Welcome to the 2025, sorry, extraordinary and ordinary annual shareholders meeting of Sartorius Stedim Biotech S.A. My name is Joachim Kreuzburg and as Chairman of the Board I will chair the meeting. With me are today Mr. René Fáber, member of the board and CEO of the company, Mrs. Pascale Boissel, member of the board and Chairwoman of the Audit and Sustainability Committee, and Mr. Olivier Guitard, Head of Controlling of the Sartorius Stedim Biotech Group and Secretary of the Board. I would like to thank all shareholders who are either personally attending here today or are participating in our webcast, as well as all shareholders who casted their vote remotely ahead of the shareholders meeting. As in previous years, we are providing a live webcast covering the entire meeting. I now need to appoint the officers of the assembly.
Is there any shareholder who would like to volunteer as a scrutineer of the meeting? If so, please remind it. Be reminded that scrutineers will have to stay after the closing of the meeting to sign the minutes of the shareholders meeting. As we do not have any volunteers, I would like to appoint Mrs. Pascale Boissel and Mr. René Fáber to act as scrutineers, which they accepted, and Olivier Guitard as secretary of the shareholders meeting. French and English interpreters are also present. I will now continue with the formalities of the shareholders meeting. The quorum that allows us to hold this combined shareholders meeting is 94.94%. The final percentage of the quorum will be available after the final counting by the bank with regards to the convening of the annual combined shareholders meeting. The agenda and the resolutions are available here at the desk.
They have also been published in the bulletin number 21 of the bylaw of February 17th of this year, in the bulletin number 28 of the bylaw of March 5th of this year, and in the legal newspaper La Provence also on March 5th of this year. No draft resolutions or new items on the agenda were requested and all documents required by law which you may have received from Uptevia or your financial intermediary are available here during the meeting and on our website. Please also refer to the universal registration document for further information. The attendance list has been signed at the beginning of the meeting. It includes the number of shares and number of rights of the shareholders present, as well as the number of shares and rights represented by proxies which we received before the meeting.
After reading the agenda, we will proceed to vote and I will present the preliminary results of the votes for the shareholders meeting this year. The agenda of the annual combined Shareholders meeting is divided into three parts. We will start with the first extraordinary part in which we will amend the company's articles of association in order to allow a smooth staggering of mandates. This will be followed by the ordinary part, during which in particular we will be able to appoint or renew directors for different durations of office in accordance with a revised article 15.3. We will then continue and conclude with our usual financial delegations to the board through a second part of the extraordinary general meeting. Before I go through the agenda in detail, I would like to introduce the board members which are proposed for re-election or first time appointment.
We propose to renew the mandates of Pascale Boissel. You see here the table with all the members that are either for reappointment or for new appointment. You see this also clearly indicated. We propose the renewal of the mandates of Pascale Boissel, René Fáber, Lothar Kappich and myself. Additionally, we propose two new members to be elected to the Board of Directors. Maybe just a brief word, you see these different proposed term of the office in the second line from the bottom on this table and that indicates to you how we achieve the staggered board terms going forward.
So as both proposed new members are present here today, I would like to ask them both to briefly introduce themselves personally, starting with Cécile, please.
Okay, so good morning, good afternoon. I am Cécile Dussart. By education, I am pharmacist and hold diploma in marketing. I've been working more than 35 years for pharmaceutical companies such as Sanofi, Aventis, at that time of [Manlaroche], Bayer and finally Galderma, who is a more middle sized company dedicated to dermatology. I work more than 10 years in marketing and then 10 years in human resources and more than 15 years at the head of operation and ESG for Galderma. I am French living in Switzerland, sitting in another board in the company so called Euro API specializing active principal ingredient. This is it. Thank you. I am very excited to be part now of the board of Sartorius Stedim.
Thank you very much Cécile. Now I would like to ask Chris.
My name is Chris Nowers. Please excuse my casual appearance, my suit is still being held hostage by Air France. I'm also more than three decades in the biopharma industry. I've worked at companies like Amgen, Bristol Myers Squibb and I've had the luxury to work on innovations throughout my career whether it be growth factors at Amgen, checkpoint inhibitors at Bristol Myers Squibb and then my most recent experience is in cell therapy where I've worked at three different companies. Firstly Kite as head of Europe when they launched the first CAR-T. Secondly Cell Medica which was a company in the U.K. developing iNKT cell therapies and then most recently at the company where I'm CEO currently is ONK Therapeutics which is a company that's exploring gene- edited NK cells. Like Cécile, I'm delighted to join the board.
