank you. Your Board recommends that you vote against this proposal. The next item for consideration is The shareholder proposal regarding executive ownership guidelines, which is item 6 on your ballot. Operator, will you please open the line of Rosanna Landes Weaver, the representative of Lynn M. Gerber Traditional Beneficial IRA of Judith S.
Gerber and other co proponents, So that she can present the proposal. Ms. Weaver, your line is now open and you have 3 minutes to present your proposal. Please go ahead.
Good morning. I work for AsuSow as part of an initiative focusing on executive compensation and income inequality. Asusow founded in 1992 works to harness shareholder power to create lasting change that benefits people, planet and profit. I'm presenting the proposal, as you said, on behalf of multiple shareholders who co sponsored this. Proposal 6 calls on the compensation committee to adopt a policy requiring that senior executives retain a significant percentage of shares that have been acquired through equity compensation programs for a significant period of time following termination and the policy only applies to future grants.
We believe that a CEO's stake in the company should grow larger over the time of their employment. Such increasing growth aligns increases alignment with shareholders. Last year, we looked at S and P 500 companies with the highest option exercises in 2018, including Home Depot, and then looked at multiple years of the company's proxy statements, poring over both the option exercises and the beneficial ownership tables to determine if executives with large option exercises subsequently reinvested into the companies. Most CEOs do. We contacted several companies where ownership did not grow proportionately, including Home Depot.
We have predictive conversations on the topic with many And 1 Company, Capital One Financial adopted its policy as described here. Meanwhile, at Home Depot, Craig Minier realized in value realized a value of $35,600,000 through option exercises in 2018, dollars 29,000,000 in 2017 and in 2019 an additional $19,800,000 Mr. Meniere did not divest a significant portion of either those exercises or shares received for vesting into company the ownership didn't move very much. The annual total compensation of Home Depot's median paid associate is 22 $1,652 per year. The disclosed pay ratio in the proxy is 481 to 1.
I did another calculation. I looked only at the options cash, not salary, bonus or even shares acquired through vesting. In the past 3 years, Meniere has cashed options equal to the combined 2019 earnings of 3,487 Home Depot employees. I find that problematic even offensive. The company recommends you vote against this for contrasting reason.
On the one hand, they The current policy in terms of vesting period requirements is already more stringent than many of our peers. On the other hand, the company contends with adopting the proposal despite the broad discretion that the Board has in defining the parameters, we put us at risk from a competitive standpoint in attracting top talent. I wonder what the company means by top talent. I would assume we want to hire people who believe in and are committed to the company and its customers. If a potential senior executive turned down a position at Home Depot because of this policy, I wouldn't consider that a red flag.
Talent and greed are not the same. I'd be happy to discuss these matters further with anyone from Home Depot or other shareholders, but unfortunately with these virtual meetings, They don't allow for the kind of mingling that used to occur, and we hope will again. But I'm happy to reach by email. I urge you to vote in favor of item number 6. Thank you.
Thank you. Your Board recommends that you vote against this proposal. The last item for consideration is the shareholder proposal regarding the Preparation of electioneering contributions congruency analysis, which is item 7 on your ballot. Operator, will you please play the prerecorded statement of Doctor. Ruth Sabre, the representative of Terra Health Foundation?
Good morning, Mr. Chairman, Board of Directors and my fellow shareholders. I am Doctor. Ruth Schaeffer, Founder and President of Tara Health Foundation, which is dedicated to improving the health and well-being of women and girls. In addition to my practice in obstetrics and gynecology, I served in a senior role at Kaiser Permanente for many years.
Tara Health is a proponent of this proposal, Which asks Home Depot to make a regular practice of examining its political expenditures to ensure that they are congruent with this company's values and policies. At Tara Health, we strive to invest only in companies that meet high standards of corporate social responsibility. Home Depot meets and often exceeds our expectations, And so the stock has been in our portfolio for some time. So why have we brought forth this proposal? Like many companies, Home Depot and its employees engage wholeheartedly in the political process through its direct and indirect political donations.
