Welcome to the 2020 annual meeting for SEI Investments Company. Our host for today's call is Al West, Chairman and CEO. At this time, all participants will be in a listen-only mode. I will now turn the call over to your host. Mr. West, you may begin, sir.
Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the annual meeting of shareholders of SEI Investments Company. Thank you for joining us today. In light of the current worldwide health crisis, we are hosting our first virtual meeting of shareholders. Joining me on the call are the members of our board of directors, Sarah Blumenstein, Kathryn McCarthy, Bill Doran, Carl Guarino, and Carmen Romeo. Also with us are two of our executive officers, Dennis McGonigle, our Chief Financial Officer, and Mike Peterson, our General Counsel. Finally, we have two partners from KPMG and our registered public accountants, Robert Capriotti here, and Katie D'Angelo. I would now like to officially call the meeting to order. I'll preside as Chairman of the meeting. Bill Doran, one of the directors and our Corporate Secretary, will act as Secretary of the meeting.
Bill and Mike Peterson will take us through the formal items for the meeting. Bill, please get us started.
Thank you, Al. The agenda for today's meeting will be as follows. I will go over certain procedural items, and Mike will preside over the voting on the four proposals set forth in our proxy statement. Al will give his annual report to shareholders. After his annual report, Al and the representatives from KPMG will take questions. The meeting will be conducted in accordance to the code of conduct posted on the web portal. Shareholders may ask questions in the designated field on the web portal, subject to the parameters set forth in the meeting's code of conduct. Please note that this meeting is being recorded. However, no one attending via the webcast is permitted to use any audio recording device.
An affidavit has been delivered attesting to the fact that notice of the meeting and accompanying materials were mailed on or about April 23rd, 2020, to all registered shareholders as of March 27, 2020, the record date for the meeting. The Judge of Elections, Tracy Oates, has previously taken the oath as judge of election. The judge has informed me that a majority of the total issued and outstanding shares of the company's stock are represented at the meeting via the web portal or by proxy. A quorum is present for the purposes of conducting business. I will now ask Mike to take us through the items on which we are voting today. Mike?
Thank you, Bill. Good morning, everyone. We will now turn to the items of business, which are described in detail in the proxy statement furnished to shareholders of record. Proxy statement is available through the web portal. It can also be accessed via the SEC's website at www.sec.gov. We have four proposals to be voted on by the shareholders at today's meeting. Proxies have been received and tabulated. They have been voted by written ballot in accordance with the terms of each proxy received. Any shareholder who has not yet voted or would like to change their vote may do so on the web portal by clicking on the voting button, following the instructions. Please do that now. We will close the voting once I have read the four questions to be voted on.
These are, first, election of Kathryn McCarthy and Sarah Blumenstein as directors for a three-year term ending in 2023. Second, to approve on an advisory basis, the compensation of our named executive officers. Third, to ratify the appointment of KPMG LLP as independent registered public accountants to examine our consolidated financial statements for 2020. Fourth, to approve the SEI Investments Company employee stock purchase plan as amended and restated in the form set forth in our proxy statement. The polls are now closed. The preliminary voting results from the judge of election are that each of the four proposals as set forth in our proxy statement has been approved.
We will report the final vote results on a Form 8-K that will be filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission within four business days. Before Al delivers his remarks, I would like everyone to note that some of the discussion may include forward-looking statements. Our forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those that are predicted. We urge you to read and carefully consider our cautionary statement posted on the meeting site. There being no further business to come before this meeting, I will turn things back to Al. Al?
Yeah. Thank you, Bill and Mike. The meeting is adjourned. I'm sorry. Here are my remarks. My intention is to focus my remarks on 2019, but considering what the first few months of 2020 have wrought, some of my remarks will stray into 2020. SEI's financial report results for 2019 were solid. The EPS for 2019 of $3.24 is a 3% increase over the $3.14 reported in 2018. Also, during 2019, our non-cash assets under management increased by $33 billion. In 2019, SEI shareholders were highly rewarded. We repurchased 6.2 million shares of SEI stock, representing $348 million of capital, and grew dividends to $102 million. The first amount of capital we returned to the shareholders in 2019 amounted to $450 million. Now turning to sales events, we were pleased with 2019 results.
In 2019, net sales events totaled $87.5 million and are expected to generate recurring revenues of $62.5 million. Since the first quarter of 2020, we have been dealing with the devastation of the COVID-19 pandemic. So far, we have fared as well as could be possible. Fighting the corona crisis, the health of our employees and their families is our top priority. By the end of the first quarter 2020, we had 99% of our 4,000 employees working at home, all except a skeleton crew of less than 100 employees. We're extremely proud of how productive our workforce has been during the crisis in handling record-breaking transaction volumes. Our new business strategy of One SEI is beginning to drive results. The goal of One SEI is to leverage existing and new SEI platforms, making them accessible to all types of clients, markets, and other platforms.
As we look back at the last 16 months, we have many to thank. We thank our employees and business partners for their accomplishments, our shareholders for their confidence in us, and our clients for their trust. After all, our clients' success is the true measure of our success. Finally, thank you for your time and attention this morning. While the road ahead in 2020 and beyond will be challenging for us, it's also full of opportunities. We believe that we're better suited today to capture the opportunities with our One SEI strategy. That concludes my remarks. Mike, are there any questions?
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We have no questions.
If there are no further questions, thank you all for joining us at our first virtual annual meeting. Good day.