Good day, and welcome to the Balchem Corporation Annual Meeting of Stockholders. I would like to now turn the conference over to Ted Harris, President, CEO, and Chairman of the Board of Directors. Please go ahead.
joining us at this virtual meeting of shareholders of Balchem Corporation. At this time, I call the meeting to order. As a preliminary matter, a virtual meeting is one that takes place via an electronic format. An audio feed from this meeting is being webcast as we speak. This webcast incorporates shareholder validation capabilities, which means that any shareholder can vote in real time during the meeting until the polls are closed, and any shareholder may submit questions while the meeting is in progress. We believe that holding a virtual annual meeting will expand shareholder access. Our shareholders in any part of the country can attend this meeting, and non-shareholders can listen to this webcast over the internet. I hope you entered this meeting by using your 16-digit control number. If you did not, you will be unable to vote your shares or submit questions during this meeting.
The polls to vote online are now open. If you have already given your proxy to management, you need not vote again because the persons designated as proxies will vote for you. However, you may revoke your proxy by voting virtually at this meeting. After the meeting has been adjourned, I will answer questions submitted on the website in the field provided for shareholders. We may not have enough time to answer all questions submitted by shareholders during the meeting. If you would like a direct response after this meeting, please provide your contact information along with your question. John Holewa from American Election Services, LLC will act as Inspector of Elections. He has taken the customary oath of office, which will be filed with the permanent records of this meeting. Will the Inspector please identify yourself so that shareholders who are participating will know who you are?
Good afternoon, everyone. I am John Holewa, CFA from American Election Services, LLC.
I would like to take this opportunity to introduce some of the officers and directors who are present at this meeting, either in person or by phone. Dr. John Televantos, Lead Director, Paul Coombs, David Fischer, Daniel Knutson, Harry Premdas, and Matthew Wineinger. Also present from the company are Martin Bengtsson, CFO and Treasurer, and Mark Stach, General Counsel and Secretary. Mr. Stach will act as secretary of this meeting. Will the secretary please report the numbers of shares outstanding and entitled to vote at this meeting?
The close of business on April 23rd, 2019, is the record date for determining shareholders entitled to vote at the meeting. A certified list of shareholders entitled to vote at the meeting is available at the offices of the company and may be inspected by any shareholder. As of the record date, 32,333,546 shares of the company's common stock were outstanding, with each share being entitled to one vote on all matters properly brought before the meeting.
Also available for inspection by the shareholders in the offices of the company are copies of the notice of meeting and proxy statement, the proxy, the annual report to shareholders, and an affidavit of mailing, certifying the timely mailing on or about April 30th, 2019, of the proxy materials to all shareholders of record as of the record date. Copies of the notice of meeting and proxy statement, the proxy, and the annual report are also posted on the virtual meeting site. The secretary is directed to file the list of shareholders with the records of the company and to file the notice of meeting and proxy statement, the proxy, the annual report, and the affidavit of mailing with the minutes of the meeting.
Under the company's bylaws, the presence in person or by proxy of shareholders entitled to cast a majority of all the votes entitled to be cast at this meeting constitutes a quorum. Preliminary tally by the inspector indicates that a quorum is present. The presence of a quorum will be confirmed by the inspector when he completes the tally of the proxies and ballots. We will now proceed to the items of business before the meeting today. Because each of these items was listed in the notice of meeting, I will not ask for a motion or a second to approve any of these items. The first item of business is the election of two directors to serve until the annual meeting in 2022 or until their successors are duly elected and qualified.
As indicated in the proxy statement, Theodore Harris and Matthew Wineinger have been nominated by the board of directors for election as directors to serve as members of Class 1 of the board. The second item of business is the ratification of the appointment of RSM US LLP as independent auditors of the company for its fiscal year ending December 31, 2019. The third item of business is to approve, on an advisory basis, the compensation of named executive officers as disclosed in the company's 2019 proxy statement, in accordance with the compensation rules of the Securities and Exchange Commission. The fourth item of business is such other business as may properly come before the annual meeting. Please vote your shares now with respect to these matters if you have not already voted by proxy before this meeting.
