Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome the Lead Independent Director of The Coca-Cola Company, Senator Sam Nunn.
Thank you. Thank you. Good morning, fellow shareowners. It is wonderful to be in Atlanta on a great spring morning. The only problem, as some of you may have guessed, is there are a few allergies around in the air, and I have my share. Be a little patient with my voice this morning. Welcome to the world of Coca-Cola and the 2019 Annual General Meeting of the Shareowners. I have had the wonderful, great privilege of serving on the board of The Coca-Cola Company, your company, since 1997. Today, as I step down from the board of directors, I thank you for allowing me to represent your interests for 22 years, including the last five years as Lead Independent Director. This shareowners meeting is very special to me and I think to all shareowners and certainly to the board of directors.
Today, we celebrate the contributions of Muhtar Kent, who is retiring after an amazing career at The Coca-Cola Company. As most of you are well aware, Muhtar served as Chief Executive Officer for eight years before passing the CEO baton to James Quincey in May 2017. Muhtar steps down today as Board Chairman, and James, assuming your approval, today will become Board Chairman as well as CEO. I have never seen a smoother transition than the one between Muhtar and James. It has been amazing to watch. Muhtar Kent has made a lasting impact on The Coca-Cola Company and the global bottling system. Muhtar has led our board with an astute and abiding focus on building the long-term strength of this company and its more than 500 brands. We all know that quarterly results are important for every public company.
Muhtar, to his great credit, was also always focused on leading, shaping, and shepherding this business for the long haul. With Muhtar at the helm, our company and our bottling partners invested strongly in our brands, the ones we have always loved and those we have come to love over the last 10 years. Today, we have 21 billion-dollar brands, 21 brands generating more than $1 billion in annual retail sales. That is up from 12 billion-dollar brands when Muhtar became CEO, with more to come in the pipeline. Shareowners have benefited from Muhtar's leadership, both in the near term and in the long term. From the time Muhtar became CEO in 2008 through today, the company returned $91 billion to shareowners, $91 billion, $55.3 billion in dividends and $35.7 billion through share repurchases. This during a period of significant currency pressure as a global company.
If an investor had bought $1,000 in Coke stock on the day Muhtar was announced as CEO and reinvested the dividends, that $1,000 would now be worth more than $2,500 today. Muhtar took on the long-term task in an almost unprecedented way. He took on the Herculean task of reshaping and reinvigorating our global franchise bottling system. It would be very difficult to overstate the importance of the Coca-Cola Bottling system to The Coca-Cola Company and to long-term shareowners. As a long-time board member, I can tell you that the interests of our company and our bottling partners are now more closely aligned than they have been in a generation. Muhtar Kent, as he steps down, will leave behind the strongest Coca-Cola Bottling system in our history, and I'd like for you to join me in applause for our bottlers around the world.
Together with our bottling partners and the Coca-Cola global team, Muhtar has built a strong foundation for future growth. Our brands are strong. Our system is strong. Our leadership development pipeline is strong. We have a strong executive team led by James Quincey. We have a strong board to guide us forward in the future. Most importantly, we have 62,600 Coca-Cola team members building this strength around the globe each and every hour and each and every day. Muhtar has also strengthened our reputation by focusing on initiatives that positively impact lives and communities around the world. A purpose that inspires both the Coca-Cola team and those who benefit. His leadership has been essential in helping Coca-Cola make a significant global impact in both water conservation and women's economic empowerment, with much more in motion. Both within and beyond the world of business, Muhtar Kent has exceptional character and values.
Yes, Muhtar is a terrific business leader, and he is even a better human being. Muhtar is devoted to his wife, Defne, who has played a crucial role in his brilliant career. Today, we also praise and salute Defne. She is with us in spirit today, and I'd like for all of us to applaud Muhtar's most trusted partner, Defne. Together, Muhtar and Defne did a wonderful job of bringing up their children, even though their lives were very, very busy. I know that they are very proud of both Selin and Cem, and with good reason. Muhtar, we wish you, Defne, Selin, and Cem every possible measure of joy, peace, and happiness. Andrew Carnegie once said, quoting him, "The average person puts only 25% of their energy and ability into their work.
The world takes off its hat to those who put in more than 50% of their capacity, and it stands on its head for those few and far between souls who devote 100%." End quote. Ladies and gentlemen, Muhtar Kent is a few and far between 100% soul. Noticing the maturity of this audience, I won't ask you to stand on your head this morning, but I hope you will all join me in standing on your feet and thanking the Chairman of The Coca-Cola Company for all he's done to lead this business and brighten its future. Let's welcome Chairman Muhtar Kent.
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much. I didn't expect it to be that emotional for me, and it has become. Good morning, welcome to you all this morning. Thank you, Sam, for your unbelievable 22 years of exceptional service to our board, to our company, to our system. Our company, all our share owners have benefited greatly from your experience, from your deep insights, global insights, and also your commitment to Coca-Cola. On a personal note, Sam, I'm really, really delighted to have worked very closely with you over the last decade and more, I'm honored also to be leaving this great enterprise in such good hands, in such great board, great leadership as we move out. Thank you again, Sam, for what you've done. Thank you.
I'd also like to thank former longtime Chicago Mayor Richard Daley, my friend, for his valuable contributions to our board over the past eight years. Mayor Daley could not be with us today, we really appreciate his service, we wish him the very best. I'd also like to thank our entire board, past and present. We have an exceptional board, one that's an amazing asset to The Coca-Cola Company and to the Coca-Cola system. Let's give them a big hand again. My fellow share owners, 41 years ago is when my Coca-Cola journey began, it began on a red Coca-Cola route truck. Around the world, red Coca-Cola trucks are nearly as familiar and nearly as known as the contour bottle.
Today, people across all continents, six continents, can see one of our trucks rolling down a freeway, rounding a corner, stopping outside a store, large or small. When they see that, they know instantly what that red truck means without thinking about it. They know instantly that it represents delicious ice-cold refreshment of the highest integrity and quality. They know it's always available, always affordable, and always ready to be enjoyed with family and friends. That's what they think about when they see one of those red trucks. I, in 1978, spent nine months on a red route truck here in Atlanta, in Lubbock, Texas, in Needham, Massachusetts, in Los Angeles. I learned right from the start, then in '78, that you have to get out into the marketplace to really understand this amazing business of ours.
In fact, where that action is, where the, I call it, the point of impact is, where the dollar changes hands, for refreshment in the $27.5 million points of sale around the world. I've kind of carried that lesson with me ever since. Even now, whenever I visit a store after 41 years, I do it often, I learn something new every time. Doesn't matter where, I learn something new every time. I started on a Coca-Cola red truck, in a sense, I've been riding those red trucks for four decades all around the world, different parts of the world. In the late 1980s, I found myself in Vienna, in Central and Eastern Europe, when the wall began to collapse.
When that wall came down, my colleagues and I, we literally and metaphorically rode red route trucks into Eastern Europe, into Poland, into Romania, into Hungary, into the Czech Republic, then it was called Czechoslovakia, into Moldova, into Russia. We built 21 Coca-Cola factories, plants in 24 months at that time. We were welcomed back into markets that had been largely closed for almost half a century. Later in my career, I had the opportunity to run bottling businesses in Central Europe, first and then in Turkey, in a company called Efes, based in Istanbul. With my colleagues, we built a strong bottling business with flourishing operations across eight countries, in a way, from the Adriatic to China, because part of Central Asia was in that territory. Ultimately, my red route truck carried me back to Atlanta, the birth of Coca-Cola, the hometown of Coca-Cola.
