Good morning, and thank you for joining us for the Target Corporation 2021 Annual Meeting of Shareholders. I'm Brian Cornell, Chairman of the Board and CEO of Target. Joining me on the line are Don Liu, our Chief Legal and Risk Officer and Corporate Secretary as well as Katie Boylan, our Chief Communications Officer. Our Board of Directors is also in attendance, including Monica Lozano, who has been selected by the Board to serve as our Lead Independent Director. We welcome Monica in this capacity and thank Doug Baker, who just ended a term as Lead Director.
Also with us this morning are other members of our leadership team and a representative from Ernst and Young, Target's independent registered public accounting firm. A year ago at this time, we decided to convert this meeting to a virtual format in an effort to keep everyone safe and to limit travel, and that continues to make sense for today. I want to start this meeting by publicly recognizing the Target team and thank them for their outstanding empathy, energy, care and resilience they've shown for each other, our guests and communities each and every day. As I've said before, the story of the last year is one in which the Target team wanted nothing more than to take care of those around us, drawing on capabilities that were equal to the ambition after years of building and investment. So once Don conducts the necessary business of the meeting, I'll spend a few minutes reflecting on our team's unwavering performance and what it means for the future of our company.
After that, we'll address shareholder questions that were submitted both in advance of the meeting and during these proceedings. If you are a shareholder and have logged into the meeting with your control number, you may ask a question or indicated on the virtual Full Shareholder Meeting screen. And with that, I'll turn to Don to take us through the business portion of the meeting.
Thank you, Brian. As a reminder, any forward looking statements we make today are subject to risks and uncertainties, the most important of which are described in our SEC filings. During today's remarks, we will refer to both earnings per share and adjusted earnings per share. Adjusted earnings per share is a non GAAP financial measure, and a reconciliation to our GAAP earnings per share is provided in our most recent 10 Q and 10 ks filings. With that, let's turn to the proposals for today's meeting presented in our proxy statement.
First, I'd like to report the notice requirements for this meeting have been satisfied. The independent Inspector of Elections is the Corredio Group. A representative from the Corredio Group is present by phone at this meeting and has reported that we have received proxies representing a substantial majority of our outstanding shares. Therefore, we have a quorum for this meeting. The polls for voting on all matters are open at this time.
Any shareholders who did not vote by proxy and want to vote or who want to revoke a proxy previously given, please do so now where indicated on your screen. If you previously voted by proxy, you do not need to vote today unless you wish to change your vote. This year, shareholders were asked to consider and vote on 3 management proposals and 1 shareholder proposal. All proposals are described in our proxy statement. So I will first present the 3 management proposals.
The Board of Directors recommends a vote in favor of each of these management proposals. Mr. Chairman, I move for the approval of the following resolutions for the 3 management proposals: to elect 12 of our current Board members nominated for reelection in our proxy statement to serve a new 1 year term. Under our governing documents, they will serve until a successor is elected and qualified. To ratify the appointment of Ernst and Young as the independent registered public accounting firm for the company's 2021 fiscal year.
And to approve on an advisory basis targets executive compensation via shareholder seo pay.
Thank you, Don. The polls are now closed on items 1 through 3. Director nominees and approve the 2 other management proposals.
Item 4 on the agenda is a shareholder proposal to amend the proxy access by law to remove the shareholder group limit. A representative speaking on behalf of the proposal submitted by John Svedden is recognized to speak for up to 3 minutes.
Hello, this is John Chavin. Can you hear me okay? Hello, this is John Chavin. Can you hear me okay?
Yes, we can.
Just as a point of order, there's a one question limit per shareholder at this meeting. It sends a message that management wants to limit shareholder engagement and shareholder outreach. Proposal 4, improve our cash 22 proxy access. Shareholders request that our Board of Directors take the steps necessary to enable as many shareholders as may be needed to combine their shares to equal 3% of our stock owned continuously for 3 years in order to enable shareholder proxy access. Proxy access allows a group of shows to nominate a director who will compete with management nominated directors to see who gets the most votes.
Competition is good for our Board of Directors. Currently, a limit of 20 shareholders must have owned $3,000,000,000 of Target stock for an unbroken 3 years in order to nominate one candidate for the Board under our proxy access rules. A strict limit of 20 deep pocket shareholders with $3,000,000,000 of target stock does not allow for a diverse group of shareholders. It is disappointing that management does not support the diversity that this proposal calls for. As a practical matter, it's unlikely that more than 50 shareholders would participate in nominating a director using proxy access with this proposal.
