Good morning. Welcome to The Home Depot's 2026 Annual Shareholders Meeting. I'm Isabel Janci, Vice President of Investor Relations and Treasurer. Today's meeting agenda will consist of a business update provided by our Chair, President, and CEO, Ted Decker. Our Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, Richard McPhail, will provide an overview of our fiscal 2025 financial results. After the business overview, we will conduct the formal portion of the annual meeting, followed by a question and answer session. Before Ted and Richard begin, I want to remind everyone 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.
These risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to, the factors identified in our most recent annual report on Form 10-K and our other filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, which are available on the company's Investor Relations website. Today's presentation will also include certain non-GAAP measures, including, but not limited to, adjusted diluted earnings per share. For reconciliation of these and other non-GAAP measures to the corresponding GAAP measures, please refer to our website. With that, let me turn the program over to Ted.
Thank you, Isabel, and allow me to extend a thank you to everyone who is virtually in attendance for today's meeting. We appreciate your continued investment in The Home Depot. In fiscal 2025, our associates and teams executed extremely well. We are pleased with our performance as we achieved another year of sales growth and market share gains. We believe the long-term fundamentals underpinning home improvement demand are strong, despite the pressures in our industry. The age of the U.S. housing stock, the chronic shortage of housing supply, and unprecedented home equity growth since 2019 give us confidence for long-term growth. We are focused on our strategy of driving our core and culture, delivering a frictionless, interconnected experience, and winning with the pro. First and foremost, our stores remain the core of our business, and our orange-blooded associates bring our culture to life every day.
We're empowering them to drive sales by enhancing our training and product knowledge, optimizing our processes, simplifying tasks, and leveraging technology to drive on-shelf availability and productivity. By creating the best-in-class store experience in utilizing technology, we are enabling our associates to work more efficiently while reducing cost and complexity across the business. Second, we continue to invest in our differentiated services and capabilities aimed at delivering a frictionless, interconnected experience. By connecting our stores, digital platforms, and fulfillment capabilities, our customers can shop, purchase, and receive products with ease anywhere, anytime, and however they choose. Through investments in our stores, inventory technology, and our nearly 200 last-mile distribution assets, we achieved the fastest delivery speeds in our company history.
We accomplished this by using ship from best location, which leverages machine learning algorithms to look across all of our distribution assets, including our stores, to optimize speed, reliability, cost, and capacity to determine when, where, and how to most effectively ship products to our customers. In addition, last year, we announced the expansion of Magic Apron, a suite of generative AI tools that help customers find the answers they need related to all their home improvement projects. This first-of-its-kind technology is like having a trusted store associate on hand delivering reliable, accurate answers. With Magic Apron, customers can kickstart their home improvement projects, whether it's getting a yard spring-ready or finding the perfect tools to become the ultimate grill master. Home Depot customers have always relied on the expertise of our Orange Apron associates in the aisles of our stores to answer questions and help them solve problems.
Magic Apron is designed to bring that same expertise to the digital world, leveraging our proprietary knowledge base to support our customers and give them the confidence to tackle their home improvement projects at the touch of a button. While we are gaining share with the pro customer, our new assets, capabilities, and service offerings have unlocked a total addressable market of approximately $400 billion with larger pros working on complex projects. In this past year, we announced additional investments focused on serving the pros' full range of needs. We aim to simplify how pros do business with us by delivering the scale, reliability, and expertise required to help them grow. Some of these investments center around technology, specifically tools like Blueprint Takeoffs and Material List Builder AI that help our pros simplify their workflow.
Blueprint Takeoffs is an AI-powered tool to help pros stay on time and on budget. Creating takeoffs is a critical but often time-consuming phase of any construction project. This tool delivers a complete material list for an entire project within hours, a process that used to take days to complete. Pros can then quickly and easily purchase all materials they need, simplifying their process by going through a single supplier. In fiscal 2025, SRS completed the acquisition of GMS, adding a highly complementary and adjacent vertical to SRS' business with differentiated capabilities, product categories, and customer relationships. SRS and GMS are already finding ways to better serve their customers and grow sales together. Bundling GMS' interior products with SRS' exterior offerings, we can now provide customers more solutions, increasing customer retention and growing our share of the pros wallet. Together, our scale is unmatched.