When I became CEO in 2008, I drew inspiration from my friend, from my dear mentor, the great Don Keough, former president of The Coca-Cola Company and chief operating officer. As a leader, Don was constantly and always polishing our brands. That really was something that he did every morning when he came to work. His goal was to leave our brands a little bit shinier, leave our brands a little bit brighter, a little more attractive than the day before. I kind of adopted that approach because you couldn't get it any better than that. Indeed, our entire company and system, in a way, embraced Don's approach. We together purposed to polish our brands, add a little more shine, brightness, value to them every single day.
Also, something else that I knew, and I was not alone, that our business also needed a renewed kind of integration for growth, renewed vision for growth, for what was possible, and what we could accomplish together, with our great bottling partners, some of whom have traveled here and are here today in the audience. My friend, my colleague, my predecessor, Neville Isdell, had gotten the business out of the ditch back on the road, and we needed to build on what Neville and his team had accomplished. Build on that. Build and get that foundation stronger. Early on, we gathered with our top bottling partners in Florida, in Boca Raton, and began to together craft what became then our 2020 Vision. The first system-wide vision growth plan in Coca-Cola's long history.
We needed to get, in a way, everyone on the same page, pulling in that same direction. That's what I recall, that those three days were all dedicated to. Our 2020 Vision helped us do that and much more. From 2009 onwards when we set it. Together, we committed to investing strongly, consistently, strongly, and consistently in our brands through our marketing, advertising, through our packaging, point of sale, every other form of brand building. This morning, here with you today, I believe this is one of the key reasons our business remains strong, even as some other consumer goods companies have actually struggled recently to keep their brands relevant. Meanwhile, we also came to the conclusion that the bottling system needed a little work.
While we had many, many great bottling partners, and we still have, we had some, at that time, underperforming ones, some lacking a persistent, undeniable appetite for growth. This, of course, became a hard but necessary multi-year, multi-stage process. Again, I thank our board for supporting us in that endeavor, in that multi-year, multi-stage process. There was a phase, first of key acquisitions, including the purchase of most of our U.S. and European bottling operations. Later, when we had made improvements and the time was right, we began to refranchise these company-owned operations, returning them to eager and committed franchise partners who shared implicitly that vision and thirst for growth. As a team, we kind of increased the pace of brand development, acquisitions. Consumer tastes were and still are rapidly changing. We needed to build a more complete and compelling brand portfolio for the future.
Today, of course, James and his team are continuing to increase that pace of acquiring, developing, building new brands, brand extensions, as well as flavors. Another area of opportunity was packaging. A decade ago, we offered limited packs, limited sizes, which was, shall we say, suboptimal for total value creation. Kind of one day, I was in a market in Penn Station in New York, visiting the marketplace with a group of colleagues, and we were visiting all the different outlets in Penn Station in New York, and we saw so many little tables of cafes inside Penn Station. The cafe's tables were outside and people had left. On the tables were 20-ounce bottles of our products with all not finished. There were some at the bottom, some of them half, some of them a little less. People had left.
People had actually paid for them, not consumed everything and left. I said, "Look what we're seeing here. We're seeing something that is basically looking at us in the face and saying, we don't have an optimal packaging strategy." From there, we developed the new packaging strategy. You may recall, not so many years ago, as I said, when aisles were dominated by 12-packs and 2 liters. Today, complete metamorphosis. If you go, you see what's on the aisles. Smaller, much different. Smaller packs, mini cans, smaller glass bottles, smaller PET bottles, serving sizes different and creating added value for our bottlers and also for our customers. All these steps and many more, we kept our eyes on the future.
Constantly, our driving commitment, as I've said, was to build this business not just for the next, as Sam said, not just for the next quarter, but the next quarter of a century. That's kind of what guided us. Again, I thank our board for their implicit support, strong support that they gave us for that. To this end, we embraced a 21st-century view of long-term value creation, knowing that for our business, optimizing your return to you, our shareholders, also meant creating rising value for our people first, our employees of our system, 700,000 strong, our bottling partners, other business partners, our customers, our consumers, communities, and more than 200 nations and governments that host us. That's our model of stakeholder value creation for the long term.
In this, we were able to build a robust heritage of also community value creation that goes back more than 130 years to Coca-Cola's earliest days. We focused on making a real difference in water conservation. Working with many partners around the world, we achieved water neutrality back in 2015, five years ahead of the goal. When we talked about that goal, people thought we looked at us strangely. "What are they talking about?" Consider this for a moment. Just consider this. This beautiful bottle of smartwater is one liter. Since our water efforts began back in 2008, we have now replenished more than one trillion liters to the world. That's how we became water positive. Not water neutral, but water positive. That, for perspective, would fill roughly half a million Olympic-sized swimming pools.
We also launched a very bold women's economic development initiative called 5by20, with a goal of empowering five million women entrepreneurs globally in this decade, outside of our four walls. At the end of last year, we'd reached more than 3.2 million women entrepreneurs audited out by outside firms. I'd just like to share with you a very brief video of one of their stories. Could we play the video?
In Nigeria, education is most important. I had to drop out of school because I had pregnant. Since then, I've been struggling. I came across the AG. AG lessons teach us about how to set your goals, savings, how to interact with people, and to handle your business. When I start with Coca-Cola, they gave me the umbrella and two crates of Cola to start my business. From that two crates, I've been able to buy 54 now. I want to provide for my daughter. I want to give her education. Everything is possible if you believe you can do it.
One of 3.2 million. Had it not been for this initiative, those 3.2 million women would not have a great opportunity and chance in the world to participate in the benefits that this world offers. Two years ago, in May 2017, I handed the keys of the red Coca-Cola route truck to James Quincey, our outstanding CEO and Chairman Elect. At the time, I said he was the right leader at the right time with the right instincts, with the right experience, skill set to lead this business forward. He has proven me right at every turn. At every turn. Indeed, I'm very proud of our seamless leadership transition, something that I began thinking of really about over a decade ago, as soon as I became CEO. James has done and continues to do an exceptional job.
Our CEO and Chairman Elect is leading our business in new and exciting directions while increasing the pace of portfolio, of brand, and of flavor expansion. We're gaining momentum, fresh momentum as a result. Looking back, I give all my Coca-Cola colleagues, associates around the world, tremendous credit for the success that we have built together. I also want to thank our consumers for making us part of their lives almost 2 billion times every single day. I also want to thank our customers for including us in their exciting growth plans, all of those 2.7 million customers, our communities for welcoming our business and for welcoming our brands into their communities, and our many public and private partners for joining us in making a lasting, positive difference in the world.
Of course, last but not least, I want to thank you, our esteemed shareholders, for your trust, for your confidence, and also for your investment in The Coca-Cola Company, your continuing investment in The Coca-Cola Company, all of you. We'll continue to work for you just as we have when we became a public company 100 years ago in 1919, our 100th anniversary as a public company. Indeed, today, as I think about the past 41 years, as I reflect upon this journey that I've been so fortunate to have, it's kind of coming full circle for me again. Considering that I became a shareowner myself about a year after my career began in 1980. After this meeting, I'll no longer be your Chairman, but I'll remain a very proud shareowner, and I'll continue to follow with eagerness progress of Coca-Cola with great interest and great pride.
