Good morning, and welcome to the Hershey Company's Annual Stockholder Meeting. I'm Michelle Buck, Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer of the Hershey Company, and I'm delighted to be here with you today. When I reflect on when we were together last year, there were a lot of unknowns and there was a lot of uncertainty related to the global pandemic. But a year later, I could not be more pleased with how the Hershey Company has met challenge and hardship with opportunity, resilience and compassion. We are an important part of comfort and connection in people's lives, and our beloved brands remain extremely relevant with consumers.
Our dedicated team brought relentless energy and passion each and every day to make moments of goodness for our consumers while protecting their well-being and the well-being of our communities and our planet. It has been a true honor to lead this team through a challenging yet rewarding year. While the vaccine rolls out across the globe, I am confident that we are in a position of strength to meet our consumers' needs and deliver strong results for our shareholders. On the call today are representatives from our independent auditors, Ernst and Young and the Inspector of Elections, American Election Services. We will now proceed with the meeting.
The Inspector of Elections has indicated that a quorum is present and this is a legally constituted stockholders' meeting. As required by Delaware law, the polls for voting are now open at 10:0:0:1 a. M. On May 17, 2021. If you sent in your proxy, voted via the Internet, phoned in your vote or voted electronically during today's meeting, your shares will be voted as you indicated.
Please submit your electronic vote if you have not yet voted and wish to do so at this time. Now turning to Slide 3. The first item of business is the election of directors to serve until the next annual meeting. All 12 individuals identified in this year's proxy statement have been nominated by the Board for the position of Director of the Hershey Company. As indicated on Slide 4, the nominated Directors are Pamela Arway, James Brown, Victor Crawford, Robert Dukowski, Mary Kay Haven, James Katzmann, Diane Cokin, Robert Malcolm, Anthony Palmer, Juan Perez, Wendy Schoepert and me, Michelle Buck.
As stockholders, we are most fortunate to have this group of experienced and capable people to serve as directors of the Hershey Company. Mr. Crawford and Mr. Dukowski have been nominated for election by the holders of common stock voting separately. The 10 remaining nominees have been nominated for election by both the common stock and Class B stock voting together.
The Board recommends that you vote for each of the Director nominees. The second item of business, as noted on Slide 6, is the ratification of the audit committee's appointment of Ernst and Young LLP as the company's independent auditors for 2021. The Board recommends that stockholders vote for this proposal. Representatives from Ernst and Young, our independent auditors, are participating on today's call. They have informed me that they do not intend to make a statement at today's meeting, but they will be available to respond to any submitted audit or accounting questions during the question and answer period.
The next item on the agenda, as noted on Slide 8, is a proposal to approve the compensation of the company's named executive officers. This item commonly referred to as say on pay is required under the rules adopted by the SEC in 2011, implementing provisions of the Dodd Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. Consistent with SEC rules, your vote is advisory and will not be binding. However, the outcome of the vote will be considered by the Board in future decisions affecting executive compensation as it deems appropriate. The Board recommends that stockholders vote for approval of the company's named executive officer compensation on a nonbinding advisory basis as described in the proxy statement.
We will now proceed with final voting on these items of business. If you have not yet done so, please submit your electronic vote now. The polls are now closed at 10:0:06 a. M. Actions now have been taken on all matters listed in the notice of annual meeting and proxy statement requiring stockholder action.
At the conclusion of the meeting, we will share the preliminary results of voting. Final results of voting will be available within 1 week on the company's website under the Investor Relations tab. That concludes the formal part of our meeting. Now on to our business review. Before we begin the business presentation, let me remind you that our presentation contains forward looking statements as detailed on Slide 12.
Please keep this in mind as we move through the business review, which starts on Slide 14. It's hard to convey in words what we have all experienced this past year. The COVID-nineteen pandemic has had a meaningful impact on the company from how we work to the way consumers interact with our brands to our relationships with customers and to the value that we deliver to shareholders. Let's take a look at a video that hopefully gives you a better feel for what this past year has been about at Hershey. Over the years, we've really focused on our company's purpose.
