Welcome to the annual meeting of stockholders of Walgreens Boots Alliance. Please note that today's meeting is being recorded. At this time, all participants will be in a listen-only mode. WBA would like to remind you that some of the comments today may contain forward-looking statements. Additional information about this is included among the meeting materials available on your screen. It is my pleasure to turn the call over to your host and chairman for today's meeting, Jim Skinner, Executive Chairman of the Board of Directors. Mr. Skinner, you may begin. Thank you. Good morning, everyone. It's 8:00 A.M. Central Time on January 28th, 2021. Let me welcome you to the annual meeting of stockholders of Walgreens Boots Alliance. This year, we are holding the annual meeting virtually via audio webcast in light of the public health impact of COVID-19 pandemic, and to support the health and wellness of our stockholders, directors, team members, and guests. While the virtual format of today's meeting is new to many of us, we are also encouraged it allows for greater participation by all of our stockholders, regardless of their geographic location. On behalf of the board of directors and the entire Walgreens Boots Alliance family, I want to thank you for joining us today and for your investment in our company. Please note that an archive of the webcast will be available on our investor relations website after this meeting. Attending the meeting virtually today are Executive Vice Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Stefano Pessina, and Vice President and Corporate Secretary, Jake Amsbary. Also attending the meeting virtually are all of our directors and certain members of senior management. We are also joined virtually by representatives of Deloitte & Touche LLP, who are present and available to answer appropriate questions that you may have of them as auditors of the company's fiscal 2020 financial statements. The inspector of election for the meeting today is from CT Hagberg LLC. Today's agenda, as well as the rules of conduct, are available in the meeting materials section of the virtual meeting platform. The meeting will be conducted in accordance with that agenda and those rules. At the end of the meeting, we will have a Q&A session. Stockholders of record can submit questions at any time during the meeting by typing their questions into the Ask a Question field on your screen and then clicking Submit. If a stockholder would like to ask a question with regard to the proposal, please submit your question through the virtual meeting platform and indicate the proposal number to which your question relates. If time allows, questions that are not specific to an item set forth on the agenda will be addressed during the Q&A period after the business of the meeting is concluded. I would like to take this opportunity to express our gratitude to all of our stockholders for your support during an unprecedented year in which our company has played such a critical role on the front lines of the global pandemic, providing essential pharmacy services and health and wellbeing products to our customers and patients. Our role as part of the communities and patients' care teams has never been more clear, as the pandemic has underscored the importance of the core strength of being a trusted and convenient healthcare provider. Through the enormous challenges that the pandemic has presented, we are immensely proud of how our people have responded and worked tirelessly while rapidly adapting our business model. We also partnered with government agencies and businesses to implement wide-scale COVID-19 testing. Now we are serving as a vital part of the solution to bring the pandemic to an end with vaccine education and administration and implementation. Racial equity was another area of focus during fiscal 2020. A diverse and inclusive organization is a top priority for our business, and we are proud to embrace and support the many cultures, backgrounds, and experiences of our customers, patients, and employees across the globe. WBA has bolstered our already robust Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion initiatives, including increasing the diversity of our board of directors and launching a Leadership Accountability Model where managers are accountable for recruitment, retention, and development of people of color and women at every level of the organization. Additionally, even in times of crisis, it is our responsibility and a business imperative to act as a major force for good. Our healthcare-centric Corporate Social Responsibility strategy is aligned with our business and our expertise. By consistently responding to social and environmental needs in an accountable way and through strong CSR governance, we are creating long-term value for our investors, customers, patients, employees, and society at large. Among our CSR highlights in fiscal 2020, WBA joined the Dow Jones Sustainability North America Index, a recognition of the company's outstanding performance in corporate sustainability. We also joined the United Nations Global Compact, a voluntary leadership platform for the development, implementation, and disclosure of responsible business practices. Since we met last year, we continue to pursue a consistent and deliberate plan to modernize our company, our businesses, and our customer offering. We've made significant progress against all four of our core strategic priorities, which are accelerating the digitalization of our company, transforming and restructuring our retail offering, creating neighborhood health destinations around a more modern pharmacy, and accelerating and increasing our transformational cost management program. Earlier this month, we announced a significant transaction with our long-term partner, AmerisourceBergen, to sell them our international healthcare distribution business, Alliance Healthcare. This is a great transaction for both businesses that will drive growth for each company without losing any of the benefits we have delivered already from working together. Our Executive Vice Chairman and CEO, Stefano Pessina, will tell you more about our progress after the conclusion of the business portion of today's meeting. With that, I will now call the meeting to order and ask Mr. Amsbary to report on giving of notice of the meeting and presence of a quorum. Jake? Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Good morning, everyone. Today's meeting was called by the board of directors pursuant to a notice that we began mailing on December 8, 2020, to all stockholders of record on the record date. A tabulation of the proxies received from stockholders indicates that a majority of the shares outstanding and entitled to vote on the record date are represented at this meeting. Mr. Chairman, a quorum is present, the meeting is duly constituted, and the business of the meeting may proceed. Thank you, Jake. A copy of the affidavit will be filed with the records of this meeting. I now declare the polls officially open. The proposals to be considered today are listed on the agenda and in the proxy materials provided and previously distributed. Voting will remain open until we conclude our presentation of the matters to be voted on at this meeting. Please note that if you have already submitted your proxy, you do not need to vote today. Your shares will be voted in accordance with the directions provided in your proxy. If you've not voted yet or submitted your vote previously through your proxy and would like to change your vote, you may do that by clicking on Vote Here button. The first matter before us is the election of directors to serve for a term of one year, for which there are 11 nominees. I am pleased to introduce each of the following nominees for election who are all participating today virtually. Joe Almeida has been a director since 2017 and is the Chairman and CEO of Baxter International. Jan Babiak has been a director since 2012 and a former managing partner at Ernst & Young. Dr. David J. Brailer has been a director since 2010 and is the Chairman of Health Evolution Partners. William C. Foote, as our lead independent director, has served on the board since 1997 and is the former Chairman and CEO of USG Corporation. Ginger L. Graham has been a director since 2010 and is the former President and CEO of Amylin Pharmaceuticals. Valerie B. Jarrett has been a director since 2020 and is the former Senior Advisor to President Barack Obama. John A. Lederer has been a director since 2015 and is a Senior Advisor to Sycamore Partners. Dominic P. Murphy has been a director since 2012 and is Managing Partner and Co-Head of U.K. Investments at CVC Capital Partners. Stefano Pessina, who I introduced earlier, has also been a director since 2012, is the current Executive Vice Chairman and CEO of Walgreens Boots Alliance. Nancy M. Schlichting has been a director since 2006 and is the former CEO of Henry Ford Health System. Finally, myself, I'm the former Vice Chairman and CEO of McDonald's Corporation, and I've served on the board since 2005 and as Executive Chairman of the board since 2015. I will note for the record that no other nominations for director has been properly made in advance of this meeting, so I declare the nominations for director closed. Our board unanimously recommends a vote for each of the director nominees. The second item of business is the ratification of the appointment of Deloitte & Touche LLP as the company's independent registered public accounting firm for fiscal year 2021. Our board unanimously recommends a vote for this proposal. The third item of business is to approve, on an advisory basis, the compensation of our named executive officers as disclosed in the proxy statement. Our board unanimously recommends a vote for this proposal. The fourth item of business is the approval of a new 2021 Omnibus Incentive Plan to replace the existing 2013 Omnibus Incentive Plan as disclosed in the proxy statement. Our board unanimously recommends a vote for this proposal. The final two items of business are stockholder proposals. The company's response to each stockholder proposal can be found in the proxy statement. Each presenting stockholder will be given three minutes to present their proposal. Presenting stockholder will be notified when there are 30 seconds remaining, so they may conclude their remarks. Stockholders should restrict their comments to the proposal before the meeting. Out of fairness to all stockholders in accordance with the rules of conduct, if a stockholder proposal has questions, the company, those questions should be submitted through the virtual meeting platform. The first stockholder proposal was submitted by Mr. Kenneth Steiner and will be presented by Mr. John Chevedden. If Mr. Chevedden is on the line, I would now ask the operator to unmute the line to allow him to present the proposal. Mr. Chevedden, your line is open. Hello, this is John Chevedden. Can you hear me okay? Yep. Proposal 5, independent board chairman, sponsored by Kenneth Steiner. Shareholders request that our board of directors adopt a policy and amend our governing documents to require that the chairman of the board be an independent member of the board whenever possible. Support for proposals on this topic received 17% higher support at U.S. companies in 2020. Boeing is an example of a company changing course and naming an independent board chairman in May 2020. Now is an ideal time to transition to an independent board chairman. Walgreens stock was at $84 two years ago. Now it is at $51. Our lead director, Mr. William Foote, has 24 years long tenure at Walgreens. Long tenure can impair the independence of a director. Mr. Foote again received the highest number of against votes at the 2020 annual meeting, 52 million against votes. Ms. Nancy Schlichting, who chaired the Walgreens Executive Pay Committee, was a close second, 51 million against votes. Management should announce today the number of negative votes cast for Mr. Foote and Ms. Schlichting to see if there is any improvement. Management pay at Walgreens received double the number of negative votes as these two directors did in 2020. The shocking management solution for this high negative vote against management pay in 2020 is to force shareholders to pay for special advertising shortly before this meeting to try and sway the vote in favor of management's outlandish pay and to try and sway the vote against this proposal. The vote today is somewhat rigged by management. Shareholders need the watchdog attributes of an independent board chairman. According to an NPR report, Walgreens, CVS, Johnson & Johnson, and McKesson remain mired in legal and financial uncertainty tied to their decades-long manufacture and sale of opioids. The highly addictive pills contributed to the overdose deaths of more