Consider this. I'm 66 years old. I spent roughly the first third of my life going to school with my family, going to schools, college. Then the rest, 41 of the past 44 years, more than 90% of my life was this journey, this amazing journey. This morning, I feel amazingly proud, very proud to have and very fortunate to have enjoyed this long, fruitful association with the most, world's most loved brands. I've a plain and simple message for all of you this morning. Our best and our brightest days are ahead. Our best and brightest days are ahead. Why do I say that? I say that because we have a great CEO, great executive management, a great team, great group of bottling partners, a great set of customers, and a great brand portfolio. That's why I say that. They're all getting better.
The business model is improving. They're getting better. Finally, as Sam mentioned, I thank all my family for staying with me, for supporting me. My late parents, my adult children, Selin and Cem, and of course, my dear wife of 40 years, Defne. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for being here. Thank you for your investment. It's been the honor of my life to help lead this business as CEO and Board Chairman over the past decade. I want to just humbly say, give a heartfelt gratitude for all that Coca-Cola has done for me as a person, and thank you for all the shareholders for having supported us and our board again. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Please, thank you. Thank you. To update you on our progress, and look forward to the road ahead, as I said, the best days are ahead. Please join me in welcoming the CEO and Chairman-elect of our company, James Quincey. Give him a warm hand.
Thank you, Muhtar. Good morning, everyone. I don't think I can add any words to that. It's truly been a remarkable story. Let us turn and start talking about the future. Talk about the future of the company, its path forward, and then, of course, the business of the AGM. Let me then take 10 minutes before we jump into the business of the AGM to just summarize how we see the future, what we see ahead of us. Of course, ahead of us in any public company presentation is this statement. You'll all have enjoyed it over the years. Moving on swiftly. I know you didn't get a chance to do the last sentence. Don't worry, it'll be back. We have an amazing business. Muhtar talked about how we've been a public company for 100 years, been going for over 130.
Muhtar's been here for 40 of them. What's been built is truly a remarkable enterprise. A remarkable enterprise, not just in beverages, but also in consumer products, perhaps even in American enterprise. It's an enterprise that has a portfolio of brands, as Sam mentioned, $21 billion brands. That, in simple terms, makes us number one or number two in all the major categories around the world, whether that be our original sparkling beverage brands or juices, plant and dairy, hydration, teas, coffees, and energy. We're number one or number two in every category. That amazing brand portfolio that's owned by The Coca-Cola Company also benefits in a tremendously symbiotic relationship with its bottling partners, for they have been able to use those brands to generate global and pervasive distribution. We literally are in almost every corner of the globe. Literally every corner of the globe.
Not by chance, not just because of the power and the strength of the brands, because of what's been built in the distribution system. The amount of red trucks, as Muhtar talked about, the bottling partners own. The cold drink equipment that does not just display the brands, but also serve them at the best temperature. We reach the corners of the globe with a competitive advantage that is enduring and long-lasting. Is, at the end of the day, just the beginning, as Muhtar talked about. Let me try and symbolize in a simple way why we think this 130-plus years and this incredible leadership position is, in fact, just the beginning. It's just the beginning because the long-term opportunity ahead of us is still enormous.
It's still enormous. If you take these two simple bottles of drinks, on the left-hand side, you've got the developed markets of the world. These account for about 20% of the world's population, 1.5 billion people. In those countries, about three-quarters of what people drink is commercial beverages. They paid some money for it. You can see, whether that's alcohol or hot beverages or cold beverages. Even in those markets, whilst we have a leadership position, our share is some 21% of the cold beverages and very small in hot beverages. In the developed world, we still have an enormous opportunity to grow share. Perhaps the even greater opportunity is on the right-hand side, the developing and emerging markets. This is where 80% of the world's population live, 6.1 billion people.
There, commercial beverages only represent one in every four of the drinks they consume. Our share of that has a lot of room for growth. We truly believe that despite all that's been accomplished over 130 years, there is in fact a huge runway ahead of us of multi-decade opportunity for growth, and we absolutely intend to build on it. To do so, of course, we need the right strategies. We spent a lot of time over the last number of years, Muhtar mentioned a good number of what's happened, reinvesting in the sparkling brands, reforming and refranchising the bottling system. We believe we truly now have the platform that will allow us to go into the future to capture the opportunity ahead of us. We've got the portfolio brands, but what we're bringing to that is greater discipline in stewarding and growing those brands.
Not all of them are equal. Some are in truly fabulous leadership positions around the world. Others have come into being and are challenging. They might be a number 2 or number 3, and some of them are just beginning, just exploring, just nascent. The way we need to market and nurture those brands will depend on its stage of growth. The discipline will allow us to further extend our leadership positions. As I said in the beginning, we only do that because of the symbiotic relationship with the bottling system, where our switch from perhaps too much of a volume focus to a greater value focus, which of course includes volume, has allowed us to intensify our alignment and our strategic alignment with the bottlers.
Bringing in new bottling partners, creating scale, creating more investment that is further driving the ability to execute and leverage our competitive advantage to distribute around the world, creating a truly system-winning culture. Doing so in a way that wins with stakeholders. The Coca-Cola Company has always had an approach that it cannot win unless the whole community wins. Not just us, the bottling partners, the customers, but indeed the broader community. In doing this, we do need to bring ourselves constantly up to date. One of those is around digitizing the enterprise. Truly changing the way we work, the way we interact with our customers, and the way we engage with our consumers to bring ourselves into a truly and fully digital age. Doing so, we've of course had to continue to evolve our culture to become more focused on growth, more focused on empowerment.
The bigger and more dispersed and the larger the enterprise becomes, the more that every corner of it needs to feel empowered to take the actions necessary to grow. In growing, as I said, it's not just about growing for the benefit of The Coca-Cola Company, all of you, the shareholders. Of course, that is the end result. We need to make sure that we grow in the right way. We need to do business the right way. There are many aspects to that, and let me just call out a few. Muhtar talked about water leadership. We became water neutral, actually even water positive now, well ahead of schedule. We started with water when that was, in a way, the core essence of the product. The most important thing that underpins the beverage enterprise, the water, the liquid within it.
Returning all the water we use to the environment seemed like the right place to start. We launched last year, the World Without Waste. It's clear that the other key part of our beverage portfolio is the container it comes in. It's simply not going to be acceptable in the future for that to turn into waste. We set ourselves the goal of not just making all our packaging recyclable, but make sure that by 2030, we recovered a bottle or can for every one we sold and then started using it in our products. In fact, of all the things that companies use to package up their materials, our containers are in a way a great place to be because each one of those containers has intrinsic value.
If it can be recovered, it can be completely reused in another bottle, and so we truly can create a closed-loop economy with our packaging material, such that we are both water neutral and from a packaging point of view, we don't create any waste. As we go forward, we'll continue to invest in the communities, whether it's some of our big global programs like 5by20 that Muhtar just talked so eloquently about
More local things. Our support here in Atlanta for the community, for the Police Foundation, and the Westside Future Fund. We operate both at the global community level and at its most local. Perhaps to try and bring all this and give you a sense of what this feels like, what this looks like, I'll run a short video before I summarize. If you could run the video, please. In summary, your company has an incredibly bright future ahead of it. It's truly positioned to win in a great industry, a growing industry, an industry with lots of opportunity. We've been transforming the portfolio, and we're stewarding it with discipline. Together with our bottling partners, we're executing in an aligned way. The culture has continued to evolve to be even more empowered and growth-orientated, and we're doing so while doing business the right way.
