Good afternoon, everyone. I'd like to welcome all of you to the annual meeting of stockholders of LKQ Corporation. My name is Nick Zarcone, and I'm the President and Chief Executive Officer of LKQ. We are pleased to be hosting our second virtual annual meeting. It is now shortly after 1:30 P.M. Central Time on May 11th, 2021, and this meeting is called to order.
I would like to introduce the other members of the board participating in today's meeting. Patrick Berard, Meg Divitto, Robert Hanser, Joseph Holsten, Blythe McGarvie, John Mendel, Jody Miller, John F. O'Brien, Guhan Subramanian, Xavier Urbain, and Jacob Welch. Matt J. McKay will act as Secretary of the meeting. Peter Sablich, a representative of Broadridge Financial Solutions, has been appointed to act as Inspector of Election. Representatives of Deloitte & Touche, our independent auditor, are also present at our meeting.
During the question and answer period, they will be available to respond to appropriate questions. After the formal meeting has adjourned, we will have a very short presentation, and then we will provide time for general questions. Only validated stockholders may ask questions in the designated field on the web portal. Out of consideration for others, please limit yourself to no more than two questions.
Please note that this meeting is being recorded. However, no one attending the webcast is permitted to use any audio recording device. To conduct an orderly meeting, we ask that participants abide by these rules and the other rules set forth in the rules of conduct and procedures posted on the web portal.
Since we announced our first quarter financial results just 12 days ago, and we have no new material, non-public information to disclose, I would ask that you refrain from asking questions either already covered on the earnings call, a transcript of which is available on our corporate website, or looking for more recent business activity updates. Thank you for your cooperation.
The Secretary has delivered an affidavit of mailing establishing that notice of this meeting was duly given. A copy of the notice of the meeting and the affidavit of mailing will be incorporated into the minutes of this meeting. All stockholders of record at the close of business on March 15, 2021, are entitled to vote at the annual meeting.
Our first order of business at this meeting is to determine whether the shares present at the meeting, either in person or by proxy, are sufficient to constitute a quorum for the purpose of transacting business. Matt McKay, do you have a report?
Yes, Nick. The stockholder list shows that holders of 303,136,134 shares of common stock of the corporation are entitled to vote at this meeting. We are informed by Mr. Sablich that there are represented in person or by proxy 278,299,586 shares of common stock, or approximately 92% of all the shares entitled to vote at this meeting.
Thank you, Matt. Because holders of a majority of the shares entitled to vote at this meeting are present in person or by proxy, I declare this meeting to be duly convened for purposes of transacting such business as may properly come before it. The next order of business is a description of the matters to be voted on at today's meeting.
The first proposal before the stockholders of LKQ is the election of 11 directors to serve until the annual meeting of stockholders in 2022, and are duly elected and qualified. We recommend the election of the following persons as directors of the corporation. Patrick Berard, Meg Divitto, Robert Hanser, Joseph Holsten, Blythe McGarvie, John Mendel, Jody Miller, Guhan Subramanian, Xavier Urbain, Jake Welch, and Dominick Zarcone.
The second proposal before the stockholders is the ratification of the appointment of Deloitte & Touche LLP as the independent registered public accounting firm of the company for fiscal year 2021. The third proposal before the stockholders is the approval on an advisory basis of the compensation of our named executive officers. If any stockholder would like to ask a question regarding any of these proposals, please submit your question through the web portal.
It is currently 1:36 P.M. Central Time, and the polls are now open. If you previously voted by proxy, you do not need to vote today unless you wish to change your vote. Any stockholder who has not yet voted or wishes to change their vote may do so by clicking on the voting button on the web portal and following the instructions there.
We will now take a short pause to allow anyone the opportunity to vote their shares. Now that everyone has had an opportunity to vote, I declare the polls are now closed, and it is 1:38 P.M. Central Time. Will the Secretary please report the preliminary results of voting?
