A shareholder proposal to require J.B. Hunt Transport Services Inc. of Lowell to set goals to reduce greenhouse gas emissions was defeated at the company’s annual meeting Thursday.
Company CFO David Mee said the proposal was voted down 87-13 percent with 96 percent of eligible voters participating.
J.B. Hunt’s directors had unanimously recommended a “no” vote on the proposal. The company said it believed it was doing enough to reduce emissions and it wasn’t “prudent to make specific commitments or be informally regulated by individual shareholders on specific issues.”
Calvert Social Index Fund and Calvert VP S&P MidCap 400 Index Portfolio, both of Bethesda, Maryland, had proposed the motion. They called for reduced emissions goals and for the company to report by September on its strategy to achieve those goals.
The board of directors were reelected to one-year terms at the meeting, all by at least 90 percent of the vote, Mee said. Ernst & Young LLP was approved as the company’s accounting firm by more than 99 percent.
President and CEO John Roberts showed a video presentation of the company’s achievements of the past year, which included annual revenue of $6.2 billion and $374.7 million in net income. Roberts said the company also opened or is in the process of opening three operating centers.
Roberts said the company’s customer interactive app, 360, has been a great success since being introduced last year.
“It has taken off like a rocket,” Roberts said. “It enables customers to do business without getting on the phone or using a fax.”
J.B. Hunt (Nasdaq: JBHT) also started an employee support group called Growing and Retaining Outstanding Women and pledged to hire 10,000 veterans by 2020.