Shareholders, your company has a bright and great future ahead of it.
Ladies and gentlemen, the business portion of our meeting will now begin. Please welcome back Chairman of the Board, Muhtar Kent.
Thank you, James, for that very compelling story about the future. As I said, I really, really believe the brightest and best days are ahead, and you can see why. I'd like to open formally the business meeting. Today, we're going to address five items that are detailed in your proxy statements. Following that, I will conduct a question and answer session in which we will address questions about any of the five items or other business issues that you may wish to raise. Our intent is to finish this morning's meeting by 10:15 A.M. Let me first welcome the people joining me on the dais, James Quincey, Chief Executive Officer and Chairman Elect, who you've met, John Murphy, Executive Vice President and our Chief Financial Officer, Bernhard Goepfert, Senior Vice President and our General Counsel, and Jennifer Manning, Associate General Counsel and Corporate Secretary.
I'd like to extend a special and warm welcome once again to our Board of Directors who have joined us this morning. Bios for all director nominees are included in your proxy statement, beginning on page 18. I will ask each of our directors to stand as I mention them by name, and I will ask you to please hold your applause until they are all introduced. I will start with Herbert Allen. Please hold your applause. Ron Allen, Marc Bolland, Ana Patricia Botín, Chris Davis. If you would just remain standing if you could, please. Chris Davis, Helene Gayle, Alexis Herman, Bobby Kotick, Mel Lagomasino. James Quincey is here, Caroline Tsay, and David Weinberg. Thank you. Thank you very much. This is a very capable group of directors. They are a model for dedicated and effective board leadership.
They provide company leadership with thoughtful guidance, always with the highest integrity. We are thankful, fortunate for their service and dedication to our company and to you, our shareholders. We also have representatives from our independent auditing firm, Ernst & Young, here today, who I will ask now to stand. Could you please stand? Thank you. Thanks very much. Thank you. Finally, we have many of our long-term, long-time shareholders, you, as well as our employees, my associates, and alumni here today with us, and I extend a very, very warm welcome to all of you. Before we begin today's business, I extend an invitation for you to stay on and enjoy our World of Coca-Cola today with our compliments. This wonderful facility will open to you shortly after the conclusion of today's meeting this morning. On to today's voting matters.
In the packet in your seat, you will find an agenda of the meeting, and you will find a copy of the proxy statement. These will serve as your roadmap to the business items we will be discussing today, and I encourage you to follow along, please. Also in the packet are our meeting procedures and our rules of conduct. Ensuring this meeting is productive and is safe is, as always, our top priority, so I ask you to please closely follow these rules. Here's how the meeting is going to flow. Our Corporate Secretary, Jennifer Manning, will present each of the three management proposals. There are also two shareholder proposals, which will be presented by the proponents or their representatives. The presentation of the shareholder proposals will be limited to three minutes.
After each of the five proposals are presented, I will present our board's point of view and our board's recommendation. Just like last year, after all five business items have been presented, we will conduct a question and answer session where I will take questions on those five items or other items that we are voting on today, or any other top business topics that you would like me to address. Jennifer, would you please bring us the secretary's report now?
The notice for this annual meeting and its related proxy statement were mailed beginning March 7, 2019 to all shareholders of record as of February 25, 2019. Our Inspectors of Election from Computershare Trust Company, N.A., advise that we have a quorum represented by 87% of the total shares eligible to vote. The polls are now open. There are five matters to be voted on. On page three of the proxy statement, you will find a list of the voting matters. If you need a ballot, please raise your hand now. Remember, you do not need a ballot if you have already voted. The polls will be open until the end of the Q&A session, at which time ballots will be collected. That concludes the secretary's report, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you. Jennifer, would you now please present the first matter to be voted on?
The first matter is the election of directors. The company's bylaws require that every director stand for election each year. All of the director nominees listed in your proxy statement are nominated for election for a one-year term expiring in 2020.
Thanks, Jennifer. We have, as I've mentioned, a very knowledgeable and engaged board. Our director nominees are highly qualified to represent the interests of you, our shareholders. The governance section, beginning on page 13 of your proxy statement, provides details about this item, including each director nominee's qualifications. There is a recommendation to vote for each nominee. As I just explained, I will take questions on this and any other matters during the Q&A session, which I will conduct after all voting matters are presented. Jennifer, could we go to the next item, please?
On page 46 of your proxy statement is the advisory vote to approve executive compensation. As required, the company seeks a non-binding advisory vote from shareholders to approve the compensation of the company's named executive officers as described in the compensation discussion and analysis and compensation tables of the proxy statement.
Thank you. The Compensation Committee discussion and analysis in your proxy statements explains how the Compensation Committee views company performance and also how executive pay is tied to that performance. We take this say on pay vote very seriously, and the Compensation Committee will continue to consider the outcome of the advisory vote when making compensation decisions. The board of directors recommends a vote for the advisory vote on executive compensation. Jennifer, would you now please present the third item?
Our audit committee has appointed the firm of Ernst & Young LLP to serve as the company's independent auditors for the 2019 fiscal year, and this item seeks ratification of this appointment. The audit matters section of our proxy statement, which includes this proposal, begins on page 88.
Thank you, Jennifer. The audit committee and the board believe that our auditors, Ernst & Young, serve the company and serve you, our shareholders, well, and therefore recommend a vote for the ratification of this appointment. Jennifer, would you now please present the fourth item?
Our fourth business item is a shareowner proposal seeking an independent board chair. This proposal and the board's response are on page 93 of your proxy statement. Mr. Malizia from the Teamsters Union will present the proposal. As a reminder, the presentation of the shareowner's proposals are limited to three minutes.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman, members of the board, fellow shareholders. My name is Louis Malizia, I'm representing the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, longtime The Coca-Cola Company shareholders and North America's largest union representing Coca-Cola workers who produce, package, and distribute Coke products. The Teamsters General Fund urges the board to adopt a policy for an independent chair. Coke's leadership transition provides the perfect time to move to this best practice in corporate governance. Investors demand and deserve a leader of the board whose first responsibility is accountability to stakeholders, not one who decides and directs day-to-day operations as well. We believe an independent chair makes management oversight even more rigorous.
Our CEO must manage the business, which includes overseeing our key relationships with the many bottlers throughout the U.S. and around the globe, to manage the risk inherent with the loss of control of the products such as customer relations and quality control that comes with our refranchising. We urge our fellow shareholders to vote for this proposal and take an important step for accountability. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Malizia. I appreciate you being a longtime shareowner and also, we appreciate our long relationship with the Teamsters Union first. Secondly, we appreciate your raising this important issue. We understand, we respect many of the arguments made by those who might support the idea of an independent director as a board chair. However, we believe that a leadership structure which includes a combined board chair and CEO is the best structure for our company. As we go forward, the leadership of both the board and the company by James will be the optimal structure to guide this company and to achieve and surpass our business goals. A combined chairman of the board and CEO, I want to just make sure that I remind everyone, is just one element of our leadership structure.
Which also includes a lead independent director, active non-employee directors, and board committees led primarily by independent directors. We are fortunate to have had such an independent, effective lead director over the past five years in Senator Sam Nunn, and now also an equally strong incoming lead independent director in Mel Lagomasino. It is important to note that if the board believes that a different leadership structure is warranted, they will make the change. With our current governance structure, the board has the flexibility to make these kind of changes, amendments based on the specific needs of our business. We've done this in practice. The board has demonstrated that it will prudently exercise this judgment when shareholder interests are best served. This was the case when the leadership structure was changed back in 2007, and again recently in 2017 to ensure an orderly CEO transition.