than 230,000 Americans, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Mr. Chevedden, you have 30 seconds remaining. By some estimates, the opioid crisis is also costing communities in America hundreds of billions of dollars a year. Fallout from the opioid crisis has already forced Purdue Pharma into bankruptcy. Court filings have revealed the role that executives at companies like Walgreens had in downplaying the risk of pain pills to boost profits. Please vote for the watchdog attributes of an independent board chairman, proposal five. Thank you, Mr. Chevedden. Our board of directors has unanimously recommended that our stockholders vote against this proposal for the reasons described in our proxy statement. The final stockholder proposal was submitted by Sisters of St. Francis of Philadelphia and its co-filers and will be presented by Mr. Tom McCaney. If Mr. McCaney's on the line, I would like the operator to unmute the line to allow him to present the proposal. Mr. McCaney, your line is open. Thank you. Good morning. My name is Tom McCaney. I represent the Sisters of St. Francis of Philadelphia. I come before you to present proposal number six, requesting a report assessing how the increased health risks of severe COVID-19 infections to customers that smoke impact our company's evaluation of risks associated with selling tobacco products. The Sisters of St. Francis, as well as the other co-filers of this proposal, are members of the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility, a coalition of over 300 global faith and values-based institutional investors currently representing more than $500 billion in managed assets. We are appreciative of the many conference calls with company representatives we've had to discuss the company's decision-making on tobacco. Through them all, our shareholder group has emphasized the hypocrisy of a healthcare retailer selling a deadly addictive product while promoting itself as a global leader in health and wellness, committed to being a force for good around the world. While Walgreens has unconvincingly attempted to justify its sale of tobacco, the CDC reports that 480,000 Americans die annually from smoking. As a cigarette retailer, our company has contributed to that figure. This horrible coronavirus pandemic can now present Walgreens with an opportunity to truly be the healthcare leader it aspires to be. We're all aware that COVID-19 can stress virtually every system in the body, but also know that it is primarily a respiratory illness. Walgreens announcing that it is ending its involvement with tobacco would instantly reduce the company's exposure to risk, align its operations with its stated values, and demonstrate goodwill to its current and potential future customers. We ask all shareholders to vote for proposal number 6. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. McCaney. Our board of directors has unanimously recommended that our stockholders vote against this proposal for the reasons described in our proxy statement. Jake, are there any questions regarding the six proposals under consideration? We do have one question that's come in this morning, and that is, "Was CEO pay higher in 2020 compared to 2019?" I'll go ahead and answer that question. Thank you for the question. The answer is no. If you look at the summary compensation table on page 75 of our proxy statement. You'll see that CEO pay was lower in 2020 than it was in 2019. Okay. Thank you, Jake. This concludes the presentation of the formal agenda items for the meeting. If you've not yet voted, please do so now. Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. Polls are now closed. I would like to recognize Mr. Amsbary to announce the preliminary voting results. Thank you. Based on the report from the Inspector of Election, I am pleased to report the preliminary results of the voting. With respect to the nominees for director, all director nominees have been duly elected. The ratification of the appointment of Deloitte & Touche LLP as our independent registered public accounting firm for fiscal year 2021 has been approved. The advisory vote on named executive compensation was not approved. The new 2021 Omnibus Incentive Plan has been approved. Neither of the stockholder proposals has received a majority of the votes cast. I remind everyone that these are preliminary voting results. The final results will be available after they have been certified by our Inspector of Election. The final results will be publicly disclosed on a Form 8-K that will be filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Thank you, Jake. The 2021 annual meeting of stockholders is now formally adjourned. First, let me congratulate each of our directors, all once again duly elected at a very high percentage rate. Let me now continue by again introducing our Executive Vice Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Stefano Pessina, who will share his reflections on the company's past fiscal year, progress on our strategic priorities, and more about the future. Thank you, Jim. Hello, everyone. The fiscal year ended 31st August 2020 was framed for our company, as it was for all of us personally, by the global COVID pandemic. News of the novel coronavirus and its global spread began to dominate the world headlines shortly after our meeting last year. Managing the business through this pandemic has created unprecedented challenges for us all. In common with every other business, COVID had a material impact on our operations globally, most notably in the second half of the fiscal year. As a consequence, this pulled down our results for the year as a whole. Despite this having been one of the most challenging years of my career, our businesses have proven resilient, driven in part by our brand and customer loyalty and our continued delivery against our key strategic priorities. All this has been made possible, however, through the continued extraordinary dedication and hard work of our people despite the extreme conditions. This outstanding contribution from our teams and the investments we have made in our businesses in recent years means we are able to adapt well in rapidly changing market and operating conditions. I have to express my thanks to my fellow executives and the management team, who have continued, in fact accelerated, the restructuring transformation of the company, while at the same time addressing the many