Good morning. I'm Bob Eckert, and I welcome all of you to Levi Strauss & Company's 2026 annual meeting of shareholders. I want to thank you all for taking the time to join us, and I hope you are safe and well. The agenda and rules of conduct appear on your screen on the virtual meeting website. We'll conduct the meeting in accordance with these documents. At this time, let me take this opportunity to introduce you to the members of the Levi Strauss & Company board. In addition to myself, they are Michelle Gass, President and CEO of Levi Strauss & Company, Troy Alstead, Jill Beraud, Yael Garten, Dan Geballe, Jeff Jones, David Marberger, Chris McCormick, Jenny Ming, Artemis Patrick, Joshua Prime, and Elliott Rodgers. I'd like to thank Chris McCormick, who will retire from the board after today's shareholder meeting.
Thank you, Chris, for your immense value and service on the LS&Co. board. Additionally, I'd like to thank my fellow directors, broader Levi's team, and all of you, the shareholders, for a great 15 years, as I'll be stepping down as chair following today's meeting and retiring later this year. This has been one of the greatest honors of my career, helping guide this company through some of its most consequential moments, becoming the strong company it is today. I'm delighted to pass the chair seat to Troy Alstead, who has served on the board for more than 10 years. Troy has been a guiding force for the company, and I have every confidence in his ability to lead the board and advise the company going forward. Lastly, thank you to all of our board members for their continuous dedication and willingness to serve.
They are all online, as well as members of our management team. Now, let me turn the meeting over to our general counsel, David Jedrzejek, for the formal business of the meeting. Dave?
Thank you, Bob, and good morning, everyone. Just a few reminders before I go into the proposals. First, this meeting is being recorded and will be available for the next 30 days on the meeting center site you accessed today. Second, shareholders who have not previously voted their shares and who have previously completed an online registration may vote online prior to the closing of the polls. The polls will be closed for voting after I go through each of the proposals to be voted on. Third, while the meeting is virtual only, shareholders that have completed an online registration will have the capability to submit questions online during the first five minutes of the meeting.
Guests attending this meeting are in listen-only mode. We will try to answer as many questions as possible and will group questions from multiple shareholders on the same topic or that are otherwise related. Any other questions not answered can be raised separately by contacting investorrelations@levi.com. Now, we'll move to the formal business. A representative from Broadridge, who is acting as Inspector of Elections, is present online. The Inspector of Elections has reported that a majority of the votes eligible to be cast at this meeting are present or represented by proxy, and therefore we have a quorum and we may proceed. There are four proposals to be considered today, three company proposals and one shareholder proposal. Each of the proposals will be presented in the order in which they appear in the company's notice of annual meeting and proxy statement.
Please note that only properly submitted proposals will be considered at this meeting. The first item of business is the election of three Class One directors to serve until the 2029 annual meeting and until their successors are duly elected and qualified. The nominees for Class One director are Jill Beraud, Artemis Patrick, and Elliott Rodgers. The second item of business is the proposal to approve, on an advisory basis, the compensation paid to the company's named executive officers as set forth in more detail in the proxy statement for this meeting. The third item of business is the ratification of the selection by the audit committee of the board of directors of PricewaterhouseCoopers as the company's independent registered public accounting firm for the fiscal year ending November 29, 2026.
The fourth item of business is a shareholder proposal, which was submitted by the National Center for Public Policy Research, requesting a bylaw amendment related to a sustainability return on investment report by the audit committee. At this time, I'd like to introduce a representative from NCPPR who is in attendance at our virtual meeting today. Given the proponent's presence at the meeting and in the interest of time, I am deeming the shareholder proposal to be properly presented before the meeting. I will now recognize Steve Milloy for a period of no more than five minutes to make a statement regarding their proposal.
Good morning, shareholders. My name is Steve Milloy, and I am the Executive Director of the Free Enterprise Project of the National Center for Public Policy Research. I am asking you to vote yes on proposal number four regarding oversight of our company's so-called sustainability initiatives.
Management opposes our proposal, calling it micromanaging. Let's see if that's true. Management has made net zero by 2050 a sustainability goal for Levi Strauss. I was at a conference a couple of weeks ago where the 2022 Nobel Prize winner in physics, John Clauser, described climate alarm as a multi-trillion dollar hoax. For more than an hour, John Clauser described in great detail how climate alarm is based in demonstrable science fraud.