We have an unrivaled distribution network of over 2,350 stores, 1,250 branches, 325 customer-facing warehouses, a fleet of 16,000 delivery assets, and a professional sales force of over 5,000 associates. We will focus on aligning all of our assets and capabilities to cross-sell broader product offerings and services to our pro customers. Our values wheel and inverted pyramid have guided us as we revolutionized home improvement and will continue to influence our decisions as our business evolves. Over the past 45 years, we've built one of the most powerful business models in the world and will continue to build upon our distinct set of competitive advantages.
Our iconic brand, over 470,000 passionate associates, an unrivaled real estate footprint, a flexible supply chain, overall scale, and our product authority are just some of the competitive advantages we have that offer a unique value proposition, allow us to grow faster than the market, and deliver exceptional shareholder value. I'd like to thank our associates along with our supplier partners for their extraordinary dedication and hard work to serving our customers and our communities. They continue to live our values every day. They are the power of The Home Depot and help make us the number one retailer in home improvement. Richard, over to you.
Thank you, Ted, and good morning. I'd also like to thank everyone in attendance. We appreciate your investment in The Home Depot and your participation in today's meeting. I will provide a brief overview of our consolidated financial results from fiscal 2025 before we begin the formal meeting. For the year, our sales totaled $164.7 billion, an increase of $5.2 billion or 3.2% versus fiscal 2024. Total company comp sales increased 0.3% and U.S. comp sales increased 0.5%. Our fiscal 2025 net earnings were $14.2 billion, and our diluted earnings per share decreased 4.6% to $14.23 per share. Excluding intangible asset amortization, our adjusted diluted earnings per share for fiscal 2025 was $14.69, a decrease of 3.6% compared to fiscal 2024.
Recall that fiscal 2024 included a 53rd week, which added approximately $0.30 to diluted earnings per share and adjusted diluted earnings per share for the fourth quarter and the year. Our business continues to generate strong cash flow, and we have a disciplined and balanced approach to capital allocation. In fiscal 2025, we generated approximately $16.3 billion of net cash from operations. We used a portion of this cash to pay $9.2 billion in dividends, and we invested approximately $3.7 billion back into our business in the form of capital expenditures. During our fourth quarter earnings call this past February, we announced that our board approved a 1.3% increase in our quarterly dividend to $2.33 per share, which equates to forecasted total dividends of $9.32 per share for fiscal 2026.
We are pleased with the performance of our business over the last several years and are committed to creating value for our shareholders. With that, Ted, back over to you.
Thanks, Richard. On behalf of our Board of Directors and our entire team of associates, I would like to welcome you again to the 2026 Annual Shareholder Meeting. We appreciate your participation. Before we start the formal portion of our meeting, I'd like to make a few introductions. It's my pleasure to introduce the other members of our Board of Directors standing for election at the meeting who have joined us today. They are Gerard Arpey, Ari Bousbib, Jeff Boyd, Frank Brown, Wayne Hewett, Manny Kadre, Stephanie Linnartz, Paula Santilli, Caryn Seidman-Becker, Asha Sharma, and our lead director, Greg Brenneman. I'd also like to recognize Charles Ritter and Danny Zamora of KPMG, the company's independent auditor, who have joined us. I now officially call the 2026 Home Depot Annual Meeting of Shareholders to order and declare the polls open for voting.
I'll turn it to Teresa Wynn Roseborough, our Executive Vice President, General Counsel, and Corporate Secretary, to outline the process for today's meeting. Teresa is serving as secretary of the meeting, and our Inspector of Elections is American Election Services.