challenges we have faced in supporting our colleagues and navigating the businesses through responding to the pandemic. The continued efforts to contain the spread of the virus have seen varying global responses that have placed restrictions on populations and communities. People have had to adjust to life under these new conditions, both in terms of their health and retail behavior. The availability of vaccinations to provide the community with an element of protection from the virus will result in a return to more normalized social activity. To date, we have performed over six million COVID tests, directly supporting the national COVID response in both the U.S. and the U.K. We have already administered well over one million COVID vaccinations, and we have the infrastructure and professional resources in place to handle up to 30 million per month across our network as the vaccination programs are rolled out. The pandemic has demonstrated very clearly the importance of one of our key strengths in being a convenient healthcare provider in the heart of the community. Operating in markets battling to respond to the global pandemic has involved increased operating costs and consequently reduced margins. That said, despite the significant disruption to our businesses across the world, we delivered a very credible financial performance for fiscal year 2020. Full-year sales increased by 2.5% versus the prior year on a constant currency basis to $139.5 billion, with solid growth in our Retail Pharmacy USA. and pharmaceutical wholesale businesses, partly offset by a decline in sales in our Retail Pharmacy International businesses. Overall, COVID-19 reduced sales growth by approximately 100 basis points, with over 80% of the impact in the Retail Pharmacy International segment. Adjusted operating income declined 24.8% on a constant currency basis to $5.2 billion, with the adverse impact of COVID-19 accounting for over 70% of the year-on-year decline. Adjusted earnings per share for the fiscal year was $4.74, down 20.6% on a constant currency basis, around $1.02 of the decline relating to the COVID-19 impact. Our transformational cost management program has continued to progress very well and remain on track to deliver at least $2 billion of annual cost savings by 2022. Cash flow generation was strong for the year, with free cash flow of $4.1 billion, up 5.6% on the previous fiscal year. On the 7th of January, we released our results for the first quarter of the current fiscal year, which showed continued sales growth and better than anticipated adjusted operating income and adjusted earnings per share, though the business continued to be materially impacted by the disruption caused by the pandemic. This continued robust financial performance has allowed us to return around $25.5 billion to shareholders since the creation of the group at the beginning of 2015, with over $9.5 billion paid in dividends and almost $16 billion returned to the shareholders through share buyback over the period. Despite the challenges we have faced during the past fiscal year, we have continued to make material progress against our four key strategic priorities. To remind you, these priorities are to accelerate the digitalization of the company, transform and restructure our retail offering, create a neighborhood health destination around a more modern pharmacy, and continue to roll out our transformational cost management program. During the fiscal year, we extended our Find Care offering, helping patients to find local health services with over 19 million interactions in the last quarter on the service. We significantly enhanced the capacity of our omnichannel business and radically improved the convenience of the service, introducing options to pick up digital orders at the drive-thru and at curbside, in addition to in-store or via home delivery. We entered an agreement with Microsoft and Adobe to develop an enhanced personalization engine to allow us to offer truly personalized marketing solutions to our customers, building on our newly transformed data infrastructure. We began to see the benefit of this in our retail sales almost immediately, and this continues to deliver enhanced sales from our marketing initiatives. In the U.S., in pharmacy, we relaunched our Prescription Savings Club, with our new offering proving significantly more popular with patients. Average weekly enrollment in the Savings Club has increased by over 400% since the relaunch in June, with members saving well over $164 million off the cash retail price on their prescriptions. Since the end of the fiscal year, we have made even more progress with the complete redesign and relaunch of our U.S. customer loyalty program and the launch in November of myWalgreens. This is far more than just a new look. myWalgreens is a completely new experience for our customers, offering a gateway to an extensive health and wellbeing service and a complete reimagining of our loyalty rewards program. This new offering has already proved extremely successful, with over 40 million customers joined to date and enrollment continuing to grow rapidly. Our Boots business in the U.K. has had a particularly difficult time in the last year, with the uncertainty of the details of the U.K.'s departure from the European Union creating a challenging retail market even before the disruption of the pandemic, which has been severe. As elsewhere, the team in the U.K. has risen to the challenges of the pandemic extraordinarily, and at the same time has taken significant actions both to control cost and reorientate the business, almost doubling the fulfillment capacity for online orders during the year. As a result, they have started the new financial year strongly, and the recent improvement in the performance of the business is a true testament to the resolve and the resourcefulness of the team, despite the issues they faced even before the impact of COVID on their business. We have also continued to look at how we best focus our resources and assets to the greatest effect. You have seen this clearly in some of our more recent announcements. At the beginning of January, we announced a significant transaction with our longstanding partner, AmerisourceBergen, to sell them our international healthcare distribution business, Alliance Healthcare. This is a great transaction for both businesses that will drive growth for each company without losing any