We all know how important that is for employees today. And our purpose is about making more moments of goodness. There are 4 strategies that enable us to do that. First of all, our beloved brands that bring smiles to consumers' faces every single day. Secondly, unmatched capabilities that enable us to deliver to delight our consumers and our customers better than many others in the marketplace.
Our people and our culture are strong and give us advantage, and we continuously focus on the long term to ensure that while we are delivering short term financial results, our eye is constantly focused on sustainable profitable growth. We have a portfolio, as I mentioned, of beloved brands. And if you think about that portfolio, it really ranges from sweet indulgence where we clearly have the bulk of our products and brands, but we have branched out to meet other incremental consumer occasions. And that includes in the savory space and also in better for you, 2 areas where we are underdeveloped and we have opportunity to capture incremental snacking occasions like we did with the acquisition of SkinnyPop. We continue to have very strong leadership positions.
We are number 1 in confection and then within confection, number 1 in chocolate and also mints. We have gained significant household penetration this past year during COVID in our baking and grocery portfolio, and we remain 1 in syrup and also in cocoa powder. And lastly, we have the 2 position in ready to eat popcorn with the acquisition of SkinnyPop. Our business model is really about the flywheel of investing in the core to grow the top line, to create cash that falls to the bottom line that enables us to return to shareholders and also reinvest in the future. We are big believers in marketing support with 1 of the highest marketing support as a percent of net sales in the industry.
We do that because our category is one of the most responsive and the combination of our scale brands, our high profit margins and the responsiveness of our category give us very strong ROIs. Innovation is another key component of our business model. This is a category that consumers love and they are constantly looking for variety and to try new things. But we also do a very good job of balancing between innovation and the core. Seasons, I mentioned earlier, is about onethree of our business.
Four big seasons that happen every year, we have strong household penetration and participation. And this is one of the ways that we create a real bond and connection with consumers because those seasons are about traditions and rituals in their lives. Price realization has been important to our top line growth historically, and it will continue to be going forward. Recently, we've expanded our pricing strategy to include not only list price increases, but also have a real focus on price pack architecture that allows us to meet new occasions and offer new value to consumers. We have very broad distribution, but we have continued to have opportunities to optimize at the SKU level.
And this past year was a great example of that where we had a pretty significant increase in our CMG item count. We have a tremendous opportunity to further diversify to capture profitable incremental snacking occasions and growth. Across our portfolio, we are primarily focused on sweet indulgence, though that is growing and evolving over time. One of the areas we have opportunity is in better for you. And within that, one space is within our own category.
If we look at many other indulgent categories in the marketplace, many of them have a greater proportion of better for you items. And we are excited to be expanding our Thins platform this year adding the KitKat brand with KitKat Thins. We are relaunching our sugar free platform, which was launched many years ago as a product for diabetics as 0 sugar and will have Hershey and Reese and some other varieties. And lastly, we will be launching organic versions of Hershey and Reese. Snacking beyond confection is another opportunity for us.
We have new campaigns on Skinny Pop and Pirates. We recently entered the nutrition bar category. So in addition to savory and better for you, we are playing in protein based snacking as well. And this past year, we launched a test market of snack cakes on the Reese's brand that enable us to capture the morning snacking occasion. Finally, we are focused on building a profitable and growing international business as that too offers incremental opportunity for us.
We are focused on India, Mexico and Canada as growth drivers, and we are using efficient distribution models in Europe, in Asia and also in China to continue to grow our business there. Let's take a look at some of the great campaigns that we have on our business. One of our beliefs is that we will win in the marketplace through building capabilities that give us competitive advantage. And over time, we have proven that to be true. We are well known as being number 1 on many key capabilities in our arsenal.
We are ranked number 1 in category management and customer service, in in store execution. Certainly, our media investment versus our peers is quite strong and we have continued to invest in data and analytics and continue to find new ways to use them to unlock value. One great example of this is what we did with some more this past spring. We were able to find a correlation between increase in COVID cases and consumption of some mores. Consumers were told they needed to stay home.