There's hardly any administrative difference in 20 shareholders submitting proof of only 3 $1,000,000,000 of target stock compared to 50 shareholders submitting proof of owning $3,000,000,000 of target stock. And adopting this proposal would show management's commitment to diversity. This proposal is asking for so little. Our current proxy access is way out of balance and too difficult for shareholders to make use of. The evidence is that there has not been one proxy access candidate placed on the ballot of any company during the past 5 years.
There have been 500 companies with a shareholder right to proxy access during these 5 years. 5 years times 500 companies equals 2,500 company years without one proxy access candidate. This means that under the current rules, a company such as Target would not expect 1 proxy access director candidate during the next 2,500 years. This is way out of balance as far as shows are concerned. Management says that it engages with shareholders on this proposal topic.
However, management is silent on whether 30% of Target shareholders support this proposal topic, which is typical. This proposal topic also won 41% at Advanced Auto Parts just weeks ago. The effectiveness of a good governance proposal like this proposal is that it would not result in more costs, but would instead pay dividends because the mere presence of good governance serves as the guardrail to make sure that management elects the best directors on their own because if management does not elect the best directors then shareholders have a remedy with teeth to make their director nominations known to management. Please vote yes to improve our catch-twenty two proxy access proposal 4.
Thank you. The Board's position on this proposal is set forth in our proxy statement. At this time, the polls are closed on Item 4. Based on our preliminary count of the votes, this proposal was not approved by our shareholders. For all other proposals, the final results of the shareholder votes will be announced when they're available.
And with that, we'll conclude the business portion of our meeting. Now, I'd like to provide an overview of our business and expectations for the year. When we announced our 2021 priorities back in March, we talked about building on a new baseline and continuing to grow our business. Instead of seeing last year's record performance as a peak, we saw it as part of a long term story with the brightest chapters still ahead. Our strategy set us up for success in 2020, even though that with this crisis in mind.
It was designed to create the retail platform of tomorrow with an unmatched integration of physical and digital shopping, technology, team spirit and an unrelenting focus on our guests. As it turns out, aggressive investment and rapid scaling meant the platform was ready to serve our guests uniquely well when the pandemic struck. Because the capabilities we've built to make Target the easiest place to shop translated seamlessly to making us the safest place to shop as well. Today, Target is known as much for its same day fulfillment services and safety as we are for style and swagger. And millions of American families have built trusting routines and connections to Target that will continue long after the pandemic.
In fact, as we cautiously envision a post pandemic world, we believe that even with a wider array of shopping options open to them, consumers will continue to focus on one stop shopping, staying loyal to the brands that kept them safe and serve them best during the pandemic. And as a result, we expect to continue building on the blowout growth we posted last year. And with 1 quarter behind us, performance has exceeded our expectations. Overall comp of 22.9% would have been a standout in any year, but piling on top of last year's growth of 10.8%, it's particularly notable. The tremendous performance we're seeing in stores, including a Q1 comp of 18%, continues to validate the central premise of our strategy that stores are the heart of our omnichannel model, generating traffic and sales growth in their own right, while serving as fulfillment hubs for our vastly expanded digital business.
More than 95% of all our sales, physical and digital, are fulfilled by our stores. And after growing an extraordinary 278% in Q1 of 2020, our store based same day fulfillment options, order pickup, drive up and shipped, grew another 91% this year. Perhaps the most telling measure of how relevant we were to guests in 2020 was a towering gain of $9,000,000,000 in market share, which span all 5 of our core merchandising categories. Building on those gains over time will be a key indicator of the durability of our business model. And in Q1, we continue to move the needle, gaining more than $1,000,000,000 of additional market share.
Importantly, we've been able to translate top line growth all day to day $0.69 establishing a new all time high for the company. Compared with 2020, this is more than a 6 fold increase. And if we look back to Q1 2019, our adjusted EPS has grown 141%, demonstrating how far our businesses advance in a short time. And earlier this morning, we announced that our Board has approved a 32% increase to our quarterly dividend from $0.68 to $0.90 beginning with the dividend payable on September 10, 2021. This is a testament to the Board's confidence and our team's ability to continue delivering strong performance in the years ahead.
