Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the shareholder meeting of ASM International. First of all, I'm very pleased to see you here in the Van der Valk Hotel. After two years of virtual only meetings, we will have a hybrid meeting today. I welcome all participants, both online and here in meeting room. As usual, I will start this. I will switch to Dutch in a minute, but before, I have some information for you. The meeting, as I said, will be in Dutch. However, certain parts will be in English. Like for example, the presentation of our CEO, Benjamin Loh, at agenda Item 2. When Benjamin provides an answer to questions raised, of course, will also be in English. Also, Mr. Didier Lamouche, the Supervisory Board Member who is Chair of the Nomination, Selection, and Remuneration Committee, will present and provide answers in English.
The meeting can also be viewed through a webcast. The webcast is both in English and in Dutch, and it will be a simultaneous translation in English for everyone who does not understand Dutch. We have, when everything is okay, some phones with equipment in the room.
Now, I would like to welcome you all, i.e., both the shareholders who participate virtually and certainly also the shareholders here in the room. We're very happy that after two years, finally, we can meet again, at least as regards those present in the room with us. A number of formal announcements, if I may. This year, it was decided to organize a hybrid meeting. It means that the meeting can be attended here in the room or virtually from behind your laptop screen. Dutch legislation makes this possible, and what it offers you, our shareholders, is a choice. As in the past, if you've registered, you can vote here in the room. You're also able to cast your vote by proxy. Finally, we offer the opportunity to vote online during the meeting. This is for people connected online with us.
Here you see all the technology that is there. We also have at ASM, and I'm sure you rightly expected this. All these things were already pointed out in the convocation as well. Now, all the documents for the meeting were posted on the company's website on first of April. The convocation that was issued on that same day also states that the full agenda with explanatory notes and the annual report 2021, which includes, of course, among other things, the management report for 2021 and the annual accounts for 2021. Also all other attachments were made available for the shareholders' inspection at the office of the company and at ABN AMRO Bank N.V. in Amsterdam. The U.S. proxy card and U.S. notice were also placed on the website as well as sent.
For the sake of completeness, let me say that the registration date was 18th April 2022 for all of this. Now, based on all of this, I can then conclude that the shareholders have been correctly convened in accordance with the articles of association and the legal provisions, and that therefore resolutions may be validly made at this meeting. I hardly need to say this, but you can see here before you, in fact, all members of the supervisory board and management board present at the meeting today. You see us all here behind the table. There's also with us Mr. Michel van Agt, Civil Law Notary at Loyens & Loeff, and he's keeping an eye on us today and will take care of the minutes of the meeting as well.
This is again in full accordance with the articles of association of the company, namely article 26.2. Finally, we have our accountant, who is Frederik Croiset van Uchelen of KPMG, and he will shortly give an explanation of the way in which KPMG has carried out its audit. That is our external auditor. In regard to any questions relating to the agenda, let me say the following. As indicated in the convocation, registered shareholders were able to submit written questions until 2:00 of last Monday, 9th May, via the email address. I can inform you that no use was made of this option and therefore no questions have been received at that email address. Of course, I hope that that email address was correct or else we will find some things in our spam box, perhaps.
Furthermore, you may have read in the convocation that shareholders have had and still have various options to ask questions. You attendees in the room can ask questions using one of the microphones, I think there's two or three in the room, for the various agenda items. If you ask to speak, I would request that you begin by mentioning your name and who you represent. In addition, I would ask that you ask no more than three questions any single round also to give others the opportunity to ask questions. Now, shareholders who have chosen to attend the meeting virtually and to vote real-time in the meeting can ask questions in the chat.
I also ask them to mention the name in the chat. Those chats are being kept track of behind the table there and will be forwarded to us behind the table if all is well. It also means that for each agenda item, we have to check for a little while whether questions are being asked via the various media. Questions may be asked either in Dutch or English, with answers given in either Dutch or English, depending on who's answering the question. Questions and answers asked during the meeting will not be posted on the website, but will of course be included in the minutes of this meeting, and they naturally will be posted on the website. May I also remind you that after the meeting, you can turn out the sound of your mobile phones again.
In accordance with recommendation 4.1.10 of the Dutch Corporate Governance Code, the minutes of the meeting will be posted in draft form on the website within three months, and shareholders will then have three months to respond to them or point out to us any incorrectnesses. As I've also indicated already, both Dutch and English will be spoken throughout the meeting. The presentation of Benjamin Loh, our CEO, and also his answers to questions will be in English. He's taking Dutch lessons, but he's not quite there yet. That will also apply then to the short presentation of Didier Lamouche, who, as I said, is member of the supervisory board and chair of one of the committees. There is that live webcast again, which is available in both English and Dutch and is made available to shareholders via the company's website.
I'll give some voting information, because before we move on to agenda item two, which is our first voting item, I will inform you about the voting. As I mentioned, there are the following possibilities to cast your vote. The shareholders in the room who have registered at the desk vote during this meeting by using an app on their mobile phones. You know, that is a kind of virtual voting box, if you like. A virtual voting device, at any rate, because the voting devices in the room are, of course, not virtual, but real. You're also able to vote by proxy, and if you did so, you already gave your voting instructions to Michel van Agt, who is our civil notary.
I mentioned him before, and he will ensure that your voting instructions are carried out in the way that you indicated. For U.S. proxies by New York registry shareholders, the voting instruction will also be lawfully implemented. Now, if you registered for that virtual meeting, and this is the people who are with us from behind a screen, and you're taking part as such, it means that you have now accessed the Lumi application. Lumi is our service provider. This was done then via the ABN AMRO website, and you can follow this meeting through this application, and also you can vote using that. However, everything will become much easier once we're all back in a room together as I am, which is my view when I read all this out to you.
Now, as you may have seen, our agenda item 9 concerns the appointment of Hichem M'Saad as a member of the Management Board, and that item will only be put to the vote if agenda Item 8, which regards the new remuneration policy of the Management Board, is adopted with more than 75% of our votes. Now, therefore, those voting items will be dealt with as follows. We will work with a number of so-called voting blocks, and at the end of each block, I will show you what the voting results are. Those blocks are subdivided as follows. The first block of voting regards agenda Items 2-8 . The second is for agenda Item 9 only, and the third block of voting regards agenda items 10 through 14.
Now, during each block, it's an awkward word, I think, in English, but says the interpreter, but you may vote for all the voting items in that block. Only for the voting items of that particular block. Just to make this very clear, not anything else that comes later. This applies for both the people in the room who have registered and for the people who are voting virtually from home through the Lumi application. At the end of each block, I will show you the voting results. Again, to be absolutely clear, I will show the voting results of all the voting items on the agenda again at the end of the meeting. The results of the vote will also be posted on the company's website within 15 days. It regards all the voting items there.
Well, I think this is about all that I had to say in terms of practical comments. We'll move to agenda Item 2, and this is up for our discussion. It regards the report on the financial year 2021, and I'll ask the Board of Management to report on the activities and results in and for the financial year 2021. Benjamin, please.
Thank you, Martin. Also very good afternoon from my side. I think it's absolutely splendid to see at least faces and not a screen, which we have been trying to do over the last two years. Maybe just one clarification. Martin mentioned that I was taking Dutch lessons. They are not going to go anywhere because I'm learning from a five-year-old girl who is the granddaughter of my partner, and you can understand how good my Dutch is. You know, don't count on it. I am going to, you know, present the 2021 financial year, as, of course, on behalf of the management board, which is myself and my colleague here, Paul Verhagen, the CFO. I think by all measures, 2021 was a great year for the company.
You know, we enjoyed tailwinds from the growth in the semiconductor industry, but it was by no means an easy year because of supply chain disruptions because of pandemic and so on. I will try to go through this as fast as I can. The usual cautionary note you know regarding forward-looking statements. Today's agenda, first of all, I'm gonna start with a couple of key takeaways and then dive into the results for 2021. Gonna share with you a little bit on the outlook of 2022 this year. Maybe touch a little bit on what we do or what as a company we are trying to accelerate our focus activities in ESG.
Finally, a look at what are the mid-term outlook and priorities and prospects for the company. Key takeaways, I think, you know, ASM International did a great job in executing the strategy that we have put for ourselves. We grew the top line by 34% at constant currencies in 2021. The company continues to invest in R&D, in manufacturing, and also in the organizational capabilities. In terms of people, we hired, actually, or we increased our headcount by almost 30%, about 28% last year. We are continuing to increase the number of people in the company because we have so many opportunities and activities going on.
We accelerated our focus on sustainability with the aim to achieve net zero emission by 2035, and, you know, we will talk about that, a little bit more, later on. Finally, in terms of our mid-term revenue target of EUR 2.8 billion-EUR 3.4 billion, which we shared at our Investor Day last year, we are very confident that we will be able to reach that target by 2025, including an operating margin of between 26%-31%. Maybe diving into the business and results review. 2021 was characterized by acceleration in digitalization, so the whole industry grew by about 26%.
Actually the industry for the first time crossed the $500 billion US dollar mark for the first time last year. I spoke about you know demand coming from a semiconductor tailwind. Demand was strong for semiconductor products, which translated into a semiconductor equipment and other investments as well. At the same time you know the whole industry was plagued you know by supply chain shortages because demand was outstripping supply. There were also constraints that came about because of the pandemic. We were very fortunate that the investment in our new Singapore facility was very timely. That came about at the end of 2020, just in time to help us significantly expand our capacity.
We are going to expand even further, as I will touch on later on. With the growth in the company, you know, we are continuously, you know, improving our business processes, IT and other support functions to meet the rapid growth. That is actually also part of the growth in the people that we have witnessed in 2021, and we are still witnessing. Ultimately, we delivered a record-breaking year, you know, growing the top line by 34% at constant currencies. In terms of record-breaking year, you know, so whether it's the revenue, whether it's equipment revenue, whether it's recurring spares and service revenue, we broke all the records. It was all a record high for the year.
A lot of our business has been driven by the logic and foundry sector, which is where we have our biggest strength. At the same time, I think we made a lot of significant progress in the memory market as well. Some, you know, a segment which we are relatively smaller, but we have, you know, made significant gains in 2021. If you take a snapshot at the results of 2021, and compare it to what happened in 2020, you see actually all of the arrows are green. Revenue was up, of course. You know, maybe just to draw your attention, you see that normalized net earnings was a huge increase of 70%. You see that the gross margin, operating margin, everything was up.
Compared to 20, it was a good year for us in 2021. A little bit more on the financial performance, whether it's in terms of bookings, revenue, gross margins, et cetera. Here, I would like to draw your attention to, you know, the bookings, the operating result, and the revenue. You see a significant increase in bookings for the company in 2021. Which, you know, unfortunately, due to supply chain constraints, we were not able to deliver everything, but that sets up us very well for 2022, because a lot of the orders have been carried forward into this year. Operating result was a record, of course, at EUR 491 million.
