Welcome to the annual meeting for Ecolab Inc. Our host for today's call is Christophe Beck, Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer. I will now turn the call over to your host, Mr. Beck. You may begin.
Thank you, and good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to Ecolab's annual meeting of stakeholders. I'm Christophe Beck, Ecolab's Executive Chairman and Chief Executive Officer. It's now 12:30 P.M. Central Time. I know that the polls are open, and I now call the meeting to order. Joining me today is Janine Boone, our Executive Vice President, General Counsel, and Corporate Secretary, who will be conducting the formal portion of the meeting. In addition, we're joined by Dave MacLennan, our Lead Independent Director, Steve Zurn of PwC, the company's Independent Registered Public Accounting firm, and Yuhao Dong, our Deputy General Counsel, Securities and Assistant Secretary. Links to the agenda and the procedures for this meeting are available on this virtual meeting platform. Please review these procedures as they contain important information, including how this meeting may be adjourned if we experience technical issues.
To conduct an orderly meeting, we ask that participants abide by the procedures. Following the formal portion of the meeting, I will address our recent financial performance and speak to you about Ecolab's business opportunities. After that, we'll have a short general question-and-answer session if we have time. Let me start by extending a special welcome to any former Ecolab associate and retirees listening to the broadcast of this meeting. We're pleased that you are part of our audience today. I would also like to welcome our Executive Committee and Corporate Officers who are attending the virtual meeting. The hard work and commitment from you and your teams is the reason for our continued success. Now, I'll introduce the 12 directors standing for nomination today and who are also in attendance for this virtual meeting.
Judson Althoff, Executive Vice President and Chief Commercial Officer of Microsoft Corporation, Director of Ecolab since 2024. Shari Ballard, Chief Executive Officer of Minnesota United, Director of Ecolab since 2018. Michel Doukeris, Chief Executive Officer of Anheuser-Busch InBev, Director of Ecolab since February 2025. Eric Green.
Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer of West Pharma, Director of Ecolab since 2022.
Marion Gross, former Executive Vice President and Global Supply Chain Officer of McDonald's Corporation, Director of Ecolab since May 2025. Michael Larson, Chief Investment Officer to Bill Gates and Business Manager of Cascade Investment, Director of Ecolab since 2012. Dave MacLennan, former Executive Chairman of the Board and former Chief Executive Officer of Cargill, Director of Ecolab since 2015, and our Lead Independent Director since May 2023. Tracy McKibben, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of MAC Energy Advisors, Director of Ecolab since 2015. Lionel Nowell, Lead Director of Bank of America and former Senior Vice President of PepsiCo, Director of Ecolab since 2019. Victoria Reich, former Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer of Essendant, Director of Ecolab since 2009. Suzanne Vautrinot, President of Kilovolt Consulting and retired Major General of the United States Air Force, Director of Ecolab since 2014.
John Zillmer, Chief Executive Officer and Director of Aramark, Director of Ecolab since 2006, and I'm the final nominee standing for election. Before we move on to our next agenda item, I'd like to take a moment to acknowledge a director who is not standing for reelection, Arthur Higgins. Arthur joined our board in 2010, 15 years ago. He served on the Audit Committee for two years and on the Governance Committee for seven years. He also served eight years on the SHE Committee and lastly, 13 years on the Compensation Committee. We benefited from Arthur's wisdom, experience, and knowledge, especially in the areas of life sciences and global business operations. On behalf of my fellow board members, we thank him for his distinguished service and wish him the very best. I now turn the meeting over to Janine Boone, our General Counsel.
Thank you, Christophe, and good afternoon, everyone. Before we proceed with the formal portion of the meeting, I will cover the mechanics of our virtual meeting. If you would like to submit a question during the meeting, you may do so by clicking on the Q&A button located on the left below the webcast screen and submit your question following the prompts. We will answer questions on the matters to be voted on during the formal portion of the meeting. There will also be a short general Q&A period immediately following the remarks of our Chairman and CEO, Christophe Beck, if there is time. Note that only validated stockholders, as of the record date for today's meeting, will be able to ask questions on the web portal.
