Good morning, welcome to the Essential Utilities annual meeting of shareholders. I would now like to introduce Mr. Christopher Franklin.
Thank you and good morning. Welcome to Essential Utilities annual meeting of shareholders. I am Christopher Franklin. I'm Chairman and CEO of Essential Utilities. Thanks for joining us today. I appreciate your participation and hope you find the virtual experience to be useful. A couple of administrative issues before we begin. I wanna remind you that today's meeting is being recorded. It will be available on our website.
Copies of the meeting minutes from our 2025 annual shareholder meeting are available on the virtual meeting platform under the Meeting Materials section. In accordance with the company's bylaws, the notice of today's meeting and internet availability of the proxy and materials were mailed on March 25th, 2026 by Broadridge Corporation to all shareholders of record as of March 2nd, 2026.
This was the date fixed by the board of directors as the record date for the shareholders entitled to vote at this meeting. This notice will be included with the records of today's meetings. A copy of the shareholders entitled to vote at today's meeting is available for review. Now, it's been confirmed that 84.7% of the 283,303,697 shares of common stock outstanding on the record date are entitled to be voted at the meeting and are represented either in person or by proxy.
Therefore, a quorum is present, and the meeting will now come to order. I'll act as chairman of the meeting, and Kimberly Joyce, Essential's Vice President Corporate Secretary, will act as secretary of the meeting. Outlined in the proxy are three proposals to be voted on by shareholders this morning.
This first proposal is the election of seven directors to serve until the 2027 annual meeting of shareholders and until their successors shall have been duly elected and qualified. As set forth in the proxy statement, following nominees have been proposed for election. Elizabeth B. Amato, Christopher L. Bruner, David A. Ciesinski, Daniel J. Hilferty, W. Bryan Lewis, Tamara Linde, and myself, Christopher H. Franklin.
The directors' backgrounds and qualifications are explained in the proxy. Each of the directors is present with me today. The second proposal is the approval on an advisory basis of the company's executive compensation as disclosed in the proxy statement. The board recommends the approval of this proposal.
The third proposal is the ratification of appointment by the audit committee of the board of directors of PricewaterhouseCoopers, LLP, as the independent registered public accounting firm for the company for the 2026 fiscal year. The Board recommends approval of this proposal. These are the three proposals and the only matters to be voted on by the shareholders at this meeting.
Before declaring the polls open for balloting on these matters, we will take a moment to respond to any submitted questions or comments, specifically concerning these three proposals. The team indicates there are no questions. I now declare the polls open for voting on these proposals. If you've already voted by proxy and do not wish to change your vote, your vote will be cast as previously instructed and no further action is required.
To submit your vote or change your previously filed responses, please use the Cast Your Vote section and click on the button, Vote Here. Please follow the instructions for the proxy ballot that will pop up and appear on your screen. I'll give that a brief moment. All right. Thank you. That concludes the presentation of the items of business that you have been asked to vote on at today's meeting. At this point, the polls are now closed. I will ask Kimberly Joyce to report the voting results as received from the Inspector of Elections.
Thanks, Christopher. I have received the preliminary voting results from the Inspector of Elections based on the proxies received as of the opening of the polls at today's meeting. The preliminary results indicate that all three of the proposals received the required number of votes for passage. We will report the final vote results on a Form 8-K filed with the SEC within four business days from today's meeting.
Thank you, Kimberly. Is there any other business to properly come before the board today? Hearing none, I will adjourn today's meeting. Thank you for joining us.
This now concludes the meeting. Thank you for joining, and have a pleasant day.