Thank you, Ted. The formal business portion of the meeting consists of the election of directors named in the proxy statement, the ratification of the appointment of the independent auditor, the say on pay vote, the presentation of two company proposals to amend the certificate of incorporation, and the presentation of shareholder proposals. Each shareholder proponent will have three minutes to present their proposal. The polls will close shortly following the presentation of the shareholder proposals. We will conclude the formal business of the meeting by announcing preliminary voting results before answering questions submitted by shareholders either in advance of or during the meeting. Shareholders who have logged into the web portal for the meeting using their control number may submit 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 on our Investor Relations webpage within 24 hours after the meeting. No one attending via the webcast or telephone is permitted to use any device to record the meeting. As of March 23rd, 2026, which is the record date for the meeting, there were approximately 996 million 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. As Ted noted, the polls are open for voting.
Any shareholders who log into the meeting using their control number and who would like to vote today can do so electronically by clicking the vote here button on the screen. If you've already voted, you do not have to vote again unless you would like to change your vote. Ted, back to you.
Thank you, Teresa. There are 12 proposals to be considered at this meeting, all of which were described in detail in the proxy statement provided to shareholders. The first item of business is the election of directors, which is item one on your ballot. The board has nominated the individuals named in the proxy statement for one year terms expiring at the 2027 annual meeting. Your board recommends that you vote for each of these directors. The next item is the ratification of the appointment of KPMG as the independent auditor of the company for fiscal 2026, which is item two on your ballot. The board recommends that you vote for this proposal. The next item is the advisory vote on executive compensation, also known as say on pay, which is item three on your ballot.
Specifically, you're being asked to approve on an advisory basis the compensation of the company's named executive officers as disclosed in the proxy statement. Your board recommends that you vote for this proposal. The next item for consideration is the company's proposal to approve the adoption of an amendment to the company's certificate of incorporation to add officer exculpation, which is item four on your ballot. Your board recommends that you vote for this proposal. The next item for consideration is the company's proposal to approve the implementation of miscellaneous amendments to the company's certificate of incorporation, which is item five on your ballot. Your board recommends that you vote for this proposal. We will now turn to the shareholder proposals. As a reminder, each proponent will have three minutes to present their proposal.
Per our meeting rules of conduct, please limit your comments to the subject matter of the proposal being presented. The first shareholder proposal for consideration is the proposal regarding evaluation of recycling-related plastics targets, which is item six on your ballot. Operator, will you please play the pre-recorded statement of Paul Chesser presenting this proposal.
I'm Paul Chesser of the National Legal and Policy Center. Home Depot commits to requiring its suppliers to reduce or convert 200 million pounds of plastic used in products to recycled or alternative materials by the end of 2028. Every cost of that conversion, like higher prices for recycled resin over virgin resin, product redesign expenses, and supply chain inefficiencies, gets embedded in what suppliers charge the company for the products on its shelves. The company's own sustainability disclosures acknowledge that sourcing recycled content requires expanding supply chains, which is an admission that the materials required are expensive and scarce. Shareholders are absorbing these costs without being shown a rigorous independent analysis of whether they are justified. The peer-reviewed science says they are probably not.
A 2024 analysis in the journal Environmental Science & Technology, which examined 53 life cycle studies across 16 product categories, found that plastic produces fewer polluting emissions than its alternatives in 15 of those 16 categories. Replacing plastic with heavier paper, glass or composite alternatives, which is exactly what Home Depot's mandate drives, adds weight per shipment, increases transportation emissions, and raises costs. The recycling infrastructure that would make these commitments meaningful does not exist at the scale required either. California, with the most activist regulatory environment and the most ambitious plastics law on the books, recycles most plastics at rates in only the single- digits. There's also a legal dimension the board has not addressed.
Home Depot is a member of the Sustainable Packaging Coalition, one of three organizations that a 10 state coalition of attorneys general warned the last couple of years may be violating federal antitrust law through coordinated packaging standards. The Board's opposition statement to our proposal does not mention this exposure for shareholders. Our proposal asks for a scientifically independent, objective, and quantifiable evaluation of whether these policies actually serve shareholders. It is the analysis the Board should have done before making the commitments it asked suppliers and shareholders to live with. We urge shareholders to vote for item six. Thank you.
