Hello, and welcome everyone to Kraft Heinz 2025 Annual Stockholder Meeting. I am Carlos Abrams-Rivera, CEO and member of our Board of Directors. On behalf of the nearly 36,000 Kraft Heinz employees around the world and our Board of Directors, we thank you for joining us today. As Chairperson of this meeting, I hereby call the meeting to order and appoint Angel Willis as Secretary. The members of our Board of Directors are present at the meeting today. Peter Fritz has been appointed as Inspector of Election and is also present at today's meeting. Mike Nelson from PricewaterhouseCoopers, our independent auditor, is also here with us. During today's meeting, we will make some forward-looking statements. This is a standard reminder that actual results can differ materially from the results discussed today.
You should refer to the cautionary statements and other information included in our 2024 Annual Report, our 2025 First Quarter 10-Q, and our subsequent filings with the SEC. Before we dive into the business of the day, I think it's important to ground us in our purpose and the role we play in people's lives, a privilege and responsibility we don't take lightly. At our core, we are an agricultural company. Whether it's cucumbers in Ohio, potatoes in Idaho, or tomatoes in California, our ingredients are grown in local communities and crafted by employees who share our passion for making high-quality, great-tasting food that is both affordable and accessible. This is why we exist, and it's more important than ever. We know that in moments of uncertainty, our brands provide comfort and connection, and we are proud to be a trusted partner in kitchens everywhere.
What brings us together today is that we all believe that, in the value we bring to consumers, to communities, and to you, our stockholders. Today, I want to share why I believe in Kraft Heinz and why I'm more confident than ever in our future. As I said previously, at our core, we are an agricultural company. Our roots are in agriculture. H.J. Heinz grew his first product, horseradish, on a patch of garden his father gave him more than 150 years ago. Today, whether it's in the U.S., Spain, or Brazil, the vast majority of our products are locally grown, sourced, and sold. And that's an advantage for us. It means better quality, and it means we're less exposed to trade tensions. As an agricultural company, we also understand and invest in sustainable farming practices that fuel our obsession with quality.
For example, we are obsessed over the seeds for our tomatoes, so we get the perfect red Heinz Ketchup in every batch with no artificial colors. In fact, there have never been artificial colors or dyes in the 150-plus years we've been making our iconic Heinz Ketchup. We are grateful for our partnership with farmers around the world. The irresistible taste and quality of product starts with them, and we are fortunate to work with the best. Second, we are focused on the right driver for long-term sustainable growth, and we are making progress. Like the rest of our industry, we're facing market pressures. Even so, we are making meaningful progress, especially within our three strategic pillars: North America Retail, Global Away From Home, and Emerging Markets. Let's start with Emerging Markets.
Our growth drivers for these segments are twofold: leveraging the strong brand equity of Heinz and expanded distribution through our go-to-market model. Our teams are accelerating these drivers creatively and effectively, and it's yielding results. We have grown top line for the last three straight. Powered by Heinz, we grew at a 7% CAGR from 2022 to 2024, and we have increased distribution points by nearly 175,000 since implementing our go-to-market model. While the U.S. away from home market is experiencing a slowdown as consumers pull back on spending, we are seeing progress across each aspect of our strategy: expand our footprint, grow beyond ketchup, and excel in our go-to-market approach. We've had some exciting wins recently, including our partnership with the Chicago Cubs, which made Heinz the official condiment of Wrigley Field, and a new global contract with Hilton Hotels.
Our Philadelphia Cream Cheese brand continues to grow thanks to partnerships with Crumbl and Dunkin', and our go-to-market approach is working. From 2021 to 2024, we have consistently grown share in the U.S., and in Q1 of this year, we added 16,000 new distribution points globally. Now, for North America Retail, we have longer to go in our journey, but we're moving in the right direction. We are prioritizing the four brands experiencing the most top line pressures: Lunchables, Capri Sun, Kraft Mac & Cheese, and Kraft Mayo, and have developed strategic plans to drive improvements. For Lunchables, we just launched an exciting new innovation with PB&J, and we are planning our biggest fall season campaign ever. Capri Sun is already seeing a turnaround. We are winning on taste, and our new single-serve bottles are performing significantly better than expected.
