Good morning and welcome to the 2026 Annual Stockholder Meeting for Ingredion Incorporated. I would now like to turn the call over to James Zallie, Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer, and Director of Ingredion Incorporated. Please go ahead.
Thank you, operator, and good morning, everyone. I am Jim Zallie, Ingredion's Chairman of the Board, President, and CEO. I want to welcome everyone to Ingredion Incorporated's 2026 Annual Stockholder Meeting. We appreciate your attendance, your interest in, and most importantly, your support of Ingredion. I hereby call this meeting to order pursuant to the company's bylaws and Delaware law. We decided to hold the 2026 annual meeting in a virtual format as we believe it facilitates stockholder access by enabling stockholders to participate equally from any location around the world. I am joined today by my fellow presenter, Tanya Jaeger de Foras, Ingredion's Senior Vice President, Chief Legal Officer, Corporate Secretary, and Chief Compliance Officer. In addition to Tanya, we are joined today at today's meeting by Vicki Reich, our Lead Director, and other members of our Board of Directors and our executive leadership team.
Also present today is a representative of Broadridge Financial Solutions, who is the meeting's Inspector of Election. The agenda for this meeting is presently on the screen. It is also available to view at any time through the appropriate link on the virtual annual meeting website. Our rules of meeting conduct, 2025 annual statement, and our 2026 proxy are also available on the website. In addition, you may use the website to submit questions to Ingredion and to vote. As a general housekeeping matter, during this meeting, when I refer to people attending this meeting as a stockholder, it means stockholders that have logged in to the virtual meeting website using their 16-digit control number. Tanya, could you please update us as to whether a quorum is present at this meeting and provide us with additional background on the procedures for this meeting?
Thank you, Jim. Based on the information provided to me by our Inspector of Elections, there were a total of 63,054,170 shares of common stock outstanding on March 23, 2026, which was the record date for this meeting. The holders of at least 55,347,290 shares of common stock or 87.8% of the voting power of the outstanding shares are present by proxy or in person at this meeting. Accordingly, we have a quorum of stockholders in attendance for this meeting. With respect to voting procedures, many stockholders have voted in advance of this meeting. Stockholders who have already voted do not need to take further action with respect to any of the matters to be voted on today. Your vote has already been counted.
To the extent described in our 2026 proxy statement, people attending this meeting as a stockholder may vote or change their vote during this meeting using the virtual annual meeting website. In addition, people attending this meeting as a stockholder may ask questions during this meeting. We will address stockholder questions that are relevant to the meeting business and that comply with the rules of meeting conduct. We will post a summary of all questions and answers relating to the annual meeting on the Ingredion Investor Relations website. Questions about specific agenda items should be submitted while the relevant item is under consideration. For example, if you have a question about Proposal one on the meeting agenda, the time to ask that question would be while Proposal one is being discussed.
In addition, once voting has closed and the business of the annual meeting has concluded, there will be a general question and answer session. Now that we've covered the introductory topics, I'd like to turn the meeting back over to Jim.
Thank you, Tanya. I hereby declare the polls to be open. The polls will close immediately prior to the adjournment of this meeting. Tanya, please take us through the items on the meeting agenda.
Thank you, Jim. The first item of business is the election of directors. Each of the 11 people named in the 2026 proxy statement has been nominated to serve as a director to hold office for a term to expire in May 2027 or until their respective successor has been elected and qualified.
Thank you. If you are attending this meeting as a stockholder and would like to discuss something related to Proposal one, please submit your question now via the virtual annual meeting website. Having received no questions, the discussion regarding director nominees is over. Let's move on to Proposal two.
The second item of business is the advisory vote to approve the compensation of the company's named executive officers, as disclosed in the company's 2026 proxy statement.
Thank you. If you are attending this meeting as a stockholder and would like to discuss something related to Proposal two, please submit your question now via the virtual annual meeting website. Having received no questions, the discussion regarding the advisory say on pay vote is over. Let's move on to Proposal three.