I encourage all of you to read more about this beginning on page 93 in your proxy statements. That would be our point of view right now. Jennifer, would you please present the fifth and final item?
Our fifth and final business item is a shareowner proposal requesting a report on sugar and public health. This proposal and the board's response are on page 95 of your proxy statement. Mr. Rogers will present the proposal.
Thank you, Mr. Kent. I'm here representing John Harrington. Before I introduce John Harrington's proposal on sugar and public health, I want to ask two remarkable women who have traveled long distances to be at this meeting to stand up and be recognized. Dr. Esperanza Cerón, please stand up, Dr. Cerón, has come here from Colombia. Rebecca Briner is here representing Mexico's leading consumer organization, El Poder del Consumidor. Rebecca, over there. Thank you.
No countries have been harder hit than Mexico and Colombia with skyrocketing rates of obesity, diabetes, and other serious health issues attributed to high consumption of sugar, and especially what's referred to as liquid sugar, found in sodas, energy, and sports drinks. I hope, Mr. Chair, that you will give both these women an opportunity to address why it is so important to our nation's and the world's health, and especially the health of children, that large Coca-Cola share owners like Warren Buffett, Bill and Melinda Gates, The Vanguard Group, and BlackRock vote in support of the proposal. There is mounting scientific evidence showing that there is a national and worldwide health crisis being caused by overconsumption of sugar, and that The Coca-Cola Company, following the playbook of the tobacco industry, is trying to downplay the crisis and the scientific evidence.
Harrington, who heads up an investment company, is also trying to wake up and warn investors and potential investors in Coca-Cola that if the company continues along the path of keeping its head in the sand and trying to deceive the public by funding front groups and producing junk science and bogus reports downplaying the detrimental effects of sugar consumption on health, the company's overall value could be at risk and plummet. Mr. Harrington's proposal makes a simple request that the board of directors issue a report on sugar and public health, with support from a group of independent and nationally recognized scientists and scholars providing critical feedback on Coca-Cola's sugar products, and especially those products targeted to children and young consumers. Third-party publications cannot fulfill the board oversight required by the proposal, and Coca-Cola's publications on the subject are misleadingly incomplete.
Frankly, every executive and member of the board should welcome this proposal and give it a thumbs up. One last thing. In the company's opposition to the proposal, you mentioned, "The Access to Nutrition Foundation, a respected, independent, nonprofit organization, which is based in the Netherlands, already produced reports covering our company that encompasses sugar and public health, and we believe addresses the essential objectives sought by the proposal." Well, let me tell you, the Access to Nutrition Foundation has an index. Coca-Cola is down the bottom, way below Pepsi and Nestlé and other companies. You want to know something? Even their scores are terrible. Coca-Cola and the industry has a lot to do to make things better. One last thing.
To learn more about the arguments posed to the Securities and Exchange Commission, whether to order Coca-Cola to include the resolution on its 2019 proxy statement, a battle Coca-Cola obviously lost, please visit our new revamped website, www.killercoke.org. Thank you.
Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Rogers. You actually talked about really what is our board's position on this proposal. This proposal requests, specifically, that the board issue a report on sugar and public health with support from a group of independent, nationally recognized scientists and scholars. That's what the proposal is about. The Access to Nutrition Foundation, which is a respected nonprofit organization based in Holland and is funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, already produces reports covering our company that encompasses sugar, includes public health, and we believe addresses the essential goals sought by that proposal. The Access to Nutrition reports most recently published was 2018, last year. That report provided a detailed analysis and commentary on leading food and beverage manufacturers' efforts to improve consumers' access to nutritious beverages and foods.
These reports are designed to be used by various different stakeholder groups, including academia, including civil society organizations. All of this is outlined on page 96 in very simple, plain English. Additional reporting, as requested in the proposal, would provide no useful information that is not already covered in the Access to Nutrition reports. The last one that was published, as I said, was in 2018. Importantly, though, let me just again stress that we certainly recognize the role our company must play in addressing health challenges. This proposal might lead you to believe that our company is not a responsible player in this area, and nothing could be further from the truth. Our company fully comprehends that people should not eat or drink too much sugar.
We are taking also specific and meaningful actions to assist, to help to make consumers more aware about and more easily control the consumption of added sugar. Just to give you a couple of bullet points. 425,000 tons of sugar have been removed from the market through product reformulations and packages. Only in 2018, last year, 400 products were reformulated alone, bringing the total to 800. Only in one year, we took as much as was reformulated in the past and did reformulations in last year of 400 more products. Products with no sugar that we have are growing double digits, like Coca-Cola Zero Sugar. 40% now, 40% of our sparkling soft drink brands in the U.S. come in eight and a half ounce mini cans. North America, last year saw a 30% growth in its mini cans.
We finally support the WHO recommendation in limiting added sugar to 10% of the total diet. We support that. Publicly, we've said that. Those are just a few bullet points, and I don't know if our CEO, James, would like to add anything.
I think you covered it.
All right. That's really our point of view. Since all voting matters have been presented, that concludes the business portion of our meeting. The polls are going to close at the end of the Q&A session, which is coming up now. If you have a completed ballot, please raise your hand and someone is going to collect it. Before we begin our Q&A session, I will ask Jennifer for the preliminary voting report. Jennifer?
Thank you. The following vote is preliminary. If you are voting here today, your vote will be tallied this afternoon and included in our final vote. As Muhtar said, the polls will close after the Q&A. The Inspectors of Election report that each nominee for election as director has received at least a majority of the votes cast in favor of their election. Therefore, all of the director candidates have been elected to serve as a director until 2020. The advisory vote to approve executive compensation has been approved with an affirmative vote of 97%. The management proposal on the ratification of Ernst & Young as auditors has been approved with an affirmative vote of 97%. The shareholder proposal regarding an independent board chair did not pass and had an affirmative vote of 17.9%.
The shareholder proposal regarding a study on sugar and public health did not pass and had an affirmative vote of 4.8%. That concludes the preliminary vote report.
Thanks, Jennifer. We will now turn to the Q&A session. I will take questions from the floor. Secondly, I will take questions submitted in advance on our website, AGM website. Thirdly, if there are any from the overflow room. Attendants, microphone attendants will help me select attendees wishing to address the meeting. The microphone attendants have those numbered paddles. Can we just raise them, please? I will ask the microphone attendants to identify yourselves when you want to ask a question. When the Q&A session begins, if you have a question, please raise your hand but remain seated. Please wait for the attendants to call on you before you proceed to the end of the aisle of your row. It is important as it will keep too many people from standing and blocking the view of those that are behind you. Thank you for your cooperation in advance.
Produce your admissions card to the attendant who will introduce you or the shareholder that you represent, at that point, please proceed with your question. Please direct all questions to me as the chair of the meeting, either James or myself will answer those questions. Please limit your questions to two minutes each. We are using a clock to keep us aware of that time. There.
Just one more. You mentioned that the meeting is scheduled to terminate about 10:15 A.M. It's about a half hour from now. Does that mean we can take questions for at least another half hour?
We're going to keep going.
Okay.
