For all shareholders who have joined us through the website of the company. Shareholders who can't be present, therefore, will know what was said. The results of the voting items on the agenda will be published within 15 days after voting, also placed on the website within those 15 days. Those who wish to leave the meeting are asked to report to the registration desk. The voting card will then be taken from you and will only be returned when you want to go back into the room. Of course, we need to know how much share capital is represented at the meeting. Something about voting. Those who have a power of attorney or proxy have to register as such with the registration desk. We will use electronic voting systems today, we will have voting machines.
The first voting item on the agenda, which is the adoption of the financial statements. Prior to that, we will have a test. I would like to ask everybody to switch off their mobile phones or mute them, at any rate, or put them into flight mode so we are not disturbed during this meeting by all kinds of interesting noises or sounds. It means now that we can proceed to item 2 on the agenda, which is the report of the financial year 2018. It's a discussion item. Our CEO, Chuck del Prado, will present today, you will be able to ask questions after the presentation.
Thank you, [Martin]. I would like to welcome everyone here and also those listening on the live webcast to ASM's 2019 Annual Meeting of Shareholders. We are pleased to present the company's results and business performance on last year. Before starting, as you are used to, I would like to remind you all with this slide on the customary cautionary note regarding forward-looking statements. I trust you have read it okay. With that, let me start the presentation itself. The agenda of today's presentation consists of four topics. First, we will address the business environment and results of 2018. After that, we will present the financial highlights of last year, followed by the key non-financial highlights, including, for example, sustainability. Finally, we will present the business agenda and outlook for the whole year.
Let's start with providing an update on the market in 2018 and highlight the business performance of key product lines. The wafer fab equipment market, in U.S. dollar terms, was further up in 2018. Internally, we estimate up slightly above 10%. As you can see in this graph with Gartner's estimates, Gartner is a very well-respected market research firm. The healthy increase in 2018 was mainly the result of over 20% growth in memory spending for the full year, memory is in the orange color. While logic and foundry spending, which is in the gray color, that spending was flattish for the year as a whole. While the first half of the year was still strong, overall WFE, wafer fab equipment spending in the second half started to slow down.
Investment in NAND memory weakened in 2018 and were particularly lower in the second half of the year. DRAM spending, also a kind of memory device, was up for the full year, but also started to slow down in the second half of the year. Advanced logic spending was up for the full year and even accelerated in the second half of the year, driven by investments in the advanced nodes. Foundry spending decreased year-on-year but did accelerate in the second half of 2018. Let's now review ASM's product performance in the WFE market in 2018. We looked in the former slide to the market as a whole. Now let's look at the company's performance. As previously noted, our products focus on serving the deposition segment of the wafer fab equipment market.
Within deposition, as many of you know, we are a leader in the ALD segment, so-called atomic layer deposition. ASM's revenue was up 17% in 2018 on a U.S. dollar basis. Based on that performance, we believe that we outperformed the WFE market as a whole. ALD is still the main driver of our business, and it continues to deliver over half of our equipment revenue. We are also pleased that as part of our growth strategy, the other product lines, EPI, PECVD, which stands for Plasma-Enhanced CVD, and furnace, all had solid sales increases in last year. And by the way, what you see here on the screen is, let's see, the wafer handling part. On the part on the back is where the wafers are entered by the operator.
In this wafer handling part here, they are prepared to basically then be positioned to go into one of the 4 reactor chambers. From an industry segment point of view, we are strongest in the so-called logic foundry segment, and we are seeing increased share in this segment at our key customers' advanced nodes. In logic, the most advanced nodes that we are now shipping high volume equipment to is 10 nanometer, and in foundry, it's a 5 nanometer node. Furthermore, we strengthened our investments in many R&D engagements with key customers, engagement which are focused, again, on future nodes. As some of you may recall, we launched the Synergis Thermal ALD tool in July last year at SEMICON West Trade Show. SEMICON West Trade Show in San Francisco is the biggest show in the year for, let's say, the equipment business.
This Synergis tool is a key part of our focus on expanding our ALD served available market in both logic and memory. You should assume, if you look at the total market for single wafer ALD, we are not addressing everything today. With this Synergis tool, we are expanding basically the served available market within the total available ALD market. We are increasing basically opportunities to generate business. Synergis supports a wide range of applications, leveraging our successful Pulsar and EmerALD existing reactor chambers on our high productivity proven XP8 platform using so-called dual chamber technology. Further expanding in the ALD space, we launched the XP8 QCM product in January this year at the SEMICON show in Korea. This tool is focused on high productivity applications for both plasma ALD and plasma CVD, using, again, our common XP8 high productivity platform.
The XP8 QCM tool features a so-called Quad Chamber Module, which tightly integrates four process chambers per module. As a result, in a full configuration of four QCM modules, the tool can handle 16 wafers at the same time, which is very powerful. These QCMs, this specific tool is already in high volume production at multiple customers as we speak. Another example of products that we have in the deposition space is epitaxy or EPI. It's a very important growth area for the company. The Intrepid ES tool is successfully addressing the CMOS EPI market. In 2018, we continued supporting the volume manufacturing ramp of a leading foundry customer in the world. We improved our position going from seven to five nanometer.
We were already in the foundry business at seven, but when that segment transitioned to five nanometer, that specific customer, we basically increased our position. As a result, in 2018, we believe we increased our share of the EPI market as a whole. EPI for analog power applications also contributed to this gain in 2018. Analog power has been in the market segment, as in EPI, that we have been engaging in already for a long time. In addition, we expect, in general, in the market as a whole, that the number of EPI process steps will increase in the upcoming advanced technology nodes, which is good for EPI demand in general.
Last but not least, we continue to address the so-called furnace market, the vertical furnace market, with a niche strategy that includes serving selected key customers, including for advanced logic applications, and also includes relatively small but important and growing market segments such as analog and power. The vertical furnace product line showed a solid sales increase also in 2018. Let's now take a look at the summary of our financial results in 2018. Before I do so, I would like to show this moving picture one more time. Before I do so, what you will see here is a part of an epitaxy reactor, which contains a gold coating, and the gold coating serves to enhance the reflectivity of the light of the lamps in the EPI reactor. That helps to improve so-called temperature control across the wafer, in this reactor.
Let's take another close look. Here you see it. It's one of the only chambers in the world that has a gold coating, a unique reactor in the industry space, of which we are very proud. Okay. Let's take a look at those financial results. Let's look at sales first. Sales in EUR in 2018 increased with 11% to a new record level. What you see on the right bottom end of the slide, as we addressed on an earlier slide, on a U.S. dollar basis, our sales increased by 17%. Compared to the WFE growth, which is also measured in U.S. dollars, we believe again, that we outperformed the market in 2018. A broad range of products contributed to the sales growth.