To be clear, there is still a lot of volatility as the country reopens and vaccination rates continue to increase. But in addition to having a durable business model designed to serve guests well in any environment, we have a flexible and adaptable team that will continue to shift with whatever is on the horizon. And given the trust we've built with our guests quarter after quarter and our commitment to adjusting along with them to the ongoing shifts in the macro environment, we're confident in continued comp growth through the remainder of this year as well as healthy full year profits. Now, if this were a bike race, there'd be no coasting after a climb or letting momentum carry us forward. Instead, we're pedaling into the next hill.
We're staying hungry. And to borrow a concept from a hero and mentor of mine, John Wooden, we're competing against ourselves to become even better. This means innovating and investing billions each and every year in the assets and capabilities that are already differentiating target. This includes remodeling hundreds of additional stores and adding dozens of new small formats per year, adding to our roster of 30 plus owned brands across our multi category portfolio, including our new food brand, Favorite Day, and our new arts and crafts brand, Mandelama. It includes extending our longtime leadership in design partnerships and limited time offerings with our new designer dress collection featuring 3 rising stars in fashion and our Hilton Carter for Target collection of plants and plant accessories.
And it also includes putting outstanding store design, visual merchandising, omnichannel expertise and same day services to work with strategic partners like Disney and Levi. Where everyone can care, grow and win together and to a $15 starting wage that is well above the national minimum. In fact, in many local communities, including the Little Village neighborhood in Chicago, where we're opening a new distribution center with 2,000 jobs, our starting wage is considerably higher than that. The additional replenishment capacity created by the Little Village DC is one way we're supporting our successful stores as hub strategy. Supply chain innovation is another with our new sortation centers as a recent standout example.
The vast majority of online orders shipped to home are fulfilled by sort teams picking and packing items to go out our back doors by national carriers. We're making this process speedier for guests and more efficient for our business by blending technology acquisitions and our thousands of ship shoppers in a supply chain capability that's new for us and will help fulfill even more digital orders quickly and profitably. As our teams pick and pack orders in stores, we'll sweep those packages to a sortation center multiple times per day. There, we'll apply Grand Junction and deliver technology to sort them in the most efficient delivery routes using our ship shoppers or traditional carriers to run those consolidated routes out in the neighborhoods. Our first location center is up and running in Minneapolis, and we'll open 5 more this year as we continue to learn and expand the network.
These are just some of the ways we'll continue to make our business even better for our team, our guests and communities. What's equally important are the many ways we're using our business to make everyday life better for everyone. As we gather today, we're less than 2 months past the guilty verdict in the Chauvin trial, an important step forward for our hometown and I hope for the country. In 2020, we all witnessed the murder of George Floyd, the racial disparities of COVID-nineteen and the racist acts directed at Asian colleagues and neighbors. In the months since then, we've accelerated our successful 15 year old diversity and inclusion strategy through our Racial Equity Action and Change Committee.
Reach was specifically created to advance racial equity for black team members and guests across all areas of Target's business. And it has already brought forward many substantial initiatives, including our commitment to increase representation of black team members by 20% with black owned businesses by 2025 endowing our scholars program in partnership with historically black colleges and universities and co founding the 110 Coalition to hire, train and advance a 1000000 Black Americans without college degrees, to name a few. To be sure, additional challenges have emerged, including the devastating spike in COVID cases in India, where so many target team members live and work in our sourcing organization and our headquarters located in Bangalore. That's one of the many reasons why our team remains so determined to put our size and scale, purpose and values to work for all families. Later this summer, we'll share more information around another consequential advance we're making with that ambition in mind.
It involves a refreshed enterprise sustainability strategy that draws upon our company legacy of corporate responsibility, diversity and inclusion and community engagement. As part of our immediate efforts, we'll focus on designing and elevating sustainable brands, innovating to eliminate waste, and accelerating opportunity and equity in our communities, all in service to a safe and prosperous future for all. Look for more information very soon. So as we wind down these remarks and get ready to take your questions, I couldn't be more confident in Target's future or we're grateful for our team. Each and every day, they come to work for all families.
They care, they anticipate, they adjust in any environment to keep delivering for our guests. And in doing so, they keep our business, our ambitions and our impact growing. They're the reason our business model is so durable. And they're why I'm so optimistic that despite these many months of global and social crisis, our best days as a company and as a country lie ahead. Before the formal Q and A session begins, we'd like to recognize a representative to speak for up to 3 minutes about the impact of Target's partnership with police.