Kraft Mac & Cheese is serving up new flavors and more cheese in every box. We're also rolling out a new value size that can feed a family of five for less than $2. I'm updating packaging to highlight the fact that Kraft Mac & Cheese has been made with no artificial flavor, preservative, or dyes since 2016. Finally, Kraft Mayo is building on the great taste by investing in packaging and price. These plans are rooted in a Brand Growth System, our proprietary framework for growing our brands. Through our Brand Growth System, we gather consumer insights to identify opportunities across brand resonance, product, and packaging value and omnichannel execution. The insights help us make smarter investments in our products and marketing to drive long-term sustainable growth. Through our agile ways of working, we are able to act on those insights at record speed.
In fact, we are in the process of scaling the Brand Growth System to cover approximately 40% of sales by the end of 2025 to deliver more value faster for consumers. We have more work to do. I am happy with the progress we're seeing across all three growth pillars and look forward to sharing more as we continue through 2025. Third, we are growing our business by investing back in our brands. We are home to more than 200 iconic, beloved brands, and those brands are the bedrock of our business. Informed by our Brand Growth System, we're making strategic investments in marketing and innovation to further strengthen the relevance and resonance of our brands with consumers now and in the future. Our marketing teams are moving at the speed of culture, and they are ensuring our brands are at the center of social and cultural conversations.
We dropped our collaboration with award-winning music producer Mustard during this year's Grammy Award, and we brought our beloved brands, including the Heinz Wiener Dogs and the Kool-Aid Man, to life in Instacart's first-ever Super Bowl campaign. Ore-Ida, that took over March Madness with a campaign featuring the great-grandson of the inventor of tater tots and Ore-Ida founder, who was playing in the tournament. Our Tater Clock wasn't just clever. The campaign drove 3 billion earned media impressions and delivered a 9% regional sales lift. In 2024, we took home 22 awards, the most ever for Kraft Heinz, at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity. We also won our very first Cannes Grand Prix award for the sustained success of the captivating "It Has to Be Heinz" campaign over the last five years.
As you can see, by combining data-driven insights and creative excellence, we are building our brands and sparking new consumers' connections at the speed of culture. Next, we're delivering delicious choices for all consumers and all lifestyles. We have some of the world's top food scientists and nutritionists, and they're using all the tools of a company our size and scale to drive innovation for consumers. With more than 200 brands and thousands of SKUs, we offer products from every lifestyle and price point. Whether that's gluten-free options, dairy-free Jell-O pudding made with oat milk, or whole-grain Kraft Mac & Cheese, we are innovating to address consumers' preferences and evolving our portfolio to meet the moment. Over the past five years, we have labored more than 1,000 recipe changes to improve the nutrition of our products.
Today, we offer more than 20 varieties of Heinz tomato ketchup, including zero sugar, no salt added, and organic with six simple ingredients. We are also engaging in conversation about how, as an industry, we can make food more nutritious and do so more sustainably. While we're innovating and evolving, our focus on quality is unwavering. Our founders, James Kraft and Henry Heinz, each got their start by selling a single product. For Kraft, it was cheese in Chicago in the early 1900s. For Heinz, it was grated horseradish in Pittsburgh in 1869. Their legacy, and our legacy, is the quality of our food, and that will never change. Additionally, our strong balance sheet gives us options. I am very proud that Kraft Heinz has built a very strong balance sheet over the past five years.