ALD continued to account for more than half of our total equipment sales, and sales in the other product lines had a notably strong performance in 2018. We finished the year on a strong note with sales up strongly in the second half compared to the first half, and record sales and bookings in the fourth quarter, driven by strong logic and foundry demand. Operating results increased by 10% last year. Gross margins decreased slightly from 41.3% in 2017 to 40.9% in 2018, explained by the impact from investments in new products and growth initiatives. Our gross margin target remains a range of low to mid-40s. Operating expenses remained under control. SG&A expenses increased by 22% due to the cost related to the new PLM system, targeted investments such as strengthening our infrastructure in China and high legal expenses for patent litigation.
R&D expenses increased by 10%, excluding the capitalization effect, as we continue to invest in new applications and new engagements. Let's now take a look at our net results. Our net results decreased from EUR 452 million in 2017 to EUR 157 million in 2018. Let's take a closer look, because I can imagine you say, "Hey, what happened here?" This shows the breakdown of the net results. In the first place, it is, of course, important to note that reported net results in 2017 included EUR 285 million of book profits of the 2 ASMPT stake sales in that year. Excluding this, if you take that part out like we just did with a click of this device, excluding this net results decreased from EUR 167 million to EUR 157 million.
Besides that, in part as an effect of our lowering our stake in ASMPT in 2017 in 2 steps from 39% to 25% stake, the results from investments dropped from EUR 89 million to EUR 48 million. The total net profit, excluding ASMPT completely, increased from EUR 78 million to EUR 109 million. Next to the improvement in operating profit, this increase was driven by the absence of currency translation losses that still impacted 2017 net results. Let's now take a look at cash. This graph shows the development in the cash position during last year. We started 2018 with a relatively high cash position of over EUR 800 million. This, of course, reflected the cash of the ASMPT stake sales, of which we had only returned a small part during 2017.
In line with our commitment, we used more than EUR 200 million for a tax-efficient capital distribution of EUR 4 per share. In addition, we paid the regular dividend amounting to a cash outflow of EUR 44 million. We used EUR 355 million in share buybacks as also funded with the proceeds of the ASMPT stake sales. During the year, we received EUR 29 million in dividends on our shareholding in ASMPT. Other cash flow amounting to EUR 29 million mainly consisted of free cash flow of EUR 23 million. This was a slight decrease compared to EUR 32 million in 2017. Higher investments in CapEx, for example, Korea and the first investments in a new facility in Singapore, and in evaluation tools were partly offset by higher profits and improved working capital.
We expect that CapEx will remain at a higher level in this year due to the further investments in the new Singapore facility, on which we will come back later. We ended the year with a net cash position of EUR 286 million. This slide shows the long-term development in dividend per share, coming from EUR 0.40 in 2011 and EUR 0.50 in 2012. For 2019, for this year, it's today on the agenda, we have proposed a dividend of EUR 1 per share. It is an increase of 25% year on year compared to the EUR 0.80 that we paid last year. It underpins our confidence in the company. It is our policy, as you know, to pay a sustainable dividend. We have returned more than EUR 1.6 billion in cash to the financial markets cumulatively since 2010. That's what this picture shows.
Last year, during 2018, we returned more than EUR 600 million to our shareholders, up from approximately EUR 280 million in 2017 and EUR 140 million in 2016. Next to the regular dividend, we returned EUR 4 per share in a tax-efficient capital repayment, and we executed more than EUR 350 million in share buybacks to repurchase 7.2 million of our own shares during last year. Going forward, our policy remains to use excess cash one way or another for the benefit of our shareholders. Let's now, oh, this, by the way, is a shot from the factory in Singapore, where we do final assembly and test of our equipment. It's a cleanroom environment, very low particle count, cleaner in general than the factory of a customer, is in general much cleaner than the surgery room of a hospital, just in terms of the amount of particles that today's chips can afford.
Let's now shift focus to some of ASM's non-financial highlights in 2018. Our achievements are only meaningful if we achieve them responsibly. We know that responsibly managing our business creates value for our company, and not only for our company, but for our stakeholders and for society as a whole. We continue to focus on improving the way we do business responsibly in all areas of our business and with all of our stakeholders. We continue to further integrate corporate responsibility into all areas of our business. This means strategies and focus beyond our financial and operational results and sharing these transparently with our stakeholders. Today, we will share some of our non-financial highlights of last year. We remain relentlessly committed to our philosophy of zero harm, which you also may remember from the presentation of last year.
This means protecting the health and safety of our employees, our customers, and our suppliers' employees. We continuously push ourselves to identify and fundamentally eliminate safety risks and hazards and foster a culture of safety mindfulness. This shows in our year-on-year injury rate reduction progress. It also means we strive to reduce our impact on the environment, both in conservation of the resources we consume and as a result of our operations. As an example of that, an example of which is the significant progress we are making in reducing our global water consumption, on which we will touch on two slides from now in a little bit more detail. We are focused on bringing further positive contributions to society. The key measures of our safety performance are aligned with our industry and include an overall injury rate and so-called recordable injury rate.
The injury rate is a superset and measures any injury requiring first aid or greater. The recordable injury rate measures more serious injuries, those which require greater than first aid or result in restricted duty or lost workdays. In 2018, our total injury rate was 0.59, a further almost 5% improvement from 2017. Our recordable injury rate, the measure of more serious injuries, was 0.23%, a further almost 12% improvement, and a record low since we started measuring 11 years ago. This is the result of years of intensive and structural focus on all aspects of safety. Any injury or incident, of course, is still one too many. We continue to develop our program and culture, and we set annual targets that drive us towards our ultimate goal of zero harm.
Water is a critical global resource, as we all know, and at the same time, is key to supporting our ASM's R&D activities. Historically, our Phoenix site, Phoenix in Arizona, U.S.A., has represented the majority of our global water consumptions. The new wastewater reuse system we constructed in Phoenix in 2017 came online in February of last year. In last year, we achieved an absolute global reduction of 28% directly from the Phoenix improvements, and a 45.4% improvement on the normalized objective from the 2015 baseline performance. We exceeded our 10% 2020 water conservation objective early and decided, as a result, to reset the objective to at least 45%. Achieving the new objective will be a challenge, however, with the new larger facilities in Korea, which we occupied earlier this year, and Singapore, targeted occupancy early 2020.
We will continue to pursue further water conservation opportunities globally. As part of our regular strategic planning process, we make investments to prepare our company for the next stages of growth. In 2018, we completed construction of our new R&D and manufacturing facility in Korea, in close proximity to key customer locations. We completed occupancy of this facility in January of this year. In April of this year, we broke ground on a new manufacturing facility in Singapore, with occupancy targeted, as we just touched on, for early 2020. The picture here shows a concept image of that new Singapore building that we plan to occupy as of, as we said, early 2020. These key investments enable the next stages of growth of ASM. We are very proud to report again on key customer awards in 2018.
TSMC, one of ASM's top customers in Taiwan, recognized ASM in December of last year with their Excellent Performance Award for the third year in a row that ASM received an excellence award from this leading foundry customer in the world. We will now review some of the key industry trends and ASM's outlook for 2019. What you do see here is you see here an assembly worker in Singapore that is working on the assembly of one of our top plasma ALD reactors that we sell throughout the world. You don't see too much of the tool itself, but you see how the person is dressed to prevent any particle contamination of this tool that ultimately will be shipped to, one again, a leading customer somewhere in the world. Looking at this slide.