of the operational benefits we have delivered already from our work together. It significantly enhances the range, scope, and scale of WBA's network in what is increasingly a business driven by scale and reach. The deal will enable significant value creation for both companies and will generate new synergies in addition to those already captured. It is a logical step following the success of our long-term strategic relationship with AmerisourceBergen, which has been a strong and trusted partner since 2013. While Alliance Healthcare was historically always a very important part of our company, our focus must now be on delivering against the significant opportunities we have in our retail pharmacy business. The team at Alliance Healthcare has demonstrated exceptional skills and understanding of their markets and have consistently proved adept at configuring their businesses, delivering strong and consistent performance. I am confident that with the backing of AmerisourceBergen, they will be well-placed to deliver growth in their businesses for many years to come. For WBA, it releases board management time and resources, which can be focused on and invested in further accelerating the development of our core retail pharmacy business. Importantly, the transaction secured an attractive multiple for a high-quality business. We will employ the proceed to reduce debt and accelerate the development of our healthcare services. We have been able to begin this work almost immediately, using some of the funds to accelerate our investment in VillageMD. This will facilitate a significant acceleration of the growth of their business, including a faster deployment of VillageMD clinics within our stores. We have also announced an investment in a majority stake in iA, a highly innovative provider of pharmacy automation solution. iA has a unique specialty in integrating leading-edge central and hub pharmacy fulfillment dispensaries with the workflow of community pharmacies. This will allow us to progressively move a portion of the more routine non-customer-facing work of our dispensaries to highly efficient regional fulfillment facilities, freeing up the time of our pharmacy professionals to more actively engage and support our customers. We have also recently announced the formation of a new consumer-centric healthcare technology business, which we have been incubating for the past year. We aim to address socioeconomic barriers to health by improving access to care in communities and helping customers find, get, and manage their care in a simple, transparent, and delightful way. By leveraging Walgreens assets, this business will also enable and uplift our payer, provider, and pharma partners in their markets to improve outcomes and lower cost of care. The business has already begun operation with our first contract underway. We will be expanding it rapidly in 2021, both geographically across the U.S., the number of lives cared for, and the range and depth of services. You will be hearing more about this business in the coming months. Finally, I would like talk briefly about the announcement we made in July last year. The board has undertaken a process to appoint a new chief executive officer to lead the company in the next phase of its development and beyond, allowing me to transition out of the role and replace Jim Skinner as Executive Chairman of the Board. Yesterday, we announced the appointment of Roz Brewer as the company's Chief Executive Officer with effect from the 15th March 2021. Roz will also join the WBA board of directors upon assuming the role. Roz has a proven track record of leadership and operational expertise in multinational corporations. She has demonstrable experience in delivering successfully strategic development, marketing initiatives, digital transformation, application of innovation and technology, supply chain, and store development and optimization, among many other accomplishments and personal qualities. She most recently served as Chief Operating Officer, Group President, and member of the board of directors of Starbucks Corporation, where she had been instrumental in helping the company accelerate its growth strategy, expand its global reach, and drive value for all of Starbucks' diverse stakeholders. Prior to joining Starbucks, Roz served as President and CEO of Sam's Club, the members-only warehouse channel of Walmart Inc. While there, she successfully grew membership, transformed merchandise, and amplified the use of digital technology to enable a seamless shopping experience at scale, which led to sequential improved comp sales. I have had the pleasure of spending time with her through the selection process the board undertook, and have been very impressed by her relentless focus on customer talent development, operational rigor, and her enthusiasm and experience in digital and technological transformation. I believe that Roz has exactly the qualities we need to drive the company through its next phase of development and beyond. I very much look forward to working with Roz to ensure a smooth and effective handover and deliver long-term growth and a prosperous future for the company. I am pleased to be in a position to hand over the reins as the company is facing so many opportunities and has such positive momentum. The progress we have reported, and I have outlined today, is a result of the work we have done over the past three years to modernize the company and build a flexible and robust infrastructure. I am delighted that the results of all the work that has been done internally is now beginning to bear fruit in transformations to our customer offering and our operational and financial performance. I am assured that I will be handing the role over at the time when my successor will have all the tools she needs, as well as my full support and assistance to drive the business to deliver continued, reliable, and consistent growth looking forward. To conclude, it has been a huge privilege for me to lead such great businesses and work with such a dedicated and talented team of people across so many countries and companies. It has also been a privilege to serve as a director of the company under Jim's leadership of the board. He has been a robust and effective Chairman. It has been a great pleasure to work closely with him over the past six years as we navigated the, at times, complex and challenging process of bringing the two companies