Additionally, if you have not already voted your shares, you may do so by clicking on the voting button at the bottom center below the webcast screen and submit your vote following the prompts. The polls will remain open until the conclusion of the Q&A period on the matters to be voted on. We will now conduct the formal portion of our meeting. We have received an affidavit signed by Broadridge Financial Solutions that notice of this meeting, along with related proxy and annual report materials, was mailed or made available on March 11, 2025, to Ecolab stockholders of record as of the close of business on March 11, 2025, our record date. Accordingly, notice of this meeting was timely given to the holders of our common stock.
With more than 88.88% of the issued and outstanding shares represented in person or by proxy, a quorum is present for the conducting of business. There are four items properly brought before the stockholders today. The first item is to elect 13 nominees to the Board of Directors for a one-year term ending at the 2026 annual meeting. The board recommends a vote for each of the nominees. The second item is to approve on an advisory basis the compensation of the company's named executive officers disclosed in the proxy statement. The board recommends a vote for this proposal. The third item is to ratify the appointment of PricewaterhouseCoopers as the company's independent registered public accounting firm for the current year ending December 31, 2025. The board recommends a vote for this proposal.
The fourth item is to approve amendments to the Ecolab's Amended and Restated Certificate of Incorporation to limit the liability of certain officers as permitted by Delaware law. The board recommends a vote for this proposal. I will now open the floor for stockholder questions on the matters to be voted on. Again, there will be a general Q&A period immediately following the remarks of our Chairman and CEO, Mr. Beck, assuming there is time. As a reminder, to submit a question during the meeting, you may do so by clicking on the Q&A button located on the left below the webcast screen and submit your question following the prompts. Up to one minute will be allocated to read each question. I now invite Yuhao Dong, our Assistant Secretary, to read out questions submitted by our stockholders on the matters to be voted on.
There is one question on the floor. The calculation of the CEO compensation actually paid total in the paid versus performance table for the past several years can dramatically differ from CEO total compensation amount in the summary compensation table. How does the Compensation Committee use the compensation actually paid total compensation figures in its calculation of the CEO target total compensation award for the upcoming year? And this question will be addressed by Mr. MacLennan.
I'll take that as a member of the Compensation Committee in my capacity as lead director, and our philosophy is we position the three major components of compensation for the CEO, which is base salary, annual cash incentives, and LTIP, Long-Term Incentive Plan or Long-Term Equity Incentives, in the median range of our competitive market, so we use roughly 20 comparator firms to look at the range and target the median. It's then adjusted for the company size, and actual compensation actually may be targeted below that or above that based on how long the CEO has been in the job, his performance, scope of responsibilities, and other relevant factors.
Thank you, Mr. MacLennan. If there are no further questions, we will resume the formal portion of the meeting. The polls are now closed. I will report the preliminary voting results based on the proxies already received. The 13 directors standing for nomination were elected. The proposals to approve the compensation of the company's named executive officers disclosed in the proxy statement, ratifying the appointment of auditors, and approval of the amendment to the Ecolab Inc. Restated Certificate of Incorporation were approved. The final vote results will be reported to the SEC on a Form 8-K, a copy of which will be made available on Ecolab's website. This concludes the formal portion of our meeting. Before turning the meeting over to Mr. Beck, let me note that remarks made during the following presentation by Mr.
Beck concerning future expectations, plans, and prospects for Ecolab constitute forward-looking statements under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Actual results may differ from those projected by these forward-looking statements. Information concerning factors that could cause actual results to differ include those factors discussed in the company's annual report on Form 10-K found under Item 1A, Risk Factors. I now turn the meeting back to Mr. Beck to adjourn the formal business portion of the meeting and to offer comments about Ecolab's business.
Thank you so much, Janine. I now declare the formal business portion of the meeting adjourned. We'll now transition to business review, followed by the Q&A session. It's always a pleasure to recap the highlights of our prior year and share updates on our continued growth story. 2024 was another historic year for Ecolab, marked by record sales, record earnings, record margins, and record free cash flow. Today, I'll then discuss our journey, where we're coming from, where we are, where we're headed, while highlighting the reasons I remain confident in our ability to deliver high performance in these very unique times. I'll also take some of your questions at the end of my presentation. What we do truly matters, now more than ever.