Before we go to the details of this slide, total semiconductor chip sales grew in the low teens percentages in 2018. Looking ahead to 2019, with the memory down cycle, integrated circuit sales are expected to decline a few percent in 2019, somewhere between 3% and 4%, depending on whether you look at Gartner or VLSI. This plot shows semiconductor revenues for the major application market drivers. Basically, the drivers for ultimately also equipment buys, equipment buys that ASM represents. What you see is, first you can see in the bottom section that smartphones, which is the green part, smartphones are a very large application, although the long-term growth rate is somewhat slowing down.
Next you see is that the semiconductor end markets for servers, which is the blue part, and solid-state drives, which is the upper red part, are both growing long-term due to the demand for data centers, cloud computing, and artificial intelligence. Finally, we are seeing very strong growth rates for automotive and industrial application segments. Auto is driven by ever-increasing features and longer-term by, of course, as we all know, autonomous driving. Industrial is driven by increased automation and robotics and overall IoT, overall Internet of Things. What this slide tells, that overall, the total semiconductor market is healthy, with long-term growth expected. That's bottom line what this slide tells us. Here we are showing the longer-term fab equipment market forecast. The former slide was the chip itself, and this is the equipment demand that results from the demand for devices.
You can see that 2019 is down, and we spoke to that earlier on, and we think in the mid to high teen percentages down due to the decline in memory spending. Gartner forecasts show, because this slide comes from Gartner, one of the market research firms, shows the lower spending level extending into 2020. Although other market researchers, like for example VLSI, show the market already turning up in 2020. VLSI, for example, estimates an 8%+ in 2020. We don't only look at this slide, because what is very important, further important to mention is that Gartner also forecasts that investments for the more advanced technology nodes, so that's the spending of these blue bars, the part that is spent on the advanced nodes, so on the most advanced technology nodes, grow significantly in the coming years. That's what Gartner predicts.
Specifically, investments for so-called 10 nanometer and below are forecast to grow from approximately 10% of total wafer fab equipment spending today to a much higher percentage in the next two to three years. That's very important for ASM also because that's the sweet spot that ASM focuses on the advanced technology nodes. As previously noted, the WFE market, the wafer fab equipment market outlook is expected to be down in 2019. At the same time, ASM, we as a company, benefits of the current market dynamics, the current market dynamics of logic and foundry doing much stronger than memory. The market dynamics, why do we benefit from that? A little bit more detail. Let's take a closer look at those various market segments.
While visibility in the memory market is relatively limited, we do not anticipate a material recovery in spending in the broader memory market in the second half of this year. Memory spending is still expected to be down significantly for the year as a whole. Analog is still healthy in the first half of 2019, but is expected to decrease in the second half of this year. In advanced logic, however, demand remains strong, with spending focused on expansion for the 10-nanometer node and even initial R&D investments for 7-nanometer. In foundry, we are seeing demand for the first round of 5-nanometer investments as we speak. That is very important to mention because ASM is strongly benefiting from advanced node spending in the logic and foundry segments, as logic and foundry account for the largest part of ASM's business.
In addition, we have achieved a much bigger share of wallet with our logic foundry customers in their most advanced nodes. As you know, share of wallet is just the amount of money they have, how much of the amount of money they, on a yearly basis, spend, do they give to ASM. That part, that share of wallet is growing. Compared to the prior nodes, the number of ALD layers has substantially increased in 10-nanometer logic compared to 14-nanometer logic and 5-nanometer foundry nodes compared to 7-nanometer node. If you compare 14-nanometer logic to 10, the amount of ALD applications the customer needs has gone up. In foundry, the same thing. We benefited from that.
Therefore, in 2019, we expect to perform better than the market, which we will get back to in a few slides when we talk about our 2019 financial outlook. In 2019, we will continue our focus on broadening the applications we can address, especially in ALD, where we are a leader. To increase our served addressable markets, our so-called SAM, within ALD. In doing so, we will have a strong focus on gradually, step by step, also increasing our reach in memory, while, of course, at the same time, maintaining our strong position in logic foundry that we spoke to already a few times today. Also key to our growth strategy is driving structurally higher sales in EPI and in PVD and furnace product lines. A key component of our growth strategy is continuing to strengthen R&D engagement with our key customers.
To prepare for the next stage of growth, we will continue investments in new products, in new equipment, and in new process applications. The final bullet on this slide shows that we are also not only investing in our own products and our own applications, but we are also investing in new manufacturing capacity, like we touched on earlier in Singapore, to meet anticipated long-term business growth. We would like to close this presentation with our financial outlook for the second quarter and our current view on 2019 as a whole. This slide shows the financial outlook for Q2 as we earlier communicated in our Q1 press release that we released late April. For Q2, on a currency comparable level, we expect sales between EUR 230 million and EUR 250 million, while bookings on a currency comparable level are expected to be in the range between EUR 240 million and EUR 260 million.
If you take the mid of the range in sales and bookings, then there is a book-to-bill higher than 1 for Q2 that we predict. If we look at 2019 full year, general expectations are that the wafer fab equipment market will decline with a mid to high teen percentage. We touched on that several times in the former slides. Logic and foundry, as compared to memory segment, are expected to stay healthy in 2019. Based upon this current market view, we, ASM, expect to meaningfully outperform the WFE market as a whole in 2019. Thank you. I thought there was a last slide with thank you, but.
[Foreign language], Chuck
that doesn't show. Thank you very much for your attention.
Thank you, Chuck, for your very clear and interesting presentation. Now I would like to give the opportunity to you, our shareholders, to ask questions or make remarks. Any questions are very welcome, or maybe you had questions about the annual report. Who can I give the floor to? I think the lady over there was first.
Good afternoon, Chair. My name is Stephanie [Glassens]. I am here on behalf of the VBDO for Sustainable Development. I would like to ask you questions about the sustainability policy of the company. First of all, I'd like to thank ASMI for the constructive relationship that we have built and also the engagement phone call, including CSR employees from the U.S. We would like to really thank you for that. My first question is about climate change. Related risks and opportunities to climate change.
ASM is very aware of that, of course, referring to the water system in Phoenix and drought, heat, these are all effects of climate change. Sooner rather than later, all companies have to face this. The U.S.-based organization, the Task Force Climate-related Disclosure, advises companies to include these risks and opportunities in its financial statements. Other stakeholders and shareholders will then have all the information to have a good and healthy estimate of what the company's results, including these sustainable goals. Recommendations were published. Does ASM wish to include these recommendations to have risks and opportunities included in the financial reporting system? That's one. Second is livable income. ASM focuses on that, too, and talks to the Responsible Business Alliance and is looking for a living wage standard. In practice, it is very difficult to attain. Even parts of cities, countries, regions, they're very different.