together and realizing the financial opportunities created to deliver value for our shareholders. I would like to thank him unreservedly, personally, and on behalf of us all for his wise and insightful leadership and service, and I am delighted that we will still have the benefit of his counsel and guidance as a non-executive director on the board going forward. Thank you. I will now hand back to the Chairman. Thank you, Stefano, for your generous comments, and most of all, for your friendship, partnership, and leadership of this company. I would also like to add my congratulations to Roz and look forward to the relationship and her leadership relative to the future of our company. It's been an honor and a privilege to serve with you and with this remarkable board as executive chairman, and as I prepare to hand over the tiller to you, I look forward to continuing to serve with you on the board. Looking back over the past eight years when Stefano and I first began serving together on the Walgreens board, few had any idea that the world would come to face a deadly global pandemic that we're in the middle of today. We never imagined just how much and how urgently the global health and wellbeing enterprise Stefano envisioned and helped to engineer would be needed. Thanks to Stefano's extraordinary strategic vision, the management team he brought together and our 450,000 people across the world on the front lines of care, we've been able to meet the call of duty during this pandemic. We also demonstrated under the most challenging circumstances just how indispensable the pharmacy is to our healthcare systems and global health. In that, Stefano has provided exceptional leadership and I believe a great future for our industry. Stefano, it's been a true pleasure to work with you, to learn together with you, we've had some learnings along the way, to see this company grow and thrive because of you, and most of all, to call you my friend. Thank you. That concludes our formal remarks. We will now move into the question and answer portion of the meeting. We'll take the remaining time to respond to questions that were submitted through the virtual meeting platform. We will answer as many of your questions as we can in the remaining time. At this point, I'd like to ask our Global Chief Communications Officer, Aaron Radelet, and read the questions that have been submitted. Aaron? Thank you, Jim. We have several questions that have been submitted. Questions and answers will be grouped by topic, and substantially similar questions will be grouped and answered once. For proper question that cannot be answered due to time constraints, we will post answers to representative questions on our investor relations website as soon as practicable after the meeting. I would refer stockholders to the rules of conduct during the COVID-19 pandemic. Thank you, Aaron. Well, it's been quite a challenge, I'd have to say, as everybody's aware. Before I ask Alex to share some thoughts on this and what we actually did, I'd like to say that obviously the times that were experienced over the last year and still experiencing to this date, as evidenced by the form of this meeting, are simply unprecedented. Our teams first and foremost focus on the health and safety of our employees, patients, and customers. At the same time, our company had and still has a significant role to play in the pandemic response. To a large extent, while businesses around the world are being forced to shutter, we're running toward the fire and providing solutions to bring this pandemic to an end. I'm very proud of our team and what we've done over this past year. Alex, further to that, how did we manage the process? Thanks, Jim, and good morning, everyone. With 450,000 team members across the world and millions of customers and patients, health, safety, and wellbeing have always been a top priority for Walgreens Boots Alliance, and this became more of a focus during the pandemic. Throughout our businesses, we updated and adapted policies and benefits to allow our people to take care of themselves and their families. When COVID-19 hit, our communities went into lockdown. Businesses shuttered, and people stayed at home for weeks and months, but not Walgreens Boots Alliance. Our pharmacy stores, distribution centers, and wholesale operations stayed open across the globe to provide essential healthcare services, medications, and needed consumer goods. We moved swiftly to maintain business as usual, establishing a COVID-19 steering committee and task force to oversee a response to our different geographies while working hard to help protect the safety of our people, patients, and customers. In terms of response at WBA to our customers and communities, we collaborated with governments and industry partners to implement COVID-19 testing sites and to prepare for vaccinations against the virus. We put safety measures in place to help protect our customers and our people. We innovated and adapted to meet the evolving needs, expanding services such as delivery and pickup options, offering new products, and working to guarantee supplies of essential items and personal protective equipment. Our expert caring local pharmacists provided trustworthy information on COVID-19 for the communities and public they serve. We conducted targeted outreach to the most vulnerable patients to make sure they had access to the medications and the products and services they needed. For our team members, we deployed a pandemic response system and team to manage and mitigate employee exposure cases, providing timely access for reporting COVID-19 cases and proper clinical and safety guidelines to minimize exposure to our people and our customers according to U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, using CDC guidelines and data as the driving force in all of our decisions. We kept lines of communications open with an always-on employee feedback tool, including a wellness check and responding to feedback with enhanced health and safety information, workplace flexibility, recognition of our frontline team members, and adjustments to benefits, including tools to help people manage stress and anxiety. For certain team members making great sacrifices on the front lines, we offered a one-time payment. Employees who work in our support offices were provided with the tools to work from home and the flexibility to do so. We recognize