Thank you. Our response to this proposal is set forth in our proxy statement. Your board recommends that you vote against this proposal. The next item for consideration is the shareholder proposal regarding a report on packaging policies for plastics, which is item seven on your ballot. Operator, will you please open the line of Kaylee Knose to present the proposal. Ms. Knose, your line is now open, and you have three minutes to present the proposal.
Good morning, Mr. Chairman, board members, and shareholders. My name is Kaylee Knose, representing As You Sow, the filer of proposal seven. The plastic pollution crisis poses increasing risk to Home Depot. An estimated 24 million metric tons-34 million metric tons of plastic end up in the world's waterways annually, causing serious harm to human health and the environment. If no significant actions are taken, the level of plastic pollution entering waterways could hit 53 million metric tons by 2030. Global leaders from nearly 200 UN member states are in the process of negotiating a global treaty to end plastic pollution. Mandates are being considered for legally binding plastic use reductions, recyclability, and transitions away from disposable single-use packaging.
At least 1/3 of plastic use must be reduced to cut 80% of ocean plastic pollution by 2040, and reduction is the most viable solution from environmental, economic, and social perspectives, according to a definitive report by Pew Charitable Trusts. Our company has not taken basic actions to combat plastic pollution, such as disclosing its current total use of plastic packaging and setting a goal for plastic use reduction. Competitors like Walmart and Target have taken such actions. Similarly, the company has not set a goal to make all its packaging curbside recyclable, reusable or compostable by a date certain. Competitor Lowe's has agreed to do this by 2030. The company argues in its statement of opposition that it has a comprehensive approach to addressing plastics in its packaging, rendering our proposal superfluous. This is not the case.
The company's policy cannot be viewed as comprehensive when it lacks disclosure of the most basic data, such as the amount of plastic packaging the company uses annually. It cannot be viewed as comprehensive when it does not contain a commitment to a specific percentage reduction of plastic packaging use or a goal to make all packaging recyclable, reusable or compostable by a certain date, as competitors have done. The company notes its efforts to remove harmful PVC from new private branded consumer packaging and work with suppliers to keep PVC materials out of future packaging. This is an important step, but the company provides no information on whether brand name suppliers have been engaged to remove the PVC in brand name packaging by a date certain. The company should move decisively to ensure removal of PVC from all packaging sold in its stores.
Please join us in supporting proposal seven to advance our company into a leadership position fighting plastic pollution. Thank you.
Thank you. Our response to this proposal is set forth in our proxy statement. Your board recommends that you vote against this proposal. The next item for consideration is the shareholder proposal regarding a report on customer data privacy risk, which is item eight on your ballot. Operator, will you please play the pre-recorded statement, Ben Jordan, representing this proposal.
I'm Ben Jordan from Atlanta, Georgia. I'm a journalist, science educator, and researcher in things relating to tech and cybersecurity. I'm presenting on behalf of Zevin Asset Management and the 17 co-filers of proposal eight. I'm here to ask a rhetorical question that is not related to controversies surrounding Fourth Amendment rights, but purely business decisions. Once Home Depot's data enters Flock Safety's network and local law enforcement agency runs a query, does Home Depot control what happens next? Unless Home Depot has some new information contradicting my years of researching the business and security posture of Flock Safety, the answer is no. I don't think the potential consequences of that are realized by a lot of businesses that partner with companies like this. Firstly, federal immigration authorities have accessed Flock's network through local police intermediaries without retailer authorization.
More than 4,000 immigration-related lookups were identified in Flock's own audit logs. Home Depot's governance framework didn't detect this. Its audit infrastructure didn't prevent it. When it was repeatedly raised with management, the side door access pathway was not addressed. Secondly, I personally found and reported a security vulnerability where, among hundreds of cameras across the country, I was able to watch over 30 days of customers in Lowe's parking lots. I was able to see what they purchased and then cross-reference their license plate with the breach to find their home address. This, among dozens of other vulnerabilities, have been widely reported by media across the country, and my team has published vulnerabilities recognized by the Department of Homeland Security and cited in letters by Congress calling for an FTC investigation into Flock.