It's really my experience in advanced therapies that I hope to bring to Sartorius and really be part of the team that's going to help drive the company forward. Good to meet you all.
Thank you very much Chris and I invite everybody to consult our Shareholders' G uide for more details if need be. The setup of the new board to be elected I think will clearly continue to show a high level of competence in the first place, but then also a high level of diversity also regarding the complementary experience and expertise in the biopharmaceutical industry and other adjacent industries that are relevant to us. Myself and the entire Board would also like to thank Henri Riey at this point in time who has been a member of the board since 2007, so pretty much since the combination of Sartorius and Stedim has been created as Sartorius Stedim Biotech for his very valuable contributions and expertise that he brought to the company during his many years of service. Mr. Riey.
He will no longer be available for a further term and he will retire from the Board at the end of this annual shareholders meeting. Now let us come back to today's agenda. Under the competence of the first part of the extraordinary shareholders meeting we have under topic one the reading of the Board of Directors report on the proposed resolutions of the first extraordinary part of the shareholders meeting. Topic two are two resolutions concerning the amendment to the Articles of Associations which is first amendment to article 15.3 and that is then covered by resolution number one. The second is the amendment to article 17.5 which will be covered by resolution number two.
Under the competence of the Ordinary shareholders meeting we have topic three, which is the reading of the three reports of the Board of Directors, namely reading of the Board of Directors Management report on the financial statements including the Group Management report. We have the reading of the Board of Directors report on the proposed resolutions of the shareholders meeting and reading of the Board of Directors Corporate governance report. Topic four is the reading of the three reports of the statutory auditors respectively. The one on the company's financial statements for the year ended end of December 2024. The one on the consolidated financial statements for that very year. The third is the report on the regulated agreements covered by Article L225-38 and following of the French Commercial Code.
Topic five is the approval of the financial statements for the financial year 2024 and the discharge to all directors. The sixth topic is the approval of the consolidated financial statements for that very financial year. Seventh is the allocation of the financial result for that financial year. This will be resolution number five. The sixth resolutions concerning the remuneration of the members of the Board will follow in full compliance with the say on pay doctrine, which also is described in our URD for 2024. These are the six resolutions, resolutions 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 and 11. We have another six resolutions concerning the Director's mandates. Here we are talking about those resolutions 12 through to 17.
Topic number 10, covered by resolution number 18, is the authorization granted to the Board of Directors to enable the company to trade in own shares. After the Ordinary shareholder meeting, we have a second extraordinary meeting which starts with topic number 11, which is reading of the report of the Board on the proposed resolutions, topic number 12. It is the reading of the four special reports of the statutory auditors, which is one, and that is covered by the resolutions 19-24 on the general delegation report. We have one on the issuance of shares reserved for members of the company and employees savings plan, that is resolution 26. The report by our auditors concerning the authorization to award free shares is resolution number 27.
Then the reading of the report on the reduction of capital, resolution number 28. Then we finally have another 10 delegations of authority granted to the Board of Directors in relation with shares and capital of the company. These are the resolutions 19- 28. I will not read all those delegations now because it is a bit repetitive. It is related to the topics that I already have mentioned before and all you find in the respective documents here on the desk and on the Internet. Before proceeding with the voting process of the combined shareholders meeting, I would like to ask our Chief Executive Officer, René Fáber, to present the 2024 annual financial statements as well as the development of the company, including information about sustainability. René.
Thank you very much and hello everyone and welcome to this year's annual shareholder meeting of Sartorius Stedim Biotech. Also from my side today I will walk you through the 2024 results, will talk about the market, the market situation, the position of Sartorius in the market, how we are and how we serve our customers, how we differentiate and we'll also finish with the outlook for the year 2025. Starting with the 2024 last year results, we have finished the year 2024 with close to EUR 2.8 billion sales revenues representing a slight increase of 1% compared to previous year. You see on the chart on the right side, looking at the five years horizon, it represents a strong growth of 93% and kind of a continued track record of doubling our business every five years. On the order intake, the development was even more positive.
We have seen that the normalization after the pandemic continued very much the destocking which very much impacted the development of our business. Post- pandemic is progressing well. Most of our customers have reached their target inventory levels and we've seen that recovery, especially of consumables, again reflected here in the double-digit order intake growth. Our underlying EBITDA margin came at 28% close to prior year level. Looking at the market and the customer, after again the exceptionally volatile pandemic demand peak and the post-pandemic normalization, we now see the industry returning back to its underlying growth trend. The consumables, as I said, developed well and strong. Also, our business in advanced therapy solutions developed and grew over proportionally double-digit. Yet the equipment, the, you know, the CapEx side, the spend of our customers for instrument systems, however, still remained muted.