If you wish to rescind your proxy and vote on your own behalf, you must submit a ballot now. The polls are now officially closed. This concludes the voting portion of the meeting. Inspector, please tell us the preliminary results for the election of the nominees to the board of directors.
Mr. President, as Inspector of Election, I have reviewed the proxies received prior to the meeting and the ballots collected during the meeting. Based on a preliminary count of the proxies and ballots, each nominee has been elected to the board of directors by the vote of at least a majority of all votes cast at this meeting in person or by proxy.
Inspector, please tell us the preliminary results for the ratification of the appointment of RSM US LLP as independent auditors of the company for its fiscal year ending December 31, 2019.
Based on a preliminary count of all proxies and ballots, the appointment of RSM US LLP as independent auditors of the company for its fiscal year ending December 31st, 2019, has been ratified by a vote of the holders of at least a majority of the shares of common stock present at this meeting in person or by proxy.
Inspector, please tell us the preliminary results for approval on an advisory basis of the compensation of named executive officers as disclosed in the company's 2019 proxy statement, in accordance with the compensation rules of the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Based on a preliminary count of all proxies and ballots, the approval on an advisory basis of the compensation of named executive officers as disclosed in the company's 2019 proxy statement in accordance with compensation rules of the Securities and Exchange Commission, has been ratified by a vote of the holders of at least a majority of the shares of common stock present at this meeting in person or by proxy.
That concludes the formal business for this meeting. The formal portion of the meeting is now adjourned. At this point, I will pause to answer questions that may have been submitted by our shareholders. We have allotted ten minutes to answer questions, then the members of the board and I will be excused, seeing ourselves for a board meeting. We do have several questions, two of which are very similar and related to one another. They refer really to progress relative to Curemark and the progression of the work around the CM-AT treatment for autism. Just to give you all a general update, the board just had our June board meeting. We need to go back into session after this annual meeting. We did receive an update from Dr. Joan Fallon at the meeting, who is the CEO and founder of Curemark.
She reflected on the recent results that she just presented at INSAR in Montreal, sharing for the first time publicly the results of the most recent clinical study, which really are very encouraging. There were several areas that show very nice statistical improvement based on the use of CM-AT. We are quite encouraged by this first publication of the results of the study. She also shared with us that she had the pre-submission meeting with the FDA and talked about how that went, which she felt very positive about. She also talked in quite a lot of detail around the fact that we will be having to file a BLA or a biologic license application as opposed to an NDA, and what that means for both Curemark and Balchem as one of the manufacturing partners on this drug.
That certainly will be a more detailed process for us as the manufacturer than the NDA. We are in the midst with Curemark and outside consultants trying to understand exactly what that will mean for us. We are very pleased that Curemark had their pre-submission meeting with FDA. We're also pleased with the fact that she has published the, for the first time, data from the trial, and the results certainly seem to be very encouraging. We're actively trying to understand the change to a BLA and what it means for us in the process. We'll have more information on that and updates on that as time goes by. Certainly, we'll talk a bit more about that on our next earnings call when we've learned more. The next question that we had is just who is our largest competitor?
That's a very difficult question for us to answer, because we really have different competitors in different areas of our business. I think in the choline space for animal nutrition, Eastman is probably our largest global competitor in that space, and so we commonly think of them as one of our largest competitors. In the food ingredient business, the business we call Ingredient Solutions, I would say Kerry, a very large Irish multinational ingredient company, is probably our largest competitor in that space. Those are two very large companies that we compete with head-to-head in different parts of our business. Those would be the two that I would highlight for that question. I will pause to see if any other questions come in.
Those being the only questions that we have, I'd like to just conclude by thanking everybody for your participation in this year's annual meeting of shareholders of Balchem Corporation. Thank you again, and goodbye.
The conference is now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.