I'm not an attorney. It can be argued that deploying cameras with widely known security issues can be argued as negligence. Beyond this, the surveillance partnership between businesses and law enforcement is a pretty fresh and controversial thing. A lot of that exists in a legal gray area dependent on Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Section 702 needs to be consistently extended by Congress every few years, and quite literally could see a termination in the next month, for example, as it's being debated right now. I'm certainly not asking Home Depot to take some sort of political position on government-related surveillance. I'm asking them why they would involve themselves in a divisive controversy when they can realistically save money by investing in their own retail surveillance infrastructure.
This would allow Home Depot to own the hardware, customize it, independently test and secure it, and have complete control over where the data is ultimately stored and how that data is being used. The report requested in item eight is pretty straightforward. It's a board-level assessment of whether existing controls are sufficient with independent validation, clear of downstream use restrictions, and transparent disclosure of how access to this data is actually being used. This would be responsible governance, and we hope the board treats it that way. Thank you for your time.
Thank you. Our response to this proposal is set forth in our proxy statement. Your board recommends that you vote against this proposal. The next item for consideration is the shareholder proposal regarding an independent board chair, which is item nine on your ballot. Operator, will you please open the line of Mr. John Chevedden to present his proposal. Mr. Chevedden, your line is now open, and you have three minutes to present your proposal.
Hello, this is John Chevedden, proposal nine, independent board chairman. Shares request the Board of Directors adopt an enduring policy and amend the governing documents, including the corporate governance guidelines, in order that two separate people hold the office of Chairman and the office of the CEO as soon as possible. The Chairman of the Board shall be an independent director. An independent lead director shall not be a substitute for an independent board chairman. The Board shall have the discretion to select an interim Chairman of the Board, who is not an independent director, to serve while the Board is required to seek an independent Chairman of the Board on an accelerated basis. An independent board chairman at all times improves corporate governance by bringing impartiality, objective oversight, and external expertise to board decisions, mitigating conflicts of interest, enhancing transparency, and boosting shareholder confidence.
This detached perspective allows the chairman to focus on shareholder interest, strengthen management accountability, and provide critical checks and balances, ultimately contributing to long-term sustainability and profitability. Independent board chairman could help Home Depot deal with this poor stock price performance. Home Depot stock was at $420 in 2021 and is at only $310 now in spite of a robust stock market. Independent board chairman could also help Home Depot deal with headwinds like these. High mortgage rates continue to suppress existing home sales, which historically drive a large portion of Home Depot home improvement spending. Supply chain and tariff rate uncertainties for imported goods have contributed to elevated costs and made certain items unaffordable for Home Depot customers. Shoppers are increasingly prioritizing repair and maintenance over purchasing high-ticket appliance or decor items from Home Depot. Please vote yes, independent board chairman, proposal nine.
Thank you. Our response to this proposal is set forth in our proxy statement. Your board recommends that you vote against this proposal. The next item for consideration is the shareholder proposal regarding a biodiversity impact and dependency assessment, which is item 10 on your ballot. Operator, will you please open the line for Dr. Mark Rossi to present the proposal. Dr. Rossi, your line is open. You have three minutes to present the proposal.
Good morning, Chairman, directors, and shareholders. I am Dr. Mark Rossi, Senior Research Associate at the Lowell Center for Sustainable Production for the University of Massachusetts Lowell. I've worked for over 30 years advancing safer solutions to hazardous chemicals, including leading the development of tools like GreenScreen and the Chemical Footprint Project that are widely used by companies today, ranging from Apple to Walmart. I am here on behalf of Domini Impact Investments to present proposal 10, requesting the company conduct and publicly disclose a biodiversity impact and dependency assessment presented for the third year in a row to bring the Board and shareholders' attention to this financially material topic. The question animating proposal 10 is, where is The Home Depot most exposed to nature risks across your value chain? This is a critical question for the company answer because your value chain depends on nature. A few examples.