the extraordinary efforts of our teams across the world on the front lines and behind the scenes in our support offices, who made enormous sacrifices to take care of communities and patients during this pandemic. Thank you, Jim. Jim, our next question is: When will the vaccine be available to everyone? Do Walgreens employees and their families have priority access to the vaccine? Thank you very much, Aaron, and thank you for the question. This is a question that's on the minds of a lot of people, internally and externally in the organization. I'd like to have John Standley, who is our president of Walgreens, who's on the front lines and delivering the education, communication, and vaccinations themselves, through our pharmacies and team members. I'll ask John to give you an update on where we are. Thanks, Jim. Good morning, everyone. As you probably know, access to the vaccine remains very limited at this time. Accordingly, the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices has recommended an approach that focuses vaccine immunization efforts on those most at risk. We are proud to play a critical role in vaccinating America's most vulnerable population in long-term care facilities today. As we announced earlier this week, we completed vaccinations of first doses in skilled nursing facilities on January 25th. We're working on assisted living facilities right now. We're about 50% of the way through the first dose in those facilities. We'll complete the first dose in those facilities the week of February 15th. We expect to complete three clinics in all of the long-term care facilities by early to mid-April. We're moving along very expeditiously in our efforts there. We're also working with several states in phase I-B and I-C, we're beginning to immunize in certain instances in our stores as well. We are also building a significant number of immunizers across our company, we'll have about 45,000 immunizers available by mid-April, we'll be well-positioned as we move into phase II. In terms of broad access to the vaccine, what we know today, based on information available today, we expect that to be sometime in the spring when vaccine will be broadly available. In terms of access for our Walgreens team members, that's really being determined state by state, based on definition of essential workers that each state will determine, we'll work diligently to make sure that our team members know when they're eligible to receive the vaccine. Thank you, Jim. The next question is, what is Walgreens doing to ensure the safety of the vaccine you're administering? John? Thank you again, Jim. Another very good question. Appreciate it. A couple of things I'd like to call out here. First, we are very experienced in immunizing. We do a lot of immunizations today, both with flu shots and many other vaccines in our stores. We bring a lot of experience to this work. We've undertaken an extensive training program to make sure that all of our immunizers are trained in working with the COVID-19 vaccine. That's both the immunization itself as well as the handling, which is unique for this vaccine in certain instances. We also make sure that we have all of the appropriate supplies available when vaccinating, including emergency kits. All of our vaccinators are also trained in CPR and are very experienced in handling what's required, if for any reason there is an adverse effect. We also have implemented, as Alex talked about earlier, COVID protocols whenever vaccinating. If we travel to a long-term care facility or in our store, our immunizers wear face shields, our patients wear masks. We employ social distancing. We're, I think, doing a good job here making sure everybody stays safe as we work through the procedure. We also have proper screening procedures to make sure that those who should be getting the vaccine are the ones who get it from a safety perspective. We have built a supply chain here to handle this vaccine that ensures temperature control across the whole process. I think we're doing a great job here of making sure we're well-positioned to ensure safety as we immunize. Thank you, John. The next question is, what have we done to promote diversity and inclusion at WBA? Well, as I said at the beginning of the meeting in my comments, diversity and inclusion is a top priority for the business. We put a number of strategies in place to ensure the diversity and inclusion in our organization across the broad breadth of our employees. I'd like to recognize our Chief Diversity Officer, Carlos Cubia, and ask him to respond. When we think about our diversity and inclusion strategy, here at WBA, we're truly committed to creating a culture where diversity and inclusion is truly at the center of everything that we do. When we think about our strategy, while it is global in nature, it's local in execution. We work with each of our markets to create the appropriate strategy for them. To that end, at WBA, we embrace the fullest definition of diversity. All of the dimensions of diversity are what we look at when we look at our diversity and inclusion strategy. We have more than 300,000 employees in more than 17 countries that truly represent the broadest range of backgrounds, cultures, experiences, perspectives, and insights. We know that diverse teams, through all of the research that's out there, shows us that it improves our performance. It drives our growth and enhances engagement among ourselves, with our customers, patients, and suppliers. There is no doubt that diversity and inclusion is in our DNA. To ensure that we're living up to these values, we have implemented new policies, new procedures, practices, training, and educational opportunities to aid us in our pursuit to create a diverse and inclusive culture. When we think about just a few of the things that we've done over the past year or two, we set up goals to increase women and people of color in our senior leadership positions. This is important because we know that accountability starts at the top of house, so we want to make sure that our leaders are representing those goals. We set goals to increase spend with diverse vendors and suppliers across the board because we want to give back to the communities that do business with us and keep us in business. That is important to us. To help govern us and to move us forward, we've set up a Global Inclusion Council, which is consistent of 24 of our senior leaders