We have been informed by the Inspector of Election that the preliminary vote report shows that, number one, the nominees for election to the board of directors have been duly elected. Number two, the appointment of Deloitte & Touche as our independent registered public accounting firm has been ratified. Number three, the compensation of our named executive officers has been approved. We will be reporting the final vote results in a Form 8-K to be filed with the SEC within four business days.
Thank you, Matt. There being no further business to come before the meeting, the 2021 annual meeting of stockholders of LKQ Corporation is adjourned. Before moving on to the Q&A session, I would like to take a few minutes to address our ESG initiatives, which were broadly announced this past April 6th, when we made public our first annual CSR report.
With that, I'm going to take a few minutes to walk through a presentation, which hopefully everyone has the ability to see on the screen. First, I want to start with our mission statement. This is important because everything we do at LKQ In the end, we want to be a leading global value-added distributor of vehicle parts and accessories. That's our business. It has been our business from day one, and it's going to continue to be the focus of our activities going forward.
In doing so, we really need to serve a number of different constituencies. First, we need to provide great value to our customers. We also need to build really strong partnerships with our employees, all 44,000 of them, and the over 1,500 communities in which we operate around the globe. These last two constituencies, that being the employees and the communities, you'll see are central to our ESG priorities.
In short, what does LKQ offer to investors and to our shareholders who are listening on this call? Well, first and foremost, we have market-leading positions in almost everything we do around the globe. We have some of the broadest product lines amongst automotive parts distributors, including mechanical parts, collision parts, and a whole variety of different accessories.
We transact our business on a global basis and have the broadest geographic coverage amongst automotive parts distributors, including comprehensive coverage of the United States, Canada, and 21 different European countries, and we are the only entity to have a pan-European footprint. We have a history of delivering excellent organic revenue growth, strong EBITDA and cash flow, and growing earnings per share. Perhaps most importantly, we are an environmental leader in the recycling of vehicles and related materials.
The metrics from our salvage business in the North American marketplace as it relates to the recycling of automobiles is very impressive. As noted on page five of our presentation, we are the global leader when it comes to recycling vehicles. In 2020, we procured, processed, and recycled approximately 818,000 vehicles on a global basis.
At the end of the day, almost none of the vehicle ends up in a landfill. We focus on recycling every bit of the car or truck that we can. First thing we do is we drain every drop of fluid out of the vehicles when they come to our facilities. That allowed us to recycle millions of gallons of fuel, millions of gallons of waste oil. In addition to other fluids like transmission fluid and windshield wiper solvent and antifreeze.
We're able to reprocess and recycle over 2 million tires, over 600,000 batteries. Importantly, we processed and sent on to other folks in the ecosystem over 850,000 tons of scrap steel. Ultimately, that scrap steel is a feedstock into the steel production process and actually replaced the need to mine over 1 million tons of virgin iron ore.
Perhaps most impressively, we sold well over 14 million individual recycled parts. That's over 14 million parts that didn't need to be produced, packaged, and shipped ultimately into the end marketplace. We are incredibly proud of what we've been able to do throughout the lifetime of LKQ as it relates to being a good environmental steward with respect to our North American recycling business.
Given that recycling is core to our salvage business, we actually have made a conscious decision to focus our ESG initiatives on other key items. There are five items noted on page six that are the focus of our ESG activities. First and foremost, we want to reduce the carbon footprint over time. We want to enhance the engagement with those 44,000 employees that come to work every day.
Diversity and inclusion, creating equity across our workforce is paramount to everything that we do. As a distributor, we buy product, we warehouse it, and we distribute it ultimately to our customer. There's a long supply chain that we engage with, and we're going to do what we can to enhance and create a sustainable supply chain as well.
Last, but certainly not least, we want to engage and support with those 1,500 different communities in which we operate across the globe. Those are the five key focus areas from our ESG initiatives, and you will hear more about these in the years to come. If you go to page seven, I'm going to give you just a snippet of an example of how we're trying to put these activities into work on a day in and day out basis.
Over in the Netherlands, just outside our Rotterdam headquarters, we are in the process of bringing on a brand-new central distribution center. It's a large facility with over 50,000 sq m of space. It's not just a big warehouse. Okay? It is a state-of-the-art warehouse. The roof is going to be fully equipped with solar panels that will make the building completely energy self-sufficient. It is a zero-emission, zero-gas facility.