First, wood products depend on sustainable forests, yet 17% of your timber is sourced from the ecologically vulnerable Canadian boreal forest. Second, garden products depend on pollinators, yet your stores sell harmful insecticides to pollinators as well as glyphosate, a chemical facing extensive government restrictions and litigation. For example, Bayer, a manufacturer of glyphosate-based products, has incurred over $11 billion in legal settlements. Third, the cost-effective and reliable production of your products on your shelves depends on clean air and clean water, yet toxic air and water pollution continue to rise from the manufacture of products sold at The Home Depot. Here are two examples. PFAS, the forever chemicals, due to their toxicity to people on the planet, are being banned in products and regulated in water and water pollution across many states, including California and New York.
Yet PFAS may be found in paints, adhesives, flooring, roofing, furniture, and many other products. Does The Home Depot know all the products on its shelf that contain PFAS? Second, PVC plastic. Its production, transport, including the railroad disaster in East Palestine, Ohio, and incineration are significant sources of hazardous air and water pollution. Yet PVC continues to be used in brand name packaging, flooring, piping, and other products sold at Home Depot. In the face of these and other nature-related financial risks, The Home Depot has yet to systematically assess where it is most exposed across its value chain. Proposal 10 looks to start The Home Depot's work with an analysis of the risks to nature, of where the risks to nature are coming from. This assessment will help The Home Depot be more strategic with better data, analytically rigorous, and effective with the actions it takes.
Domini looks forward to your support for proposal 10 to proactively address the potential nature risks faced by The Home Depot. Thank you.
Thank you. Our response to this proposal is set forth in our proxy statement. Your board recommends that you vote against this proposal. The next item for consideration is the shareholder proposal regarding a report on the sufficiency of associates' access to healthcare, which is item 11 on your ballot. Operator, will you please play the pre-recorded statement of Elizabeth Levy.
Hello, I am Elizabeth Levy, a Managing Director of the investment advisor, Clean Yield Asset Management. In support of our clients, I formally move proposal 11, asking Home Depot's board to issue a public report on its employees' access to affordable, timely, and quality healthcare. Home Depot is a high-touch, high-trust retail business, and it relies on a skilled, active, engaged, and loyal workforce, as management often tells us. American employees care about healthcare. According to an SHRM survey, American employees view healthcare as extremely important, more important than retirement savings or career development benefits. Researchers also tell us that healthcare is a core affordability worry, sitting ahead of food, utilities, and other household expenses. Nationally, 48% of insured adults worry about affording their monthly health insurance premium, and 21% view cost as a barrier to getting their healthcare they need. I'll repeat that for emphasis.
Of adults with health insurance, almost half still worry about how they will afford medical care. While Home Depot offers multiple health insurance plans to employees, as we reviewed the deductibles and caps of The Home Depot plans we found online, it seemed as though a family facing a medical condition could experience catastrophic expenses and costs surpassing savings. Preventative care may also be out of reach. For example, if an employee is required to pay 30% of each doctor's visit expense, they may not participate in essential diagnostic care action. It appears as though for some employees, a copay for just visiting the doctor for consultation may represent 1/3 of a day's wages. We do not know if this is the true experience for Home Depot employees. We're concerned that Home Depot does not know either.
Other companies, including large retailers, do explicitly ask employees about the sufficiency of their health insurance and healthcare access. Home Depot must understand if the health insurance programs it offers are effective enabling true healthcare access. It must understand if employees are currently able to access affordable, quality, and timely healthcare. Therefore, we make this request to ensure that Home Depot management has adequate information to assess the sufficiency of their healthcare benefits. Thank you.
Thank you. Our response to this proposal is set forth in our proxy statement. Your board recommends that you vote against this proposal. The last item for consideration is the shareholder proposal regarding a report on discrimination in charitable support, which is item 12 on your ballot. Operator, will you please play the pre-recorded statement from Inspire Investing presenting this proposal?
My name is Tim Schwarzenberger with Inspire Investing. We file this proposal seeking transparency on Home Depot's practices related to transgender medical interventions for minors. Rather than make the case ourselves, we wanted shareholders to hear directly from someone impacted, I'd now like to yield my time to Chloe Cole.