In 2024, looking into sector specific and macro trends, China stabilized rather on low level. On the positive side, we seen the funding beginning to increase again, an indicator that the industry is returning.
Back to t he underlying growth trend. However, the geopolitical environment continued to contribute to uncertainties with ongoing conflicts in Ukraine, Middle East as well as potential legislative changes like the Biosecure Act in the U.S. forcing some of our customers to reconsider their CDMO outsourcing strategies. While navigating through these volatilities, we and our team were able to deliver well on the EUR 85 million efficiency programs focused mostly on reduction again of the inventories back to the pre-pandemic levels at cost saving especially in purchasing of direct and indirect materials and the readjusting the resources as well as stretching the capacity expansions timelines again back to reflect the current customer demand needs. In the last five years we have significantly increased and expanded our team and added 3,700 new jobs and an increase of roughly 60%.
I'm very proud of our ambitious, highly skilled team who is recognized in the industry as the top team in helping customers develop their manufacturing processes faster and manufacture the biologic drugs in the most efficient ways. Sartorius Stedim is a highly attractive place to work. We are happy to be able to fill more than three quarters of the Management positions with internal talents. More than a third of such leadership positions are run by women, a ratio which we are looking to further increase. Moving forward, we are continuing to invest in our global infrastructure, expanding the manufacturing capacities, investing in new automation technologies in manufacturing, and also in our customer-facing facilities. I would like to highlight first here the new Center of Bioprocessing Innovation we opened in November last year close to Boston in a biotech hub in the United States.
In that center we working closely with our customers to develop new generation of manufacturing processes. The center is co-located with our corporate research activities, a team who is looking into future next generation technologies for biomanufacturing. We are very happy to having that center now open and active, which brings us another step closer to our customers, especially in the United States. On the expansions, we are running a few major expansions in Germany for filters manufacturing, [heroban] for single-use technologies in Germany. In Freiburg, we are investing in the facility to make critical cell culture components for use in cell therapy manufacturing, and in Asia we are building a greenfield facility in Songdo, South Korea where we will manufacture all major consumables like filters, single-use bags, and cell culture media. We spent EUR 340 million in these expansions in 2024.
That expansions and that investments bring us into a strong resilient position when it comes to our presence globally being close to our customers. The second largest facility in our network is in Yauco in Puerto Rico serving U.S. market and as I mentioned with the investment in Asia in South Korea we are investing in a significant footprint in Asia as well and particularly in South Korea which is a strongly growing manufacturing hub of biologics today. Already the largest single location in terms of volume of manufacturing of biologics in South Korea. To finish that part of the 2024 review after the temporary decrease of the underlying earnings per share in 2024, we are proposing a EUR 0.69 dividend per share which corresponds to the same level as 2023 and shows our overall positive outlook for the future business development.
Let's take a step back now and take a few minutes and talk about the bigger picture. What is actually the purpose of Sartorius Stedim , what we are doing and how we contribute to better health for more people. With our focus on biologics and biopharma industry. We support customers who are making the most complex but very effective and efficient drugs for the patients. During the last more than 20 years we have seen an enormous progress in the science and how our customers brought really life changing medicines to the patients. Yet Sartorius has been always and is an integral part of that amazing journey in the industry. When we look however at where this novel treatment are used and w hat was.
The accessibility to the patients for such new treatments, we see that by far the majority are used in Western countries in the U.S., Canada and Europe and only 20% are used in the rest of the world where the majority, 85% of the population, sits. This is a problem of affordability, accessibility, but also shows the growth potential and expansion potential of these biologics once they reach the broad global population. The issue of that accessibility is related to costs and price of these therapies. You see here that some of them, like cell or gene therapies, can go up to several millions per treatment. This is a one time treatment, but still very high costs. This is again related to the complexity of these biologics. It takes our customers more than 10 years to develop these drugs.
Only 10% make it to the market which succeeded the phase one and the costs associated with such drug development are on average above $2 billion. Here this is where Sartorius contributes and help our customers to speed up to accelerate development of these drugs and make the manufacturing of these drugs much more efficient. Coming now to how Sartorius Stedim is supporting and working with our customers. We are, when it comes to innovation, focusing on certain specific areas which make the most and the biggest impact and positive impact on how our customers bring these medicines to market and manufacture them. Single-use technologies, Sartorius Stedim being the pioneer and recognized market leader in single-use manufacturing, we now enable the industry and our clients to intensify these processes, make them even more efficient, increase the output.