Please. Thank you. If you go over your allotted time, I will ask you to please finish your remarks and sit down. If you disrupt the meeting, I will ask you, unfortunately, to leave us. Those are the meeting procedures. We welcome questions, we welcome comments about any of the voting items that we just covered or the general business affairs of our company. Again, please stay on time with the two minutes. I'll go to the first question. Is there a question? Paddle two. Yes. Go ahead.
Mr. Chairman, I introduce Mr. Chase Mushe.
Thank you, Mr. Kent. There was an article in The Wall Street Journal that recently reported on the CEO pay ratio being higher this past year than previously. Could you share some insight into why this number changed so significantly?
Thank you.
Thank you.
I will. First let me say that we pay for performance across the board. Not just for executive level, but all levels. Our compensation program remains very competitive in every market that we operate, at every level. Many factors affect pay ratio. Comparing year-on-year may not tell the whole story. A few companies are as global as The Coca-Cola Company, and that affects median salaries because of the global nature given specifically differences in cost of living and market pay in different regions of the world. This year, for example, the year of the comparison, our numbers included more than 17,000 employees of Coca-Cola Beverages Africa, where the cost of living, and therefore the pay levels and compensation rates are much lower than Western markets. It was not in the numbers the year before, 17,000 from Coca-Cola Beverages Africa, because they came into our system in the calculation.
Also, our North America refranchising efforts completed took 20,000 employees out of our base. 20,000. Another factor in the timing, again, of the changes in our leadership was another factor. Because James was CEO for the full year in 2018, that went into the denominator and numerator, as opposed to half of the year in 2017. Those are some of the reasons, the critical, key reasons, that drove the differences from year-on-year, which was the basis of your question, why did it go up? That's basically how I would address that question. Thank you for your question. Panel three.
Mr. Chairman, I present Jordan Aregheti.
Good morning, Mr. Kent. People of all ages are increasingly concerned with the amount of plastic waste in our environment, especially in our oceans. What role does The Coca-Cola Company have in this, specifically in helping to solve the problem? Thank you, sir.
Thank you. Clearly and understandably, there's a lot of concern about plastic waste in the environment, and especially in our oceans, and we understand that. We believe we do have an important role, leadership role, to play in this area. I think James, in his discussion, talked about the importance of a World Without Waste, and I'll ask him to address your question in more detail.
Sure. Thank you. Clearly, our objective is to make sure we get to a World Without Waste. We need to recover, not just have recyclable, but to recover all our packaging and begin to reuse it. Actually, as we sit here today, virtually all our packaging material is already recyclable. Importantly for The Coca-Cola Company, has intrinsic value in the sense that if we can recover it can be reused and be part of the circular economy. The biggest gap to making that circular economy work is collection. Technology already exists to be able to recycle the packaging from collection back into bottles. We have parts of our operations around the world where we have very large recycling facilities that once we get the bottles, we're able to convert them back into PET that can be used in bottles. Mexico has a massive facility.
We have the largest facility in Western Europe. We have the technology, we have the capability to reuse the PET. The gap is collection. What are we doing? We're working with a whole series of governments around the world, because it's going to take not just ourselves, but other manufacturers and retailers and government, particularly local government, to bring into being effective collection schemes so that we can recover PET and other materials, aluminum, et cetera. We can recover the PET. We know it can be done. There are countries in the world where they have over 90% recollection rate. This is something that is doable, and it's not just a developed world answer. We know from our experiences in Mexico and South Africa, you can go from low single digits collection into two-thirds and 70% collection rates within a decade, relatively doable.
We know this is something that can be solved in the developed world and in the emerging economies. It is an organizational problem. It's complex, involves a lot of players. We're very committed to playing our part to getting it done. We're partnering with a lot of other people to do it. We see that manufacturing industries are on board. Other companies like ours have set very similar goals to recover and reuse. Retailers are on board. I think this is something that is getting a lot of traction among the manufacturing and retail industry. There's still a long way to go because of the immense organizational challenge of putting in these collection systems.
Thanks. Thanks, James. Let me now just take a question submitted in advance from our annual meeting website. Jennifer, would you read the question, then I'll come back to the audience.
This question was submitted by Alan Sharman. Can you talk more about coffee and how it fits into the broader growth strategy? Is Costa coming to the U.S.?
Thank you. With the growth in coffee and hot beverages, and taking into account that we are a non-alcoholic beverage business and company and system, it's more important than ever that we make serious and significant inroads and investments into a category that's growing so fast, and we did. I'll ask James to add some more details to that.
Thank you, Muhtar. Yeah. As Muhtar mentioned, it's not only one of the largest categories, actually, you could see it in the little bottles at the beginning, but it's one of the fastest-growing categories around the world. It's a category that's not just about hot beverages, because it actually takes many different shapes and forms. It can be coffee at home, it can be coffee in a coffee shop, it can be coffee in someone else's restaurant outlet, or in fact, across a whole series of different channels, whether they be convenience stores or petrol stations, or at work, or at university. There are many different forms of coffee. What we see is the opportunity for The Coca-Cola Company in an industry that is ultimately still very fragmented. No one company or enterprise has as much share, so that they truly lead and dominate the category.
We see an opportunity for growth for us. We've done well in ready to drink. We're actually the global leader in ready to drink coffee, although that's driven entirely out of our Asian business with Georgia Coffee in Japan. Costa will allow us to do is to create a coffee platform. It will have a foot in the retail, where it creates the brand experience and helps generate the brand imagery. That brand can then be used in the different other elements of the coffee industry, whether that's in the next easiest thing to do for us, which is ready to drink coffee, which we'll be launching later this quarter. In fact, become a better beverage partner to many of our other customers.
One of the things that Costa brings is a vending machine, which is, in a way, the hot version of our freestyle vending machine, and they have almost three times as many of these, if you like, automatic coffee shops as they have actual coffee shops. These vending machines are great for convenience stores, for petrol stations, for at work, for a whole series of other places where the coffee provision is still, if you can excuse the pun, lukewarm. We've got a tremendous opportunity to upgrade it, and their capability allows us to do it, whether it's with the vending machine or, in fact, the provision of beans and machines. It will provide us a brand that we can use across a whole series of different formats to serve even better, a whole series of different channels and provide growth for The Coke Company.
Thanks, James. I see Ron Oswald in the audience from the IUF. Ron, I think you've got a question. I know you do, and if you want to, we welcome your comments. Thank you.
Thank you. Actually, I do have a question, if there's time later, I'd like to ask the president of the IUF to ask a question on our behalf.
Go ahead.
Mr. Mark Lauritsen, if that's okay. Thank you.
Sure, Ron.
Thank you, Chair. It's interesting, a little less than a year ago, right here in Atlanta, Coca-Cola hosted the Human Rights Conference. Coca-Cola always claims to promote access to human rights throughout the globe. In the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, there are a whole list of human rights, and to devalue one human right, devalues every one of them. I'm concerned, Mr. Chairman, that today Coca-Cola is starting to devalue certain human rights, namely the human right for workers across the globe to join a trade union of their choice without interference. Namely, just last night, workers in the U.S., they got to cast a ballot, but it wasn't a fair ballot because they were threatened.