My name is Chloe Cole. I am a detransitioner and I advocate for medical safeguarding of children who have been harmed by transgender procedures. I'm here because I know what happens when big institutions like Home Depot value outside corporate pressure and ratings over the safety and well-being of children and their families. This proposal is not about politics. For me, the impact is personal because I have to live with the consequences of this every single day. I was a 12 year old girl when I was led to believe that my pain and confusion during puberty meant that I needed to become somebody else. My doctors decided that the only treatment was irreversible drugs and a scalpel to my breasts. No child can fully understand what it means to give up a healthy body or to never fully mature into adulthood.
Before I was old enough to vote, marry or drive, I was put on puberty blockers and testosterone in middle school, and eventually, I underwent a double mastectomy at 15. This was abuse disguised as compassion by adults who I trusted in institutions. Doctors continue to push thousands of children into that failure every year. Home Depot appears to be complicit in this failure. Shareholders deserve to know whether this company is subsidizing, endorsing or being pressured into supporting medical interventions that many doctors, parents, and victims now recognize as dangerous for our youth. Based on public information from the Human Rights Campaign last year, Home Depot's healthcare plan seems to cover transgender medical interventions for covered dependents, including children. The landscape is shifting. States across our country, including Georgia, where Home Depot is headquartered, have banned the use of these procedures on children.
Medical authorities in over six countries, including our own Department of Health and Human Services, are pulling back because both the data and personal testimonies have clearly shown that there are consequences for attempting sex changes on children. Former patients like me are speaking out and winning lawsuits because we know now what happens when institutions refuse to face what they've helped to enable, and the parents of the next generation are fighting to ensure that it never happens again. Millions of American families trust Home Depot with their homes. It's that legacy that makes it imperative to act now before the name Home Depot is permanently attached to the sterilization and mutilation of children. Children deserve to be protected, families deserve transparency, and your shareholders deserve to know what is being done with their investments.
Thank you. Our response to this proposal is set forth in our proxy statement. Your board recommends that you vote against this proposal. That concludes the shareholder proposal portion of today's meetings. If you have not already voted, you can do so now following the instructions on your screen. I will pause briefly so anyone voting can complete their ballot. The polls will be closing shortly. The polls are now closed. I will now ask Teresa to review the preliminary voting results.
Thank you, Ted. 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 auditor for fiscal 2026 has been ratified. The advisory say on pay proposal has been approved. The amendments to the company's certificate of incorporation to add officer exculpation and implement other miscellaneous amendments have been approved, and none of the shareholder proposals have been approved. Please note that votes cast at this meeting will be verified and tabulated by our Inspector of Elections, and the final results of the vote will be available in a Form 8-K that we will file with the SEC by May 28th.
This concludes our formal business, and I declare the meeting adjourned. Now we'll move to the question- and- answer session. I'll turn it over to Isabel before we start the Q&A.
Thank you, Ted. At this time, we'll take questions from our shareholders. If you logged on with your control number and would like to ask a question, please type it in the question box on your screen. Out of consideration for others and consistent with our meeting rules of conduct, please limit yourself to one question. As a reminder, we will only answer questions pertinent to meeting matters. Questions regarding personal matters, including those related to employment, product or service issues or suggestions for product innovations will not be answered at the meeting. Statements of advocacy that are not questions or do not relate to the business of the meeting will also not be addressed. If you have customer service issues you would like to discuss, we encourage you to reach out to our customer care department. Now let's move on to the questions.
We've received a number of similar questions, and in the interest of time and to answer as many questions as possible, we'll group the similar questions together. Our first question is, w hy does Home Depot allow for the sale and use of dangerous pesticides and steer customers to these rather than other products?
Thank you for your question. As a retailer, we offer our customers a number of product options and regularly partner with our suppliers to offer a range of solutions that would meet customers' expectations. I encourage you to visit the gardening section of our stores as well as homedepot.com to see all the product choices we provide our customers, including many organic options.
The next question is, w hy are your stores locking everything up behind wire mesh? I'm unable to look at product and read about the details without spending that time hunting a salesperson down to unlock the shelves. Why does it seem like every time I go into my local Home Depot, more shelves are being locked up?