They were actually told as well that it was safer to be outdoors. And what more perfect occasion than to share s'mores with the family over the backyard barbecue. So we started to look at the trajectory of COVID cases, and then we were able to target our focus on s'mores into those specific areas where COVID cases were increasing. We increased our retail coverage. We directed our retail sales teams to really focus on some mores in those markets.
And we altered our media and increased media in those markets where some mores was starting to increase in consumption. And you can see here the great results that we were able to deliver as a result of this effort. And we continued to invest in other capabilities that will build future growth for us and strength in our foundation. Within the supply chain, as you all know, we are rebuilding our ERP platform and that will be a foundation for many of our capabilities to come. We are working on building more agility into our supply chain, so that we can more easily customize products for our retailers and consumers at margins that are neutral to our current margin structure.
And given the growth that we've had, we will invest in incremental capacity. From a customer perspective, we continue to invest in the capabilities we need to activate with our customers, including omni channel, which has been very important and will continue to be in the future. And lastly, we've advanced our pricing capabilities and also become even more targeted with our media. One of the special things about the Hershey Company is our people, our organization and our culture. We believe that culture is a competitive advantage.
I couldn't be more proud that our employee engagement is industry leading and it actually grew this past year even during COVID. Our culture is enabling business transformation across every aspect of the business, whether it's smarter capital allocation, learning from past mistakes to make even wiser decisions around M and A or other areas of the business, whether it's trying new models and continuing to advance our pricing capability or approach to innovation. Across the board, this culture is enabling us to adapt and evolve as is needed in the marketplace today. Every decision that we take for the company balances not only delivering short term financial results, but keeping an eye on the long term and making sure that we are focused on sustainable growth. We are proud that we continue to show up and be recognized from many different organizations for how we do business, not just the results that we deliver.
And we're proud that over this past year, when many of our communities were in need, we stepped up and we provided and contributed even more to those communities. Finally, we have always put a focus on ESG, and there is never a time that it was more important to us than it is today. We're thrilled with the progress that we have made across every aspect, whether it was achieving our goal that we set many years ago for 100% certified COCO that we reached this past year or whether it was doing a lot of hard work to build science based targets. One area I wanted to spend some time on this morning is our newly announced commitment to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions based on the latest climate science by partnering with the science based target initiative. This includes goals to reduce our Scope 1 and 2 emissions by more than 50% and our absolute Scope 3 emissions by 25 percent by 2,030.
Additionally, we set a new goal to reduce packaging weight by an additional £25,000,000 and target 100% of our plastic packaging to be recyclable, reusable or compostable by 2,030. Finally, we announced a new company wide deforestation policy to end deforestation across our supply chain by 2,030. This work is important, it's ambitious and it's what the world needs from leading companies like Hershey. We look forward to sharing more details with you in our 2020 sustainability report, which will be published on June 1. Shifting gears now, I'd like to spend a few minutes on our long term growth algorithm and the capital allocation framework that support delivering peerleading shareholder returns.
Alongside our strategy are our long term financial targets. These include 2% to 4% sales growth and earnings per share growth of 6% to 8%. I am pleased to say that we have consistently delivered against these targets even during this past very volatile year. And we are off to a great start in 2021 with double digit sales and earnings growth in the Q1. In 2020, we delivered 2% organic constant currency growth driven by pricing gains and volume growth in the North America segment leading to significant share gains in core U.
S. Confection. The strength and expansion of gross margin along with agile and disciplined approach to operating expenses drove adjusted earnings per share growth of over 8%. This balanced approach to the top and bottom line is what drives sustainable advantaged results. It also provides strong cash generation, which is a differentiator for us and fuels our capital allocation framework.
The first stop on the flywheel is to fund organic growth. This includes capital investment as well as investment behind our brands. Making investments in our brands and capabilities is an important part of our business model. After that, we have dividend and share buyback. Both ways, our financial strength directly benefit our shareholders.