If you look at the gross margin, we have been improving over the last couple of years. Last year, we again did that, and we finished the year at 47.9%. Part of the strategy, of course, in the industry that we are in is technology, and we continue to, you know, churn out and, you know, introduce new products. Last year, we introduced the Intrepid ESA, an epitaxy, you know, deposition equipment, that was targeted at atmospheric pressure applications, primarily in the power analog and wafer manufacturers segment. We have seen very good adoptions, and we have actually begun to ship to multiple customers across the world for these applications.
Previum is something that is required for surface cleaning, that is now a technology requirement, in order to make sure that the surfaces that you deposit any kind of materials is pristine, is clean. That's something that we have done, you know, last year as well, together for our EPI products. Last but not least, even though it's relatively older, the A400 DUO vertical furnace was introduced about two to three years ago. I've included it here because we have seen very significant traction and adoption of this product, you know, across the world, and including in China, where we have very good traction, winning against domestic competition.
Last but not least, not shown here, we have also started, you know, a new 300 mm vertical furnace product, which we will officially launch soon. It's actually the first vertical furnace 300 mm product that we are launching in 23 years. It's great, very exciting, and we are seeing a lot of traction to that product. Customer awards. One of our strategies, of course, is to work very closely with customers to make sure that we are aligned, their roadmaps, that we can support them. Here we are very honored to be able to receive awards from three of our biggest customers. The Intel award, Intel EPIC Award for technology, TSMC for excellent performance for production support.
We were one of only six companies that got that. Of course, Samsung for best collaboration award in various areas, whether it's technology or whether it's support. We are actually on a good track as far as supporting and aligning our roadmaps with our three biggest customers. Here is just a chart to show how we performed last year in terms of the share price. I would say that we did very well. In fact, I think at the end of 2021, we were the best performing stock on the AEX. You know, this year, even though it's a little bit more volatile, we are still doing well. Hopefully this continues because the stock market is out of our control.
Next, jumping into this year. What is gonna happen in 2022? We look at the market that we play in, wafer fab equipment or WFE spending. It's growing very fast. If you look at, you know, 2020, 2021, you know, the year ended at about mid-80 billion kind of a market size. This year it is expected to cross the $100 billion market size for the first time. This will continue actually for the next couple of years as well. We see a significant growth in the market that we are actually playing in. A lot of this growth is driven by advances in technology and also increases in demand for semiconductors that is used in practically everything today.
We see multiyear investments announced by all three of our customers. We see technology inflections driving 3D transitions all around. We also see some government efforts to try to secure semiconductor supply on their own, and that is actually also helping to drive increases in investments. Another way of looking at this is to look at the investments by the various technology nodes. If you look at 2020, you know, the color in blue, 7 nm and below was still relatively small. When you look at 2022, the one that has increased significantly, and going into 2022, is going up even further and will continue to be at a high level. The reason for showing this is ASMI, ASM International as a company, we play mostly on the leading-edge nodes.
The more investments that happen at the leading-edge nodes, the better it is for us. Actually plays to our strengths. In terms of guidance that we provided with our first quarter earnings, we do expect that supply chain conditions are going to be mainly challenging, and we have guided the second quarter to between EUR 540 million-EUR 570 million, which is a small sequential increase from where we finished in the first quarter at EUR 517 million. We do expect that for the second half the revenue that we will be producing in the second half will be higher than the first half, of course, subject to supply chain conditions.
Today, we still have some pockets of limited visibility in some parts of the supply chain, so, you know, it's kind of difficult for us to give a firm or quantifiable number. We do expect second half to be better than the first half as some of the supply chain constraints are eased. We expect that the wafer fab equipment or WFE equipment market is going to grow mid- to high teens. In fact, a lot of consensus puts it at something like 17%-18%, and we are very confident that we will outperform and outgrow the WFE market this year. We will continue, I think I touched a little bit on that, expansion of our R&D and manufacturing. You know, across the world in all of our different sites, we are expanding.
Belgium, we'll probably start in 2023, but the rest really completely got started. In Helsinki, we will start in the second half of 2022 to expand our lab. In Japan, I think the R&D lab expansion is almost finished or should be finished. We expanded our lab facilities in the U.S., in Phoenix, already end of last year. In Singapore, I will touch a little bit on later on. We expanded our manufacturing capacity. South Korea, we are going to expand in the second half. We start work in the second half. Last but not least, we also completed a training demo center in Almere, where we are, early this year.
In Singapore, we have our biggest manufacturing facility that, you know, is responsible for about greater than 80% of our total output. We finished the new building at the end of 2020 with just one floor. We have recently had, you know, like an opening ceremony where it was also a groundbreaking ceremony for us to start work on the second floor. With that, we are going to triple our global capacity, which is necessary for us to attain or achieve our midterm target of EUR 2.8 billion-EUR 3.4 billion. The facility has been designed with sustainability in mind, and it's certified with the Green Mark GoldPLUS.
Last but not least, not just as a manufacturing facility in Singapore, we also have key members, senior members of the supply chain management, IT, and global people. Maybe the number is already a little bit outdated. We have about 880 people in Singapore and growing by the day. Going into ESG, we start with, for example, what is the purpose, the mission, and the strategy. Our purpose is actually simple. We refreshed the purpose, mission, and strategy recently to make it easy so that it's understood by every member of the ASM International community. Our purpose is to improve people's lives through advancing technologies that unlock new potential. Our mission is to enable our customer success by creating leading-edge semiconductor process, products, services, and new materials. Our strategy is even simpler.
Our strategy is growth through innovation. Innovation is a significant part of our growth strategy. When we look at what supports the purpose, the mission, and the strategy, we look at what are the principles that guide us, and we come to, okay, what are the core values of ASM? You know, the core values are we care, we innovate, we deliver. You probably heard some of that on the movie as well. These are the three core values that really guide our behavior, guide our decision-making, and in almost everything that we do going forward. Focus on sustainability. We have five different pillars. We have the innovation pillar, the people pillar, planet pillar, responsible supply chain pillar, and last but not least, the governance pillar.
You know, we have been looking at this actually over the last couple of years in various degrees. Last year, we decided to put all of them into a more cohesive ESG strategy and to accelerate our focus. One of the things that we did, of course, in terms of our planet, our environment, was at our investor day, we announced, you know, our ambitions to become a net zero emission by 2035, which by itself is an extremely challenging target. We are committed to try our best to do that. Innovation, of course, is always at the heart of ASM International.
For the last 50-something years, the company has always thrived on innovation, has always been a technology leader, has always been a company that helps to move the semiconductor industry forward. Our people, again, I will have another slide after this, but people has always been the core assets of the company. They are actually the biggest assets of the company. Responsible supply chain. You know, with our membership with the Responsible Business Alliance, you know, Association and so on, we try to do our best as far as the responsible supply chain is concerned. Last but not least, governance.
One of the things that we have actually done is, of course, also to change the management board and the management team structure with adding a third management board member and creating an executive committee. People and culture. We look at this as our biggest asset, people. You know, we try to create an environment where people have every single possible opportunity to grow, to develop a career, and to be happy within the ASM family. The areas that we focus on are leadership and development. We try to provide as many opportunities as possible to all our employees to develop themselves. Engagement.
We truly believe that only when you have employees that are engaged, can you really make a difference as far as the company, and being competitive is concerned. Culture, we spoke about that. One of the areas that we are focusing on, of course, is the three core values that leads to, you know, a culture, a corporate culture. Last but not least, as part of also our sustainability or ESG agenda, inclusion and diversity. Here we have a target that by 2025, we would like to increase or we are targeting that the proportion or the population of female employees will increase from 15%-20% by 2025. Of course, targeting net zero 2035.
Our achievements in 2021 includes that four out of five key sites are already on 100% renewable electricity or electricity from renewable sources. That is actually 76% of the total of our consumption. We have a midterm target that by 2024 we want to be 100% renewable electricity by 2024, and I think we are on a good track to get there. Actually, what we have done in 2021 already represents 67 absolute reduction of our Scope 1 and 2. We still have some way to go, but we have made very good progress as far as 2021 is concerned.
This year, what we are doing is really to focus on revalidating our Scope 1 and 2. We're also measuring our scope three emissions. Our target is that by the end of this year or early next year, you know, our validation and our, let's say, progress, including our plans, will be submitted to SBTi, you know, for validation. Once that is done, we will be able to share that with the wider community. We also hope that we can publish, you know, our climate transition plan early 2022 after the validation by the SBTi.
A little bit of breaking news that we are quite proud of, a few days ago, the Euronext announced a new index, called the AEX ESG Index, and we are honored and very proud that we are one of the 25 companies that were included in the index. Midterm outlook and a little bit on the priorities. The strategic objectives of the company we have shared this with you know all investors all analysts during the Investor Day is to maintain our leading share in ALD also expand in memory increase our EPI market share selectively grow in vertical furnaces and PECVD. That's an area where you know earlier on I touched on about the new products. Grow spares and service business.
Accelerated or accelerating progress in sustainability, and of course, drive a continuous strong financial performance. The enablers of our strategic objectives are really five different elements. People, I think that I've said is really our key asset. Leading-edge innovation, and this is something that, again, you know, we have been investing in R&D. We have been putting a lot of our resources into making sure that we are at the forefront of technology, because where we play in the leading-edge nodes, technology is exceptionally key. Early customer engagements, and we are very proud and happy that some of our work has been recognized by our customers. In fact, the three biggest customers earned us awards.
Flawless operational excellence, whether it's in terms of providing service to our customers, quality, et cetera. We still have some work to do, but we're improving significantly. Last but not least, strong financial performance, strong financial position, so that we can continue to invest in the company, invest in the growth of the company, especially in R&D and in the people, and anything, you know, we also have a policy of paying a sustainable dividend, and any excess cash will be used for the benefit of all shareholders. What we are really doing, ASM International is shaping the future. If you look back at the last 40 years or so, you know, starting maybe with desktop computing, you know, our products or let's say the...
Our equipment is used to make products that go into a lot of these advanced gadgets, you know, starting from desktop computing in the 1980s to autonomous driving of today. This is gonna continue with the metaverse, the IoT and so on. We look at ourselves as a company that is enabling the future, and that's very important. There are other things that we enable, for example, electronics in healthcare and so on. Those we are very proud of, that our equipment are used to make components that go into those kind of machines, that helps to improve healthcare and people's lives. When you look at semiconductor sales by key applications, this is roughly what is going to happen over the next five years. It's just going to grow.