But these contributions sometimes end up undermining the good work and the high aspirations of the corporate responsibility initiatives. We included 2 examples in the body of our proposal. One concerns climate change. Despite Home Depot's public commitment to achieve a 50% reduction in carbon emissions by 2,035, the company has been a long time member of the U. S.
Chamber of Commerce. The Chamber has long and consistently lobbied to slow down efforts to transition the U. S. Away from fossil fuels. Home Depot has also made 1,000 of dollars in contributions to members Congress who are on the record denying climate change.
Another example concerns the company's support of politicians who are working actively to erode women's access to reproductive Comprehensive Family Planning correlates highly with female workers' ability to enter and advance in the workforce. The company assures shareholders, in fact, in this year's proxy That it has been working hard to reduce women's unequal level of representation in its workforce and yet public records show that in the aggregate Home Depot and the Home Depot PAC Donate 1,000,000 of dollars to politicians and committees working to erode access to abortion. From 2018 to the present, our company has donated over $300,000 to politicians in Georgia and other states who oppose access to abortion, including those responsible for the Wave of so called heartbeat bills last spring. In the same period, the company gave more than $3,000,000 to anti choice politicians and committees at the federal level. This undermines our company's work to elevate women in the workplace.
In a survey conducted last December, nearly 9 out of 10 women said that their ability to control when and if to have children was critical to their careers. If the company must make political contributions, it should do so with a greater awareness of unintended consequences and seek to reduce them. As a long term shareholder, I ask you to consider whether Home Depot's hard work to meet its carbon reduction goals we'll make a difference in fighting climate change if the U. S. Chamber of Commerce succeeds in weakening climate regulations.
I ask you If Georgia politicians you are supporting succeed in shutting down the state's abortion clinics, have you thought about the impact on your employees and the state's talent pool? Mr. Meniere, I urge you and our Board to think about our company's ability to impact public policy for the good of all beyond our narrow business interests, make the company a true and consistent champion of environmental and social sustainability. Thank you for your attention.
Thank you. Your Board recommends that you vote against this proposal. If you have not already voted, you can do so now following the instructions on your screen. I will pause for a moment so anyone voting can The polls are now closed. I'll now ask Teresa to review the preliminary voting results.
Thank you, Craig. The preliminary voting results for the company proposals are as follows: all of the director nominees named in the proxy statement have been elected by a majority of the votes cast. Approximately 90 percent of the votes cast have voted in favor of the ratification of the appointment of KPMG and approximately 97% of the votes cast have voted in favor of the compensation of the company's named executive officers. For the shareholder proposals, approximately 19% of the votes cast have voted in favor of the shareholder proposal regarding amendments to our shareholder written consent right. Approximately 36% of the votes cast have voted in favor of the shareholder proposal regarding EEO 1 disclosure.
Approximately 26% of the votes cast have voted in favor of the shareholder proposal regarding executive ownership guidelines Approximately 33% of the votes cast have voted in favor of the shareholder proposal regarding an electioneering contributions congruency analysis. Based on the preliminary vote count, all of the nominees for the Board of Directors have been elected, the appointment of KPMG as the company's Independent auditors for fiscal 2020 has been ratified and the majority of the votes cast approved our executive compensation. None of the shareholder proposals have been approved. Please note that the votes cast at this meeting will be verified tabulated by our Inspector of Elections and final results of the vote will be available in a Form 8 ks, which we will file no later than May 28. Craig, back to you.
This concludes our formal business and I declare the meeting adjourned. Now we'll move on to an overview of our business, after which we will have a question and answer session. Before I begin, let me remind you that today's presentation includes forward looking statements. These statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from our expectations and projections. Again, I want to thank you all for joining us today.