It's estimated that by 2050, our planet will have 30% more people, but 2 billion more who will need more food and more energy to grow and thrive. We need 47% more energy, and we need 56% more water than what nature can replenish, and that's without the AI boom, which will make these numbers even much larger. Now, here's the good news. We can help. Ecolab is in the business of protecting what's vital. We protect people from infections, we protect natural resources, and we protect business performance. We've close to 48,000 people serving millions of customers around the world, and last year alone, we helped protect 1.7 billion people from infection. We touch a third of the world's food production and almost a quarter of the power generated.
Our 3,000 scientists and digital experts apply their R&D, digital technology, and data science expertise to power the offerings we provide to our customers, and our global team continues to deliver significant positive impact on society and the environment. For more than 100 years, we've grown fast by growing our impact and growing our team. This has been Ecolab's success formula forever, and it will remain the same for the years to come. Consistency is key, and our shareholders have rightly come to expect steady, long-term double-digit earnings growth, which is why our long-term commitment on 5%-7% sales growth, 20% OI margin, and 12%-15% EPS growth remain unchanged, and we've only taken to get there the right momentum, the right opportunity, and the right team. In 2024, with sales close to $16 billion, we delivered another record year, once again.
Our unique ability to deliver innovative solutions that help our customers achieve best-in-class outcomes, enhance operational performance, and conserve natural resources like water and energy continues to grow in importance, and our most critical customers truly value what we provide, which leads to increased demand. We grow fast by growing our impact. We believe that doing the right thing the right way leads to improved performance for us and for our customers, so our expertise and innovative solutions we're working to help them achieve their operational performance and sustainability goals with absolutely no trade-off. In 2024, Ecolab worked with customers to deliver an impressive impact on a global scale, in all cases, ahead of our plans.
Together, we're able to conserve 226 billion gallons of water, which is the equivalent to the drinking water needs of 781 million people, avoid 4.6 million metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions, protect 1.7 billion people from foodborne illnesses and infections, and achieve $9.1 billion in cumulative value from the use of Ecolab solutions and services since 2019. To reinforce the importance of the value our team delivered to our customers, you can see here the incredible job they did by capturing some of the value delivered into pricing in 2024. Inflation in delivered product costs may have provided a catalyst, but the value of what we delivered for our customers was nearly three times the price. By linking pricing to total value, the return on investment in Ecolab solutions and services becomes very clear.
The acceptance delivers increased sales and gains market share, all while encouraging future and ongoing investment. Delivering total value beyond the investment required by our customers has always been the Ecolab way. It's a true win-win for customers and our shareholders. We go fast by growing our impact and growing our team. Our outstanding performance is the result of our 48,000-strong, high-performing team working together to deliver best-in-class outcomes to millions of customers around the world. So it comes as no surprise to us that Ecolab's best year ever was paired with high retention, record engagement, and our most diverse team on record. We worked really hard to build the winning culture we enjoy today. We'll therefore continue to live our values and do what's right, the right way, to nurture our high-performing team and fuel our future.
Part of our success has been finding new ways to elevate the impact our team provides. During the last four years, we've worked hard to support each Ecolab associate and help them become more productive, whether through new ways of working, deeper engagement, or the application of new leading-edge digital technologies. We are finding ways to grow a positive impact. But at the end of the day, the Ecolab team is at its best when it's winning. And we are. Our goal is always to do the right thing the right way. It's never about the recognition or the awards. It's about the integrity of doing what's right, especially when no one is watching. Even so, the Ecolab team accumulated an impressive number of accolades in 2024.
From being named one of America's most just companies by CNBC to receiving the prestigious Corporate Award from the Executive Leadership Council, we're again recognized as one of the world's most ethical companies by Ethisphere for the 19th time in a row. And we remained Fortune's most admired companies list. I'm proud of our team, what they have accomplished, and how they achieved it. We have an unbelievable past, and our future has never been brighter. The world today might get a little bit more complicated than we all wish, but when you operate in more than 170 countries across 40 industries, you're used to rapid change. We have tariffs, geopolitics, wars, and the impact of currency movements. But we're used to that. And how we respond is what we will also set us apart.