Like I said, 2022 or 2021 was the first year semiconductor sales, you know, crossed the $500 billion mark. The projections is that by 2030, it will double to $1 trillion. It will just continue to grow, because there are so many different applications, so many different drivers of semiconductors today. For us, the long-term outlook looks really solid. We do believe that the semiconductor market is going to continue to grow, and as I said, reach perhaps $1 trillion in 2030. All this is driven by various applications that are data-intensive, compute-intensive, that is, ever demanding for more powerful, less, let's say, power usage, kind of semiconductors.
When we look at where our customers are moving, we see that a lot of them are committed to making multi-year investments. They have projected the investments, you know, over the next three to four years, because they can see that the demand is very significant over the next couple of years. This is something that we also shared with, you know, the analysts and investors during our Investor Day last year in September. These are our targets, where we ended in 2021, and our midterm targets in 2025. We do expect to grow to EUR 2.8 billion-EUR 3.4 billion by 2025, representing a 16%-21% CAGR.
Gross margins will be in the range of 46%-50%. SG&A will be as high single digit by that time, and R&D is either high single digit to low teens and operating margins in the range of 26%-31%. Now, of course, besides financial targets, we also have non-financial targets. A part of it is, of course, a greenhouse gas emission and our very significant ambition to get to a net zero by 2035 for all three scopes, one, two, and three. We want to get to 100% renewable electricity by 2024. Safety, which is, you know, a major, let's say, thing within the company, we wanna make sure that we continue to be one of the industry leaders as far as safety is concerned.
Once again, the key takeaways, just so that everybody remembers the key takeaways. We continue to execute our strategy. We grew our top line by 34% in 2021. We continue to invest in R&D, manufacturing, organizational capabilities, because there's significant demand and also a lot of opportunities in front of us. We grew headcount by 28% in 2021, and we are still continuing to grow our headcount and also trying to ensure that people and culture are key priorities for building the next phase of the company. We are confident that we will be able to outperform the wafer fab equipment market this year, which is expected to be at mid to high-teens .
We do expect that our second half revenue will be higher than the first half, depending on the improvements in supply chain. We are continuing to accelerate our focus on sustainability, and we are also confident that we will reach our midterm target of EUR 2.8 billion-EUR 3.4 billion by 2025, with an operating margin of between 26%-31%. That is the update as far as the company is concerned. Okay, very well. Thanks a lot.
Right. It's always tricky. My apologies, I didn't have the microphone on. This is your opportunity to ask questions, and I see the first hands going up on the first row. Good afternoon. Stefanie Claessens of CPDO, Sustainable Development Investors is my name. I'd like to ask something about the ESG policy of ASMI. First of all, we repeat our compliments from last year. The engagement call, we spoke at that with four employees of ASMI with enormous commitment shown on the themes of ESG, which we're very happy with. We're convinced that companies that embrace ESG will make sure that there's a contribution to the continuity of their company at the same time. First, something about climate and litigation. You want 100% renewable in 2024 and net zero for all scopes in 2022-2035.
You worked with suppliers also to get three down. Can you give us more of an insight into which that is specifically that you agree with your suppliers in this area and what targets you set for this? The use of energy or consumption of energy is also something that lies with your clients, because using your machines demands a lot of energy, which is a point of concern for the future. How is ASMI dealing with the energy consumption of the machines for which the demand grows and the consumption grows, and then that becomes a big problem and is part of Scope 3? How do you deal with this? Do you have, for example, terms and conditions in your sales agreement that it can only be done with renewable energy? Is there a wind turbine supplied with every single machine?
I'm just thinking out loud, really. Our second question is about a living wage. A living wage is what is paid to all employees of ASM International, which is not that strange because the nature of the work would lead one to expect this. However, mainly in the supply chain of technology and electronics, a living wage was not paid everywhere around the world. How does ASM International deal with the guaranteeing of a living wage throughout the supply chain? And a final question I have is about diversity and inclusivity. There's a 20% target for women in the company, and there are many programs in place, Converge and CoTalks and Connect, which are all focused on improving the culture in this organization.
I take it that there's also a point where people can say something, a desk they can go to if there's harassment, for example, and do such reports arrive? Because that is also a sign that that system that you have in place works in this regard. Thank you. That was a neat definition of three questions. I think I heard five or six, but very good questions. There's really one that you forgot. The chips that we make with the machines also use energy, and we're making them more economical as well. We do go beyond Scope 3, I should tell you, and I'm happy to tell you. Floor to our CEO, please.
Sorry, I have to answer in English. I think, you know, as far as the suppliers, I think maybe to answer your question on what we are doing with our suppliers. One of the things that we actually did last year was to make sure that you know, all of our suppliers, you know, join the CDP program.
Through that, we are hoping that, you know, because of the close relationship that we have working with CDP, we will be able to track, for example, what the top key strategic suppliers of ours, which is basically, you know, the top 80% of the suppliers, what are they going to, you know, update, you know, in terms of their efforts towards, you know, climate change. We think that that is probably the best way for us to kind of monitor and track. With that, you know, if there's anything that we need to work together with them, then we would have a basis to work from. We started that last year.
In fact, last year was the first year where we gave out, you know, an ESG award to suppliers. That was the last year. We are trying to. We have something called the PRISM Award, which is really for, you know, a supplier that has excellence in ESG efforts. Last year was the first year that we gave out such an award, and we are trying to, you know, really grow that, you know, culture and that momentum within, you know, our supplier base as well. In terms of what do we do in scope three with the customers, you know, one of the things that you observe is that a lot of our customers, they do want to, you know, reduce their net zero emission as well.
They have been putting a lot of activities in place. You'll find that there is an increasing amount of usage of renewable electricity by some of our customers. Of course, they are not where they should be or at the level where, you know, it's, let's say, that significant yet, but that's a good start, and we are very encouraged by that. We work very closely with them in terms of being a supplier, also responding to, you know, all the different requests, and let's say actions that they have as far as, you know, ESG is concerned.
You know, with all actually, not just the top three, but all most of our customers, there is annual discussions regarding, you know, where what our activities, and then they will track us. That's something that they do to us, just like what we do to our suppliers. On the living wage, I think, you know, we have actually co-sponsored, you know, a living wage, let's say a policy or program, with the RBA, and we are actually co-leading that.
I think that's one way of trying to ensure that, you know, the labor that is within the semiconductor industry gets paid a wage that is good enough for living, and that makes it possible for everybody to make a good living. That's something that we are continuously working on with the RBA, and we hope that going forward, at some point in time, it may be, you know, accepted, and, you know, become part of the code of conduct. Today it is not, but we are leading, co-leading the working group to try to make sure that we try to push that as far as we can.
In terms of inclusion and diversity, I think you mentioned, Stephanie, some of the programs that we have, Converge, you know, which are employee resource groups, not just for, you know, gender diversity, but for various other purposes as well. We also have the WIN initiative for the female population. Of course, you know, we also do a lot of programs trying to make sure that the company is aware of the importance of inclusion and diversity. Part of this is through, you know, some of the surveys that we do once every two years. We did our first survey in 2020.
We did a pulse survey in 2021, and this year we have just kicked off a second survey. It's a cycle of once every two years to gauge you know sort of response of the employee base as far as their understanding. We try as much as possible to ensure that we create awareness. Last year, we had actually two of our female supervisory board members speak during women's I think it was Women's Day or International Women's Day. Stephanie was one of them, Monica was the other one. I think it was very enlightening that we could have supervisory board members, female supervisory board members speak at large to the rest of the company.
We also have, you know, various participants platforms where we try to, for example, in the area of women in engineering or women in semiconductors, we have the head of our Singapore facility, Yvonne, who has joined that as a speaker. Various activities that we are doing to try to create a sense of awareness and try to be much more involved. I think the last part of your question was whether we have something like a whistleblower or complaint channel. I do believe we have. We have actually a very, I would call it sophisticated. It's run by people and the general counsel. If there is a complaint, for example, against myself or Paul, you know, we don't see it.
They see it, and they will investigate, and eventually they will give a report actually to the chairman of the supervisory board. It's very impartial. I don't think we have had a lot of those kind of cases, because I think that we are quite confident that people are happy working for us. It's a happy environment. Should there be any, and probably there's a few such complaints, they all go to the general counsel and the head of people to be investigated. I hope that answers most of your questions, Stephanie.
To add to the last point, we are informed at the supervisory board about any case, a simple case or a complicated case, so by the corporate secretary.
I will say this again, we get this information going back into Dutch. Thank you. In terms of diversity as a supervisory board, indeed, we are giving the right example, aren't we? Because five nationalities, 50% women, so 50/50. Somebody's saying without a microphone that we couldn't hear, and the chair as well. This doesn't happen all that often if you look at the AEX. I hope everybody follows our good example. Here in front, there is Vreeke. You've brought a lot of stuff, machinery. Well, this is an iPad Pro, and I take it that you've put some stuff in that iPad Pro, some of your products. I'm Vreeke of... This is a fantastic team, let me say, here behind the desk side by side, both as to subject involvement and emancipation.
It is fantastic. A huge compliment from me. However, communication could be much, much better because, you know, who is going to say the most important thing here today? That is I. Because you know why? At one point, I purchased shares, a whole portfolio of them, and I never looked at it again, really. The best performing share is ASM International, which is up some 2,000%. I never read this in the newspaper. You don't advertise with this. You could raise a lot more money by communicating about your strengths, and I would be very happy to help you with this. You're smiling or perhaps laughing, but if I tell you 2,271% up, no shareholder would tell anybody else that, but I do it publicly, and all top investors worldwide are hearing me.
There's been the Club of Rome report. This was made a long time ago, and it's about boundaries or limits to growth. Well, the past 50 years since that report, we seem not to have done a lot. We seem to be the dirty little man of Europe. It's beautiful that you are so sustainable together with 25 other big companies in the Netherlands. Nevertheless, we go from crisis to crisis. CO2, nitrogen. It's unimaginable. Here we have the climate crisis and the war, and also they are connected because Russia has put us in a fossil fuel crisis, and China will put us in a green crisis. You are all part of the old boys network. You could have seen this coming. Russia since 2014 with the annexation of the Crimea, that was a clear sign. Let me give you a clear sign.
China. China is monopolizing all green raw materials, so production should go to America, Africa, and Europe. COVID is also a climate crisis. Too much meat, too many exotic animals. Could we ask you to come to the point or to the question? Yes, I'll reach my questions. A question is: how can you communicate better in the future? In terms of diversity, what my predecessor already said, you see in positions at the top that diversity intimidation plays a role there very often, which is oftentimes invisible. I want to know how you are doing at the top there. Another question is, you are making big profits, but wouldn't it be great, and Ms. van der Meer Mohr knows more about this, I'm sure. All IT schools in the Netherlands don't have enough money.