from across the enterprise that serve as advisors and consultants to the diversity, equity, and inclusion strategy, activities, and practices to make sure that the things that we're doing are fully in line with who we are as a company and who we want to be as a company. Our strategy really focuses on acquisition of talent, development of that talent, promotion of that talent, and really making sure that we take an inside-out approach to our strategy. There's so much more that I could go into. I'm going to direct you to our investor relations website. At the conclusion of this, we'll post more specific information. I would also encourage you to go and look at our Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Annual Report that was released earlier this year and is also available on our website. With that, I'll turn it back over to you, Jim. I feel really comfortable that our commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion is market leading. Thank you, Carlos. Jim, the next question is, the proxy statement notes that Walgreens is committed to having pharmacy play a role in helping people quit tobacco. Has Walgreens surveyed its U.S. pharmacists to get their assessment of the companies continuing to sell tobacco products? If so, what are the findings? Thank you for the question. First of all, we have a diversity inclusion process around not only thought but input in our organization. I believe on this issue of tobacco, we have input from everybody, and we've surveyed everybody. Our response and the input from this, even the testing that we've done in markets like Tallahassee on not selling cigarettes, we have a lot of input, yet our position on tobacco is clear as stated in the proxy. If I would ask Alex to maybe comment further on that. Sure, Jim. Obviously, we survey our people regularly to make sure we really understand how they see things, including our pharmacists. I have to be honest and say that it's not come up in any pharmacist surveys we've done. We will pay attention to this in the next survey and make sure we understand more the attitudes of our pharmacists towards our decision to sell tobacco. I also want to remind the shareholders and the audience that we sell a whole range of products that our pharmacists use to help people stop smoking. That includes both physical products and digital products. We are, compared to other retailers in our sector, have the largest market share and still growing in smoking cessation products. We arm our pharmacists with all of the information they need to really help people when they're ready to take the action to stop smoking. Again, I'll go back. We'll look into the survey, and it'll be asked a question to see the attitude of pharmacists in the future. Thank you. Thank you, Alex. Jim, the next question is, when was the last in-person board meeting, and are any directors not attending today's annual meeting? Well, first of all, I'm sad to say that our last in-person meeting was in Delaware last year at the annual meeting, January 30th. All directors were present then, and all directors are present today online. We're all anxious to get back together in face-to-face meetings. In the interest of safety, we continue to operate remotely. We hope that our next face-to-face meeting may be in April. Just depends on where the vaccination process is and what we're looking at in terms of the availability to be able to do that. Okay, the next question is, what impact on Walgreens is Amazon's entry into the pharmacy business? Alex, would you mind update on that? Sure, yeah. We think competition just makes us better. Again, Amazon are obviously great and strong competition. We've been really working hard to transform our pharmacy operating model, and we continue to do so and recently announced the fact we've acquired a company that we believe has got the best pharmacy supply chain through micro-fulfillment centers, which will really allow us to remove the workload from our pharmacists, free them up so they can be more able to take even better care of their customers and patients, both physically and digitally. We still believe at the heart of pharmacy is the role of the pharmacist, and they can do more, and they want to do more. We absolutely welcome the entry of Amazon, the same as many other mass retailers have entered pharmacy. We believe that we have the strategy, the investment, and the talent to make sure that we stay strong, and we develop pharmacy on behalf of Walgreens and the communities that we serve. I think we've got time for one more question, and that is, what are the preliminary percentage votes for each ballot item? Jake, can we close that? Is it final yet or not? It's not final at this point, but I can give preliminary voting results for each of the items. I'll give the for votes for each of the directors. 614,609,755 for Joe Almeida. Jan Babiak, 624,366,640. For David Brailer, 624,527,078. For William C. Foote, 590,396,310. For Ginger L. Graham, 625,526,047 votes. For Valerie B. Jarrett, 613,929,643. For John A. Lederer, 611,955,137. For Dominic Murphy, 625,157,260. Stefano Pessina, 619,265,407. For Nancy M. Schlichting, 598,366,029. For James A. Skinner, 601,814,702. For item 2, ratification of the appointment of Deloitte & Touche LLP as the independent registered public accounting firm for fiscal 2021. The for votes were 716,514,110. The advisory vote to approve named executive officer compensation, 299,529,122 votes. The approval of the 2021 Walgreens Boots Alliance Omnibus Incentive Plan, which was item number 4, 581,338,061 votes. Item number 5, the stockholder proposal requesting an independent chairman, 231,432,799 votes. Finally, the stockholder proposal requesting a report on how health risks from COVID-19 impact the company's tobacco sales decision-making received 70,974,330 votes. Thank you, Jake. That is all the time we have for questions today. As Aaron mentioned earlier, for proper questions that could not be answered due to the time constraints, management will post answers to representative questions on the investor relations website as soon as practicable after the meeting. Thank you for being here today, and thank you for your continued trust in Walgreens Boots Alliance. Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes the 2021 annual meeting of stockholders of Walgreens Boots Alliance. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect your lines.