The past 5 years, we have delivered an average dividend payout ratio of 52%, exceeding our commitment of 50%. This was complemented by our share repurchases, which returned over $1,000,000,000 over this same time period. While we put our share repurchase program on hold last year due to COVID-nineteen, our strong cash position and outlook enabled us to resume this program this year. Our strategy, financial objectives and capital allocation framework are critical to delivering peer leading shareholder returns in the long term and our results demonstrate this. With Hershey's total shareholder return exceeding the packaged foods industry and the S and P 500 in the past 10 years.
And today, our stock price is at an all time high. Despite the volatility over the past year, our performance remains steadfast. We navigated unique circumstances and delivered strong financial results and shareholder returns. I am confident in our strategies and in our team, and I remain optimistic that we will emerge out of the pandemic stronger than we entered it, perpetuating our peer leading shareholder returns into the future. We look forward to hearing your feedback and addressing your questions.
We will cover as many as we can during the time we have allotted. Responses to all pertinent questions received, including any that we may be unable to address today, will be posted on our website within a few days of the meeting. For those joining the meeting via webcast, you are able to submit questions through the meeting portal. For those of you joining via phone, you will be in a listen only mode and unable to ask questions during the meeting. We will now proceed with the question and answer part of the meeting.
During the question and answer part of the meeting, we will be addressing pre submitted questions as well as questions submitted electronically during today's meeting related to company operations and our efforts to improve overall performance. It is, however, for the directors and officers at this, the annual meeting of stockholders of the Hershey Company to deal with questions regarding the privately held Hershey Trust Company or Milton Hershey School, except for information already disclosed in the proxy statement or other filings with the SEC. We appreciate your understanding of this matter. Before we dive in, let me proactively address one that I know is top of mind for many of you. Similar to last year, we have created a special gift box with a mix of core items and new innovations that is available to you for free.
And we are offering our shareholders 20% off their online order and free shipping at shop. Hersheys.com between now June 30. For your online order, just enter the code ENJOY20, all caps for the enjoy, upon checkout. To receive your free gift box, please go to thehercheycompany.com/ asm2021 to enter your name, address and control number by May 24. This link can be found under the Investors tab.
Hi, Michelle. The first question that came in today is what is the long term strategy for mix of business between candy and better for you snack? Thanks, Lee. Well, first, let me make sure that I emphasize candy is and will remain our number one priority. This company is comprised of iconic candy brands and they are a key component of our future growth strategy.
And we will continue to invest in them because consumers love those great tasting indulgent snacks as part of what they like to consume. And as a reminder, because of our strength in confection, we are actually the number 2 player in snacking in the U. S, given the size of the confection category. It's our goal to capture more opportunity by expanding our portfolio of products to engage with our consumers who are snacking throughout the day and who may be looking for savory or better for you snacks as well as the current portfolio of products that we offer. We're really fortunate that we have the financial flexibility to not only be able to continue to invest in our candy brands as we always have and deliver strong returns to our shareholders at the same time, but to also invest in capturing these new incremental snacking occasions.
Our long term aspiration is for our snacking portfolio to represent approximately 15% to 20% of our global sales. Great. Thank you. Our next question, when will Hershey offer a greater selection of sugar free chocolate products? We know that there are a growing number of consumers who are looking for great tasting treats that have less sugar.
And as the number one U. S. Confection manufacturer, we are focused on leading the category in that space to make better for you candy more affordable and accessible for everybody. This year, for example, we relaunched and rebranded our sugar free offerings and we made more packaging sizes available to our customers as well. We've also invested in a startup company with innovations in plant based food ingredients that use rare sugar alternatives that would enable us to deliver great taste to the consumer.
And our R and D team has been working for years to create great tasting, breakthrough recipes that use kind of these rare and natural sugars that will enable us to continue to bring products to the market as consumers demand them, as our investment in some of these technologies helps to increase the availability of them and also to decrease them as an ingredient cost. And we'll have more to share on that as we move forward. The next question. According to the Philadelphia Inquirer, Pennsylvania is the launching pad for 14 legislative proposals to restrict or complicate access to voting, the most of any state. What are you doing to add your corporate voice to the efforts against these measures?