People that wear the Coca-Cola uniform, they were threatened with their jobs, with their financial stability, and they were threatened and then had to go make a choice to vote. In Indonesia, The Coca-Cola Company is supporting a structure that was put in place, a labor relation structure put in place by the Suharto regime, probably one of the most abusive human rights abusers regimes ever in history, one of the worst in history. Here we sit in Indonesia supporting a structure that was put in place by a human rights abuser, and then The Coca-Cola Company and its subsidiaries are terminating union officials, breaking unions in Indonesia. These are two examples that are happening right now or just happened. My question then to the Chair is this: when is The Coca-Cola Company going to start really enforcing what they say in their papers and their documents?
When are they really going to live the mantra that they preach in their papers? That's my question to the Chair.
Thank you. Let me just dial back just a bit and just say that we've had a long-standing relationship with you, the IUF. We worked through numerous challenges together, talking, and worked through numerous challenges over the years with you primarily at the helm, Ron. I know that now with what's mentioned, you come to us in the spirit of collaboration, and we want to continue to move with a productive dialogue. We are aware of the labor issues. We do not accept that we were in any way hindering the opportunities for workers to vote in a completely neutral, transparent manner. They voted, and the result is, I think yesterday they voted, if my knowledge is correct, and they decided not to become unionized. We have today in our system, out of 700,000 employees worldwide in the Coca-Cola system, 140,000 system employees represented by unions.
That we have nothing against employees becoming unionized, and neither do our bottlers. I just want that to be clear. Otherwise, we wouldn't be able to operate with 140,000. We operate fine. It would not be appropriate for me to discuss, from this platform, specific labor matters that you've mentioned in Indonesia and in Northern New England from the floor of this meeting. But we are happy to continue our dialogue, and I know that the CEO of Coca-Cola Northern New England offered to meet with Sue Longley, your successor, Ron. We will continue to talk, and we will continue to make inroads in the spirit of collaboration. By no means, we adhere to every form of human rights in every country where we operate, in every community we operate. Let me just again stress that. We appreciate what you raised.
We can't address it in those details at this meeting. This is not the appropriate venue, but we will continue to address your concerns in the spirit of collaboration. Let me go to another question. One over here.
Mr. Chairman, may I introduce Brad Dupree?
Good morning, Mr. Chairman, and thank you. I am a shareholder and have two little girls, so I'm hopeful about the long-term prospects of the stock and the dividend. Are you willing to talk about the prospects for the stock, and can you comment on the future of the dividend as well?
Thank you, Brad. Obviously, we can't make predictions. Over the past decade or so, since 2008, I think Sam mentioned the numbers. We returned $91 billion in shareholder value, plus the market cap of The Coca-Cola Company grew by another $88 billion over the past decade, in addition to the $91 billion. The past is never an indication of the future. I have every confidence that the best years are ahead. We have a great track record of paying dividends. We've paid a quarterly dividend since 1920. We've increased dividends in each of the last 57, I think, years.
I think that we have a very strong foundation from where The Coca-Cola Company is moving ahead, that's all we can say. We have the bottling business of The Coca-Cola Company, which is a really important metric in terms of ingredient of the engineering for The Coca-Cola Company, is in the strongest ever position it's been, in the best ever hands that it's been. The leadership of The Coca-Cola Company is in tremendous hands, the best leadership going forward. Therefore, I have every confidence that the best years are ahead. Thank you for your question. Mr. Rogers, you asked me if we're going to have another chance. Do you still have a question that you haven't addressed?
I would love to. I surely would like to see Dr. Sharon ask a question, and also the woman from Mexico and Colombia.
We will call on them as we see fit. If you have anything else to say, please.
Yes. I want to back up my comrades from the labor unions. We talk about Coca-Cola and workers' rights and human rights. I'll go back to the IUF because I get their reports. It seems that respecting labor unions and workers' rights doesn't seem to be on Coca-Cola's list of priorities. In fact, the IUF has dubbed Coca-Cola, if I'm correct, a serial human rights offender. Human rights abuses are accumulating at The Coca-Cola Company's facilities in Indonesia, Haiti, the Philippines, the U.S.A., and Ireland. I just had people from Ireland come in here to talk to me about what's going on there with the concentrate plants. Also, I have to bring up again the serious issues of Coca-Cola's complicity in the kidnapping, torture, and murder of union leaders in Guatemala and Colombia has not been dealt with. Now, Mr. Kent, I appreciate the opportunity we've had sitting down.
We've had good discussions to try to resolve some of the issues that I've raised. Mr. Quincey is now going to be on the hot seat, okay? Because Mr. Quincey, coming out of Mexico, there are serious issues in Mexico and Latin America, and now he's the head of the company. We have to deal with the Angel Alvarado issue of a human rights abuse that happened to him some years ago when he refused to violate the law at the direction of Coca-Cola under the auspices of Mr. Quincey. Remember the great ILO investigation the International Labour Organization was going to do? An independent investigation of the human rights abuses in Colombia with Sinaltrainal. That was a lie. It was a lie promoted by Neville Isdell and Mr. Kent, you yourself.
You still will not admit that that was a phony investigation that never took place and never had a chance of taking place. I just wanted to raise that. Good luck to you and your future. Mr. Quincey, you'll be hearing from me.
Thank you. Look, if my memory is correct, you raised the same, very similar issues about Angel Alvarado, about Mexico, in not last year, because, we missed you last year. The year before, and nothing could be further from the truth of those allegations. There is just no ground to any of those allegations. We've talked about them, you and I, in a different environment, sitting down around a table, and we just believe that none of those allegations are true. As regards the IUF, we are going to keep sitting down and talking, and we view our relationship as being positive and something that we continue to keep going forward, trying to solve some of our differences through discussion, dialogue, and trying to see common platforms together. Ron, you have a point?
I think you know who I am. Clearly that's true. We have worked, I think, hard and successfully over 13, 14 years to resolve some of those issues. They are stacking up again, and that's a concern to us. The international human rights framework that the company claims to publicly and proudly be compliant with has also evolved over those years. However, given the company's constantly repeated assertion that you are now not able to influence bottlers in the system, I would ask you this question: To what degree have your franchising arrangements kept up with the challenges of that changing human rights framework? Your human rights report in 2017 started with the claim that standards laid out in it applied across, and I quote, "Our 800 factories." However, it ends with a significantly weaker statement that you merely expect bottlers to respect international human and workplace rights.
A mere expectation cannot reflect the extent of your obligation to the 700,000 workers you speak of in the system. I would also suggest that if the business model, the contractual arrangements, and the management tools they provide don't work for those human rights issues, why would anyone have faith in them working for other issues around, for example, environment, plastics, and even issues around branding and marketing? If you claim, however, that those contractual arrangements do work for those other issues, why have similar contractual obligations not been effectively written into those arrangements to strengthen your ability to remedy the substantial human rights risks that The Coca-Cola Company faces around the world? Thank you.
Thank you, Ron. First, we see eye to eye with all our bottlers related to issues of adhering to the highest standards of human rights. Clear. However, bottlers are independent companies run by independent leadership teams and not everything can be dictated to bottlers because they are independent companies, some of them public companies. We do see eye to eye on the very important issues of adhering to human rights, of the principles of the highest ethical standards, all of those. Recognize, please, that they are independent companies. Again, we work with you all the time to influence. Bear influence to bring matters to a better place with us being in the middle of the table. That we see as our role. I think going forward, we will continue.
Just like I mentioned, the CEO of Coca-Cola Northern New England, that's accepted to meet with Sue, is a part and parcel of all of these. Do not underestimate, please, our resolve in wanting to basically collaborate and to try and resolve some of the issues. There will be things that we will agree to disagree. That's just a fact of life. It just happens. We respect you as an organization. We work with you as an organization, and we will continue to do that. Let's see. I'll take a question from five back there because we haven't gone back there.