We accomplished this by aligning our short and long-term incentive with shareholder value creation, maintaining a very disciplined capital allocation policy, and driving strong initiatives to improve working capital and CapEx return. Our strong balance sheet allows us to reinvest in our business while protecting profitability. In this climate, more than ever, optionality and flexibility are an important and differentiating advantage for us. Finally, our culture and agility set us apart. Our culture is a competitive advantage for us, especially when the business is facing pressure. That's because of the ownership mentality that defines our culture and attracts top talent. We all feel personally accountable for results and, at the same time, investing in our collective success. That combination of meritocracy and belonging is what makes working at Kraft Heinz so special.
In fact, in 2024, we achieved our highest employee engagement scores ever with both salary and hourly employees, and we were certified as a great place to work in 22 countries around the world. I'm also proud that we have been named to Fast Company's annual list of the world's most innovative companies for the third year, this time in the manufacturing category. This is a testament to our manufacturing and operations colleagues who bring our iconic brands to consumers each and every day, and I couldn't be more grateful for their passion and commitment. I appreciate these external recognitions. What means the most to me is the pride that I see from our employees at the plant, proudly wrapping swag for the brands they produce when they come to work and the satisfaction they show when serving our products to their own families.
It's the joy on the faces of the children who visit the office for Family Day, taking a turn on the Kraft Mac & Cheese noodle swing and looking at mom or dad with new appreciation because they make their favorite mac and cheese, and Heinz Ketchup, and Lunchables, and Jet-Puffed marshmallows, and Kool-Aid. At the end of the day, culture is about people, and it's about teamwork, and I couldn't be prouder to be part of this team. Last year, we introduced a new dream: to be the leader in elevating and creating food that makes you feel good. As I stand here today, I want to build that dream because it feels good food for all.
We make great-tasting food from quality ingredients consumers can afford for every lifestyle and every occasion, available anywhere and everywhere, and it's about using our size and scale and our roots in agriculture company to advance the industry. I'm incredibly proud of our company's resilience and obsession with progress and the contribution of our team members around the world in leading the future of food. Our food brings people together, it solves real challenges for busy consumers, and it brings smiles to kids and families. When we talk about feel-good food, we mean for the body and the soul, and I'm proud that at this moment, we are feeding both. With that, I'll hand it over to Angel for the formal business portion of the meeting. Thank you for your continued confidence in Kraft Heinz. Thank you, Carlos.
I'm Angel Willis, Global General Counsel and Corporate Affairs Officer, and I'm very honored to be here today. We have designed the format of this virtual meeting to provide our stockholders with the same rights and opportunities to participate as they would have at an in-person meeting. The agenda and rules of procedure for today's meeting are available under Meeting Materials at the bottom of your screen. To conduct an orderly meeting, we ask that participants abide by these rules. As stated in the rules of procedure, questions submitted in the field provided on the virtual meeting website will be addressed during the Q&A session. I have an affidavit of mailing from Broadridge Financial Solutions certifying that notice of this meeting was duly given. All stockholders of record at the close of business on March 10th, 2025, are entitled to vote at the annual meeting.
I am also pleased to report that I've been informed by the inspector of election that approximately 86% of all of the shares entitled to vote at this meeting are represented by proxy or in attendance. The meeting is duly convened, and the quorum is present. Now, let's turn to the formal items of business. The polls are now open and will remain open until all items of business have been presented and discussed. If you've already voted, you do not need to take further action. If you've not voted, or if you already voted and you'd like to change your vote, you can access the meeting using your control number, and you can use the Vote Here button at the bottom of your screen to submit your vote online.
The first item is the election of directors to serve until the 2026 annual meeting of the stockholders or until his or her successor has been duly elected and qualified. The nominees who appear in our biographies appear in our proxy statement are Carlos Abrams-Rivera, Humberto P. Alfonso, John T. Cahill, Lori Dickerson Fouché, Diane Gherson, Timothy Kenesey, Alicia Knapp, Elio Leoni Sceti, James Park, Miguel Patricio, John C. Pope, and Debbie Soo. Our board recommends a vote for each of the nominees for a director. The second item is the advisory vote on executive compensation for our named executive officers as disclosed in our proxy statement. Our board recommends a vote for the advisory resolution to approve executive compensation. The third item is the ratification of the appointment of PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP as our independent auditors for 2025.