The final item of business is the ratification of the appointment of KPMG LLP as the independent registered public accounting firm of Ingredion for the fiscal year ending December 31, 2026. A representative of KPMG is in attendance at this meeting and will be available to answer questions during the general question and answer period.
Thank you. If you are attending this meeting as a stockholder and would like to discuss something related to Proposal three, please submit your question now via the virtual annual meeting website. Having received no questions, the discussion regarding the ratification of KPMG's appointment is over, and let's move on to voting. Stockholders who have already voted do not need to take any further action with respect to any of the matters to be voted on today. Your vote has already been counted. If any person attending this meeting as a stockholder wishes to vote or to change a prior vote to the extent permitted as described in our 2026 proxy statement, please do so now. Let us proceed to the Inspector of Elections preliminary report. Any proper votes submitted before the polls close that are not reflected in the preliminary report will be included in the inspector's final report.
Tanya, could you please present the preliminary report from the Inspector of Election?
Jim, the Inspector of Election has determined that more than a majority of the votes cast were in favor of the election of each of the 11 director nominees named in our 2026 proxy statement. More than a majority of shares present by proxy or in person at this meeting were cast in favor of the say on pay advisory vote and the ratification of KPMG as the company's independent registered public accounting firm for the 2026 fiscal year.
Thank you, Tanya. Based on the Inspector of Election's preliminary report, I hereby declare that all 3 agenda items have passed. Final voting results will be reported in a Form 8-K filed with the SEC. With respect to any other business to be brought before this meeting, I note that the applicable deadlines have passed and that no other items of business were proposed to be discussed at this meeting. This concludes the business of the annual meeting, and I hereby declare the polls to be closed. The annual stockholder meeting is hereby adjourned. At this time, I would be pleased to take your general questions, if there are any. If you are attending this meeting as a stockholder, please submit any questions now via the virtual annual meeting website.
Jim, we've received some questions. The first one is, why do you not release a press release when you have new quarterly and yearly earnings?
We do in fact release a press release at every quarterly earnings cycle, along with our quarterly earnings. To obtain those press releases, you can find them on our website at ir.ingredionincorporated.com.
Okay, we have another question. How has the GLP-1 market affected Ingredion?
At this stage, we see minimal short-term direct impact on our business and, given our focus on healthful solutions, meaningful long-term opportunity. One of the things I could highlight is this past quarter, we highlighted the greater than 50% growth and high single-digit growth for our protein fortification and sugar reduction portfolio, respectively. One of the categories that is also benefiting from the use by GLP-1 dieters is the dairy category that is being protein fortified, and Ingredion's texturizers have a very big presence in the dairy category. It's a category that we are watching closely, or the impact of these medications we're watching closely as they continue to gain increased adoption. We look at it in a very balanced way from a standpoint of our focus on healthful solutions and the opportunities that it affords for dieters that are on these medications.
Okay. The last question we received. With geopolitics, how is the company affected? Have emerging markets outside these areas created opportunity for Ingredion for the next several years?
One of the things that we indicated on the last earnings call is that we are monitoring the impacts of the conflict in the Middle East on energy prices and the direct impacts and the indirect impacts that's going to have. We have taken a view on that into our full-year earnings guidance, and we also are working to mitigate any direct impacts through price increases this year, and that is also factored into our guidance. One of the things that I could say about geopolitics this year with the conflict in the Middle East, somewhat analogous to the impact of tariffs last year, is that we have demonstrated repeatedly that we operate with agility and with resilience to be able to navigate these headwinds.
We did so last year with tariffs with a low single-digit million-dollar increase in tariffs net that we were able to offset, and we anticipate to be able to navigate this year's geopolitics in the same way. The only other thing that I would say is that coming through the pandemic, we localized and regionalized our supply chain. We're much less vulnerable to disruptions supply chain wise from geopolitical shocks. The resiliency we've built into our supply chain, I think, positions us very well.
Those are all the questions we've received.
If there are no further questions, I want to thank everybody for attending today's annual stockholder meeting, and I want to thank you for your continued support of Ingredion. Thank you very much.
Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes the meeting. You may now disconnect.