Sanderson Farms, Inc. Holds Annual Meeting of Stockholders

Sanderson Farms, Inc. (NASDAQ: SAFM) announced today that it held its annual meeting of stockholders this morning at its general office in Laurel, Mississippi. In the formal business conducted at the meeting, stockholders re-elected five Class A directors for terms expiring at the 2023 annual meeting, and one Class C director for a term expiring at the 2022 annual meeting. Management also reported on the Company’s performance during fiscal 2019 and provided an outlook for fiscal 2020. Re-elected to three-year terms were David Barksdale, Principal, Alluvian Capital; Lampkin Butts, President, Sanderson Farms, Inc.; Beverly W. Hogan, President Emerita, Tougaloo College; Phil K. Livingston, Retired Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Deposit Guaranty National Bank of Louisiana; and Joe F. Sanderson, Jr., Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Sanderson Farms, Inc. Sonia Perez, President, AT&T Southeast States, was elected to serve two years remaining in an unexpired term.

Other directors, whose terms continue to future years, are: John H. Baker, III, Fred L. Banks, Jr., John Bierbusse, Mike Cockrell, Toni D. Cooley, Edith Kelly-Green, Suzanne T. Mestayer and Gail Jones Pittman.

In other action at the annual meeting, stockholders approved the following items of business: the Sanderson Farms, Inc. and Affiliates Amended and Restated Stock Incentive Plan; in a non-binding advisory vote, the compensation of the Company’s Named Executive Officers; also in a non-binding advisory vote, a resolution that the Company should hold future non-binding advisory votes on executive compensation every year; and the ratification of the selection of Ernst & Young LLP as the Company’s independent auditors for the fiscal year ending October 31, 2020. Stockholders rejected a stockholder proposal to request that the Board of Directors report annually on water resource risks and related metrics and rejected a stockholder proposal to request that the Board of Directors report on the Company’s human rights due diligence process.

Even though the two stockholder proposals were rejected, the Company announced that following recent extensive engagement with many of its largest stockholders, and in recognition of evolving investor expectations in regard to sustainability reporting, the Company is committing to integrate the reporting standards of the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB) into its environmental, social, and governance (ESG) disclosures by the end of fiscal 2020. The purpose of these enhanced disclosures is to provide the Company’s stockholders with transparent, comparable, and decision-useful ESG data that SASB has identified as being material to the Company’s business.