She used to be at ASML and now at ASMI. Wouldn't it be great if she became chair and then give that education in the Netherlands an enormous boost with lots of funding also for female students, which will fill the deficit. How will you go about this? Also in a societal sense, you can help because shareholders and stakeholders are very important, are becoming much more so because the Floriade is now in Almere. ASMI, I read, did not sponsor this, and they have a shortage, a shortfall of EUR 50 million. Can't you give them some money as well? Because your profits are so high, and you can make much more profits if you feel your responsibility to communicate and to support others.
Finally, two or three years ago, at the headquarters of ASMI were all sorts of little, Porsche Cayennes, and I take it that they're electric cars now, BMW, Audi, Porsche.
I hope so. One more thing. In the Netherlands, we have the nuns, right? If you really want to speak Dutch, learn Dutch, you can learn it as well as Maxima or one of our earlier princes by learning it from the nuns in that institute where everybody learns languages in an intensive course, immersion, and then you can talk with everybody else around you in the language of the country. Okay, why hasn't Mr. Loh gone to the nuns to get educated in Dutch at least? Well, I'm sure he will be okay, but all the other questions I asked are much more important. Okay, let me check whether I understood you. I heard something about communication. It was like a television program almost. Thank you for good lessons.
As to hybrid, indeed, part of the members of the supervisory board do drive electric. You must be so sorry at having only 10 shares. Well, you shouldn't be telling anyone. That's private information. I offer you my sincere apologies, says the Chair. Such a great result of growth. Right, I don't just do this. I do all sorts of other good things for you that you don't see. Well, I attend many meetings, so I know of some of these things. Again, let us answer your questions where we can. Of course, says the shareholder. I would like to start with our Chair. About communication. We are not visible enough in the country. Benjamin, what about that?
I think, you know, in terms of communication, we have improved very significantly over the last two years. Let me give you some examples. You know, on the last two years, we have also accepted to give newspaper interviews. We were on the FD, we were on the NRC. So we actually tried to, you know, speak to the newspapers, for example, so that people know a little bit more about ASM International. I agree with you. You know, not a lot is known about ASM International, so we have tried to do that. We are very much more active now. If you look at social media, whether it's, you know, on YouTube or whether it's on LinkedIn, we publish a lot of our articles as well.
This is all just trying to make sure that people understand and know ASM International a little bit better. You know, for example, recently we also gave interviews on Bloomberg, CNBC, with local newspapers as well. So I think, you know, we are doing a lot of that, compared to, for example, two years ago. Also internally, we are also stepping up our communication. So we have Connect, which is a forum where we share news within the company. We, I think, have done, you know, a good step up from where we were before. We also right now also have a lot of, you know, regular interactions with the employees.
For example, Paul and myself and also Hichem, we try to do, you know, whenever we go and visit, you know, an office, all hands, we explain about the strategy, we explain about, you know, our sustainability strategy, our overall strategic focus. I think in terms of communication, we have done a lot. Maybe, we need to improve and do even more, but I think compared to where we were, we have improved significantly.
Mr. Vreeke, I also think you should consider that we are very international. You have seen all our sites, you know, so we should be very careful. You know, where do we have many people in Singapore and the U.S.? This is where we do much more. In the Netherlands, we are a relatively small organization. Your signal is very clear. We'll take a close look at it. I can tell you last week I made a round with the finalists of the Royal Prize that I'm chair of. You know, we have wonderful companies in the Netherlands that nobody knows about. Maybe it's just Dutch modesty there. I think there's a huge market there for the Dutch industry to become more known. Maybe you could give some consults.
Well, I can give you an example, but that would be taking it too far. But thank you for your suggestion. Did this answer your question? Yes. That question was now answered. My other question was this. The top of the company missed Russia and now we get China. How are you going to prevent from ending up from one crisis to another? And how are we going to make sure that these two things do not strengthen each other? You know, we now buy all the green stuff from China, and China is increasing all of that. It's not just a question to ASMI, but you are in a network with TU Delft University, et cetera. It is very important that we make sure together as a continent, as Europe, and you as a company, you must have an influence.
Make sure that we do not end up in an even more serious crisis. Well, I will include your advice, Mr. Vreeke, but, you know, predicting the future is very difficult. Rest assured that ASMI has a China strategy, and we are closely monitoring all situations. Of course, you know, we do not manufacture ourselves in China. That is clear. You have heard from our chair that we pay close attention to what our sources do, you know, where we source our products. Also, when it comes to availability and all other elements. We take very good care. We're very careful, and the world is bigger than the Netherlands, and that applies to ASMI as well. Well, in the Netherlands, we have a can-do mentality, right?
Some people say that we can't say that anymore because it relates too much to our golden age, which was not all positive. You have an influence to a certain extent also on what happens in China, and, you know, you can nudge them. You can nudge the Chinese. You have that influence and power. Yes. Yes. We are aware of that. Thank you. Looking around, I see someone else. My name is Uding, on behalf of VEB, Association of Securities Holders. Okay, last year, for the first time, ASMI had an investors day at the same time with the big brother, ASML in Veldhoven. Now, ASML said earlier this year, you know, the 2025 goals, you know, we have to adjust them already upward. What about your forward-looking or your outlooks then? That concludes one question.
ALD technology, question two. In a market that which is growing very fast, do you see competitors also intensifying because the growth is so fast, the growth pace is so fast? Then third question, I was wondering whether you could talk about opportunities like smaller geometries and threats of the wider acceptance of ALD technology. Three questions. One is about 2025 update, whether we see a reason to adjust that. ALD, you know, and the competition. The last question is EUV, that we are not in ourselves, but again, I would like to give the floor to Benjamin.
Sure. On the first question. I think recently, as you correctly mentioned, ASML, you know, announced that they were going to expand capacity, and, you know, that kind of set off a euphoria within the market. Everybody expected that, okay, you know, things are going to be even better. I think it's still a little bit early to say for sure. What we can say for sure is that is a very good sign because, obviously ASML is confident that the demand is going to grow. That's why they are trying to increase their capacity.
Now, that coupled with the fact that, you know, if you look at our three main customers, you know, they have all made multi-year bets, you know, of up to 2025, 2026, gives us a lot of confidence that, you know, the market, in fact, is seeing very strong demand and will grow. At this stage, you know, we stick to our midterm targets. Of course, we review that regularly. If we feel that we should change, maybe on a yearly or every 18 months, we of course would change that and inform the market. They are actually a good news, you know, what is happening with the announcement from ASML.
I think ALD technology is an area where, you know, ASM has excelled, and it's one of our core strengths. And of course, you are correct that being the fastest-growing part of the market, you know, it is probably attracting competition, and competition is in fact intensifying. Maybe some figures. If you look at 2020, the market was about, for ALD, single wafer ALD was about $1.5 billion. We expect that is going to grow to between $3.1 billion-$3.7 billion by 2025. Effectively, a doubling of the market, more than doubling of the market. Some analysts have even said that we are a little bit conservative. Maybe yes, maybe no, but that's our view today.
With such, you know, high growth, growing at 16%-20% CAGR, for the next couple of years, of course, the competition is going to be attracted. We are very confident that we will continue to maintain our leading position, for a couple of reasons. One, we have been in this ALD equipment space longer than anybody else. In fact, you know, my predecessors had the foresight to already start investing in ALD more than two decades ago. We have the biggest knowledge base, we have the largest installed base, and we have also built up the biggest, let's say, you know, base of materials and chemistries, which are the most important aspects of ALD.
We are very confident that even with the intensifying competition, we will continue to be the leaders, because it's just not easy to replicate what we have done over the last two decades in a couple of years. The question on smaller geometries, actually, I'm not very clear. Are you talking about EUV?
Yeah. Just looking at this whole EUV, where does it have to move from EUV to EUV? How does this impact your ALD technology?
I think in general, you know, EUV for us is net a positive because EUV might reduce, for example, the number of patterning steps, but EUV creates the need to have additional ALD layers that supports the EUV. That actually, in our experience, you know, with logic or foundry customer from 7 nm to 5 nm and now going to 3 nm, it's actually a net positive for us. It increases the usage of ALD, one. Two, when you look at EUV, it's not able to replace all the patterning steps completely. Even with EUV, there are steps that still require multiple patterning. It's generally going to just increase the number of ALD steps for us, which we are actually very positive about.
Please go to the microphone because otherwise people at home can't hear you. Yes, my apologies. That's much better.
Where you've regained, I think, market share from Lam Research, and you've had a period where you were losing market share. Is that something that you're in terms of memory growing faster, maybe over the next couple of years? Or how do you see that in terms of the competition, and your own technology? Do you think you're now ahead in terms of technology, so you're able to take market share also in memory?
I think we are actually very positive as well as far as memory is concerned. We started about two-three years ago working with all the memory customers on the advanced ALD applications that they will need at their next nodes. You know, we see some of them now starting to be adopted. One of them is the high-k metal gate, the hafnium oxide. That is the first one that has been adopted by the majority of the memory manufacturers. We do have a pipeline of other applications. One of them we shared during our first quarter earnings call with you know, ALD gap fill.
That is, you know, in good traction and probably will be adopted for high volume manufacturing within the next, I would say, 12-18 months. We look at, you know, the end of 2022 and 2023 as the time horizon where a lot of the work that we have been doing over the last couple of years, they can move into high volume manufacturing. Our share will start to increase from there.
Yeah. Okay. Thank you.
Right. Looking around the room, I do not see any other questions, which means that I will now look at whether we have questions from the chat. No questions from the chat. That is nice. Now that we don't have any further questions, we can move on to the next item on the agenda. Before that, I will state something. With the piece of paper that I was just given, I can tell you that the total number of issued shares on the record date amounted to 49,297,394. On that date, there were 717,295 shares in treasury, and therefore 84,580,099 shares could be voted on.
For this meeting, however, we have registered a number of shares of 36,083,548 shares, and that number of registered shares is 74.28% of all of our shares. Which brings us to agenda Item 3. This is the first voting item, and it regards the remuneration report, so the implementation and execution of our policy for remuneration. You can read about this in the annual report, of course, pages 111 through 116. That is where you can find in the annual report 2021, that information on the implementation of the remuneration policy. Now we will have a short introduction of this topic by my colleague, Didier Lamouche. He is the chair of that remuneration committee, and so he would like to give us an explanation.
Everyone. Ladies and gentlemen, dear shareholder, I will take you initially through the remuneration report 2021, and then in a second step through the adjusted remuneration policy for the management board and for the supervisory board. As Mr. Chairman already indicated, the remuneration report is included in its entirety into the ASM 2021 annual report, page 111 to 116. This report fully complies with the Dutch Civil Code and the principle as set out in the Dutch Corporate Governance Code. In accordance with the Dutch Civil Code, as said by the Chairman, we ask you, the general meeting of shareholders, to cast an advisory vote on the remuneration report 2021.