Our Board and Audit Committee recommend a vote for the ratification of the appointment of PwC as Kraft Heinz independent auditor for 2025. The fourth item is a stockholder proposal requesting the company to issue a report by December 2025 providing the factual basis for legitimacy of all recyclable claims made on plastic packaging. This proposal was submitted by Jan Dell of The Last Beach Cleanup. Ms. Dell, you will have two minutes to present the proposal. You may unmute your line and begin. Thank you, and good morning from California. My name is Jan Dell, and I am an individual investor and chemical engineer who has held Kraft Heinz stock for about 25 years.
To protect shareholder returns, this resolution seeks to prevent the company from squandering company funds on wasteful environmental, social, and governance (ESG) programs that deceive consumers, create legal risks, and do nothing to help the environment. Kraft Heinz pays for the use of arguably false and illegal recyclable labels from a second party called How2Recycle, thereby creating legal risks while the company remains liable for false recyclable labels on products. Kraft Heinz also sponsors a plastics industry store drop-off recycling directory for plastic bags that has been exposed by ABC News and Bloomberg to deceive consumers because collected plastic waste is sent to landfills, incinerators, and dumps in Asia. Just last month, I put trackers in two store drop-off bins that are on the directory that Kraft Heinz sponsors in San Clemente and Dana Point, California.
Within days, both plastic bags were trucked to a landfill, not to a recycling factory. Unfortunately, this shareholder resolution may not receive high votes because shareholders may view it as a wasteful ESG effort. It is actually the opposite. This resolution objects to Kraft Heinz wasting corporate funds on fake ESG efforts that deceive consumers and expose the company to brand reputation, legal, and financial risks. There has been significant media coverage on the 40-year fraud of plastic recycling promoted by the plastics industry. Unfortunately, Kraft Heinz has sided with big plastics and promotes many of the same false claims directly and through many of the same paid front groups. I agree consumers want to buy good food products at a good price. They don't want to be lied to. I urge other shareholders to vote for truth and transparency and to end wasteful, fake ESG programs at Kraft Heinz.
Thank you. Thank you. As further detailed in the company's statement in opposition to this proposal in the Proxy Statement, the board believes our current efforts meet the aims of the proposal and have a significant impact on improving and reducing our packaging while reducing risks for the company. We are committed to recycling and to providing consumers with clear information to help increase recycling rates as much as possible while also continuing to evolve within a dynamic and rapidly evolving recycling and regulatory landscape. We have stringent internal measures designed to ensure that on-pack claims are not misleading to consumers, and our on-pack recycling labeling is reviewed utilizing industry guidance. The board believes the report requested by the proponent would divert management's time and Kraft Heinz resources without providing meaningful benefit to the company or our stockholders. For these reasons, the board recommends a vote against the proposal.
The fifth item is a stockholder proposal requesting the company to issue a report describing how the company could address flexible plastic packaging in alignment with the findings of The Pew Charitable Trusts study Breaking the Plastic Wave or otherwise authoritative sources to reduce its contribution to plastic pollution. This proposal is submitted by As You Sow on behalf of Rodger De Freitas Trust. Ms. Kelly McBee, Circular Economy Manager, will present the proposal. Ms. McBee, you will have two minutes to present the proposal. You may unmute your line and begin. Thank you for the opportunity to present this proposal. I'm Kelly McBee with As You Sow, representing the filer of proposal number five, which asks our company to prepare for risks faced by plastic pollution by addressing a particularly pervasive form of packaging, flexibles.
Flexible packaging, such as that used in our Oscar Mayer and Capri Sun brands, among others, makes up the majority of our company's plastic packaging currently reported as unrecyclable, relegating a significant portion of our packaging to landfill and plastic pollution. Collectively, corporations like Kraft Heinz face an annual financial risk of approximately $100 billion should global governments continue the growing policy trend of holding corporations financially accountable for packaging at its end of life, a policy known as extended producer responsibility, or EPR. The first statewide EPR laws have recently been adopted in five U.S. states, with rapid and ongoing additional legislative introductions throughout the country. Under new EPR regulations, flexible plastic packaging faces some of the greatest fees to producer companies compared to their recyclable or reusable packaging alternatives.