We put a lot of effort into automation of the workflows, taking manual steps out of the work of our clients. Last but not least, help our clients to use and analyze the data in a way which help them to make the manufacturing process even more efficient. Let me spend few words on these selected innovations. First, intensified processes which is a move of the industry from so called batch manufacturing into ultimately continuous manufacturing. We at Sartorius Stedim are very much working closely with clients large like Sanofi in developing these next generation tools, systems and consumables for clients to run a manufacturing of biologics in a continuous way. You see the benefits one can achieve with that. Decrease the cost by half or increase the productivity significantly by factor 3. Also CO2 emissions and footprint of a facility.
These are a very attractive value proposition to clients to work with Sartorius on that innovation. A second example is an area of advanced therapies. These are new drug modalities becoming more and more relevant in our industry. We have built a strong portfolio through acquisitions during the last five years of critical materials, reagents, cell culture media, which when properly mixed and working together as you can see on the right side, can make an enormous improvement in process yields for our clients. For these novel modalities here, the manufacturing processes are very immature and the need for innovation is prominent. Especially here for such new therapeutics. Third example is a bit different. It is about material. Material science is one of the core competencies of Sartorius.
The selection of the right material, which often are in contact with drugs and drug substance in terms of quality, reproducibility, change management of the materials, is critical. We looking into sustainability topics. Sartorius is bringing a first so-called PFAS-free. PFAS are chemicals which have negative impact on environment. There's a potential ban of these chemicals coming and we are bringing an alternative filter which is not using these chemicals for our clients to make them ready to switch when needed. On the right side you see three examples how we are bringing a non-fossil source plastics into our products and by that increasing the share of these renewable materials in in our products portfolio. That brings me to the sustainability topics. In line with the EU regulation.
We evaluate which impact Sartorius business has on business activities, have on environment, people, and which risk and opportunities arise from sustainability topics. For each such a material sustainability impact, risk, and opportunity, we develop a management approach. Set targets, define programs and actions to execute and achieve these targets. Let me give you an example on the climate change as a material sustainability topic. We have set ourselves a target to reduce emissions and achieve net zero CO2 emission by 2045. We define programs and have programs in place and then respective actions like using new sustainable input materials. The examples I brought on the page previous chart, miniaturizing the products, working closely with suppliers together to reduce the CO2 footprint as well. A well-structured approach to achieve these targets.
Looking at some numbers, Sartorius Stedim Biotech representing around 80% of the Sartorius AG group is significantly contributing to the emissions of course of the group, but also to the implementation of the climate strategy of the AG and in compliance with the current regulation we are presenting numbers here reflecting the Sartorius AG numbers. As we are a strongly growing company, we decided to set our targets based on CO2 emission intensity, which means gram CO2 per EUR revenue, a target of reducing per year on average 10% of that intensity. You see since 2019 we are trending to that target being now at minus 8% almost.
You also see when it comes to the avoidable scope one and two emissions which we want to get to zero by 2030, you see on the right side also the development of that performance indicators with slight increase but under proportionally to the revenue growth which I showed you in the beginning of my presentation, almost doubling in five years and we are seeing around 10% increase only of that emissions. That brings me now to the outlook for 2025. Starting first with the underlying market fundamentals and with big been repeatedly saying that we see these market fundamentals being very strong, intact, robust. On one side the demographics are positive. The global population is growing, is aging, that drives more and more need for medicines.
More and more of the medicines are the biologics, the type of modalities and type of medicines where Sartorius Stedim is focusing. You see a significant increase last 10 years the proportion of this type of medicines in the pharma industry, which drives then a very healthy double digit growth of the industry. When we have a closer look at what our customers are doing, the pipelines of the drugs they are developing, we see a very healthy development. We have seen 2024 being the record year of approvals of new biologics and a record year of approvals of cell and gene therapies as well, which today represent already a 30% of our customers drug pipelines. That all translates in attractive underlying growth rates. You see that pharma market alone already provides a nice, nice growth potential biopharma significantly above that.
Within the biopharma market there are pockets of growth pillars like biosimilars, like the cell and gene therapies which I mentioned, where we have built a strong portfolio and a position to serve that. There is also an ongoing and still strong trend towards adoption of single-use technologies, mostly now for commercial scale manufacturing of these biologics. That is all a very positive development of the industry. We see a rapid pace in innovation reflected in that multimodality landscape now, which again is an attractive growth potential for Sartorius Stedim Biotech moving forward. The key message is that these growth drivers are now taking over and, you know, after the pandemic and the normalization, they are increasingly being visible as growth drivers for our business. How does that translate to our outlook for 2025?