It has won a number of awards related to the sustainability of the building. Obviously, there's going to be a lot of charging infrastructure for electric vehicles. Importantly for our employees there is a number of very large windows providing daylight, which will create a very pleasant working environment in the facility.
Again, this is just one example of many of how we're trying to put our focus on the carbon footprint into practice each and every day. As noted on slide eight, we are very proud of our commitment to building strong partnerships with our employees and the communities. First and foremost is always creating a safe and secure work environment.
While it's always been a priority for LKQ, the past 14 months and living through the pandemic have clearly put an exclamation point on this particular topic. We want to offer our employees excellent career paths to have real engagement with them and provide them the development and training they need to continue in their careers. We're focusing on providing fulfilling work with competitive compensation and, importantly, benefits.
We want opportunities for all of our employees to have personal and professional growth, a focus on training and development is key. Perhaps most importantly, we have a culture, and we're going to continue to build a culture that emphasizes fair and equitable treatment for all of our employees. Lastly, good governance and integrity are fundamental to our continued success.
We have a tremendous board of directors that you just elected, 11 individuals, nine of whom are independent directors under the NASDAQ guidelines. These individuals bring a vast array of experience each and every day to the company. Four of them, four of the 11 individuals, reflect diverse board members, either by gender or by race, and we are very proud of that as well.
If you've been following LKQ, you know that we've been on a continuous mission to refresh our board. Indeed, six of the 11 directors have been added in just the last three years. It is a very relatively new board. Average tenure across the 11 of us is just about five years. Again, a number of relatively new appointments, which are bringing incremental experience, perspectives, and knowledge to LKQ. Lastly, from a structural perspective, we think we are a governance-friendly corporation.
We have annual election of directors, majority voting. We have a majority voting standard. We have a proxy access provision. There are no poison pills in place. The next slide is just a summary of the 11 directors, their experience, and what they bring to bear for LKQ.
I could not be more proud to have these 10 individuals by my side as we lead LKQ in the future. That is the conclusion of the formal remarks, and we'd now like to open the meeting up to questions from shareholders. We have one question that has come in, and the question relates to the topic of stakeholder capitalism as an alternative to shareholder capitalism, has received considerable attention recently.
As a long-term pension fund investor, we appreciate the sentiments embodied in the stakeholder capitalism perspective, but feel that execution could be complicated. Could you please discuss your perspective on the concept of stakeholder capitalism and what principles the board would use to balance the interest of varied stakeholders as it develops and implements the company's long-term strategy? I greatly appreciate that question.
Our goal is always to take a very holistic view as to all the key constituencies that are required to create a successful LKQ Corporation. As highlighted in the mission statement, which is how I started the presentation, there are a number of key constituents that we need to be equally tuned into each and every day. Yes, our customers, the folks who are going to pay us over $12 billion for the parts that we sell this year, those 44,000 employees across the globe, those 1,500 different communities, thousands of suppliers. At the end of the day, if we do a good job of serving those constituencies well, our shareholders will also do just fine.
At the end of the day, we're conscious of creating economic value and good shareholder returns, but to do that in a manner that is balanced with these other key constituencies that are fundamental to our continued success. As I mentioned in the ESG presentation, all five elements of our ESG programs are really focused on social shareholders, right? Our employees, our supply chain, the communities in which we operate.
Obviously, the focus on reducing the carbon footprint has an impact on the entire population across the globe. We do believe that we are being very thoughtful in taking a proactive approach to addressing not only the best interest of our shareholders, but all the other key constituencies around the globe that are important for us to be successful. Hopefully, that answers your question.
At this point in time, no other questions have come in through the web portal, so we will bring the annual meeting to a close. We certainly appreciate your time and attention. We know that there are many companies out there. We appreciate that you are a shareholder of LKQ, and you've spent a bit of your afternoon with us here today. Thank you very much, and we look forward to chatting with you at our next annual meeting.