This is a very important issue and we have been spending a lot of time speaking with and listening to all of our stakeholders on a wide range of societal issues. For voting specifically, we recently joined a nonpartisan alliance along with many other companies to voice our support at the federal level for the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act. We like this act as it has bipartisan support, it is research backed and it aims to prevent voter abuses before they happen. We believe this bill will help ensure a healthy democracy, which we think is critical for the stability of society and for our economic system and in turn for our business. Our next question.
Can you comment on the 630:one CEO pay ratio and what you feel is an appropriate target for executive pay. I do not believe peer comparison of executive comparison is always appropriate if the corporate herd mentality is ever larger increasing ratios. We take many things into consideration as we look at compensation for all of our employees, including our executives. As a publicly traded company, our approach must be performance based, market competitive and align with both our short and long term goals. We believe our compensation practices are in the best interests of all of our key stakeholders, including shareholders and employees.
Our next question, how much chocolate is still made in Hershey? Now we get this question frequently. Nearly half of the chocolate and candy that we sell in the U. S. Is made right here in Hershey, PA at our 2 iconic plants right down the road from Milton Hershey's house.
Over 60% is made in the state of Pennsylvania and we manufacture approximately 85% of what is consumed in the U. S. Is actually made in the U. S. We're really proud that in the past 2 years, we've invested over $500,000,000 in capital expansion across our Pennsylvania facilities as well as our plants in Virginia, Illinois and Tennessee.
And these investments have created approximately 500 new jobs in the U. S. And we are continuing to hire as we speak. Great. Thank you, Michelle.
Next question. Please tell us management philosophy on returning cash to shareholders, dividend increases versus share buybacks. In addition, please tell us management's guidance on debt management. Sure. So our capital allocation priorities are centered around investing in the business and returning cash to shareholders.
And I would say that those priorities have been pretty consistent over the past several years. Our number one priority is always business investment and that includes things like adding capacity at our manufacturing plants or making investments in our digital capabilities, new capabilities that enable us to continue to win and thrive in the marketplace. Our dividend is a close number 2 in terms of priorities and we have paid that consecutively for over 90 years. We're committed to sharing at least 50% of our earnings with our shareholders. From a debt perspective, both our target and current levels of debt are below many of our peers, Yet we generate a lot of cash.
While we're willing to take on additional debt for strategic acquisitions, it is always with a clear path back to our target levels so that we can maintain our strong balance sheet and financial flexibility. One of the things that is great and I believe advantaged about this company is we are fortunate to have an advantaged financial structure that enables us to satisfy all of these needs and we still have additional cash to participate in share buyback to further bolster shareholder returns. Our next question, what percentage of your company products are labeled as fair trade? So I'd like to take that one I think in 2 parts. The first is specific to fair trade.
Our Barkfins brand, which we acquired several years ago, which is sold in the U. S. And Canada, is both fair trade and non GMO. Secondly, fair trade is one of the many different third party environmental and social standards used in responsible sourcing. And responsible sourcing is one of our key sustainability priorities.
So more than 60 percent of our ingredients are certified to 3rd party environmental and or social standards, including 100% of our cocoa. Representative standards include Fair Trade USA, Rainforest Alliance and the roundtable on sustainable palm oil and Bonsucro. Can you repeat how we can get our free box of chocolate and chocolate world discount? Absolutely. And I appreciate the enthusiasm and passion for our products.
So to receive your free gift box, you can go to thehersheycompany.com/ asm2021 to enter your name, address and control number and you need to do that by May 24. There is a link under the Investors tab. So the link can be found under the Investors tab in the website. We are also offering our shareholders 20% off their online order and free shipping at shop. Hersheys.com and that runs anytime between now June 30.