As I mentioned at the start of the meeting, these are unprecedented times. And I want to start the business update portion of today's meeting by explaining how we are thinking about making decisions at The Home Depot in today's environment. When our founders started the company over 40 years ago, they did so by first defining the type of culture and value system that they wanted to promote. Our culture is represented by these 2 powerful symbols: our values wheel, which guides our decisions we make in the business And our inverted pyramid, which defines who's most important in our business, our customers and frontline associates. Anchoring to these values has never been more critical.
Our decisions and actions are rooted in a commitment to do the right thing, take care of our people and be fair for our customers and communities. To that end, as the Situation around COVID-nineteen has evolved. Our focus has been and continues to be on 2 key priorities, the safety and well-being of our associates and customers and providing our customers and communities with essential products and services. The team's alignment around these two objectives has enabled critical speed when making decisions and implementing a number of changes across the business in a rapidly evolving and incredibly fluid environment. I'd like to briefly touch just on a few of the early and decisive actions that we took in support of these primary objectives.
To promote the safety environment of our associates and customers, we implemented a number of operational changes starting in mid March. We have adjusted our store hours, closing earlier than usual to give our staff more time to properly clean and sanitize and restock our shelves. We took a proactive and early stance on limiting customer traffic in stores to better We have also promoted social and physical distancing in stores by marking floors And adding signage to help customers and associates maintain safe distances and have installed plexiglass shields as an additional safety precaution. We have provided our associates with face masks and have distributed thermometers so that associates in stores and distribution centers can perform health checks before reporting to work. At the height of our spring selling season, we also made the decision to cancel our Annual spring events, including spring Black Friday.
This was not a decision that we took lightly, yet we made it with confidence given our We believe that having this event would drive footsteps to our stores and directly undermine our commitment to prioritizing safety. To help take care of our associates, we expanded our paid time off for all hourly associates that can be used at their discretion and will be paid out at year end if unused. We also offered additional paid time off for associates who are 65 or older or deemed to be at higher risk by the CDC. We have instituted weekly bonuses for hourly associates in our stores and distribution centers. We are providing double pay for overtime work and we have extended dependent care benefits and waived related co pays.
Our more than 400,000 orange blooded associates are the heartbeat of the Home Depot and supporting them as a core value of our company. In addition to taking care of our associates and customers, we have also focused on serving our communities with essential products. Supplier relationship and partnerships matter and during times of crisis is when they matter most. We have been able to quickly shift our focus to identify And source essential products that our customers and communities need. We have relied on our vendors to provide these products and have worked together to expedite The availability of needed items.
We have also donated 1,000,000 of dollars worth of personal protective equipment or PPE And executed a stop sale on all N95 masks in our stores and on our website so that shipments could be redirected to hospitals, Healthcare Providers and First Responders around the country. Though this crisis is unparalleled in its size and scope, we have built a reputation throughout our history of doing whatever it takes to be there for our communities at the most critical times and this situation is no different. Beyond the grounding that our culture and values provides and the actions that we have taken in support of them, we believe that The Home Depot is uniquely positioned to weather COVID-nineteen. At our Investor and Analyst Conference in December of 2019, we've provided an update on the progress of our investment initiatives to create the One Home Depot experience. One Home Depot is the full realization of an interconnected frictionless shopping experience that we started developing years ago.
It will enable our customers to seamlessly blend the digital and physical worlds and was formulated using an entirely customer back approach. This investment strategy built on a number of distinct competitive advantages already in place. And while the world has drastically changed over the past few months, our competitive advantages and overarching benefits of an interconnected One Home Depot strategy are perhaps even more in focus and relevant today. Investments we have made over the years in our stores, market leading digital assets, flexible supply chain and a world class merchandising organization have allowed us to quickly adapt and shift to customer needs, preferences and behaviors. For example, we were able to extend our buy online pickup in store capabilities to curbside pickup in a matter of days across the chain because of the robust interconnected infrastructure that was already in place.