Mr. Chairman, may I introduce Alexa Diane Kaczmarski?
Thank you. I would like to yield my time to Dr. Esperanza Cerón, if I can.
You cannot. You can't just get up.
Okay
give a proxy to someone else.
Okay.
That's not part of the rules of the meeting, please.
No problem. I have a question. Mr. Chair, my name's Alexa Kaczmarski. I'm representing hundreds of thousands of members of the nonprofit Corporate Accountability. I'm also here with public health experts from Latin America, as Mr. Rogers mentioned earlier. We, along with organizations across the globe, are calling for Coke to stop interfering in public health policymaking, such as soda taxes. The American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Heart Association have both recommended and called for soda taxes to decrease consumption of sugary beverages that are increasingly linked to diet-related diseases. Why is the Coca-Cola Corporation spending $millions lobbying against
Policies.
Thank you. Well, first and foremost, we adopted guiding principles in 2016 that help define our approach to health and wellbeing orientated research, and also engagement with third parties. We adopted those principles back in 2016. Those principles include our decision that we will not provide all of the funding for any wellbeing specific scientific research. We will only provide financial support transparently if a non-Coca-Cola entity bears at least half of the research costs. We also do not pay third parties to increase awareness of wellbeing scientific research. We've adopted those policies. We don't adhere to know everything, and we are always flexible to keep amending and improving and moving forward. Take that in that vein and we will continue. Nothing stays constant. Everything is changing, and we change according to that.
We're not in any way or form funding the kind of research that you just mentioned. We have very clear policies in place. James, anything to add on that?
I guess the other thing that's worth saying is, obviously we, as we talked about earlier, see that we have to take action in the sense of helping to reduce sugar consumption, particularly overconsumption by people. Muhtar talked about it in the context of the board resolution. We're very focused on that, whether it's reformulations, whether it's smaller packages, whether it's innovation in products with less calories. We made a tremendous amount of progress. Muhtar talked about some of the statistics of sugar reduction. When it comes to public policy, as we've talked about, we don't get involved with funding the research or pushing out the research.
What we do have a point of view on is that very narrow taxes based over any one category, whether that be sugared sparkling or any other category in an industry such as food and beverages, where there's a high degree of substitution, is going to create the health outcome that's being sought after. There's a lot of research out there. Lots of research that's not funded or supported by the industry, independent public health research, and it's very difficult to see where the narrow taxes are generating a health benefit. Broader taxes, we have supported, whether they're broad-based, whether it be across all products high in fat, salt, and sugar or sugar products in general. In the end, behavior's only going to be changed if it affects a significant portion of the basket.
If it's only a tiny sliver, it's not going to generate the health outcome. That's kind of why we do what we do.
Thank you. I think we'll take one more question. Back there, number 6.
Oh, yes.
We haven't gone to the back yet. Yeah.
Thank you.
Mr. Chairman, we have Denise Hendrix.
Thank you. First of all, Muhtar, thank you for your passion and your leadership. One of the issues that you've been very passionate about is women empowerment, and I'd like to know what motivates you to be so into supporting this issue.
Thank you. It was just a simple truth. Back in 2008, we looked at who were the shoppers for Coca-Cola. Predominantly, the numbers came back globally about that. The numbers said 67% of the global shoppers for Coca-Cola products were women consumers. We looked at internally in the company, where were we in women leadership, and there was a complete dichotomy, this discord. The numbers were in the low teens, in terms of senior management, in terms of mid-level, in terms of the pipeline. We went to work on a program to improve the diversity and the gender equality of women leadership and women executives in The Coca-Cola Company, because it made so much sense. If shoppers are 67% women and only 15% of your senior leadership team is made up of women leaders, that can't be right. We're leaving huge talent off the table.
We went to work, created a women's leadership council. I became the honorary chair of that, and over the years, it's a journey. We haven't concluded. We continue to progress. The numbers are now in the high 30s for executive leadership. The numbers are much higher for pipeline and mid-level. This is not just here in the U.S. I'm talking global numbers. In the bottling area, I think we have a lot of work to do in this area, continue to have a lot to do. I know one thing. The algebra for me is very clear. You improve gender equality, and the business gets better. You empower women in communities, the communities get stronger and better. That, to me, is a very constant algebra.
In the past here in this annual meeting, I've received a question, "What is the benefit to me as a shareowner of your 5by20 program?" The 5 million women entrepreneurs, the largest program of its kind undertaken by a commercial enterprise to date. Goldman Sachs had a program, every program, by the way, has got value of gold. I don't mean to say anything negative about any program. I think every program has the value of gold in the world, the Goldman Sachs program was 10,000. Ours is 5 million women entrepreneurs, different programs. All of them are good. The value is very simple. You saw a woman in Nigeria became a Coca-Cola customer, a retailer, one of the 2.7 million, because of what we did. We identify the women with NGOs.
We give them basic training in finance, stock rotation, retail, hygiene, and we link them up to microcredit. Off they go. They go, and when they get bigger and then they add some meat to the bone, they go and hire more women. That's how the system works. That lady, who became an entrepreneur, a Coca-Cola selling outlet in Nigeria, sells many other products. Sells chips for cell cards, sells other beverages, sells confectionery, sells chocolate, sells many other products, sells household products. They retain a loyalty to our brands because that's who put them into business. That's who basically created an opportunity for them. That's the value that you cannot put money on. A long-term value to our system. They become distributors. Again, they have a loyalty to our brands when they become distributors. They become retailers, they have a loyalty.
They get involved in restaurants, their own restaurants, small little restaurants with three, four, five tables. They have a loyalty. That's the value. I think we see that we're on track to achieve our goal, that hugely challenging goal that we set for ourselves in 2010 for 5 million. We've achieved so far 3.2 million, and by the end, when it's December 31, 2020, we will have reached, I know, the number of 5 million. We're very proud of that program. When that finishes, we'll keep going and launch new programs, I'm sure and certain, because there's so much value for us in this endeavor. No, no. You've spoken twice.
I have not.
Now it's time for you to sit down.
You have not honored your promise. Respect the women. We have doctors who are going to be honored and who want to be able to speak on the health approach. Why are you avoiding allowing women to speak? Give her two minutes.
No. The lady behi-
You do not believe this.
lady behind you said that she would like to speak on behalf of her, and then she spoke herself, so that subject is covered.
She would not give her proxy a voice. She said, "Dr. Sharon, give Dr. Sharon two minutes.
Please.
This woman has been a supporter from the outset, and knows our health issue. Give her two minutes.
We respect everyone in this room. You had the chance to speak twice. Now, Mr. Rogers, I ask you to please sit down.
I will sit down, but I'm going to object to the way that you're handling the meeting. You're last leaving and once you're going, you're doing good. Okay?
I am leaving. I am going out feeling very good. Thank you. Thank you.
We will come to judge you, I think, on one last little push.
Please sit down. That concludes our Q&A session. Essentially, we've come to the end of our meeting. The polls are now closed. If you have a ballot, please raise your hand, so that they can be collected. For those of you shareowners that plan to visit our World of Coca-Cola as our guests, I hope you have a fun, memorable day as always. As I close this meeting, and officially retire as your chairman, again, I could not be more excited about the future. Thank you very much and have a great day.