In addition to new EPR laws, the forthcoming international adoption of a global plastics treaty is anticipated to affect the utilization and costs of all plastic, but especially that which is unrecyclable and most prone to pollution, flexibles. Adoption of the report requested in this proposal would prepare our company for sweeping EPR laws and a global plastics treaty. Please support proposal five. Thank you. Thank you. The board believes that considering our current initiatives to mitigate the environmental concerns associated with flexible plastic packaging, the adoption of the shareholder proposal would divert management's time and Kraft Heinz resources without providing meaningful benefits to the company or our stockholders. For these reasons, the board recommends a vote against the proposal.
The sixth item is a stockholder proposal requesting the board to adopt a policy and amend the company's bylaws as necessary to require the board chair position to be held by an independent director. This proposal was submitted by The Accountability Board. Mr. Matt Prescott, President and Chief Operating Officer, will present the proposal. Mr. Prescott, you will have two minutes to present the proposal. You may unmute your line and begin. Thanks so much. And I'll keep this very brief for the sake of everyone's time this morning and just say that we think the proposal speaks for itself given the flurry of changes to the board's leadership structure in recent years. So I'll just refer folks to the proxy materials for more information.
I do also just want to add quickly, say thank you to the board for considering the proposal, although we obviously didn't end up seeing eye to eye on it. And I just want to add finally that both Glass Lewis and Institutional Shareholder Services are supporting the proposal and recommending that shareholders vote in its favor. So I'll leave it there. Thanks, everyone. Have a great day. Thank you, Mr. Prescott. The board believes that it is in the best interest of the company and our stockholders to allow the board to retain the flexibility to select the leadership structure that's best suited to meet the needs of the company and its stockholders at any given time, including determining from time to time whether it is appropriate for the same individual to serve as CEO and chair.
Adopting a rigid policy as requested by the proposal would impair the Board's ability to structure its leadership in the manner it believes to be most effective to serve the company and the stockholders' interests. For these reasons, the Board recommends a vote against the proposal. I'm now confirming whether we've received any questions regarding the proposals. We have not received any questions on the proposals. Thank you. The polls are now closed. The Inspector of Election will now count the votes. I have the preliminary vote report from the Inspector of Election, and I'd like to report the preliminary voting results. With respect to item one, each of the 12 director nominees has been duly elected by the affirmative vote of more than 97% of the votes cast.
With respect to item two, the advisory vote on the company's executive compensation, the proposal has been approved by the affirmative vote of approximately 96% of the votes cast. With respect to item three, the appointment of PwC as Kraft Heinz's independent auditor for 2025, the appointment has been ratified by an affirmative vote of approximately 94% of the votes cast. With respect to item four, the stockholder proposal regarding a report on recyclability claims, the proposal received the support of approximately 12% of the votes cast and did not receive enough votes to pass. With respect to item five, the stockholder proposal regarding a report on plastic packaging, the proposal received the support of approximately 12% of the votes cast and did not receive enough votes to pass.
And finally, with respect to item six, the stockholder proposal regarding the adoption of a policy on an independent board chair, the proposal received the support of approximately 28% of the votes cast and did not receive enough votes to pass. The final results will be available for stockholder review after the votes have been certified by the inspector in our Form 8-K to be filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission within four business days after this meeting. There being no further business for the 2025 annual meeting of the stockholders, this business portion of the meeting is now adjourned. All right. Hello, everybody. We will now begin our general question and answer period. We will attempt to answer as many questions as time allows, but only questions that are germane to the meeting and in accordance with the rules of procedure will be addressed.