Per location, you would have to look into what livable wage is. Philips has come a long way and is using a wage indicator database. Does ASM wish to tell to the meeting what concrete actions were taken based on the conversations with the RBA, and whether it has the intention to look at livable wage standards in the regions you're present in? Of course, the sustainability goals that were laid down by the UN, that's my final questions. They were laid down to look at climate change and hunger and ban it. We have many goals, 17, and we have sub-goals and indicators that were formulated. The SDGs are more and more becoming guidelines for all companies and other institutions to formulate sustainability policies. Is ASM already developing its policy from 2025 to 2030? Will ASM use those guidelines and sub-indicators from the UN?
Thank you. Again, the sustainability goals of the United Nations, are they willing to include that in their policies on sustainability? Thank you.
These are very relevant questions, I would say. Something to think about. Chuck, I would like to give the floor to you to answer part of these questions.
Thank you for your questions. We agree with you. At least a couple of times a year, we have a dialogue with your organizations, we do not only assess where we are, but we also see this as an opportunity to learn
Again, we are learning, but you have been able to notice, I hope, that ever since 2013, when we started CSR policy on our website, that we have progressed enormously in this particular field, and that we take things very seriously. I'm very happy that you said, also in the call we had yesterday, we included many people from our organization, CSR officers that focus on that. Absolutely. The TCFD. We are aware of the fact that it could be useful to have more transparency when it comes to the activities of the TCFD. At this moment, we're actually working on these new recommendations and looking at how we can integrate them, or whether we are going to. We are not ready yet to publish any concrete commitments for 2019 and report on that in 2020.
I think it's clear to me that for you it has high priority. We will definitely include it in our debates, but it's too early to promise anything. That was your first question. Living wages or livable wages. Actions so far, I think you have described it correctly that the RBA is very important to us. That is the platform that is very important within the semiconductor space, if you will. At this moment, there is no single definition of living wage ready, and that is a barrier to get to a uniform guideline. We are talking to our most important key customers, though. You did ask us to take the lead in that debate, again, we're dealing with very large key customers. It's quite difficult to be leading, being ASM.
We do have a challenging role in that forum, and we will continue to do so. Again, looking at this problem on a local level and how to do that, I must say I did not have any discussion about that. We actually could do that, have that debate internally within the company. I don't think we've looked at it like that. Thank you for that recommendation. We will look into that. The sustainability goals, we are well aware of them, and we have identified a number of pillars when it comes to that, when it comes to sustainability, and the three most important ones to us that we have defined is, of course, supply chain, environment, and safety.
Within those three goals that we have identified, we look at what fits the agenda best, and we've been able to classify them under five subgoals. Within these subgoals, we look at those five that we have identified and then try to quantify what we mean to achieve. The steps that we have achieved are small steps, but serious nevertheless. I think HR published for the first time now how compensation differences are between males and females around the world. These are steps that we're taking within one of these goals, I think it's number 5, and to try and better quantify that. That's what I can address right now. We can't use all of them, all 17 as a guideline, but we do have identified fields that are relevant to us and then prioritize accordingly within that United Nations context.
I trust that this is sufficient for now. Thank you, Chuck. Is there anyone else? Yes. Right here at the front.
My name is Ferwer, on behalf of the Stockholders Association. We have powers of attorney from several shareholders, over 29,000. I have several questions, probably not to your amazement. I will ask them separately because I remember that you prefer that. First of all, a question about the presentation. In the outlook, you indicated that the expectation is that the automotive market will grow in the coming years. You also told us that at the end of last year, the revenue development with the equipment that you use for certain electronic equipment was, of course, also on the grow. That's probably because the self-driving cars are on the go, right? My question is, of course, do you also think this is related?
Well, yes, we would like to get all your questions, by the way, we'll answer all of your questions. The life cycle of your equipment. Can you indicate what the life cycle is of the equipment that your customers use? Third question, based on media coverage on an espionage scandal with one of your colleagues, did that give any rise for better security of your own corporate secrets? Do you have any procedures that you have reviewed based on that incident? Did you take any extraordinary measures based on all of that? I can, of course, understand that you also conclude that your security needs to be better to prevent something like that. I can imagine that you have equipment that, page 60, I'm referring to of the annual report, equipment with a guarantee of two years.
Can a customer actually send equipment back after two years if they're not satisfied? How does that work? What kind of guarantee is that? Your platforms that you base your products on. If I look at the names, many of those names are somewhat older. To what extent are you developing it further on the platform that keeps the same name, and how long does such a platform last until it needs to be replaced by a completely new design? My final question for this item on the agenda, can you tell us whether you have any news in the court case against Kokusai? I do not expect it, but maybe you have a date for a court ruling or court decision or any other concrete facts about the court case. Just assuming when and where. Thank you. Chuck.
Your first question was the outlook of the application and the self-driving cars. Yes. You asked about the link with electric cars. The very simple answer is of course, yes. Developments in automotive in relation to hybrid cars and of course, more and more full electric cars, it's just taking a huge leap. It'll be a driver for all the products in that industry. If you combine that with, it's very important, of course, that you are ready with all the networks that you have, also 5G. That's a very important enabler for that kind of end market to get going. If you combine all of that, the amount of data that has to go back and forth between a user and a central location, if you will, where this needs to be processed, is huge. That all has to pass through silicon.
We have a long way to go, but it is, of course, a very important growth market for this industry. You are talking about the flow of data, but if you look at what the influence of electric cars can be and how we will see society, it'll have an effect on the power grid. All these terms you've heard before, of course, smart grids, but regardless of whether something is smart or not, it'll be about capacity that needs to be increased urgently.
Is that something that you benefit from too? When it comes to that part of power, it's maybe not. Sure. If you look at that power electronics market, we are active there, but not so much in other parts. We will take a close look at where growth segments are, and we will, of course, adjust accordingly. Thank you.
Second question was life cycle of equipment. Do you mean the technological or economical? Yes, that's an important distinction that you're making there, but I expect that technological life cycle or technical life cycle is actually longer than economical. I'm curious to know how long a customer uses the equipment, and when they have depreciated and written it off, they maybe make a university happy with the equipment. I don't know. That's not what I'm getting at. It's about the first customer who acquires the equipment. How long will they use it, including updates? Yes, the potential replacement market. You say that spares is also an important part of what you do. This is why I'm interested in knowing this, Peter. Technical life cycle is relatively long.
Normally, if you have a new generation, Chuck referred to 10 nano in logic and five nanometer in foundry, you see that equipment that was used for other applications before is going to be reused. Also you see that if it's an existing application, it could be used with an upgrade. It really depends on the kind of equipment that you're referring to. Technical or technological life cycle is rather towards 10 than five, actually. Then economical life cycle. That is different per organization, but I guess that most organizations take into account more or less five years. Yes, virtually all our key customers have depreciation or write-offs in five years. You talked about the corporate espionage in Of course, this could happen to us too. It is one of the risks that we have always described in our annual report.