As the first step, I would like to remind you that the remuneration policy on which the remuneration report 2021 is based was adopted by the general meeting of shareholders on May 18, 2020. In terms of base salary in 2021, the base salary for our CEO, Mr. Benjamin Loh, has been increased by 3% in line with the market movement in the Netherlands this year, as well as in line with the average increase for ASM employees in the Netherlands. As far as the CFO, Mr. Verhagen, is concerned, he has started his assignment in June 1st, 2021, and as such, was not included in the base salary adjustment review process.
Let's review now in more detail the variable remuneration elements of the pay mix. Called the short-term cash incentive, STI, measuring the results over the last years, and the long-term share incentive delivered in performance share called the LTI. As far as the STI is concerned, so the short-term cash incentive, as you know, it is based both on financial targets with a weight of 75% of the nominal, and 25% on non-financial target, namely based on ESG related on one hand, and strategy related KPIs. All those targets are set annually by the supervisory board. The maximum attainable level for the CEO is 150% of his base salary, and for the CFO of 125% of his base salary.
Obviously, given the report and the results that Benjamin will give to you, it will not be a surprise given the strong performance that we have recorded in 2021 for ASM, that both management board members have shown an overachievement on the predefined STI targets. Those achievements have been, as you can see in the remuneration report, of 138% of base salary for the CEO and 114% for the CFO. Let's turn now to the LTI, the long-term share incentive performance share-based component of the remuneration. As you know, again, this is a multi-year, three years actually, variable payment based on performance shares that become unconditional after a performance period measurement of three years, and which also subject post those three years to a two years holding period post-vesting.
The unconditional award is a result of targets on revenue growth compared to the market as measured on the three years period, an average EBIT versus a preset objective set by the supervisory board. As Mr. Loh started in May 2020, and Mr. Verhagen in June 2021, there is obviously no vesting performance share in 2021, as the performance period is, as I said before, three years. Let's go now to an indicator which we may publish, which is a CEO pay ratio and which is also included in the report. The so-called CEO pay ratio. As you know, the ratio of the CEO remuneration and the average remuneration of all other employees in the company is calculated by dividing actually the CEO remuneration by the average remuneration of all employees in the company.
The pay ratio this year is relatively stable compared to the former year and also compared to last year, moving from a number of 27 in 2020 to 29 over 2021. Next item, the retirement of Mr. Van Bommel as CFO as of May 18th, 2021. If you remember back in October of 2020, the company has informed all stakeholders about the retirement of the former CFO, Mr. Van Bommel, at an age of almost 65 years.
As this is an ordinary retirement, no severance payment was made to Mr. Van Bommel, and the supervisory board did not grant a new LTI award in 2021 either. In line with ASM regular retirement arrangements, which also apply to all employees of ASM, all outstanding conditional performance share that were granted to Mr. van Bommel in 2019 and 2020 vested at grant level on his retirement date, which in fact represents a total respectively for 2019 and 2020 of 7,343 shares and 5,559 shares.
Let's now move to the remuneration policy for the Management Board for 2022 onwards. As you probably know, the actual remuneration policy was adopted by the AGM, the General Meeting of Shareholders on May 18, 2020. After recommendation of the Nomination, Selection, and Remuneration Committee, which I have the pleasure to chair, it is proposed to adopt a new remuneration policy for the Management Board. Mainly in view of the proposed change to the composition of the Management Board by appointing Mr. Hichem M'Saad, who is present here, and if you elect to do so, will present himself later on.
It is intended that in line with the Dutch Corporate Governance Code, the remuneration policy for the management board will be then applicable for the next four years. Let me explain in a few words the changes. First, why? The responsibilities of Mr. M'Saad as a U.S.-based management board member for ASM will include accountability for ASM technical product portfolio, platform configuration, future technologies, and innovation. He would bear the title of Chief Technology Officer, CTO. As Mr. M'Saad is already based in the U.S. since he start with ASM and even before, in 2015. He will remain, and given the importance of this market for us, it's even more important, he will remain based in the U.S.
Given this fact, the supervisory board has deemed necessary, if not absolutely necessary, to consider US labor market practices and US benchmarks in setting the overall remuneration of Mr. Hichem M'Saad. Hence, a rigorous benchmark was performed by an outside renowned consulting firm, PricewaterhouseCoopers, based again, as I said, on US labor market practices and benchmark data out of the US market. The major adjustment is dealing actually with the LTI, the long-term incentive portion of the compensation, which for those who knows well those markets, shouldn't be a surprise given the differences we see, on these pay elements between the European market and the US market.
Next to his base pay, Mr. Hichem M'Saad will receive at on target 80% of base salary, short-term cash incentive, and at on target 450% of base salary, long-term incentive performance share based, and again based on performance. This performance will be measured against two preset predetermined financial indicators. The performance share, as I said before, will become unconditional after a period of three years, after which the performance is measured through the award date. Of course, as I said before, in order to show commitment to ASM and align such commitment with the shareholder interest, the members of the management board, including the Mr. Hichem M'Saad, are required to hold the vested performance share for two additional years after the vesting date.
In addition, to go quickly, just to highlight the key differences of the new proposal for the remuneration policy, we are proposing three slight adjustments. First, the disclosure in the remuneration report. We were often, very often requested to further increase the transparency and the disclosure of our remuneration measurement elements. The performance indicator which are used and their relative weighting will be disclosed in the remuneration report next year. Actually, the actual short-term incentive payout following the attainment of each of the non-financial performance criteria will be annually disclosed in the remuneration report. That's the first point. Second point, we also adjusted the forfeiture of payouts for the STI or LTI elements, or we clarified a few elements of those.
The remuneration policy as such is then clarifying those situations in which some management board members could, in any case, they forfeit payouts of their STI or LTI if they are hired from outside, or if not actively providing services on the last day of the performance year. I'm sorry, I'm confused here. I repeat. Let me repeat. The remuneration policy clarifies some situations in which management board members will, in case they forfeit payout of their STI or LTI, if they are not actively providing services on the last day of their performance year, or if they are not actively providing services on the date of vesting. This is a clarification that we're bringing to the report.
Now last point, but not least, in case of new appointments, the new remuneration policy also clarifies specific provision for the new appointment, especially what we call replacement awards. Last item, Mr. Chairman, that I would like to mention, the remuneration policy as it concerned the supervisory board for 2022 and onwards. The actual remuneration policy of the supervisory board, as you remember, was adopted by the AGM on May 18, 2020. The last increase, actually, of the remuneration of the supervisory board members was four years ago, back in 2018, and was at that time approved at the AGM May 20, 2018.
The proposed adjustments in the remuneration level of the supervisory board and the remuneration policy are directly related to the growth of the company since four years now, to the increased complexity of ASM, the expansion of the activity also of the supervisory board, and are supported by a benchmark again executed by an outside firm, consulting firm, in this case, PwC. This completes my report to the AGM, Mr. Chairman.
Okay, Didier. Thanks a lot.
Yeah, my colleague has a quick flight to Paris, so he was doing three and eight at the same time, I think, explanations of items on the agenda, three and eight. To be fast, I'm sure. Now we must first discuss item on the agenda number three, and that was to do with that remuneration report. Would anybody like to ask a question? I see the Stockholders Association of the Netherlands representative, Mr. Vrolijk, on behalf of the VEB, one brief statement and two very brief questions for you. The remuneration report does not give enough insights.
In the targets and performance achieved in the past year, both STI and LTI related. For STI, for example, we do not see what the threshold and max levels are for any individual performance criterion. In terms of reference, I'll refer to ASML, who gives us a full table of these numbers. Our question is, will you present a full table of these figures as other companies also do from next year? About non-financial criteria, my question too, which of those criteria were used this year, specifically also in terms of ESG? Okay, you're asking me about non-financial targets of last year, and I'll give the floor back to Didier, and he will ask us to be even more transparent, like our small colleague, ASML, next year. Back to Didier for this.
Yes. Thank you for your question. As you very well know, this is a general request for many shareholders and also proxy organizations across Europe and across the U.S., to be more transparent. That's exactly what we want to do. At the same time, we need also to protect the interests of the company and the shareholders of the company. You know that most of our financial targets are very competitively sensitive. Very. Because disclosing the target comes back to declaring to your competition what you're aiming at. This is why we do not disclose. This is why we want to protect also the company, and I think this is a key element. We think this is a key element.
Having said that, we also take the commitment to further increase the level of transparency, and next year we will disclose the strategic goals, which are a bit less sensitive in the short term. To answer your question, this year the goals were measured on ESG strategy achievements for the year, point number one, and point number two on the strategy achievement for this year. Both equally weighted. That's how we assess the performance of the manager this year.
Thank you very much. Yeah, maybe my question was not that specific, but on ESG, what was measured on ESG? On strategy, what was measured on strategy? Is that, for example, market share or what are we talking about in terms of non-financial?
That I cannot disclose you. The management defined the strategy that the board approved, and this strategy is of course a multi-year strategy with different milestone year by year. We measure basically the achievement of the milestone as compared to the commitment the year before of the management. Same with ESG, as we are in the, I would say, in the phase where we need to define and then set the strategy and then set precise targets. We were in the period, still last year, of defining the key milestone of the strategy. We measure the management on did they achieve the milestones that will lead going forward to key KPIs.
Okay. Thank you.
Thank you for your questions on transparency. I will definitely also forward it to my successor. Anyway, we understand because it's quite a discussion. You want to have as much transparency as you can, but you also do not want to inform the competition. That is, of course, somewhere in between lies the golden route that makes everybody happy. This is what you see everywhere, you know. We promise you that we will take a careful look at it again. Right. Looking at whether there are any other questions. Mr. Vreeke. Good afternoon again. I am a person that really likes visual things, stimuli. I like to see an overview when you present, because now I have to sort of plow through 10 pages of the annual report to look at remuneration policy.
That doesn't make it informative. I think if I'm not mistaken, Mr. Loh earns EUR 3 million. Is that correct? Because I can't do the math. My question is, does he find this a good salary on an international level? Is that a reason for him to stay? Or are there headhunters who say, "Hey, that Benjamin Loh, we need to have him." You know, because it's very important to keep everything that's on the other side of the table. It's a great team. I also have this question, whether a supervisory board would accept you know, an hourly wage of EUR 200-EUR 250. That seems fair to me, especially during COVID. Think day and night you worked on ASMI. Remuneration. Is it realistic then? Basically you're getting at that it should be higher.
Yes, I should think so, because penny-wise is pound-foolish. I was at ING Group and, you know, ING Barings, you know, took over for GBP 1 and it cost us EUR billions. You have to feel happy with the remuneration that you get. Now we know that ING director, he had EUR 2 million and now he moved to a Swiss bank, and now he earns EUR 20 million, and that is his market value. Well, benchmarking, I'm just saying benchmarking is important. VEB also represents me, by the way. Again, you know, looking at all those tiny pennies, you know, in the Netherlands we accept that, but we have to look at the international stage, and you will have to be able to recruit people, and you operate on an international playing field.