So for your online order, just enter the code ENJOY20 upon checkout. Thank you, Michelle. Our next question, my wife and I enthusiastically endorse your willingness to bring out new products using your existing brands, such as Reese's snack cakes and licensing your brands to prestigious companies such as Kraft Heinz Foods, Colliders and Flower Suze, Mrs. Freshley. What can we look forward to the rest of the year?
Well, I'm glad that you will enjoy our broad array of products. We have some exciting innovation this year. You can look forward to Kit Kat Fins, Kit Kat Mocha Flavor, Reese's Stuffed with Pretzels, Reese's Snack Cakes, Chocolaty PayDay, and organic versions of Hershey and Reese as well as more sizes of our 0 Sugar items. Many more branded goods are now produced using confectioners coating where palm oil replaces cocoa butter. This shift away from real chocolate produces bottom line numbers while diminishing the brand.
These products have no redeeming value other than to fill the belly. All while European manufacturers continue to grow by delivering quality real chocolate products. Why has management taken this approach to growth when the industry is under the intense scrutiny for aiding obesity? We try and stay very close to consumers and let wide variety of what consumers are looking for. We take great pride as well in being able to produce the highest of quality products at prices that are affordable to our consumers.
So we always start by sourcing the highest quality raw ingredients, including cocoa, dairy, sugar and all of our other key ingredients. And then we use the highest quality manufacturing processes to make sure that we have quality as well as safety. We do regular testing in all of our manufacturing facilities and also with consumers to make sure that our products taste as great as they ever have. All of our Hershey's, Reese's and Kit Kat chocolate products use cocoa butter. Turning to our next question.
Why don't you buy the cocoa farms from the the cocoa farms from the farmers? I think they mean, why don't you buy cocoa from the farmers? Then employees, the former owners as managers at a wage that is more than they make from their crop, insist that they employ adults and not children. We are take this very seriously and are very committed to responsibly sourcing our ingredients. And we have taken several steps to address child labor and to ensure that farmers earn a living wage.
We are one of the only chocolate manufacturers to achieve 100% certified cocoa And that means that farmers are receiving training and support to grow cocoa in a responsible sustainable manner while achieving higher yields that bolster their incomes and we are incredibly proud of the work that we did against that target that we set several years ago and that we delivered upon. Farmers who participate in certification also receive a premium price for their cocoa and that further supports their own families and also their communities. In addition, our commitment to have 100 percent of our cocoa from high risk countries direct sourced by 2025 is going to provide us with even greater visibility into our supply chain and it's going to enable us to expand all the great programs we have to more farmers and to more communities. We will also be able to have 100 percent of our farms covered by the child labor monitoring and remediation system and that is a leading practice in the industry that has been proven to reduce the instances of child labor by 30%. The next question, why set a range for targets of company performance?
Why would one want to limit growth just to meet a target? We are always looking to maximize our performance, but we want to do so in a sustainable way because we know that's important to our stakeholders. Our target ranges reflect the fact that the environment is volatile and certainly we've all seen that over the past 18 months and it's difficult to predict performance with just pinpoint accuracy. Our goal is to be as transparent as possible with investors on the range of possible outcomes that could occur, while simultaneously we always strive to deliver the strongest sustainable performance possible. Our next question is, will Hershey set a deadline by which the company will ensure that it is paying cocoa farmers on its supply chain of living income.
We recently published our living wage statement and as part of that we affirm that we continue to pay a living wage for all full time Hershey employees. We are also at the same time establishing new partnerships and programming in our cocoa supply chain that will allow us to directly measure farmer income on cocoa for goods in Ghana and Cote D'ivoire to better target our programs and investments focused on improving incomes. We're also strengthening the engagement that we've had in pre competitive platforms and multi stakeholder collaborations and that is working with the industry as well as governments and NGOs that we feel are critical to enable an environment ultimately needed to promote a living income for cocoa farmers. Consistent with our peer companies, we have not yet set a timeframe for achieving a living wage in cocoa. Thanks, Michelle.