As shelter in place orders will roll out across the country in late to mid March, we saw our digital business accelerate from approximately 20% growth in early March to triple digit growth by the end of April. In fact, daily traffic to homedepot.com Reached record levels during the end of the quarter. During the last 3 weeks of the quarter, traffic to homedepot.com was consistently above And as a result of our continued investment in our digital infrastructure and with the great work of our technology teams, we provided continuous service to our customers and our conversion rates continue to increase. So while our focus right now is on the Safety of associates and customers in this new COVID-nineteen environment, we remain committed to our One Home Depot strategy. These investments are designed to leverage and extend our competitive advantages in any environment.
And while we still believe that we have identified the right areas of investment, we will continue to assess and make sure they're aligning with customer preferences. That being said, Given the prioritization of health and safety in the current environment, investments that touch our stores directly, such as changes in our front end and accelerated merchandising resets will be postponed until it makes sense to resume them. The flexibility and agility of our business model coupled with our focus on execution and strong partnership with our suppliers helped us deliver solid results in the Q1, and Richard will take you through the details in a moment. Despite the many unknowns of the current environment, we believe that we have taken steps to ensure that we will emerge from the crisis stronger an even better position for the future. I want to thank our incredible associates and express how grateful and proud I am of the resilience and strength that our teams have demonstrated as we navigate these extraordinary circumstances together.
Also want to thank all of you for your support of The Home Depot and for joining us today. And with that, I will turn it over to Richard.
Good morning and let me also thank you for your participation in the meeting today. I'm going to briefly touch on our consolidated results from fiscal 2019 as well as results from the Q1 of fiscal 2020. And as Craig mentioned, I'll share with you some additional details about the steps we took to support our associates and to further solidify our liquidity position in response to the uncertainty related to COVID-nineteen. I will end with a discussion of our capital structure and priorities. Fiscal 2020 marks the 3rd year of our strategic investment plan to create a seamless and frictionless interconnected experience.
These investments are designed to leverage and extend our competitive advantages in any environment. They helped us to deliver solid financial results in fiscal 2019 and will continue to help us effectively serve our customers and communities in what is an incredibly fluid and challenging environment now. While a great deal has happened since we reported our fiscal 2019 results and the environment has certainly changed. We always use this meeting as an to update you on our most recent annual performance. So let me start there.
During fiscal 2019, Sales were a record $110,200,000,000 an increase of 1.9 compared to fiscal 2018. Sales growth in fiscal 2019, a 52 week year, reflects a comparison against a 53 week year in fiscal 2018. Excluding the extra week in fiscal 2018, which added $1,700,000,000 of sales in fiscal 2018, fiscal 2019 sales grew 3.5%. Our fiscal 2019 net earnings were $11,200,000,000 and our earnings per diluted share increased 5.3 percent to $10.25 On Tuesday, we announced the results of our Q1. Total sales were $28,300,000,000 a 7.1% increase from last year.
As Craig mentioned, in response to the COVID-nineteen pandemic, during the Q1, we took a number of actions to support our associates, which resulted in approximately $850,000,000 of additional expense. These expenses negatively impacted our Q1 diluted earnings per share by approximately $0.60 As a result, our reported diluted earnings per share were $2.08 in the 1st quarter. In addition to investments we made to prioritize safety and support our associates in response to COVID-nineteen, we also took a number of steps with regard to our capital structure. We began the Q1 with a very strong liquidity position and we further strengthened that position throughout the quarter. In mid March, we suspended our share repurchase program indefinitely.
In late March, we upsized our A1P1 commercial paper program from $3,000,000,000 to $6,000,000,000 In conjunction with upsizing our commercial paper program, we expanded our revolving credit facility capacity from $3,000,000,000 to $6,500,000,000 As of today, we have no commercial paper outstanding And our credit facilities are undrawn. And finally, on March 30, we raised $5,000,000,000 of staggered maturity, long term debt with an average coupon of approximately 3%. This average coupon is below the average coupon of our overall debt portfolio. These actions were important to ensure that we had more than adequate liquidity during this period of uncertainty. Part of creating value for our shareholders is paying a dividend.