I am the only shareholder that is now stating that we should have a different approach toward remuneration, I think, because it's really nice that, you know, you have like, let's say, modest salaries like our prime minister, but you have to retain your staff. But what is your question? Okay, so you say remuneration for the management team. Is it correct? Yes. I really want to know whether everybody is happy with what they get. Well, I'm going to answer this question ourselves. Well, we managed to attract a high-level new CEO, new CFO. So we did that because, you know, we looked at what they earned before, you know, what we can do, what is acceptable. This is how we always structured our policy.
Within that policy, we succeeded to attract great people, and they stay on board, and they are happy, I was told. They are happy. I am going to assume that whatever they're receiving is fitting. Well, then I have one more question. The workload for the Supervisory Board, especially. Yes. We will get to the remuneration for the Supervisory Board. It's a separate item. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. You think it's too little as well, or? Well, no, but Mr. Lamouche had to go to Paris, apparently, so he did that in one go. We'll get back to that, right? Yes. Right. Okay, let's see whether we have any question on the remuneration report.
Getting me to negotiate with Benjamin that he's not asking too much next year, because you bring him a lot of arguments, so not too much.
Right. No further questions about the remuneration report then. No questions on the chat either. We will move on. I inform you that in accordance with the Dutch Civil Code, the general meeting of shareholders can cast an advisory vote with regard to the remuneration report 2021. It's now time to open the first voting block. In the room you can vote using your virtual voting box or your mobile application. Shareholders who participate virtually can now vote using their aforementioned application. I will show the voting results at the end of the first voting block, which is after Item 8 on the agenda. We actually covered part of that, as I said already. I will give you the opportunity now to cast your vote, because you might not remember what you're voting for.
Let's do it now for this item so that you don't forget. Item three, let's cast the advisory vote. Right. I will move on with Item 4, which is the adoption of the annual accounts 2021. The annual accounts 2021 have been audited and approved by the external auditor, which is KPMG. I would now like to give Mr. Frederik Croiset van Uchelen of KPMG the opportunity to explain the audit and his unqualified opinion. I understand, Mr. Frederik, he did bring his own presentation to make things very transparent and clear. Yes, I did bring slides. Good afternoon. My name is Frederik Croiset van Uchelen. I'm the external auditor for the audit of the annual accounts of ASMI.
This is my second year as the responsible lead accountant, and KPMG has now been involved in the audit for seven years as an external auditor. This presentation that you see here follows the structure of our opinion that you can find on page 173 until 279 of the annual report. Right. Here we go. What did we audit? First of all, we audited the consolidated and single financial statements, and also looking at the management report, and all the other information was audited, and we concluded that the report is consistent with the annual accounts, and the audit resulted in a unqualified opinion. Furthermore, we also provided an unqualified opinion with a limited assurance when it comes to the non-financial indicators, as included on Page 181 to 183 of the annual report. The audit approach then.
For our audit approach, a number of elements are important, among which are risk assessment and, of course, looking at materiality and setting that. As part of our audit, we made a risk assessment of all possible fields in which a risk of a substantive mistake or materiality mistake, whether caused by a fraud or a mistake, where it is highest. In our unqualified opinion, we included further details as to how we assess the specific risks, among which the risk to fraud and compliance with laws and legislations. For the audit of the annual accounts, we set materiality at 4.2% of result before income taxes, which was EUR 25 million. The most important focal points of our audit. Basically, the key audit matters were included in the unqualified opinion as well and are in line with last year.
First of all, we identified one matter which related to the financial impact and complexity specifically related to revenue. Cut-off risk on revenue. To clarify that risk, this risk is the supposed fraud risk that the management will not give full accountability over the entire revenue. The second key audit matter relates to the capitalization of development costs. Again, because of financial or possible financial impact, because it's always an assessment and it's very complex, specifically in relation to criteria to be able to affect development costs. Looking at the scope, because of how the financial organization is set up and a service center in Singapore, we are able to plan our audit and execute it, which results in the fact that we were able to assess and audit 95% of total assets and 94% of revenue.
Which means that we conducted central audit activities for most important operations in Japan, Korea, the Netherlands, Singapore and the U.S. Next to that, we used local KPMG accountants to help us with Singapore and Japan a little bit further. We also used, like previous year, non-KPMG accountants for audit of ASMPT, part of our audit activities when it comes to investments with associates. Activities of local accountants then in Japan and Singapore were assessed in a virtual manner by us, and I'll get back to that. When it comes to local accountants, so also the non-KPMG ones, all activities for purpose of the consolidated annual account were executed according to our instructions and under our supervision. Finally, three relevant topics.
Just like last year related to COVID, we were not able to visit all sites physically, so we had virtual meetings with the teams in Singapore, Japan and Hong Kong. We have also had several meetings and calls during the audit process. At the end and during the process, we looked into the case files and reviewed all the files virtually for Japan and Hong Kong. Looking at risk of fraud and non-compliance with laws and regulations, we specifically, just like last year, conducted activities related to export controls and trade relations. That is also explained in our unqualified opinion. In relation to climate related risk, we included the risks in our risk analysis. We also looked at the analysis of the management, and we were not able to identify any material risks for our audit. That concludes my presentation.
I would like to leave it at that, and I'd like to give the floor back to the chair. Thank you for your attention and confidence in us. Frank, thank you. Then I would like to offer you the possibility in the room and also people online. This is the adoption of the annual accounts 2021. You have been able to hear the presentation of the highlights as well as the presentation of our CEO, but also you've been able to read everything in the annual report. Looking at whether we have any questions. Again, it's the adoption of the annual accounts 2021. Mr. Vreeke. I would really like to ask you to really ask a question, Mr. Vreeke. Of course, Mr. Pernis. My question is this: What about cybercrime?
How well is the security of ASMI, and compared to the competition? I often ask these questions and then I get an answer that many things are being done. With Maersk, they said that they had more than a million attacks. That's important information. It's like with the COVID virus, and you know when there's a lockdown, it means that Europe is in lockdown and then the world is in lockdown. I would like to know. If you look at the market value of ASMI, it doubled. All of a sudden, I see that they're over KPN and ABN AMRO. That's a great compliment. I didn't even know that. Why are we not communicating that? Isn't it great that you're in the top 25? This is almost world news. Of course, at the very top, it's ASML. It used to be Unilever and Shell.
There are miracles happening, and the Dutch people need to know. Two questions. First of all, I would like to see reporting on market capitalization because it confirms how well ASMI is doing. The other question was cybercrime. My last thing is this: I understand that all of a sudden there are many manufacturers that are manufacturing chips, and that pretty soon the price will decrease because there will be a huge offer, and what is the impact on ASMI? Trying to structure those questions. Cybercrime, you know, we actually wanted to answer that we do a lot, but you already know that. I would like to give then our the floor to our Chair or our CFO, who is a specialist in cybercrime. Again, your communication point. Yes, market capitalization and market value, we depend on you as a shareholder.
You know, the better the share price is, the bigger the market value is, and it slightly decreased. Anyways, cybercrime. Benjamin, would you like to go first or Paul? Okay. Yes. Thank you for your question. Of course, cybercrime and protection against that is one of our top five important issues, and it's also included in the risk assessment of our supervisory board meeting. It's a topic that we discuss. We do a lot. It's maybe not sufficient. In principle, we have four, five pillars. We first identify the risks, you know. You need a risk assessment of the cyber risks. Then we take measures to protect ourselves. Just like you have three locks on your door to protect yourself against burglars, you know, we also have several locks on our doors.
Of course, we have antivirus programs and other software, and we have our own access monitoring and all the standard stuff that you should expect from our company. We monitor 24/7 whether somebody is in our home knocking on our door, and we of course try to detain such hackers and kick them out. We have recovery and backup procedures that we regularly test worldwide to be sure that if anything happens anywhere in the world, that we are up and running. That is a continuous loop. Cybersecurity is also developing rapidly, and we are not standing still either. We try to stay ahead of the game. Wherever we believe we have identified risks, we try to deal with those risks.
What about risks down the chain? Because, for example, the tax authorities have a fossilized system. It doesn't seem that hard to hack that. If no income tax is received, then it will hurt ASMI too. Government IT is not that great. Can you manage that?
Well, I don't know whether I understand your question. What is your question?
Well, you know, you can have your house in order, but the government in the Netherlands.
I think you should go to another meeting for that.
No, I'm at the right meeting because if the tax authorities fall, then ASMI will also feel that effect.
Well- Well, isn't it great that we don't have to pay corporate tax anymore then? No, just on a more serious note, please ask questions that we could actually. It costs a lot.
Well, I can tell you this. Our suppliers might have access to our system, so together with our suppliers, we do that security together with customers as well. We have joint efforts when it comes to that. We talk to several groups, internal, external. Everyone who has direct access to our systems, they're all part of the scope of our total cybersecurity policy and activities. Thank you.
Right. Looking at whether anybody else has a question. If not, about the annual account, let's go and take that vote.
We vote on the annual accounts, and you and people in the room here can use the Lumi application to do this. Let me say again that the voting results of the first block of voting will be shown after item on the agenda number eight. This is your moment to vote about the annual accounts. Assuming that you have done this by now, we'll move on to agenda item five, which is always a wonderful one, I think, for shareholders. It is about the adoption of the dividend proposal. A proposal is made of a dividend to be paid of EUR 2.5 per each ordinary share. This is an increase of 25% compared to the dividend paid for 2020. I'm looking around the room to see whether there are any questions about this.
The further details, I'm sure you've been able to read in the explanatory notes to the agenda. I don't see any questions coming in via the chat either. This is another moment in which you may chat. It's the terminals you use, people at home use, you know, use the Lumi application. This is your moment to vote. Once we have done this, let us move to agenda Item 6, which is an exciting one for all our directors, since it regards the discharge of the members of the management board. In accordance with article 13.4 of the articles of association of the company, it is proposed to the general meeting of shareholders that you discharge the members of the management board from liability in relation to the exercise of their duties in the financial year 2021.
I'm looking around to see whether there are any questions about this, but I see none, and I see none in the chat either. Let's vote immediately. This is your moment to do this. You know how to do it by now. This is your opportunity. Without further ado, let us move to Item 7, which regards the discharge of the members of the supervisory board who are becoming a little nervous in turn, because in accordance with Article 30.4 of the Articles of Association, it is proposed to the annual meeting of shareholders to discharge the members of the supervisory board from liability in relation to the exercise of their duties in the financial year 2021. Again, I will give you an opportunity to ask a question.