You talk about key risks, IT security and everything going with it is one of the most important things. There is always something to consider, because when you start securing everything, you can't do what you need to do as an organization. We constantly monitor what we need to do. Over the past year, we worked really hard on it. In one of these meetings, we actually did say that a couple of years ago, we asked a third party to assess our IT security. This was an entire analysis, and actions were taken, things were implemented. Consider different things. First of all, what can we do about possible cyber attacks? Someone taking control of our systems. What we measure already with third parties included is seven days a week, 24 hours, we monitor whether we are being attacked or systems being attacked.
We have escalation processes for that. It goes even so far that we have an emergency button to stop all systems when we see that something is going completely wrong. By the way, this never happened. We, of course, are protected by different phases. Usually, we would say that they would never get past our first barrier, you never know. Phishing is very important. People who try under a fake identity, for example, to get access or gain access to the system, to data that is included in the system. We train our staff. We are very much aware. When we have emails, for example, there is a distinction between internal email and external email. External email, you will see a special sign. Do you really mean this email to go external, for example, all kinds of warning signs. Other things are important too. Encryption, for example.
All our computers are encrypted. We will no longer allow that carriers of information are directly connected to a system without permission. If permission is granted, it is also with encryption and passwords. Something else is, of course, we have staff that could copy their information, that they could actually send that information to their own private emails, for example. We have a very thorough vetting process also when they leave the company, looking at whether people try to take information with them. We also made a division in our organization that not everybody has access to all systems. Part of the system is only accessible to a limited crowd. If there is any form of collusion or intentional harm, then you have tried to hedge all those risks, and prevention is not possible for the full 100%, of course.
Of course, you can imagine that I ask this question with many other companies and one company in particular, your answer is very clear. Thank you. Peter, maybe you can talk about that trial or probational period of 2 years, the guarantee of the equipment.
The evaluation tool is something that is new for a new technology of which we expect that this customer will buy large quantities of. We will never place an eval tool with a new customer for a small quantity as long as it has not been proven. Again, this could be a risk that both parties take, right? On the one hand, a customer is actually willing to put their resources to use for such a tool, and if that is 2 years, you want to have test runs on these machines.
We will have manpower on it to see whether it works. You have to, of course, guarantee that a customer wants to accept it because that is not a fact of life. What we do is we start writing off our equipment. We do that in 5 years, I would like to really elaborate on this because it has an effect on the cash flow position of the past years. We have a lot invested in those eval tools, it has an influence on our gross margin, too, because we take those depreciations during that time. We do that because we believe it has a large market potential. Of course, we have costs, you have to invest first before you can make a profit.
If we place a lot of these tools with that background, it means that there's a lot of business potential, too, on the long term. Thank you. That is indeed a good answer, but I now have another question because of that. Also something I addressed at Besi. When you have equipment with customers in their location, a lot of data is stored about what goes on with that customer. Sensitive corporate information, how do you deal with that? How do you deal with ownership issues towards the customer?
It depends on the kind of technology, because there are interests from both sides to protect technology. If you have a key customer, then they wouldn't like their information to be used by us and place it in equipment that goes to the competition. It works both ways. We have an equal stake.
Of course, we assess that on an individual basis. Yes. Thank you. Chuck, something about the platforms. I feel that I can't elaborate. We're on a time schedule, are we? Yes. In general, you could say that whether it's a platform or a room. First of all, we have wafers that are made ready by an operator that's front end into the machine. You get the wafer handling, a wafer handler who takes the wafers one by one and then prepares them to go into the reactor chamber. That is what you call platform, and anything behind is the reactor chamber. This is of course, where the specific process takes place ALD, PECVD, EPI, et cetera. What is important with everything that we do, you can look at technical performance costs and reliability, and this relates to all products.
That's also uptime of the system, or whether a system has a lot of downtime, maintenance cycles, it's all important. We really like to include Moore's law and the rat race. Of course, the technical performance needs to grow. You try to do that as much as you can, as much as possible with the same basic designs that you upgrade and modify all the time. That is not only cost efficient for us, but also for our customers, because it means that they are also able to use the existing equipment for a longer time with some modifications. That is the balance that you try to find.
When it comes to the platform part, preparation before it goes into the reactor chamber, we introduced the XP platform, and what you see is that in first instance it included eight parts, and now we modified the platform to the extent that they can handle 16 in the end. Of course you need to make some adjustment, but not that many requiring a new platform and running the risk that you go into a selection process where customers invite new players out there as well, the competition. That is the balance. The final question on the court cases or litigation, we have arbitration. It's Kokusai. They have a license agreement from 2007 to 2017, and we have the feeling that they haven't been completely honest in the information that they provided to us. We started arbitral proceedings.
We expect in the coming months that a ruling is going to be given. After 2017, we did not extend the license agreement, whereas they still have that same product in the market that they previously paid license fees for. They are no longer entitled to do so. Of course, therefore, we started several court cases in the U.S. and Japan, and it is very common in processes like this, you can expect a counterclaim. That is ongoing, and it will take several years. It will last longer than a couple of years. Everything going on right now, looking at the work pressure with the courts, it is probably 2021 before we have some clarity in some of these cases. Just to indicate. You do say that you expect a ruling for the coming months? Yes. It will be the coming months. We have no concrete information.
Waarschijnlijk wilt u een vraag stellen.
Ja, meneer Lobbezoo, u heeft het helemaal juist. Ik ben blij dat ik hier ben.
[Foreign language]
Mijn naam is Robert Vreeken van WeConnectU Public Affairs and Investor Relations. Ik adviseer de top van de overheid en het bedrijfsleven op een aantal thema's zoals finance, duurzaamheid, zorg en veiligheid. Ik ben ook lid van de VNB en ik ben altijd blij als de VNB er is met goede vragen, goede opmerkingen. Wat ik niet heb gehoord is dat ASMI en ASML bij mij de best performende aandelen zijn. Ik heb namelijk een rendement gemaakt van 350%. Dat heb ik nog niemand horen vertellen hier vandaag. Ik adviseer u om breed te adverteren, zowel in kranten als op tv, met het geweldige rendement van ASMI. Wij kunnen als Nederlanders. Meneer, als u wat wilt zeggen vind ik het prima, maar als u zelf naar de microfoon wilt gaan, heel graag.
Uw vraag graag.
Misschien dat u het even kunt reguleren, want ik vind het wat vervelend. We hebben goede omgangsvormen in Nederland en als iemand iets wil zeggen, dan mag die even tot zijn beurt. In ieder geval, dit is een fantastisch aandeel en ASMI is een van de kroonjuwelen. Wij kijken naar duurzaamheid en daar had de VBDO het over. ASMI werkt goed mee. Alleen ondanks de enorme inzet van ASMI dreigt-
With regard to the input of ASMI, 1 million flora and fauna are imminent to disappear. It will disturb balance. When I look at sustainability at Heineken and ABN AMRO, they only buy electric cars for the top persons in the business that drive lease cars. There are various new types of electric cars including a Porsche. ASMI, or rather their management board members can move over to electrical Porsche. It should appeal to you, Mr. Del Prado. I believe for the supervisory board, Mr. Jan Kees de Jager could be interesting because he is very strong on startups and if ASMI would also help startup, it would be great for that society.