First, looking at the market, we expect the life science tools market to grow but yet below what is the midterm average. I mentioned that we see the destocking being approaching the end, yet we still see the muted investment willingness of customers in instruments and systems, and within that environment, we as Sartorius Stedim Biotech expect to perform above the market, and yeah, we would describe that as a moderate profitable growth that we want to achieve in 2025. We expect that growth to be driven mostly by consumables, and regarding the underlying EBITDA margin, based on these moderate growth, we expect a slight increase in the profitability compared to 2024.
We will continue to organically reduce our debt leverage and expect the CapEx ratio to be approximately around the prior year level. To finish my presentation today, I would like to highlight again Sartorius Stedim 's strong position, company with clear strategy, with clear focus on biopharma, customer with clear understanding is what is the what are the winning ingredients for us and strong and consistent implementation of that strategy. A business model with high share of revenues coming from consumables, recurring business, sticky use of consumables, in validated processes of manufacturing of biopharmaceuticals, company with highly competitive and differentiated products, product portfolio perceived by our customers as a market leader, innovator, high quality, premier, premium partner. I talked about the strong growth fundamentals of our market.
I talked about the robust, resilient, and flexible infrastructure we have in place for manufacturing, being close to customers in all major regions, and last but not least a market-winning ambitious team we have, being recognized as the top-notch team by our customers, helping them develop the manufacturing processes faster and making these very promising medicines much more affordable and accessible to patients worldwide. Thank you very much for your attention and happy to take questions.
Thank you very much René. Thank you very much to all attendees here for your attention. Indeed, questions will be possible to be asked at the end of the meeting, not now. We first have to follow through the agenda and then we will have the time for questions. We are now continuing with today's agenda. We'll start with topic number one of the extraordinary shareholders meeting which is related to the reading of the Board of Directors report on the proposed resolutions 1 and 2 of the first part of this extraordinary shareholder meeting. I want to read out this report as it is fully published on our website and the resolutions as announced before, relate to the amendment of the Articles of association. We are now continuing with the different topics. Now, topic number three of the ordinary part of the combined shareholder meeting.
That's the next meeting. Now we have the extraordinary number one. Now, the Ordinary. Here we start with topic number three, which relates to the three reports of the Board of Directors. Again, I won't read them out because they are available. We are talking here about the Management report regarding the Board of Directors and the Group Company report, the Board of Directors reports on the resolutions, and the corporate governance report. Topic number four of our agenda relates to the three reports of the statutory auditors which are published on our website. As said before, there are three of these reports and I would like now to invite Mr. Minarro and Mr. Assada our auditors from PwC and KPMG, to read and comment on these reports, please.
Thank you, Mrs. and Mr. Board Members. My name is François Assada and I'm an audit partner with KPMG. With me today is Cédric Minarro, one of the two audit partners with PricewaterhouseCoopers audits. Both KPMG and PwC are the joint statutory auditors of Sartorius Stedim Biotech. I'm now going to give you a summary of our joint audit report on the individual financial statements of SSB for the year ended December 31, 2024 and of the special joint report on related party agreements. Cédric will be giving you a summary of the joint audit report on the consolidated financial statements of SSB and its subsidiaries for the year ended December 31, 2024.
Before going into the summary of our audit reports, I want to emphasize that we were independent in compliance with the French Commercial Code and the French Code of Ethics for statutory auditors as it relates to the audit report on the individual financial statements of SSB for the year ended December 31, 2024. It is dated February 11, 2025. In our opinion, the financial statements give a true and fair view of the assets and liabilities of the financial position of SSB as at December 31, 2024 and of the results of its operations for the year then ended. In accordance with French accounting principles, we performed our audit under French audit standards of the financial statements prepared by SSB under French accounting standards. In our professional judgment, we determined that there was no key audit matters and we performed specific verifications required by laws and regulations.
We also had no matters to report as to the fair presentation and the consistency of the financial statements of the information given in the Management report of the Board of Directors and in the other documents with respect to the financial position and the financial statements provided to the shareholders. We also attested the fair presentation and the consistency with the financial statements of the information relating to payment deadlines as it relates to the special audit report on related party agreements. Our report is dated February 11, 2025. We were not advised of any agreements authorized and concluded during the previous accounting period to be submitted to the General Meeting of Shareholders for their approval. In addition, we have also not been advised of any agreements already approved by the General Meeting of Shareholders and which continued during the previous financial year.