I see no hands up and also from the chat there seem to be no questions. Let us vote about this as well, for which I give you the opportunity now. Once this has been done as well, I move to item number 8. This is also the last item of this first voting block. I'm sure you remember what I indicated. This regards the approval of the new remuneration policy. Mr. Lamouche has already given you a longish explanation in the earlier agenda item. I'm sure you realized that this had to do with our remuneration policy for the coming years. It's an important item on the agenda because should it not be adopted, then there will be no vote possible on agenda Item 9. Mr. M'Saad cannot then join the management board.
It's, you know, just so you know. I would also like to inform you that on 1 April, the draft remuneration policy of the management board was published on the ASM website with the notice convening this meeting. That is a formality, of course, but I must tell you this. There is an overview of the changes in this draft compared to the policy of 2020. That was also posted on the website. There are no more explanations about it. Might anyone want to take the floor, perhaps? I see somebody from the Stockholders Association of the Netherlands. I vote along, but I will vote in favor.
I have to say, if you look at 450% of target level and 150% for the maximum potential added to that is fairly aggressive in the Dutch context of, you know, ALD, Philips, ASML, if you look at them. For the future, I thought I would tell you this. Thank you for your comment and thank you for your positive vote. It is true for an international company such as ours, it is tricky in the various different countries where we work with very different salaries, but also very different systems. We took a long and close and careful look at all of this. In reality, indeed, this did demand a sacrifice from those concerned. In that sense, we really tried to balance the various interests.
I come from a big international company, and I know about such difference close up. You can't really compare to other salary packages because the living circumstances, etc., are different in different countries. Thank you for that comment and your positive vote. I see no more questions. Let us vote. Again, we'll give you another 30 seconds. Note this is the end of the first voting block. If you've not voted yet on any of the other points in this block, then you can do this now. Let me repeat that the votes that you will see include the votes cast by proxy, the votes cast in the room today, and also the votes cast today by our virtual participants.
Technology have asked me to give them a minute because they have to collect those various voting results from all the various systems. We're waiting. As soon as we have voting results on the screen, I will read them out to you. There are many screens, so I'm trying to watch all of them at the same time to see. I see feverish work going on behind the table in the back of the room. Okay, now let me read this to you. Item on the Agenda 3. That was the remuneration report of course. We see that the positive votes were 29,656,551, which is 83.77%. 5,743,900 votes against, which is 16.23%.
We have 681,915 abstentions. I can't quite read the percentage on my screen. The slide is bigger than the screen, but not the percentage of abstentions. For those of you who can calculate 0% abstentions. That is motion carried. You have adopted the remuneration report. We'll go to the annual account. That is Item 4. 35,988,284 votes in favor, 99.92%. 29,581 against, which is 0.08%. 64,801 abstentions, which is 0%. Which moves us to item on the agenda number five, regarding the adoption of the dividend proposal.
Here we have 35,898,374 votes in favor, which is 99.5%, with 179,730 votes against, which is 8.5%, and 4,362 abstentions. Which I'm sure moves us to the next three voting items on the screen, and here we have them. Number six regards discharge of the members of the management board. In favor, 35,187,714 votes. That is 98.56%. Votes against were 513,175, which is 1.44%, and 381,577 abstentions. Item 7, regarding the discharge of the members of the supervisory board.
We received 35,197,763 votes in favor, which is 98.59%. With this, they have taken over first place from the management board. Votes against, 503,276, which is 1.41%, and 381,427 abstentions. Finally, the remuneration policy for the management board, and we received 34,251,491 votes in favor, which is 95.51%. 1,611,725 votes against, which is 4.49%, and 209,250 abstentions. With this, we can conclude that all items have been adopted. Which brings us to item on the agenda number nine.
I already said that this more or less hinged on your adoption of Item 8. We're very happy to be able to reach agenda Item 9, and it is about the composition of the management board. Let me at the same time then open this second block of votes. This is such an important item for us that it is the only item in this second block. In accordance with Article 18.1 of the Articles of Association, the Supervisory Board proposes to appoint Hichem M'Saad for a period expiring at the close of the annual general meeting in 2026. After his appointment, the Supervisory Board will make that appointment. He will be Chief Technology Officer.
He's been working at ASM for the past 15 years and has played an essential part in development of ASM and many of the products of ASM. We foresee that in the role of CTO, he will make a significant contribution to the further growth of ASM. We've asked Hichem, who's present here today, to introduce himself very briefly to you. Naturally also, this will be in English in view of his nationality. He is American.
One of the microphones. Hello. Thank you very much, Martin and Supervisory Board for my nomination to the Management Board. I'm really very pleased to be nominated to the Management Board. I've been with ASM since 2015 right now, but I started my career 28 years ago, 1994, with Applied Materials as a process development engineer in HDP-CVD. I've been with this industry for many years right now. After a year spending in Silicon Valley, I actually moved to Europe. I spent two years in Grenoble, France. I have my European experience, and in Grenoble .
I worked with STMicroelectronics, with France Télécom at that point in time, and also CEA-Leti, or the Commissariat à l'énergie atomique et aux énergies alternatives, Leti. I was working on developing new processes in dielectric CVD. After two years in Grenoble with lots of skiing in Isère and so on, I moved back to Santa Clara, California. I was actually with Applied Materials too. I was actually responsible for developing the PECVD products. Within my years within Applied, I was able to develop quite a few products, namely Black Diamond family of low-k films, which are Black Diamond 1, Black Diamond 2. Developed the advanced patterning films, and those are the films that we use for patterning, for double patterning and quad patterning.
The amorphous carbon family of films, and also worked on developing stress and nitride film. Also was responsible for developing a new product called the Producer GT, which is the PECVD workhorse, and also developing the UV treatment. I was with Applied for a few years. I was the GM, VP, corporate VP, and also head of two business units, which is the dielectric CVD and the CMP. In 2008, I decided I needed to do something different. What I really like to do is maybe if you don't know is that I really liked solar energy and sustainability is very big for me. 2008, that's where solar is becoming more exciting.
When I finished my PhD in 1994, I actually wanted to work in solar energy, but at that time, the price of oil was like $0.25 a gallon in the U.S. All the solar companies actually closing. By 2008, you know, solar is coming back up, so I decided, I wanna do that. I had my own company, startup. Was very successful in solar energy. Spent about six years, was fun, was very good. Was very challenged, to be honest with you. Doing your own startup, not very easy, but it was fun. I really missed the semiconductor equipment industry. The semiconductor equipment industry is a great industry. It's very dynamic. I miss making products. I love making products.
I had to make a decision, okay, which company to come back to. My choice was very easy for me to make. At first, working with ASM. The reason why I joined ASM is because this company is all about innovation. It's really very innovative company. It has lots of respect in the industry. I was at Applied Materials, and we always respect ASM. I thought that I can bring value to ASM because I was able to commercialize products. I think if you can team the innovation from ASM with the commercialization expertise that I can bring, I think ASM can become a bigger company. That's really what I've done the past few years. I joined ASM.
I was very happy with ASM. The innovation that this company has is amazing. The company is very unique. It's not an easy company, to be honest with you, because it's all over the world. I mean, if you talk about globalization, this is the only truly global semiconductor equipment industry company. We are global because we have many centers of excellence. Centers of excellence in Phoenix, Arizona, for thermal processes, center of excellence in Japan and Korea for plasma products, and a center of excellence in Almere for the furnace products. Also we have a center of excellence in precursor technology in Helsinki, in Finland. The company is very unique. It's very global company. It has many strengths all over the world, and it makes it very strong company if we can leverage that.
I was very happy to be part of the company and the past few years I was really excited to be with ASM. We developed many exciting products. In EPI, we're back into business right now. As you guys know that, one of the reason ASM was in Phoenix because of Epi and Motorola. We really have the Epi DNA, and now, we're growing a lot in Epi, and we deserve to grow. It's very exciting for me to be part of this growth. We have developed many new products. The Intrepid ES, the preclean, Previum preclean technology. We have three different reactors to preclean the wafer. We also have developed the atmospheric Epi. We call it the Intrepid ESA. For all these products, the sky is the limit for us.
The innovation really makes us successful. To compete against a big company, the only way you can compete is by technology. We have great innovation, great technology, and this is the way we're getting our Epi into the market, and we're gaining market share. The other thing that I was really excited about within ASM is really, you know, thermal ALD. We developed a new thermal ALD platform, Synergis for ALD, and they've done very well. In 2019, I was able to add a responsibility to work on the plasma products, which is the PEALD and PECVD. We've done very well. We're gaining market. It has been great for me the past few years.
I love ASM and I see the sky's the limit. I see that we are gonna grow even further. I am very optimistic about the future. Thank you very much for your time.
Hichem, thanks a lot.
Okay.
Yeah.
Thank you, Hichem.
Much knowledge of this sector in the company and even in the management board, in the next years. Mari.
However, it all depends on you because you would have to approve his accession to the board of management. Any questions, first of all? Mr. Vreeke. Well, an unexpected question, perhaps. What is so beautiful, I had a look at it, right, it is working hard during these meetings. He has over 200 patents, and he's an enthusiastic innovator. How many of these patents are not on the shelf but are actually being used, I wonder, because Philips has 10,000 patents on the shelf, but it's not using them. The idea is for them to be used. He has most of all the members of the board of management, most patents. That is a great thing. Another question is, I looked at the CV of Benjamin Loh, who has a huge CV in the Middle East. It is fantastic.
How usable is that for the green issue that I mentioned to be actively involved in? It's Vught again, the nuns monastery is there, and it would be great if Benjamin Loh were to go to Vught and do an immersion course of Dutch with the nuns. That is a very green environment, and there's plenty of space. Well, let us limit ourselves to your question about the patents. Hichem, did you want to answer this? Did you get the question, sir? You have lots of questions, patents. Can we use them? 200 patents. How many are on the shelf and remaining there, but how many are really active, sir? You must use the microphone, please.
80% of those patents are active. Every electronic device you have has those patents in those devices.
Okay.
Yeah.
Wonderful. Because you have an in-depth knowledge as well as excellent communication skills.
Thank you.
That's great.
Thank you.
Yeah.
Thank you.
Your impact is enormous because 80% of the patents is used, and at Philips, most of them, 80% is not used.
Okay.
That's not too bad.
Okay. Thank you.
See whether that doesn't give us a 100% score of the vote. I see no further hands, so let us take that vote. This is an entire block, but it only comprises this item number nine. Let's see whether you allow that we Hichem M'Saad in our Management Board. The vote is open. Here we are waiting for the results. It's on its way from all sorts of locations across the world where people are sitting and from this room. We have received 35,850,749 votes in favor, which is 99.65%. Against, 127,378, which is 0.35%, and 102,969 abstentions. My personal congratulations, Hichem. You're joining us in our Management Board.