In February, we announced that our board increased our quarterly dividend by 10%, Which equates to an annual dividend of $6 per share. During the Q1, we paid $1,600,000,000 of dividends And our Board declared our next quarterly dividend payable on June 18, 2020. We will continue to look to grow our dividend every year as we grow earnings. Our company is in a strong financial position. We will continue to build upon our competitive advantages and we believe we will emerge from this COVID-nineteen environment a stronger team and a stronger company.
Thank you for your time today. And with that, I will turn it back to Craig for the question and answer session.
Thank you, Richard. At this time, we'll take questions from our shareholders. If you have a question, please type it in the space on your screen. As a reminder, we will not answer questions that are Personal in nature or otherwise unsuitable for the meeting. If you have a customer service issue that you'd like to discuss, we encourage you to reach out The customer care department.
The contact information for customer care is in our rules of conduct posted on the web portal for this meeting. And we'll now use the remainder of our time to answer as many questions as we can. And I'll turn it over to Isabelle, who will read the questions.
Thank you, Craig, and good morning, everyone. Our first question is, has Home Depot increased compensation for management at all levels due to COVID-nineteen.
Isabel, we have not increased Compensation for the executive team or the officers, but we have increased compensation and benefits for our early associates And our field management team, including store managers and assistant managers.
The next question if you have an outstanding company, it would be an outstanding gesture if the highest paid executives would donate their salary or stock awards for this year given the COVID pandemic and the severe economic hardship that it is causing not only to individuals but also to small and large companies?
So we're proud of the generosity of our officers. But as a company, we would never take credit for the generosity or the philanthropic work that our officers do. But let me tell you what your company is actually doing. As you know, giving back is one of our core values and we remain committed to serving our communities and have taken steps to support them during the COVID-nineteen situation. We have donated tens of 1,000,000 of dollars to date The form of product donations to hospitals, healthcare workers and first responders.
We continue to support and donate to nonprofit partners through the Home Depot Foundation and through other community relief efforts. So it's something that we're focused on and we'll continue to do.
The next question is, I understand that the pandemic has really increased e commerce demand. How do you think this increase in demand will impact The Home Depot as you look forward into 20 21 and beyond.
Yes, the pandemic has in fact increased e commerce demand pretty significantly. And the great part about that is it's exposed a number of new customers to the Home Depot and in particular to Home Depot's digital world. It's created an awareness for categories like Home Depot Home where we have extended into the completion of rooms. As a result of the e commerce demand, we expanded our fulfillment options, including curbside pickup, Which also help to drive significant online demand. What we don't know is how this all plays out.
And the reason I say that is in Ontario, Canada, we got in a situation where the only way to operate was through curbside pickup due to government regulations and we saw that demand for curbside obviously grow significantly. But once the government in the Providence of Ontario indicated that it was okay to begin to open stores back up again, We saw curbside demand fall off pretty significantly. So we're just going to have to watch and see how this evolves. We've learned a lot and one of the key things that we've learned here is that flexibility is in fact the key and we'll continue to shift With customers as the customer needs change as a result of COVID-nineteen.
Can you talk about your supply chain dynamics in Asia? Have you seen any disruption to your supply chain in China, particularly with goods like appliances?
Yes. One of the important things, obviously, when this situation began to evolve was to be communicating To our suppliers domestically, internationally throughout the world, and we did that. I'd say the first thing is recognize that 70% of Home Depot's goods are purchased domestically. And second Comment I'd have is that we've worked closely with our suppliers and we've built significant flexibility and agility into our supply chain overall. And right now, we specifically I think the question was around appliances.
We receive Appliances, both out of Asia, but also domestically, everything is working effectively in our supply chain right now.
Please explain the criteria for eligibility of Home Depot employees, especially the 90 plus employees who are hourly and non salaried employees in terms of medical and retirement benefits the company provides, Who receives benefits? Who does not? For those that who do not, when and how do they become eligible?