I believe that no company in our industry is better positioned to lead and to win in this environment than Ecolab. We're the world's water company. We're close to $10 billion in sales in water-related applications across all our business segments. We're the leading hygiene and infection prevention company in the world. And as we continue to invest in this growth engine, we're increasingly becoming a strong emerging leader in life sciences. At Ecolab, we're in the business of building new growth engines. With best-in-class, we're leveraging our knowledge and capabilities to deliver best-in-class outcomes and performance for our customers. With total value delivered, we demonstrate that the value we provide outweighs the investment we see from our customers, providing a win-win for both parties. With circular water, we leverage our science and technologies to eliminate the concept of wastewater.
With life sciences, we help produce safer drugs at the lowest possible cost. With Global High Tech, we help data centers cool faster and microelectronic fabs. We use ultra-pure water to produce faster chips with much less water. And with Ecolab Digital, our latest global business, we keep monetizing our high returns for our customers and for us the huge value we're creating for them anywhere around the world. At Ecolab, we're also in the business of developing breakthrough innovations like data centers that do not need fresh water, like fabs that use the water equivalent of 17 million people yesterday to zero tomorrow, like these machines that can be serviced in real time remotely, or like Pest Intelligence that allows customers to reach a 99% better environment. Our model helps us deliver huge value to customers when they need it the most. We serve millions of customers across 40 industries.
We know what best-in-class performance means, and we know how to deliver it anywhere around the world because we did it. That's the promise we make to our customers by bringing together global expertise locally, breakthrough technology, global know-how, and AI solutions to deliver the best outcomes at the lowest total cost while using the least water, energy, and labor anywhere, anytime around the world. We commit to delivering total value to our customers, and we measure it. Our aim is to deliver greater value than the investment we see. So we quantify and align with our customers on how much value has been created in terms of business outcomes, operational efficiency, and environmental impact. We call that total value delivered.
What's even better is that we can progressively capture, measure, and optimize our total value delivered in real time with ECOLAB D Cloud and its stack of agents and analytics, with billions of data points collected over the last 30 years, captured in millions of locations in 40 industries and 172 countries with the insights nobody has. This allows us to drive best-in-class value and efficiency for our customers and get paid for it. So how does it work? Since most of this data is stored in real time in our ECOLAB3D Cloud, we help customers understand four critical questions. First, what's my best operating location? Second, how does it benchmark to the industry best-in-class performance? Third, how much value would I unlock if all my locations were performing at the best-in-class performance? And finally, how does Ecolab help me get there?
This is what we call delivering best-in-class performance across the enterprise around the world. An application of this approach and what it means for Ecolab's growth is in the data center space. Our expertise in water and cooling technologies allows us to participate in the AI boom and capture some of its expected growth in data center technologies. We combine our innovative technology with unique experience and insights to increase data center uptime and optimize productivity, reliability, and water management across our customers' organization. This is the Ecolab best-in-class promise in the real world. Our best-in-class promise, all anchored on the total value delivered to our customers, is fueling our new business pipeline, which reached record levels in 2024. Our best-in-class approach is also helping us to deliver steady OI margin expansion.
In 2024, our organic operating income margin was 16.8%, up 290 basis points on top of the 140 basis points delivered in 2023 already. While we remain focused on driving higher margins while making continued critical investments to fuel our future, I remain confident that we will reach our 20% operating income margin target by 2027. The very best thing is that we're just getting started. With $152 billion of market opportunity, including $55 billion in existing customers, our growth potential is almost endless, which translates into high margin and double-digit EPS growth. With the best team in the industry, our future has never looked brighter. At this time, I'd like to thank you for your investment in Ecolab.
So let's move now to the question and answer section, and I welcome questions submitted by stockholders online and invite Yuhao Dong, our Deputy General Counsel, to read any question that might have been submitted. There are no questions from the floor. That was an easy one. So I want to thank you all for the opportunity to answer your questions. And I thank you again for your investment in Ecolab. I would like to close now by reinforcing that Ecolab has been a purpose-driven and growth-focused company for more than 100 years. It is an honor to represent the 48,000-strong Ecolab team and all that they do for our customers. I am proud of our legacy. I like where we are, and I'm even more excited about where we're going. So thanks for your confidence and your investment in Ecolab. That's all the time we had for today.
A webcast replay of this meeting will be available on Ecolab's website approximately 24 hours from now. So thank you again. You may now disconnect from the meeting. This now concludes the meeting. Thank you for joining, and have a pleasant day.