Congratulations. Right. Not supervisory board. Apparently, I said supervisory board. You'll have to wait for that. First, he will be on the management board, obviously, so correcting that mistake. Let's move on to item 10, which is the remuneration policy for the supervisory board. That is immediately opening up voting block three, which comprises item 10 up to and including number 14. 10 is a change in the remuneration policy for the supervisory board. Mr. Lamouche will explain the proposal for the new remuneration policy for the supervisory board for the period 2022-2026. Before he does that, I would like to mention that on the first of April, the draft remuneration policy for the supervisory board was published together with the convocation on the ASM website.
It also contains an overview of the changes to this concept compared to the Remuneration Policy 2020. Didier, please explain this item to us.
Yes, thank you, Mr. Chairman. I will repeat what I already alluded to before.
Oh.
No, but I can repeat. It's gonna be fast.
Okay.
The actual remuneration policy, actually, as you said, of the supervisory board was adopted, actually, the current one by the AGM on May 18th, 2020. If you look in detail, the last increase in remuneration of the supervisory board, actually, members was in 2018, so four years ago, and it was at that time approved by the AGM on the date of May 28, 2018.
The proposed adjustment that we have that we are proposing to you and which is included in our annual report in the remuneration level of the supervisory board are directly related to actually the growth of the company since 2018. The increased complexity of the company, the expansion of the activity of the supervisory board, and also obviously the same way we proceed, we proceeded for the management board, we also do the same for the supervisory board. They are supported by a benchmark which has been established by outside consulting firm and in this case, PricewaterhouseCoopers.
Let me look at whether you have any questions. Maybe Mr. Vreeke has a question. Yes, he does. Thank you. Well, I did have the question earlier, but I had to postpone it. My question is just regarding COVID this summer, and we might have a lockdown. Again, considering that hourly fee, EUR 200, you know, can we keep the supervisors happy enough? Because if we go into lockdown again, you will need a lot of time. I don't understand how you connect COVID to remuneration of supervisors, but you know, it hasn't changed since 2018. It's just, you know, now I am leaving. I am leaving, and it's good to keep the other supervisors on board. That's it. I don't see the relationship to COVID.
Well, I'll tell you. Because of COVID, people have said in surveys that they had to work so much harder and that the workload has increased so much. That must apply to you as supervisors, too. I understand that it was difficult. If it's very difficult, I understand that also a supervisory board, you know, has a lot of aftercare. It's important that also supervisors feel that they receive the remuneration that they do. I checked with my colleagues, and they all find it an honor to be a supervisor on this board. You know, there is nice, modest pocket money. You know, I can assure you also during a pandemic, they were fine with all of this. Yes. That is all I want to hear, Mr. Vreeke says. Thank you. Are you now going to leave us?
That's a different item on the agenda, by the way. Right. Looking at any other questions for the remuneration policy of the supervisory board. Let's take a vote. You know the procedure. Let's hold on to that, and let's move to item eleven, which is the composition of the supervisory board. As you know, Pauline, Ms. Pauline van der Meer Mohr will be my successor as chair of the supervisory board. Again, we will get back to that later on in this meeting. This is only one voting item. It's the reappointment of Marc de Jong as a supervisor. In accordance with the applicable timetable, the term of office of Mr. de Jong expires.
In accordance with Article 22, Paragraph 3 of the Articles of Association and Article 2:133 of the Dutch Civil Code, and in order to maintain adequate continuity and experience within the Supervisory Board, the Supervisory Board has drawn up a binding nomination to reappoint Mr. de Jong as a member of the Supervisory Board for a period of four years, ending after the annual general meeting in 2026, and that is in accordance with the principle 2.2.2 of the revised code. Is there anybody who wishes to take the floor? If not, looking at the chat, nothing, then cast your vote, please. Then I'm going to assume that you have cast your vote. Moving on to Item 12, which is the appointment of the company's auditor for the accounting year 2022.
You know this item because it's on the agenda each year. It concerns the appointment of the external auditor for the financial year 2022. You have been able to read the information in the explanatory notes. We ask you to extend the appointment of our current accountant, and that relates to the financial year 2022. I see no questions. Looking at the chat. Oh, it's called chair message. I'm saying chair all the time. It's the chat, but it's called chair message. Right. Cast your vote, please. Item 13, which is a familiar one. It consists of two parts, and we have separate votes on it. First is 13A, which is the designation of the board of management as a competent body to issue ordinary shares and grant rights to take ordinary shares and to exclude. Sorry, not yet.
That right is limited to a maximum of 10% of the entire subscribed ordinary capital of the company on the date of registration. No questions? I see that there is nothing. Okay, you can cast your vote. If you have done so, move on to 13 B, which is also a voting item, which is about excluding preemptive rights. In accordance with Article 7, Paragraph 5 of the Articles of Association, the general meeting of shareholders may, for a period of 18 months from the day of its meeting, designate the body of the company subject to the approval of the supervisory board and authorize it to limit or exclude the preemptive right of existing shareholders if or exclude rights to acquire ordinary shares that are issued. Let me see whether there are any questions about that.
If not, please cast your vote. Let's go to Item 14, which is the final one of the last block and the final voting item of this meeting, which is the authorization of the management board to repurchase or buyback shares, ordinary shares, up to a maximum of 10% of the issued share capital. Again, you have been able to read up on that in explanatory notes, and if you don't have any questions. Yes. No questions in the chat either, so you can cast your vote. I would like to point out this is the final voting item of the meeting. You only have a few seconds left to cast your vote. That is the end of block three.
We collect the votes, we process the results, and I will announce the results of all voting items. Then we will go over all results again. First, block three. First of all, the last voting item was item 14. Yes, 13A and 13B as well. All right. We see that 35,377,449 votes have adopted item 10. Then 569,214 against, which is 1.58%, and abstention 134,433. Then item 11, which was reappointment of Mr. de Jong to the Supervisory Board.
Adopted with 35,179,313 votes, 99.01% against 350,626, it's 0.99%, and 551,157 abstentions. Marc, congratulations. Also item 12, the appointment of the company's auditor for the financial year. It's KPMG for the financial year 2022. 36,045,075 votes in favor, 99.91%, and 31,468, 0.09%, and abstentions 4,553. Meaning that these items have been dealt with and have all been adopted by the meeting. We would like to thank you for that. That concludes it all, and that is any other business.
We did not receive any questions for any other business, but obviously you do have the opportunity now to ask your question if you want to. I see that this is not the case. Oh, my apologies. Stephanie Claessens, on behalf of the VBDO, we see in ASM International, a company that is leading in the field of ESG, and I think about the SDG 17 in which partnerships help out each other in getting to the sustainability goals. How does ASM International use its international position to help other companies, like peer suppliers, other companies? You have already talked about your role with the RB, and your chair position there, but maybe can you give any other examples or a future view on how you would like to share your expertise?
Thank you for your compliments, first of all, and indeed very important to indeed help out and influence others. I would like to give that question to Paul, I assume. Yes. Thank you for that question or your comment. We do hope to be able to inspire others with our ESG policy that we have communicated. Our direct influence is especially towards suppliers and of course our partnerships with customers. That is also what we focus on, and that's the most important thing to do to reach that potential and to reach the goal in 2035, which in itself is quite a challenging target. We see a lot of progress, and you know what we see with customers and suppliers, you know, quite a challenge. We can only hope that other companies and other institutions see what we're doing and join us.
We do not have ongoing efforts at this moment to team up. The focus is really on us, scope one and two, and scope three regarding suppliers and clients. That's it. Is that sufficient? Thank you. I am getting a message on one of the screens. 13 A, B, and 14, we haven't shown. We should do that again. Yes. There we go. Obviously, we haven't covered those items. Let's do that. Item 13A, the right to issue common shares. Adopted with 99.24%. 203,661 votes against, so 0.76%, and abstentions 4,771. Then 13B. 35,489,626 votes voted for, 98.37%.
Against, 586,949, 1.63%, and 4,521 votes abstained. Finally, Item 14 was adopted with 35,479,695 votes, 98.47%. Against, 552,862, 1.53%. Abstentions, 48,539. Well, now we have covered all items in all blocks in full. We have covered any other business, which means that we are now getting to thing which is closure. As said, I will step down as chairman and member of the supervisory board after this general meeting. It's been an insanely beautiful adventure, for me. When I was appointed to the supervisory board in 2010, the company looked quite different.
With a turnover of EUR 500 million and a loss of EUR 62 million, it did not yet look like the ASMI of today. Already a year later, the loss of EUR 26 million was converted into a profit of also EUR 62 million. Then our development of ALD technology turned out, and you've heard much about it, turned out to bring ASMI into the top league in the semicon industry. Ever since, supervisory board members have all changed, as well as the management board. I would like to thank the management team, the executive board, but also especially you as shareholders for your loyalty to the company and also the confidence that you placed in the management board. I really appreciate the dialogue with all of you.
In the supervisory board, Pauline van der Meer Mohr will take over my duties, and I wish her the best of luck. I will straightaway give her flowers. Pauline, I wish you great good luck and success in this beautiful challenge that you're taking on. Now you're stuck with the flowers. It's wonderful to get such a big bunch, but where to put it? It's a really full table of lots of electronics that you cannot see from where you're sitting, but. Well, of course, in the lounge, we are very happy to offer you the old chair of the supervisory board, but of course, also the new boards will be there, snacks, drinks, what have you. I hand over to you.
Thank you, Martin. Shall we as the new board then pay the bill for the snacks and the drinks? Thank you very much again. I'm going to give you flowers presently as well. I'm sure you understand that, and then the table will be very full indeed. Because I want to thank you very much for your leadership, your participation, your chairmanship. You started 2010, 12 years ago, so no longer could you stay, definitely not in view of the various codes that apply. In recent two years, you've been chair of the supervisory board. In this period, ASMI grew into a completely different company, as you also said. We are now a listed company on AEX as one of the 25th biggest companies in the Netherlands. We can be rightly proud of this company with wonderful people.
There's been enormous marketing, capitalization, huge talents among us, and you have contributed to all of this, and it is under your responsibility that these things grew and developed, and we become market leader for ALD and has various segments in which it is very successful. It doesn't do just one thing. I would like to thank you very much for the part you played. Also again today, I've watched you as chair with great admiration. It's almost a corporate quiz mastering in the way you get us through meetings like this. Thank you so much, and I'm happy to take over from you, and I can only hope that in the coming years, I will be able to do it as smoothly as you always have.
I would also like to thank you, our shareholders, for the trust that you've placed in ASMI, in us as supervisors and as members of the management board. As the new chair, I will definitely continue this successful journey together with the other members of the supervisory board and management board and everybody involved with us. Of course, we hope to speak to you later during drinks. This is then my first act as chairman. I don't have a hammer, but I close this meeting and thank you most warmly for your participation in this shareholders' meeting. Thank you.