All right, let's get into it. So Carlos, the first question is for you, and it's related to nutrition models. So the question is, will Kraft Heinz commit to establishing new incredible targets using externally recognized nutrition models? Well, thank you for the question. First, let me just say, we acknowledge the challenge that there is not yet a globally aligned or harmonized nutrition profile model for companies to consistently assess and report the progress on the healthiness of their portfolio. Now, in its absence, we established the Kraft Heinz Global Nutrition Guidelines that are category-specific and set maximum levels for nutrients of public health concern: sugar, sodium, saturated fats, and calories. We are also reviewing other external nutrition profile models commonly used to assess companies' performance and nutrition.
Further, we are monitoring progress on the ongoing project by Access to Nutrition Initiative to align nutrition profile models to improve investment strategies. The foregoing will support and inform future nutrition-related commitments. Thanks for the question. Thank you, Carlos. All right, the next question is also for you, Carlos. It's related to M&A. The question is, with the depressed stock prices in the food industry, would it be a good time to do an acquisition? I would say, you know, for us, portfolio management is always an ongoing situation. The good news is we have a clarity of our strategies and we have the strengths of a balance sheet. So we're always going to be looking at opportunities that optimize our business mix for the long term, while also making sure we do maintain a financial discipline.
In fact, if you look at our company, we rotated nearly 20% of our total business over the past six years. Now, our parameters for both acquisition and divestiture have been defined as we look to grow or accelerate platforms as a percentage of sales. So if you think back to our strategy, those platforms we're going to accelerate include Taste Elevation, Easy-Ready Meals, and Substantial Snacking because those are higher margin and in higher growth spaces. So we do have the strong balance sheet. We have the opportunity to continue to look at it, but just know that we're also going to make sure that we are being financially disciplined in any actions that we take.
The other part, I think, of the question related to how do we think about inflation at this point, listen, what I would say is if you look at our latest guidance, what we contemplate in terms of inflation right now is about 5%-7% in 2025, and think of those mostly coming from commodities, whether that's coffee, dairy, and meat, and some packaging costs as well that are increasing, but that gives you a sense of how we are embedded that into our guidance. Thanks for the question. Thank you, Carlos. All right, the next question is also for you. It's related to animal rights and cage-free eggs, so the question is, would Kraft Heinz be willing to reconsider some of its commitments regarding cage-free eggs? Well, first, let me say, we believe that animals deserve a good quality of life and should be treated with care.
Kraft Heinz does not own or operate farms or processing facilities. We do focus our efforts on requiring our suppliers to follow specific guidelines for animals under their care. We require a zero-tolerance policy for animal abuse and neglect and for our partners to train all individuals working with live animals to act accordingly. Now, specifically to cage-free eggs, what I would say is we stand behind our current commitment to globally source cage-free eggs. While sourcing options, we do know are globally limited, we continue to work closely with our suppliers to deliver on that progress. Thank you, Carlos. All right, next one is also for you. It's related to our dividend. The question is, when can we expect to see a dividend increase? I would say last week, the board declared another dividend of $0.40 per share.
And additionally, in late 2023, the board authorized a $3 billion share repurchase program through December 2026. So from our perspective, we believe the repurchase program provides a better opportunity to opportunistically return value to stockholders while maintaining our current competitive dividend. Thank you for your question. All right, and the last question, our Q&A period is coming to a close, so I'll take one more question. Also for you, Carlos, this is related to our stock price. You know, the stock price is not doing perhaps as well as we would like. Why is that, and what are we doing to correct it? Listen, our focus continues to be on creating the best Kraft Heinz for us, our consumers, and our shareholders. The way we see it is if we execute our plans in 2025 and beyond, the stock price will take care of itself.
Today, we are clearly undervalued, but we're also creating a great opportunity for investors to buy right now. So hopefully you all join me in being an investor in our company. Thank you for your question. Thank you, Carlos. That ends our Q&A period. We appreciate your questions. Thanks for joining us, and we hope you have a wonderful day.