As well, for all of our full time associates hourly and salary, they are eligible for medical coverage, as of their hire date. And in addition to that, for all of our full time and part time hourly and salary associates, They are eligible to participate in the company's 401 retirement program as of their date of hire.
You have talked a lot about the investments you have been making over the past few years. Are you going to make any changes related to COVID-nineteen?
So right now, as we've shared, our primary focus right is on serving our customers safely in this environment. Yet, we remain committed to our One Home Depot strategy. As Richard said, fiscal 2020 marks the 3rd year of our investments in that program to create the Seamless, frictionless, interconnected experience because we believe that the winners in retail over the long will be those that do interconnected very, very well. And so our investments are designed to leverage and the competitive advantages that we have in any environment. And we believe that the investments that we're making are in the right areas Overall, but clearly with what we're learning in the COVID situation, we'll continue to assess And determine either there are different priorities of how we execute those investments to make sure that we're shifting and adjusting with
I'd like to hear more about how the Home Depot is dealing with COVID. I've spent some time on your web page focused on the topic, and I like a lot of what I see there. It appears that Home Depot knows that customers need to feel safe and that for customers to be safe, employees need to be safe. When trust is lost, it is very difficult to earn back. I have 2 specific questions.
How are you keeping track internally of the number of Stores where staff have reported cases and how are you alerting other staff to exposures?
So first of all, obviously, our and our 2 key priorities, the number one priority was safety and well-being of our associates and customers. And so we're very much focused on that. And we work closely with, the CDC and health organizations to understand the protocols that we need to put in place and we've done that. We work with public health authorities in terms of making sure that we advise. We do contract Contact tracing and notification whenever we're aware of a case.
And it's important to note that we extend Paid time off to anyone in our associate base that is required to be quarantined as a result. And clearly, we pay for anybody that is off until their doctor release if they had in fact contacted the virus itself.
And our next question is, what was the selection process for the newest member of the Board?
So our selection process has a number of steps. It starts with identifying What are the needs for the Board? So we're always trying to match up skill sets with the evolving business. The second element is to create a diverse slate. And then third, We then have a vetting process that we go through with the nominating committee that includes multiple interviews.
We do our research And write out the candidates' qualifications and capabilities and how they line up to the Board needs. So that's essentially what we do.
The next question is how many are attending the meeting today?
The last I knew, we had over 300 attendees on our first ever virtual meeting, Hopefully, the last. I guess I'm being told it's now over 400 attendees in the meeting.
And the next question is, will dividends be paid this year?
Yes. As Richard shared in his Prepared comments, the Q1 dividend is in fact been paid, right, or will be paid in June. Yes.
The next question is when was the last in person board meeting?
Our last in person Board meeting was on February 27. And as a result of the environment that we're dealing in, we actually put in A number of virtualvideo, if you will, Board meetings that we've conducted Every few weeks. And right now that is our plan continuing to go forward.
The next question is, what is Home Depot's policy on social distancing and how it will affect store traffic?
Well, look, we did a number of things to prioritize safety in our stores. And the first thing that we did was we reduced our hours voluntarily. We cut 25% of our customer facing hours as the virus began to have its impact. And we wanted to do that to give our associates time to make sure that we could do deep cleaning And as well restock our shelves. We then put social distancing practices in place Where we went in, we marked floors, particularly think about checkout areas where you would have a larger number of folks, Areas like the paint desk where people would congregate or our service desk.
So we tried to make sure that we were spacing people out and providing visual cues to making that happen. We put social distancing captains in place in our stores and then we voluntarily limited customer traffic across the country. So we reduced the number of customers that were allowed into our stores at any given point in time. Our technology team did a phenomenal job of Creating an app for our store associates to be able to manage that process and know exactly how many people were in the store. So we've then finally, we said, we don't know how long this situation is going to take place.
So we went out and working with a 3rd party designed and implemented, plexi That we put up in all high interaction areas around the store. And that's the ongoing process that we're working to maintain social
The next question is, what is Home Depot doing to eliminate shrink and its impact on financial performance?