Now, I let Cédric introduce you to our report on consolidated financial statement.
Thank you, François. I'm Cédric Minarro, an audit partner at PwC. I'm going to present our report on the consolidated financial information. What is our opinion? We have audited the consolidated financial statements of Sartorius Stedim Biotech for the year ended at the end of December 2024. In our opinion, the consolidated financial statements give a current fair view of the assets and liabilities in the financial position and of the results of the operation for the year ended at the end of December 2024, in accordance with IFRS as adopted by the European Union. What is the audit framework used by PwC and KPMG? We have conducted our audit in accordance with professional standards applicable in France and as mentioned by François. We also confirm that we are independent of the Group and we comply with the French Code of Ethics. What are the key audit matters?
Regarding the key audit matter, we have reported on the impairment testing of goodwill. We considered the determination of the recoverable value of the goodwill to be a key audit matter, given its significance in the group's consolidated financial statements and given the use of significant estimates from the Management. We have described in our report how our audit addresses this matter with a list of all audit procedures we have implemented in terms of specific verifications. We have also reported on the consistency of the Management report with the consolidated financial statements and we have no matters to report. For the presentation of the financial information in compliance with European electronic format, we have no matters to report. In our report we have described the respective responsibilities between the statutory auditors and the Management.
To conclude in our report, we have also reminded that we have submitted to the Audit Committee a description of the scope of the audit and the audit program implemented by the statutory auditors as well as the results of our audit. To finish, in addition to our report on the consolidated financial information, we draw your attention to the fact that the Management report includes the sustainability statement prepared for the first time by Management and the Group in compliance with the CSRD and based on the European Taxonomy Regulation. PwC, as one of the statutory auditors, has also issued an unqualified limited assurance opinion on this sustainability statement included in the Management report of the Group. Thank you for your attention.
Yeah, thank you very much Mr. Assada. Thank you Mr. Minarro for your reports. We will now continue with the vote of the shareholders present in this room for each resolution, starting with the first extraordinary part of the meeting. I can now also inform you about the final quorum which is 94.96%. Concerning the voting procedure, I ask the shareholders present to write your vote for each resolution on the certified paper form handed over to you at the time of signing in either by ticking for, against, or abstain. The paper form will be considered as proof. You do not need to raise your hand to express your vote. The voting form will be collected after the voting session. We will share the results for each resolution at the end of the shareholders meeting. I will now go through the resolutions one by one.
After each resolution I will make a little pause and you will have to fill in the certified voting form in accordance with the explanations received at the entrance of the meeting. Tick the box for, against, or abstain, as just explained. We will proceed with topic number two, two of the first part of the extraordinary shareholders meeting and go through the vote of the first and second resolution, both relating to the amendment of the Articles of Association. First voting, first resolution and second voting, second resolution. The first resolution is the amendments to Article 15.3 of the company's Articles of Association. First voting please. The second voting is the second resolution which is about the amendments to Article 17.5 of the company's Articles of Association.
With that we have finished on topic number two and we will then move forward to the ordinary shareholder meeting. That means we are at the end of the voting process of the first extraordinary shareholders meeting. We will now continue again with the votes by all shareholders here in the room and go through the different resolutions for the ordinary part of the meeting. Same procedure as explained. Third voting on the third resolution which relates to topic number five. The third resolution is about the approval of the financial statements for the financial year ended on December 31, 2024 and the discharge to all directors. Third voting. Fourth voting regarding the fourth resolution, which is the approval of the consolidated financial statements for the financial year ended on December 31, 2024. Fourth voting, please.
We move to the fifth resolution and the respective voting, which is related to topic number seven. It is about the allocation of the financial result for the financial year ended on December 31, 2024, fifth voting, please. Now we will continue with topic number eight, which is covering six resolutions. They are clearly linked, therefore we are doing that now. Together they are about the sixth through to the eleventh resolutions. The sixth one is the approval of the remuneration policy and determination of the amount of the total annual remuneration to be allocated to the Board of Directors for the 2025 financial year. Seven is then approval of the information mentioned in Article L 22-10-9 of the French Commercial Code concerning the remuneration paid or awarded to the corporate offices for the 2024 financial year.
Eight, a pproval of the fixed, variable, and extraordinary components of the remuneration and the benefits of all kinds paid or awarded to the Chairman of the Board of Directors for the 2024 financial year. The ninth resolution is the approval of the fixed, variable, and extraordinary components of the remuneration and the benefits of all kinds paid or awarded to the Chief Executive Officer for the 2024 financial year. Number 10, approval of the remuneration policy of the Chairman of the Board of Directors for the 2025 financial year, and 11, approval of the remuneration policy of the Chief Executive Officer for the 2025 financial year. I hope that was good enough for the voting on 6 through to 11. We will continue with topic number, and this is related to the resolutions 12- 17.