This has been the subject of a shareholder proposal from the Nathan Cummings Foundation, which the foundation later withdrew in exchange for the opportunity to speak on this topic at this meeting. We'll now open the floor.
Sir, any representative from the Nathan Cummings Foundation with us today?
They said they're not. Okay. So I've just been informed that the representative was not able to join our meeting. So with that, I'm going to turn the rest of the meeting over to Katie Boylan, our Chief Communication Officer, who will facilitate the rest of the Q and A. We're going to pause briefly to gather questions that have been submitted by shareholders.
Thank you, Brian. As Brian mentioned, we will be answering shareholder questions that were submitted prior to the meeting and on this website during the meeting. If you're a shareholder and would like to submit a question, you may do so via the box at the bottom of your screen. Brian, we have had some questions about how Target decides where to weigh in on social and political issues in general and about our stance on voting rights legislation in particular. Would you please address those questions?
Katie, I'd be happy to. I'd start by reiterating our commitment to using Target's size, scale and resources to create positive change in the communities where we live and work. As most of you know, we employ over 350,000 team members and serve millions of guests each week. If there's something happening in the world around us, it impacts our team and guests. We consider issues very carefully and make decisions based on our company purpose and values, as well as the impact to our team, guests and communities.
When it comes to the questions around voting rights, Target believes elections should be conducted in a transparent, fair and secure manner and opposes any actions that create barriers to voting, result in unequal access to ballots or have a disproportionate impact on black, indigenous and people of colors. To support that commitment, Target, along with hundreds of other companies, join the Civic Alliance and the Black Economic Alliance Coalition. We also provide resources to our team members to encourage them to vote in local and national elections, including paid time off, free transportation to the polls and paid time off to serve as election judges.
Thank you. Before we move on to other questions, we have received a set of technical and procedural questions on topics including Board structure, record date, Board compensation and the nomination process for new directors. Answers to all of those questions are provided in our proxy statement, which you can access in this virtual platform during today's meeting and at any time on our Investor Relations website, which is investors. Target.com under SEC filings. Okay.
So moving on to additional questions. We do have a question seeking a bit more detail about compensation, both for our team members and for our CEO. Melissa, would you like to speak to both of those topics?
Sure, Katie. Thank you. I'd be happy to take that question. And I'd like to start by echoing what others have said this morning about the amazing Target team. The resilience and the dedication they've shown to our guests throughout the challenges of the last year have really been short of remarkable.
And the team continues to step up in really important ways to support our guests and families across the country. In line with our value of caring for our team, we're committed to providing them with the resources they need to take care of themselves and their families. And that's meant investing over $1,000,000,000 in additional pay and benefits for our team last year in recognition of the critical role they play in our success. This has included 5 recognition bonuses, our industry leading move to a starting wage of $15 an hour in the U. S, a portfolio of coronavirus related benefits and the donation to the Target team member giving fund.
If I turn to the question about executive compensation, we do have a long standing belief that executive comp should be directly linked to company performance and long term value creation for our shareholders. Our compensation programs are designed to attract, retain and motivate a strong leadership team. 91% of our CEO total direct compensation is performance based and our long term incentive payouts are also driven by stock price performance. Importantly, our executive compensation programs consistently garner more than 90% support from annual shareholder votes. So, if I reflect on 2020, Target drove record growth and profitability and consistently delivered for our guests during challenging times and our executive compensation as reported in our proxy is reflective of that performance.
Thank you, Melissa. Shareholder Aaron Epstein, who's been attending our Annual Shareholders Meeting for decades has a question about our standards for vendor engagement, which are designed to safeguard workers throughout our supply chain. He would like to hear a little bit more about how the audit program works, who leads it and whether we've seen violations recently. Christina, would you be willing to take that one?
Certainly, Katie. I'd be happy to. First, let me start by saying Target is committed to responsible business conduct and we actually partner with other companies to build capabilities and social compliance of our vendors and factories. Here at Target, these efforts are led by our SVP and President of Over and Sourcing, our VP of Responsible Sourcing and Sustainability and their extensive teams. Target's Responsible Sourcing Audit program assesses facility conditions across a wide variety of aspects, which we publish on our website.