It is unfortunate that we have to lock up merchandise. We've taken these measures to address theft as a result of organized retail crime, which has enabled us to ensure on-shelf availability. Product availability is paramount to the customer shopping experience, and these measures have contributed to a significant reduction in theft in stores in recent years. We're committed to providing an enjoyable shopping experience and a safe environment for our associates and customers.
Our next question is, are you okay with the stock price over the last five years? What are you going to do about it?
Our objectives to grow market share and deliver shareholder value are unchanged, and we are controlling what we can control, investing in the business and executing our strategy. Over the last few years, we have been operating the business through a challenging macro environment which has pressured home improvement demand. We believe the long-term fundamentals of home improvement are strong. We are pleased with our results as we continue to grow market share, and we are pleased that we've been able to grow the dividend every year.
The next question is, what training is Home Depot providing to managers, supervisors, and hourly associates regarding their rights in relation to ICE enforcement in and on Home Depot property?
I'll take that one. Thanks for your question. Let me first note that we're not notified that immigration enforcement activities are going to happen. We are not involved in the operations. As you know, we're required to follow all federal and local rules and regulations in every market where we operate. Our training for our associates with respect to this activity is, as always, with a focus on safety. For this reason, we ask our associates to report incidents immediately to store leadership and ask that they not engage with law enforcement active operations to ensure their own safety. Comprehensive training is available to our store managers. Other resources and support are available to all of our associates as needed.
Our next question is, do you share automatic license plate reader data with federal and/or local law enforcement?
Thank you for your question. We use ALPR technology to protect customer and associate safety and to detect and prevent organized retail crime. We do not grant access to our license plate readers to federal law enforcement, and we have not authorized any law enforcement agency other than local and state law enforcement agencies to access our ALPR data. If one of these authorized agencies shared ALPR data with an unauthorized third party, it would violate our data sharing agreements.
Our next question is, how is the Board selected? Are shareholders eligible?
I'll take that. Anyone is eligible to be nominated for our board. We have a terrific and engaged Board of Directors that I introduced earlier on the call. Their extensive qualifications and experience are described in detail in our proxy statement. At least once a year, and more frequently as needed, our Nominating and Corporate Governance Committee assesses the composition of our board. We aim to strike a balance between the knowledge and understanding of the business that comes from longer-term service on the Board with fresh ideas and perspectives that can come from adding new members. The Board and committee recognizes the importance of selecting directors from varied backgrounds with a wide array of personal and professional experiences to ensure that the Board has a breadth of perspectives that inform its decisions and facilitates effective oversight.
Our proxy statement also details the process by which shareholders can recommend candidates for consideration by our committee. All members of our board stand for election each year by our shareholders.
Our next question is, why does Home Depot give equity to compensate executives and directors?
Thank you for your question. The principal elements of our compensation program for executive officers are a combination of base salary, annual cash incentives, and long-term equity incentives. The long-term equity incentives put in place by our Leadership Development and Compensation Committee are selected to focus on pay for performance and to ensure alignment of management's business decisions with our shareholders' interests. This approach is consistent with the approach taken by public companies throughout the U.S. and is in line with market expectations. With respect to director compensation, our philosophy is to align the interests of our directors with the interests of our shareholders. We further this objective by granting annual equity awards to our directors. In total, our directors and executives own less than 0.1% of all outstanding shares, so their ownership really doesn't impact the voting power of our other shareholders.
More information about our equity compensation for directors and executive officers can be found in our proxy statement.
We have time for one more question. Our last question is, how is Home Depot doing given the macroeconomic pressures impacting home improvement demand?
There's certainly some pressures in our sector, but the team is performing incredibly well in a tougher market. We've posted growth in the United States the last six quarters, and that's because of a great combination of our merchants who are providing value to the customer every day and new innovative product and our store associates who always offer great customer service.
Unfortunately, that is all the time we have for today. If we were unable to answer your question, we encourage you to reach out to our Investor Relations department. Thank you for your attendance and participation.
The meeting has now concluded. Thank you for joining and have a pleasant day.