These are closely related topics and dealing with the mandates of Board members that was explained at the very beginning. What our proposal is here and the 12th voting is about the renewal of the term of myself, Joachim Kreuzburg as Director. 13 then renewal of the term of office for Dr. René Fáber as Director. 14. Renewal of the term of office for Mrs. Pascale Boissel as Director. 15. Renewal of the term of office of Mr. Lothar Kappich as Director. 16. Appointment of appointment, not renewal, right of Mr. Chris Nowers as Director. 17. Appointment of Ms. Cécile Dussart as Director. Finally, the 18th resolution at the 18th voting is the authorization granted to the Board of Directors to enable the company to trade in its own shares. These have now six plus one more votings.
I hope you had sufficient time for that. This was now the end of the voting process for the ordinary shareholders meeting and we can start the voting process for the second extraordinary shareholders meeting. Topic number 11 refers to the reading of the report of the Board of Directors on the proposed resolutions and topic number 12 refers to the reading of the statutory auditors' special reports. The Board of Directors report on resolutions and special reports of the auditors submitted to the extraordinary shareholders meeting have been made available as per the conditions prescribed by law and are disclosed in their entirety on our website. Therefore, I will not read them out loud here today.
We now continue with the voting of the 10 resolutions as explained a little bit earlier today, 19 through to 28, which cover several delegations of authority granted to the Board of Directors in order to act on the share securities and on the share capital of the company corresponding to topic number 13. The voting process for each is just the same as before. We are talking about again the resolutions 19 through 28 and the votings 19 through to 28. Resolution number 19. These are all delegations as explained before. I think maybe the best is I won't read them out all, they are available. As just said, it's very much about the different instruments regarding share capital, securities, etc. We have again voting number 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27 and 28.
I thank you now for having cast your votes on the delegations of the authorities of the Board. With this, we now have reached the end of the voting process for the third part of our combined shareholder meetings today. For the second extraordinary shareholders part in particular, this was also the last resolution to vote, and we will now collect your voting forms. Then we take a little break so that the votes can be collected now, please.
Sa.
Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for waiting. I now will continue with announcing the voting results. All resolutions have already been presented to you in detail during the meeting. Therefore, I will abstain from reading them out loud again and will only inform you if the resolutions have been accepted or rejected. Taking into account the votes received by correspondence, the proxies granted to the Chairman, and the number of shares held by the shareholders present in the meeting room and that have cast their votes just a couple of minutes ago, the detailed voting percentage for each resolution of the extraordinary and the ordinary shareholder meetings will be available after final counting by the bank and they will be available at the end of this meeting and also will be published on our website. I will only announce if the resolution is accepted or not.
Starting with the results for the resolutions of the first extraordinary shareholder meeting, the first resolution is accepted as well as the second resolution. Moving to the Ordinary General Meeting, I will now announce the respective voting results. These are corresponding to the topics 5- 10. We are talking about the resolutions 3 to 18 and they are all accepted. I do not have to, I think, tell this now 16 times. They are all accepted. I can move directly to the voting results of the second part of the extraordinary shareholder meeting. Again, they are corresponding to topic number 13. We are talking about the resolutions number 19- 28. Also, these 10 resolutions are all being accepted. Thank you very much. Now, as announced earlier, we have time for questions and we are happy to receive any.
I've seen a hand a little bit earlier maybe.
Thank you. Thank you, Joachim, for this question. It's rather a concern about the situation i n the U.S. currently with the current.
Administration regarding R & D fundings, especially.
In the field of vaccine and many other disease, what is your reading of the situation and how can you imagine the impact and the possible consequences in the short or long term?
I take the question. Thank you very much. First, maybe starting with the R&D funding you mentioned for Sartorius Stedim Biotech. Our exposure to research or academic on NIH was a topic in the U.S. is very limited. We are far below 1% of revenues doing with this type of customers. Of course, it is a development which does not help the science and the progress of these medicines. Yet still, as you know, pending no decisions made. We are close. We will be closely watching that, how that develops.
Okay.
Good afternoon. Have you noticed any significant effects of Brexit?
Nothing to talk about really regarding Brexit. Once that happened, we, I think we well managed, especially the regulatory topics which were related with Brexit. You may know that we have a GMP facility in the islands. They are doing testing services. That was well managed and no disruption with regards to customer service levels for such services. Also, in no other business aspect areas there was an impact.