The Chocolate World trolleys run on diesel fuel, emitting clouds of black smelly exhaust. It's very unpleasant whenever I'm behind 1 in and around Hershey. How about switching to a cleaner source of power? I hear there are electric vehicles now. Well, thank you very much for that suggestion.
The trolleys are actually owned and the trolleys are actually owned and operated by a very valued 3rd party partner that we work with to help share the wonderment of Hershey's chocolate via chocolate world. We have many planning sessions with them and at one of those future planning sessions, we will make sure that we discuss this idea. Thank you so much for the suggestion. In the Hershey archive, there is a memo written by Milton Hershey entitled Teamwork Sells the Hershey Idea. Mr.
Hershey goes on to state, the public and our customers regard all our enterprises as one institution. This place is a real responsibility on all enterprises alike because any lack of courtesy or efficiency in any one enterprise almost cocoa farmers, the growers and warehouse distributors across West Africa providing the raw material to make the chocolate, has Hershey thought about assisting the COVAX effort, the COVID-nineteen vaccine's global access by supporting clinics and personnel providing outreach to get people vaccinated to stop the spread. We have been heavily involved in partnering with public and private institutions to set up direct access to the vaccine. We think this is very important to act as a facilitator and an enabler. In the U.
S, we have dedicated clinics at all of our facilities. And in other countries around the world, we are partnering with governments to set up vaccine clinics and to facilitate supply to our people. We are waiving costs for both tests and vaccines, providing time off to our employees to get vaccinated, procuring equipment and even finding doctors for people. And we're also giving money to local vaccine efforts and food banks in places like India, Brazil and Mexico, where we have business. In addition, we've also supplied oxygen to countries in need like India and Brazil.
We remain committed to helping in this area to support our employees across the globe and doing everything that we can to provide access to vaccines to stop the spread. Our next question, as COVID-nineteen becomes better managed and we look forward to the end of the pandemic, We appreciate all the Hershey employees, many essential who worked tirelessly maintaining the production to support our quarantine baking. Thank you. As you reflect on the past year, are there takeaways or opportunities Hershey learned that would influence future strategies, operations and success? Well, first of all, let me just say thank you for recognizing the Hershey employees and their incredibly hard and relentless work during this difficult time.
I too am incredibly proud of them. As I think back on the last 15 months, certainly it's been a very challenging time and a tragedy relative to the impact on society and humans with the illness. But some of the takeaways for us during COVID-nineteen are that through this tragedy, we pulled together and banded together as an organization and we're forced to be even better. It required us to be even more agile and that enabled us to be able to pivot as the environment and our consumers changed and to make decisions even more quickly than before. This was really a key enabler for us this past year and something frankly that we want to maintain into the future as we know that the world continues to change even more rapidly each and every year.
During this time, one example of what we were able to do was to shift our focus across our product portfolio to the products that consumers needed the most. Whether it was our chocolate products for consumers to enjoy at home, for example, in backyard s'mores occasion as the government, the CDC were telling people stay at home, stay with your close family. Many people just opened up the fire pit in their backyard and we played an important role there. Or whether it's treats for Easter baskets or trick or treating as consumers were looking for a little bit of normalcy in their lives, especially for their kids. We demonstrated that we could quickly adapt our manufacturing capabilities to both keep our workers safe and also continue to provide the highest quality chocolate for our consumers when they needed it most.
The other thing that really came through here was the emotional connectivity of our brands. This has always been important not only do our products taste great, but they usually pay a special time, a special part in consumers' lives, but it was even more so during COVID and we'll continue to leverage that as we move forward. And then finally, I would say that we also built new capabilities for flexible work arrangements, given that many of us had to work remotely. And some elements of that will stay going forward. And I think that's going to give us an even greater ability to provide our employees with more balance, balance that they really want and need and also will enable us to attract new and different diverse talent.