We align to an industry protocol, which requires all disclosed manufacturing locations to regularly conduct an approved audit that is reviewed by our team. And Target maintains the right to conduct unannounced audits of any disclosed locations. Then we communicate these audit results to our vendors and our factories and when relevant, monitor the development and execution of corrective and preventative action plans. Non compliant audits may result in the cancellation of purchase orders and in some cases, termination of our business relationship. As for the question about violations, as part of our commitment to confidentiality with our suppliers, we don't share specifics regarding violations, but you can find additional information in our 2020 corporate responsibility report and on our ESG info website linked from the Investor Relations site.
Thanks. Thank you, Christina. And I actually I'll stick with you
for a moment because we've received some questions about how we make decisions about what's included in our merchandise assortment, including our book assortment. Could you address that topic as well?
Yes. Thanks, Katie. First, I'll talk about how we approach our assortment, which always starts with our guests. We listen closely to our guests to ensure our assortment reflects what they value most in their trip to Target or their visit to target.com. We've long talked about the importance of the word and and what makes Target special and our assortment is a great example of how that comes to life.
In curating our product offering, we focus on what guests need and what they want, offering both essentials and items that are more discretionary. We feature a wide selection of expertly designed own brands that can only be found at Target and their favorite national brands that our guests would expect to see on our shelves. And I would say, while our multi category portfolio has long been a reason guests come to Target, over the last 15 months, it's been critical. It's been critical to how we've delivered for our guests during
challenging times.
In terms of our book assortment, Target carries a very wide assortment of books, in fact, 100 of 1000 at any given time. Earlier this year, Target rolled out a new guideline to shape our book assortment. These guidelines, which we've shared with our book distributor and published on target.com, put more definition around harmful content, which will be excluded. Altogether, we're proud of our broad, on trend selection and believe that our assortment is a key differentiator for Target.
Thank you. Okay. Several shareholders have asked about Target's commitment to Board diversity and what we're doing to ensure our Board composition reflects the guests and the communities that we serve. We also have a question about directors who serve on other for profit boards and whether that creates a conflict of interest for Target. Don, would you like to take these questions?
Thanks, Katie. I'd be happy to. We periodically refresh our board composition, and we are deeply committed to diversity of our board. In fact, today, our board is 31% female and nearly half of our Board are people of color, which outpaces both the Fortune 100 and Fortune 500 averages. Although we're proud of where we are, there's still much more we can do in this area.
Turning to the second question. Our governance guideline sets the maximum number of boards for our directors. A director who is not a public company CEO may serve on a maximum of 4 public company boards, including Target. And for public company CEOs, they serve they can serve on a maximum of 2 public company boards, including Target. And all for profit company board service must be pre cleared by Target's Board Chair.
Our directors are also subject to a code of ethics, which addresses conflict of interest issues. Finally, the majority of our Board consists of directors that meet the independent standards of the New York Stock Exchange. So we're confident that we have the tools to manage any conflicts of interest for our Board members.
Thank you, Don. All right. We're going to take one final question. We've received several shareholders asking questions about an update on Target's commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion, including our efforts to build a diverse workplace at all levels and increase black representation among our team. We've also heard from long time shareholder meeting attendee Jane Garcia from Detroit who expressed her deep appreciation for Target's response to the issue of racial inequity.
Brian, would you like to provide the group an update?
Thanks, Katie. And I also want to thank Jane for joining us today and for Jane's support in each of my 7 years at Target. Diversity and inclusion have shaped our culture and it drives our business, and we've been on a journey for more than 15 years now to refine our diversity and inclusion strategy. Today, we're focused on 4 key areas: providing an inclusive guest experience, an inclusive work environment, building on our diverse workforce and on our societal impact. And while there's much more work to be done, I'm incredibly proud of our progress.
Details can be found in our annual workforce diversity report or our CR report and in various resources found online. Moving forward, we remain committed to this important work and we'll continue to hold ourselves accountable by sharing our progress. So that concludes this year's meeting. As we wind down, I want to leave you with some images from our latest Target brand campaign. And while playback capabilities are limited today, I hope the pictures capture the spirit of our guests, the connection we're creating each and every day, the value we continue to deliver, and I hope as we emerge from these challenging times, these images reflect a brighter future for everyone.
Please remember that our Investor Relations team is available throughout the year to answer any of your questions. So with that, thank you for joining our 2021 meeting.