Good afternoon. I have three questions. One, the first one is about Bio-Rad. I had the time to get to the meeting to visit the area a little bit and I saw a facility of Bio-Rad. What is the relationship you have with Bio-Rad today and in the future? First, second, about the shareholding structure of Sartorius . Is there anything you could do? Could you remember us what could happen? I think it is in 2027, about the agreement between shareholders, controlling shareholders ending. Third, about Polyplus. Could we have some comments about how the integration went and if you are satisfied with this acquisition? Last question, about your project in South Korea. I read in the papers yesterday that you have a big project near Seoul. Could you comment about that? Thank you.
Okay, I will start with the questions 3 and 4. First one on the Polyplus maybe a recap. Polyplus is a business with reagents used in manufacturing mostly gene therapies like viral vectors. After the acquisition of Polyplus we have immediately started the integration activities. Polyplus became a part of what we call advanced therapy solutions business unit where we combined the different acquisitions of these materials for cell and gene therapies like Albumedix,like Soligenix, like Biological Industries, Excell in a focused strategic team who is serving that particular cell and gene therapy customers in our market. Integration is progressing well. We are happy to see coming from the strengths of Polyplus being the market leader in transfection reagents being specked in in more than half of these drugs which are being developed, which is a very strong market position.
We have seen that also how these are moving with the progress of the drugs in the clinical pipelines as well. We are also happy about the synergies we see between Polyplus and other businesses within that business unit like transfection reagents working well with the cell culture media we acquired with Excell. This all is a good development. Integration is progressing well. We are expanding the manufacturing or installing GMP manufacturing on these reagents in Illkirch, the Polyplus. We will in source the manufacturing of that critical reagents soon. We are well on track on the question number four, South Korea. I mentioned that during my presentation. That is currently the largest ongoing expansion of our network. We are building facility in Songdo in South Korea.
Songdo is the area where Samsung Biologics, one of the largest customers of Sartorius and one of the largest contract development and manufacturing organizations in the world, is located virtually across the street to Samsung Biologics. It will be a facility where we'll manufacture single-use products like filters, bags, and cell culture media. We also will have validation, process development, testing services, labs in the facility serving Korean customers and Asia customers as well.
The first two questions basically have been related to the shareholder structure not of Sartorius Stedim Biotech. Therefore, I think they cannot be answered on a shareholder meeting of Sartorius Stedim Biotech. I think that's very obvious. What one can say in general is that, and this is publicly available, that the shareholder structure of Sartorius is absolutely dominated by long-term shareholders and therefore. Therefore, I think that I wouldn't speculate about any changes that affect Sartorius Stedim Biotech.
Good afternoon.
My question will be related to your first question actually about when you mentioned R& D funding. What about tariffs and potential tariffs? How much of the revenue sold in the U.S. is sold roughly in the U.S. and what kind of products produced in Europe or in Asia are sold to the U.S. please?
Yeah, on the tariffs, similar is still pending and unclear what if they will impact and will come in place and in any way will impact our business. It's not clear too. I mentioned that we have our second largest manufacturing facility for all major consumables in our portfolio is in Puerto Rico, Yauco, where we serve U.S. market.
So a gain, consumables like filters or membranes used to make these filters we make in Yauco. We make all major products in our portfolio of fluid management technologies like here bind single-use assemblies, 2D bags, 3D bags, transfer sets, and also newly cell culture media production facility for powder manufacturing. There are products which we are not making in Yauco in Puerto Rico when it comes to consumables, selected special filters like chromatography filters, for example, or reagents like those Polyplus or Soligenix we recently acquired. We do not have yet manufacturing in the U.S. In Marlborough, the mainland in the U.S., we have a manufacturing facility for equipment like single-use bioreactor chromatography systems and also hollow fiber filters. It is rather a smaller portfolio but also located in the U.S., so yeah, that is the situation. We are tracking the tariffs development, but I think we are well prepared.
Yauco facility is designed in a way that it can be modularly expanded, which is also an option once we have filled and utilized the full capacities. Which is also not the case today that we have that possibility to further expand as well.
I don't see any further questions being asked here. That brings us to the end of our today's combined shareholder meetings. If you have any further questions within the next couple of days, weeks, months whatsoever, our investor relations department always is happy to answer questions and to go into a dialogue. Having said that, we have reached the end of our today's combined annual shareholders meeting. I close the meeting. Therefore, thank everybody for participating either in person here or through the webcast. Thank you very much. Take care. All the best.