What I am worried about is cybercrime, it would be good if you had as much Apple equipment as possible, because these are less sensitive for cyber attacks and hackers are improving all the time and they have mega budgets to spend. Furthermore, there are drone attacks. IS will return to Europe, ISIS. These drones are very simple to operate to attack businesses, mainly high tech businesses. I don't know.
Well, I have to interrupt you, sir, because you advertised a lot of good brands, but you haven't asked any question yet. Okay, I will ask my questions. First of all, could you communicate a lot more on TV and in newspapers that ASMI is such a performant brand, perhaps together with ASML and Philips?
Furthermore, it would be good if you would provide lots of grants to students in universities and other high-level education institutions so that people would choose a job with lots of job security. Furthermore, my request is to do as much as you can in a sustainable manner. Thank you. Chuck. Thank you, Mr. Vreeken. You always have very good arguments when you visit us. To address the matters you've raised seriously with regard to communications. We are a no-nonsense business. It is in the DNA of the founder and in the DNA of the business. More communication.
Well, I believe that we've taken huge steps with regard to communication in two dimensions already, that is to the investors, because eventually that's the opinion of the investor, but I do believe that from our own point of view, we've taken a huge step in communication to our investment base in various parts of the world, not just in Europe, but also in America and also in Asia. That has been a very important pillar to us. Secondly, universities. We have a global HR department. They spend a lot of time on that to make sure that in universities in all parts of the world, America, Korea, Japan, to attract the best talents and to increase, enhance our profile.
We may not be as visible because our basis when compared to other businesses in the Netherlands, is rather small when compared to what we do in the rest of the world. That's just because of our distribution business model. We have many more employees outside of the Netherlands, perhaps we communicate less in the press in the Netherlands. If required and useful, we do. Perhaps we may not be as visible, but in the fields, as we expressed, we are very active. With regard to the contribution to the environment, flora and fauna that disappear where we can. We try to indicate that in our presentation and in a number of matters addressed by the lady of the VBDO. Your recommendation to think smartly about the lease cars that we have in future, we will indeed incorporate that.
When we speak about cybercrime, Mr. Van Bommel already gave an explanation following a question of VEB. That is something that really has our attention. We invested a lot in it in the past five years, and we will continue to do so. I think we have taken huge steps in that respect to make our company much safer.
Are you foolproof? No, I do not think any business is. However, you can make a lot of effort, and we can do it much faster. If things may not be working out right, then we will intervene soon. Chuck, I believe that your questions have been answered properly.
Yes, indeed. Thank you very much. Mr. Burgers, you also have a question. Good afternoon. On behalf of Add Value Fund, thank you very much for the presentation, comprehensive and on a widescreen.
We saw that we have an invitation to discover the competence of ASM. It was with a pen that writes black and red. I always write in black, of course. But about the color, I would like to have a bit more color with regard to the future, let's say the next three years. The Add Value Fund, for which I speak, is aimed at small and mid-caps. ASM is enhancing its position from mid-cap to large-cap, and it could be with regard to a revenue level of over EUR 1 billion. If you would multiply it by four with the results that we have now per quarter, it would be EUR 1 billion. With that backdrop, my first question is with regard to the EBIT margin. Mr. van Bommel already responded to one of the earlier questions, the questions of Mr. Ferwer, the evaluation tools that require more costs.
But when you achieve this larger turnover, it may mean that these costs will be spread on a larger turnover and therefore your margin could increase. My question therefore is: Is it part of the target of the next three years to get the EBIT margin structurally higher? The second question, my Chair, is about China, because this is the topic in these days. Everybody is interested in it every day. We noticed that the turnovers of ASM have doubled in China over the past few years. Will you be able to keep that up or should we also take into account a lower revenue in these markets? Will you be able to compensate that elsewhere? That is my second question. Mr. Chair, I would like to compliment you because the promise that you have made in the past year has been achieved and not many businesses can say so.
I would really like to say, please continue the good work. Keep up the good work.
Thank you. With regard to your question about the EBIT margin, Peter, please. Yes. First of all, let's address black and red and pens. Black and red is very limited. In China, you write black figures in black and not in red. When I look at the EBIT margin, in the past year, we tried to add some color because we believe that the EBIT margin is developing. We indicated that when you look at the various elements, that growth margin structures are very important in our industry. We said that it would be in the low to mid-40% and that we expect it to stay in that same percentage. There may be some exceptions. There may be a quarter that you rise above that level.
There may be a quarter, as we've noticed in the past, that it's just below that level. In the past periods, we have invested a lot with the eval tools at a relatively high level. When new tools are installed at customers, initially it would mean that there would be extra costs besides the depreciation costs of these tools. You can imagine that if you install a machine for the first time, that it may be a bit more expensive than when you do it for the fifth or the 10th time. These were the characteristics that we noticed in the past period. We expect that our gross margin that was low in the past period of the range that we've indicated, that the trend is if we continue to reach the higher levels. Secondly, R&D.
When we look at operational costs and address the research and development costs, this is the basis of our success in the long term also. We intend to keep it at the percentage level where we are today. Since we have a relatively small client base, our overhead costs will stay relatively stable. As Chuck has indicated in the past period, they were highly impacted by investments. Starting and enhancing the organization China depreciation cost because lots of IT systems, also for security reasons, are implemented. Finally, the client base that we have is rather limited, so we do not expect that it will lead to a strong increase of the overhead cost in the long term.
Okay. Mr. Burgers, about China. Last year, the figures you asked us, can we continue that? No is the answer. That run rate of doubling will not happen this year.
We will expect to grow in various years. China will increase its operations in the most advanced nodes. That's our best market. When we look at the low base that we were at, we can now benefit from China, and we definitely will do so in the next few years. We are working hard to achieve that with regard to China, and I would like to thank you for your very kind words with regards to the company. It is very important for us too to have these appreciation from our shareholders. If we appreciate ourselves, that's no use to us. We are very glad, and we thank you for being so loyal over various years to be a shareholder in this company. That applies to more people that are present in the room. Thank you, Chuck.
In view of timing, I would like to allow one more question, if there is another question. If not, I thank you for asking your questions, and I thank you for listening to our answers. We would now like to move on to item 3, the implementation of the remuneration policy in the year 2018. It's an item on the agenda that we will discuss. You can ask questions about the implementation of the policy. When you've read the annual report, you also notice between page 142 and 145 of the annual report that a lot of information has been provided about remuneration policy. I would indeed like to ask Martin van Pernis, the chair of the Compensation and Remuneration Committee, to take the floor. If you have any questions, you can ask them after his presentation. Martin.
Yeah.