Great. 3 years ago, under the Alien Tort Statute, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against 2 multinational corporations producing chocolate, finding grounds for their corporate liability and role in aiding and abetting child slavery and forced labor in the Ivory Coast. The Supreme Court has heard the case and a decision should be forthcoming. While aware of Hershey's statement against slavery and human trafficking and the code of conduct and acknowledging Hershey was not named in the suit, has this ongoing legal action affected how Hershey operates, particularly in securing cocoa access from West Africa? When Hershey purchases the cocoa, are you able to trace the inventory back to the original farm?
Thank you for the question. So first of all, providing needed services in cocoa communities has been and will continue to be a priority, irrespective of any lawsuit. In 2020, we announced 3 new cocoa related ambitions for 2025. First, we aim to achieve 100% direct sourced cocoa from known farmer groups via our suppliers in West Africa. This means that we will know the communities and the farmers who source our cocoa from these regions.
Additionally, we have committed to map 100% of Hershey supplied farms in West Africa, ensuring that we have accurate real time monitoring through geospatial satellites. And finally, we've committed to scale the child laboring monitoring and remediation system to 100% of our farms in West Africa. These initiatives will give us a clearer line of sight into where our cocoa is grown and how it was produced. And that will be a level of transparency that frankly we've not had before. These investments will allow for a more data driven and targeted approach to really provide holistic support to farmers and their families and scale up programs and instances of child labor.
As of 2020, about 60% of our volume originating from West Africa was sourced directly through partnerships with our suppliers and that puts us well on our way to achieving this new 2025 commitment. Thank you. Our next question, are there plans for a stock split? We are very pleased with the gains we've seen in our stock price and the value that it's delivered to our shareholders. And we appreciate the question and the concern and we've looked into the possibility of a split numerous times and we always relook it to make sure it's the right approach.
But we have no plans to split at this time, but we will continue to monitor and evaluate. Will next year's annual meeting be both virtual and in person? As volatile as the environment has been, we have not yet made a decision on the format for next year's meeting. We know that many of our shareholders appreciate the opportunity to visit Hershey for our meeting. And we've also though received a lot of positive feedback on virtual format because it lets more of our shareholders have an opportunity to participate.
So please reach out to our Investor Relations team to share your thoughts because we really do want to hear from all of you so that we can incorporate your feedback as we make our decision on next year. We have time for just one more question. Since Chapa World is open, can local stockholders shop there and receive a discount rather than shopping online? Yes, but with limited capacity due to COVID-nineteen. Chocolate World manages capacity with free timed ticketed admissions.
Again, this is free, but their timing when you can come in to ensure guest and employee safety. So please visit their website, which is https https:tickets. Hersheys.com/mainstore to schedule your visit. To receive a stockholder discount on your merchandise, please just bring evidence that you're a shareholder such as your proxy card or an account statement to Chocolate World. Because of limited capacity, the discount will be offered from May 17 through June 30.
All right. This concludes the question and answer portion of our meeting. As a reminder, all questions and answers, including those that we were unable to get to during the live meeting today, will be posted on our Investor Relations Web site no later than May 24. We will now proceed with the voting results. Holders of the common stock voting separately as a class cast at least 97,345,000 votes in favor of Mr.
Crawford and Mr. Dukowski as nominees for Director. Holders of the common stock and Class B common stock voting together cast at least 705,112,000 votes in favor of each of the other 10 nominees for director, thereby electing the 12 nominees whose names were listed in the proxy statement as Directors for the coming year. Holders of the common stock and Class B common stock voting together ratified the appointment of Ernst and Young LLP as independent auditors for 2021. Stockholders cast at least 725,209 1,000 votes for the appointment, 576,900 votes against the appointment and abstained from casting at least 231,000 votes on the appointment.
Holders of the common stock and Class B common stock voting together approved the named executive officer compensation on a non binding advisory basis. Stockholders cast at least 698,348,000 votes for the proposal, 10,469,000 votes against the proposal and abstained from casting at least 563 votes on the proposal. This concludes our meeting. On behalf of your Board of Directors, thank you very much for your continued support of The Hershey Company and our mutual goal of building stockholder value over the long term. We are adjourned.
Thank you very much. The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.