Is there anyone in corporate management that knows more about climate than the 2022 Nobel Prize winner in physics? Is there any employee, corporate consultant, or NGO that knows more about climate than the 2022 Nobel Prize winner in physics? The answer to both questions is obviously no. Since net zero is based on science fraud, and no one connected with Levi Strauss could possibly hope to differ with John Clauser, why does our company have a net zero goal? I call this the arrogance of ignorance. The absurd net zero goal is more than just a lie. It has pushed the company to boast about buying so-called renewable energy, which is code for pointlessly expensive and unreliable energy. Why would management want to pay pointlessly more for less reliable energy and then boast about it? Well, we can call that the ignorance of arrogance.
The grand irony of all this is that even if management insists on believing in the climate hoax, Levi Strauss could stop using energy today and forever, and the amount of greenhouse gas emissions avoided would make absolutely no difference to climate or weather. The math is exceedingly simple. Our company pays more for energy because of arrogance and ignorance. It propagates material falsehoods about sustainability to shareholders, regulators, employees, customers, and the public. As a securities lawyer, I can tell you that it's quite illegal for management to issue materially misleading statements. Management may want to dismiss all this as micromanaging, but the only thing micro in all of this is management's credibility. Implementing and propagating fraud as well as wasting corporate resources is bad business. Since management isn't really interested in oversight of corporate sustainability, shareholders must be. Vote yes on proposal number 4. Thank you.
Statement, Mr. Milloy. I now declare the polls closed. The Inspector of Elections has provided us with preliminary results and confirmed the following. Each of the three nominees for election as Class One directors has been elected to serve a three-year term expiring at the 2029 annual meeting. The advisory approval of executive compensation has passed. The appointment of PricewaterhouseCoopers as the independent registered public accounting firm for Levi Strauss & Co. has been ratified. The shareholder proposal has not passed. The final tabulation of all votes will be included in the minutes of the meeting and will be reported in the company's Form 8-K to be filed with the SEC within four business days after this meeting. This concludes the formal portion of the meeting. I'll now turn it over to Aida for the Q&A portion of our meeting. Aida.
Thank you, Dave. We will now address questions received by shareholders. Any questions posed and not otherwise answered can be raised separately by contacting investorrelations@levi.com. Our first question is, given the strong start to 2026, can you talk about what you have in motion to continue the momentum throughout the year? Michelle.
Thanks for the question. We have, in fact, started 2026 with real momentum. Beat expectations across the top and bottom line. Sales up 9% on an organic basis, 14% on a reported basis for Q1, and again, exceeding expectations across margin and EPS. Our strategies are working. Our intent to become a DTC-first company is playing out this year. This will be more than 50% of our business, but we're doing that, and we're growing wholesale too, as evidenced in our first quarter results with both DTC and wholesale growing. Our category strategies are working. Men's, women's, tops, bottoms, all accelerating, and our pivot to become a head-to-toe denim lifestyle retailer is really working. I would speak to the brand. The brand has never been stronger.
We started the year on one of the biggest stages in the world at the Super Bowl at Levi's Stadium, and we amplified that by launching our first Super Bowl ad in 20 years and kicked off our global campaign, Behind Every Original. The campaign has come to life through partnerships throughout the world, and in fact, one of the stars of the campaign, BLACKPINK's Rosé, we are now amplifying that in the Asia market with a collaboration with her. That continues through both global and local partnerships, like with COLORSxSTUDIOS, where we're launching emerging artists. Then, of course, back to sports. Levi's Stadium will be one of the hosts of the World Cup. As you can see, the momentum between the brand, product, and our DTC, now 16 quarters of positive comp growth.
We expect all of that to continue into the rest of 2026 and beyond.
Thank you. I will now turn the call back over to Bob for some closing remarks.
Thanks, Aida, and thank you to everyone for joining us today. To close out, the company is making great progress in its evolution into becoming a best-in-class denim lifestyle retailer. We have an experienced and talented team to continue to drive the company's momentum and define the next chapter of profitable growth. I'd like to again thank you all for the last 15 years. As we look ahead, I'm confident the company, under Michelle's leadership and with Troy in the chair seat, has the right strategies in place to fuel its momentum and manage the business for the long term. Of course, will do so while honoring its deep-rooted values and profits through principles philosophy. The company remains committed to delivering a strong, profitable future for all shareholders. With that, we conclude today's meeting. Thank you.
The meeting has now concluded.
Thank you for joining, and have a pleasant day.