Thank you. In 2014, our remuneration policy was adopted and no changes were made. We won't make those changes this year either. Maybe good to let you know that we will have new European legislation coming up, which means that every four years, at least, you will have to have a vote on remuneration policy. There is actually an advisory vote on the remuneration report, which is the effects of the policy. That'll start as of next year for this company because this legislation will be introduced as of June 2019 in several countries, making it effective as of July 2019. It'll be the first time, AGM 2020, that when we will get back to this. Again, I said, no changes to the policy. You can read the entire report from pages 142 up to and including 145. Maybe some information about the peer group.
We always compare the wages of the board to a specific peer group. One of the companies was Freescale, was taken over by NXP, therefore disappeared from our peer group. You know our remuneration system, we have four components. It's simple. We have a base salary. We have a variable component that focuses on annual performance. These are hard targets. It's short-term incentive, 25% is at the discretion of us, different goals to CFO and CEO. A long-term component as well, which is shares. Also these long-term goals have to be met. Then, of course, provisions for pension. Maybe not only pensions, but electric cars as well as a provision. The pay ratio is something that was introduced in the Netherlands. We, of course, work with that too.
It's the salary of the CEO that is then compared to the average wage of staff. How will you calculate all of that? Well, it's just the wage sum divided through the number of staff, and our factor is 27, which is very low if you compare that to certain companies that have it above 200. It actually did increase by two points, and that is because we moved our CEO a little bit more into the middle of the peer group. We are very careful. As far as I'm concerned, this is the information I wanted to convey to the meeting. Thank you. Are there any questions about the execution of the remuneration policy in 2018? If not, we can proceed. Thank you, Martin. We can proceed to item four on the agenda, adoption of the annual accounts 2018.
The annual report 2018 and the annual accounts were audited and approved by the external auditor of KPMG. I would now like to give Mr. Kreukniet the floor to inform you and explain to you how the company has audited the company and how they got to their unqualified opinion. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen.
My name is Rob Kreukniet, on behalf of KPMG, I am the external auditor of ASM International, I am here today with my colleague, Philip Tucker. I would like to talk to you about our audit, the responsibilities we have for the annual report and the financial statements. The financial statement is drafted by the board, approved by the supervisory board, adopted by the meeting and audited by KPMG.
The end product of our audit is our unqualified opinion, and you will find it in the annual report, 155, 161 pages. The goal is to establish that it is a fair reflection of what is laid down in the civil code. Of course, we assess and audit whether the annual report is in line with the financial statements. Our audit focuses on the company balance and also the consolidated balance. That is a general introduction, but most of you must know this. Zooming in on our audit approach, there are a number of elements that are relevant. Very important is, of course, the risk analysis. We do that at the very beginning of the process, aimed at identifying which fields provide the biggest risks on mistakes in the annual accounts, of course, items on the balance that have a lot of estimation.
We do that independently, but of course, we talk to the company. We are aware of the processes. We talk to the CFO, management as a whole, and the audit committee. Another important aspect, of course, establishing the materiality, which is the extent to which we establish that something deviates to a certain extent. It was EUR 6.5 million this year, and we compare that to the result before taxes, and it is about 3.8% of the result before taxes. For the sake of efficiency, we determine as to what we do centrally, so from the Netherlands, from our corporate team, and what we decentralize. With ASM International, we of course, do a lot of things with our corporate team because of the way in which ASM International is organized. We do the central audit of the balance, and transactions, and flows right here in Almere.
We also look at the service center in Singapore when it comes to auditing. Our corporate team has been in Singapore for a long time, and we also use colleagues that are based in Singapore. Also, other countries use foreign KPMG offices, so throughout the group, the only exception is ASMPT. We have a different auditor there that we closely collaborate with, and we visit that location every year to review their activities. We also had a file review of the activities of our colleagues in South Korea. All our colleagues work according to our strict instruction. We assess their independence, but also their competencies, and we stay in touch on a frequent basis.
Local colleagues not only are used, but we use a lot of specialists within the company, so within KPMG, especially in the field of IT, valuation, taxes, but also forensic expertise is more and more important in our activities. With our activities, we audit about 69% of turnover and 95% of assets, which is relatively high percentage like previous years. We are very happy when it comes to coverage ratio, if you will. Most important, of course, what is the outcome of the audit? It is the key elements of the audit. You will find those in our unqualified opinion on page 158. Key elements this year were the, of course, recognition of revenue, which is, of course, also the implementation of the new standard, IFRS 15. Another element is the valuation of the participation in ASMPT. Of course, it was addressed already partially.
Valuation of deferred tax positions, which is, of course, an item or a position that, of course, contains a high degree of estimation and therefore is very important to us. The last element was mentioned already by the CFO is the activated development costs that we see increasing in size and in estimation. So it is relevant for us to include that, too. Key elements right there and our activities, and again, referring to our unqualified opinion in the annual report. That concludes my very brief presentation, and of course, I am very willing to answer your questions.
Thank you, Rob. Is there anybody in the audience that wishes to take the floor, ask questions?
Thank you, Vera, VEB, Stockholders Association. I have a question for Mr. Kreukniet and two questions to you as supervisors. But first of all, Mr. Kreukniet.
You said that the valuation of ASMPT was a key audit matter. Of course, we understand that it is a very relevant element of the annual accounts. That is not up for debate. But nothing really changed compared to 2017, right? In 2017, of course, there were two sales. 2018, it was very calm at that end. So my question is then, why dedicate so much attention to this particular element?
Well, a number of reasons. The size of that item on the balance, and it is a large corporation, and of course, part of the results of the company results have to be included in the consolidated accounts of ASM International. So in that light, it is relevant. And again, there is also a local audit by Deloitte. So the company profit and loss and audit is something you can look at too.
But for us, it is because of the materiality of ASMPT in total and ASMI. So that will remain as it is probably as long as the stake is processed in this way. Yes. Every year we will conduct a risk analysis, and materiality is an important element of that. So next to estimations and the subjectivity of certain items. And at this moment, I believe that at least for the coming year, unless we feel differently, again, ASMPT will have our attention again. Thank you. Question about the financial statements immediately, right?
Yes, please. First of all, when I look at the geographical distribution of turnover, there seems to be a shift from U.S. to Europe. My question is, what is the background to that? Is that a real shift in terms of what is happening, or is it rather a shift on paper?
My second question is, do you intend to remain debt-free? You are debt-free at this moment. Is that something that you want to hold on to, or do you look at possibilities to create funding for the company in different ways? These are your two questions?
Yes. Peter. Yes, geographical distribution, that is not a conscious decision. That is because of customers. When European customers start ordering more than our U.S.-based customers, then of course there is a shift. Second question, whether we want to remain debt-free. Well, very straightforward, yes. That is very clear. First answer, I would like to get back to that. Is there really a shift from the kind of customer or group of customers that you get your turnover from, or is it a matter of customers who previously generated that turnover for you from the U.S. base and now do that book out from Europe?
Is it, again, a real shift or is it a shift of what your customers are doing on paper? I'm not aware of any geographical shift. What we have seen is that power analog, some customers placed extra orders, and power analog is typically a business that takes place more in Europe. There's no shift from customers that move things from one place to another. Thank you.