So there are a number of initiatives underway with the shrink situation. We are very encouraged By the efforts that we have underway and the tracking that we have on that, for us to fully understand the benefits of all of the actions that we're taking, we actually will need to complete physical inventories. And one of the things that we have done as a result of the current situation is right now, we have postponed the physical inventories in the stores because We don't want to add more people into the stores, or more disruption that our folks in the stores are dealing with. So it might take A little bit longer to fully realize and understand the impacts, but we like the activities that we have and we think that they're having a positive impact.
The next question is, do you feel that you are able to contain or slow down the effect of Amazon taking market share in the home improvement category.
Look, we play in a 650,000,000,000 ish market share or market space. So there are lots of room for folks to play in this category. Market share is something that we look at in multiple ways. It's not a perfect science that we use 3rd party data. We use government data.
We use input from our suppliers. And based on all of that input, the Home Depot is taking share in the market. And so we think that The work that we've done, the investments that we made and will continue to make to create the seamless interconnected experience positions Home Depot well to
The next question is, are you planning share buybacks In 2020.
So as Richard described, in our early actions, we Postponed all share buybacks for the time being. Our principles around share buybacks Haven't really changed. If you think about our principles, it is 1st and foremost utilize the capital and cash that we have to invest in the business. We want to pay dividends to our shareholders. We will always look for opportunities to invest in the business that will create greater returns for our shareholders.
And then when all of those things are done, we'll use whatever excess cash that we have to buy back Sharers if it is value creating for our shareholders. And so that those principles still hold true and are in place. We're operating right now in a very fluid dynamic environment where there is a lot of uncertainty, And we'd like to see more stability before we would consider reinstituting share repurchases.
Our next question is, have you changed the expansion of brick and mortar stores and shifted towards technology? Has your focus shifted from the pro customer to the homeowner?
First of all, no, we haven't had any major shift. We are opening a modest number of stores. Most of the openings over the past few years have been in our Mexico market, and that's where we've had opportunity. But we have continually looked for fill in opportunities within the U. S.
As well. And we also look to take pressure off of high volume stores in major markets. That's not quite as easy because the space isn't easy to find, although we have had success And finding some locations that candidly we've been working on in markets for over a decade. And so, you'll see us open stores to relieve pressure, but it's not a significant number. I mean, we'll open in the 3 to 5 range On an ongoing basis.
We see great opportunity in the digital space, Starting with the interconnected experience because we're a project business, our customers are using both the digital and physical world coming together to complete But also when you think about opportunities like Home Depot Home, where our customer research said Customers were willing to buy categories from us to complete their rooms. So think textiles, think Flatware, Glassware, so on, they trust the Home Depot to bring value. That's a great opportunity in the digital space And that's where that business is going. I don't look for that to be in our physical stores, but that's a great expansion of the home capabilities in the digital space.
Our next question is will the in store clinics be offered virtually?
Yes. Actually our workshops and I believe both our kids clinics and workshops Are moving into a virtual online experience and we're actually really excited about that.
Our next question is, does COVID-nineteen present new business opportunities?
Yes, it does.
When you think about, for example, in our MRO space, One of the things that we're already seeing in terms of requests from our customers there it is a movement to everything touchless. So think touchless faucets, touchless toilets, Added cleaning protocols that all businesses will go through, there are definite opportunities there that we'll look To make sure that we're fulfilling the needs of our customer or our associates with our customers.
Thank you, Craig. Unfortunately, that is all the time we have today. If we were unable to answer your question, we encourage you to reach out to our Investor Relations department. We also received a number of supportive comments thanking our associates for their efforts as we navigated this pandemic. In the interest of time, we did not read those comments today, but we wanted you to know that we greatly appreciate them.
Thank you for your attendance and participation. We look forward to seeing you in person in 2021.
This concludes the 2020 Annual Meeting of Shareholders of The Home Depot. Thank you for joining us. You may now disconnect.