Thank you, Peter. Any other questions for the annual report and annual accounts? If not, it means that we can proceed to the voting. You all know that the annual accounts need to be adopted by a vote. Before we do that, I wish to inform you of the number of shares present. According to the attendance list we have represented or here, 33,483,314 shares, representing 67.86% of the issued share capital that is entitled to vote.
Each share is one vote. One share is one vote. I'm sorry. Now that we know this, we can first of all do a test, making sure that all the votes after this run smoothly. Normally, we would have a question for you, and we use that question as a test. The question this time is this one. Maybe you see it already on the screen. Will Max Verstappen be the winner at Zandvoort next year? I'm not going to repeat it. It's on the screen. If I remember correctly, it is indeed about the Formula One. You all have your voting pads to be able to vote. If you are in favor or for, you vote one. If you are against, you vote two, and if you wish to abstain, you vote three. I would like to ask you to take your voting pad and make your choice.
Let's start up the voting system. Right. Voting is closed. We wait for the results. You voted for. It'll happen with 86.79%, something to look forward to, against 13.21%. They probably live right around the corner in Zaltbommel, Bloemendaal. Thank you. We can at least conclude that the voting pads work, means that we can now formally vote on adopting the annual accounts. You now have the opportunity to vote for the adoption of the annual accounts 2018. Two seconds left. This is the result for 100.00%, which means that nobody voted against, 0%, and abstentions 59,327. This means that the annual accounts have been adopted formally. We can now proceed to item five on the agenda. This item on the agenda deals with the adoption of a dividend proposal. A proposal was made for a dividend in cash of EUR 1 per ordinary share.
Who wishes to make a remark? I don't see anybody. We can vote. You can now vote. Voting is closed. The result is that 99.96% of the shares represented have voted for, 14,008 votes have voted against, it's 0.04%, 551 votes have abstained. I can therefore conclude that the proposal for a dividend of EUR 1 has been approved or adopted by the meeting. Item six. Item six concerns discharge of the members of the management board. Anybody wishes to take the floor on the discharge of the members of the management board? Possible questions, remarks? If not, let's start the voting. Two seconds left. Voting is closed. Result is that 99.94% of the votes, which is 33,343,424 shares, have voted for. 18,783 votes have voted against, which is 0.06%, 121,067 votes have abstained.
I can therefore conclude that item six on the agenda, discharge of the members of the management board, has been adopted. Item seven, which is similar, discharge of the members of the supervisory board. Anybody who wishes to comment on the proposed discharge? If not, we can indeed start the vote.
One second. Voting is closed. For, 33,342,575, which is 99.94%. Against, 18,783, 0.06%. 121,918 votes have abstained. Again, I conclude that discharge of the members of the supervisory board has been adopted by the meeting. This means that we can go to item eight on the agenda, which is the appointment of the auditor for the business of the annual accounts 2019. The appointment we've proposed to appoint KPMG also for the year 2019 as external auditors, we would like to ask your approval to do so. That is why we want to request you to cast your votes in this respect. Two more seconds. Voting is now closed. The result is that 33,446,741 votes are in favor, which means 99.9%. Against, 32,000 votes, which is 0.1%, and 4,534 votes abstained.
We can conclude that KPMG has been appointed as external accountants, auditors for the annual accounts of 2019, as decided by this general meeting. We can move on to item on the agenda number nine. It is with regard to appointment of the supervisors to the management board as the authorized body to issue ordinary shares and to acknowledge rights to take up ordinary shares and exclude preferential rights. There are two parts in this item on the agenda, and we need a separate vote on that. We will first of all address item on the agenda, 9A, the appointment of the management board as the competent body to issue common shares and rights to acquire common shares. Do you have any questions about this? If not, I would also like to ask you now to cast your votes with regard to item on the agenda 9A.
Two more seconds. Voting is now closed. In favor, 33,459,843 votes, which represents 99.94%. Against, 20,587 votes, which is 0.06%, and 2,845 votes have abstained. As such, this item on the agenda has been adopted. We can move on to voting on agenda item 9B, designation of the management board as the competent body to set aside any preemptive rights with respect to the issue of common shares and rights to acquire common shares. This item on the agenda is in accordance with Article 7.5 of the Articles of Association.
As meeting of shareholders, you will appoint the management board for an 18-month period as of the day of this annual general meeting as the body of the company, which subject to the supervisory board's approval, is authorized to limit or to exclude any preemptive rights of existing shareholders if common shares or rights to acquire common shares are issued. Is there anybody who would like to take the floor with regards to this agenda item? If not, I would like you to cast your votes on agenda item 9B. You have two more seconds to vote. The voting is now closed. In favor were 33,345,174, which is 99.6%. Against were 135,055 votes, which is 0.4%, and 3,046 shares have abstained from voting. As such, item 9B on the agenda has been adopted by this meeting.
We can move on to agenda item 10, which is authorization of the management board to repurchase common shares in the company. Are there any questions with regard to this agenda item? If not, I would like to ask you again to vote on this agenda item, please. You have two more seconds to cast your votes. Voting is now closed. Again, 99.63% of the votes present voted in favor. That is 33,335,511 votes. Against were 124,042 votes, which is 0.37%, and 23,722 votes have abstained. As such, agenda item 10, which is the authorization of the management board to repurchase common shares in the company, has been adopted by this meeting. We can move on to agenda item 11 with regard to the withdrawal of treasury shares. Who would like to take the floor with regard to this agenda item? If you have any questions.
If not, I would like to request you once again to cast your vote in this respect. Voting is now closed. In favor, 33,475,301 votes, which is 99.98%. Against, 6,880 votes, which is 0.02%, with 194 votes that abstained. Agenda item 11 has also been adopted formally by this meeting. We can move on to agenda item 12, any other business. If after the discussion on various agenda items and the explanation you have any questions or if there are any other important topics that you want to raise with regards to ASM, I would now like you to have the opportunity to ask a question to the supervisory board about the management board. Farah Feibi, don't worry, it's only one question this time. It is about acquisitions, because it has been rather quiet on that front for some time.
I was wondering, are you looking for businesses to acquire, and if yes, in what sectors are you looking? Chuck. Well, our policy in that respect is rather stable. As part of our strategic planning, we are continuously investigating opportunities to do acquisitions, let's say in economy of scale or technology, to speed up the time to market, and we are still continuing to do so. It is clear that in the past few years, we didn't encounter businesses that were interesting to us in hindsight. It's an activity that definitely has our attention and will continue to have our attention. Are you looking for activities that you already have, you want to enhance these or new markets? Well, the point of departure is obviously always the strengths of the business. It may be the technologies that we have in-house or markets in which we operate.
These are important points of departure to achieve synergies. Indeed, thank you.
Are there any other questions, perhaps? If not, I don't see anybody raise a hand in this room, so it means that there probably are no other questions, and we can formally move on to item on the agenda 13, which is closing this meeting. I thank all of you for being present, for contributing to this meeting