I am Garrett Pierce, Chairman of the Board of the Directors, and I'd like to welcome you to our 57th stockholders meeting as a public company. Before proceeding with business of the meeting, I'll need to make a few administrative announcements. I would like to point out that the audio portion of this meeting is being broadcast live over the internet on our website, www.kns.com. To help our listeners, if anybody should have a question during the question and answer session later in the meeting, please use the microphone, which will be available in the audience. In addition, the audio recording will be made of the entire meeting, including questions or comments that you may have. The audio recording will be available at our website for a limited time following this meeting.
I also want to point out that in addition to the historical statements, remarks, and comments today may include forward-looking statements which are covered by the Safe Harbor provisions of the 1995 Private Securities Litigation Reform Act. Actual results may turn out to be significantly better or worse than indicated by any forward-looking statements made this afternoon. For a more complete discussion of the risks associated with the operations of K&S, please refer to the company's SEC filings, especially the 10-K for the year ending September 29th, 2018. I would now like to introduce the other members of the Board of Directors of the company who are all present. Mr. Brian R. Bachman, Dr. Fusen E. Chen, Mr. Peter T. Kong, Mr. Chin Hu Lim, Mr. Greg F. Milzcik, Ms. Mui Sung Yeo. I now call Ms. Waters, the Secretary of the company, for the required formal announcements.
Mr. Chairman, I present a copy of the notice of internet availability of the notice of meeting and proxy statement, the proxy card, and the annual report. I also present an affidavit as to the mailing on January 18th, 2019 of the notice of internet availability to each person who was a stockholder of record on November 30th, 2018, the record date for the meeting. The notice of meeting called this meeting for 4:30 P.M. on February 27th, 2019 at W Hong Kong, One Austin Road West, Kowloon Station, Kowloon, Hong Kong, for the purposes of electing directors, ratifying the appointment of PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP as independent registered public accountants for the 2019 fiscal year, a non-binding vote on executive compensation, and transacting such other business as may properly come before the meeting. I have a complete list of stockholders entitled to vote at this meeting.
The list is available for inspection by the stockholders during the meeting for the purposes of the meeting.
The affidavit of mailing and the attachments thereto will be filed with the minutes of the meeting. As chairman of the meeting, I appoint Peter Descovich as the judge of election. If you are acting as a proxy for a shareholder, please file your written proxy with the secretary if you have not already done so. If you desire to speak at the meeting, when I recognize you, please raise and give your name and state whether you are a stockholder or a holder of a proxy. If you're a holder of a proxy, please give the name of your principal. The judge of elections has informed me that there is a quorum present. Our custom has been to dispense with the reading of the minutes of the last annual meeting.
Unless there is a request that the minutes of the last year's meeting be read, we'll defer voting until all matters are properly before the meeting and ready for voting. The board of directors have nominated Fusen E. Chen and Gregory F. Milzcik for re-election at the annual meeting to serve until 2023 annual meeting and until their successors have been duly elected and qualified. The second order of business is the appointment of PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP as the company's independent registered public accountants. The audit committee of the board appointed PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP as the company's independent registered public accountants for fiscal 2019. As you know, PricewaterhouseCoopers has served as the company's independent registered public accounting firm for the last year. I'd like to introduce Hans Koopmans of PricewaterhouseCoopers.
If any shareholder has any questions for PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP, they can be raised during the question and answer period. The third order of business is the advisory vote to approve, on a non-binding basis, the overall compensation of the company's named executive officers. If there is no discussion, we can now proceed to the voting on the matters before the meeting. As has been customary, we will now vote on all matters by ballot. I now ask any stockholder who has not voted online, via telephone, or has not mailed in or delivered a proxy, or wishes to change a previous proxy vote, or wishes to vote in person, to raise his or her hand so that the secretary can give you a ballot. While we are waiting for the report from the Judge of Elections, I would like to ask Dr. Fusen E.
Chen, our President and CEO, to make a few remarks.
Thank you, Garrett. K&S generated another set of solid records in fiscal 2018. It delivered record gross profit and record shareholder returns. While we are all proud of this success and the benefit to customers, suppliers, employees, and the investors, we are well prepared to further enhance our value creation and deliver into the long term. The organizational refinements and the strategic direction established in fiscal 2017, combined with the identification, pursuit, and execution of new development initiatives during fiscal 2018, create a stimulating working environment for employees and also provide new long-term growth prospects for the company. Our aggressive shares repurchase activity and the annual dividend declared in June 2018 highlight our continuing commitment to deliver value to our shareholders. Technically, we continue to execute on several near-term opportunities and also target several longer-term opportunities as we look ahead.
Our organizational refinements have further empowered our individual business units to achieve strategic and result-driven goals, which are closely aligned with all of our stakeholders' interests. Our early effort of refining our business structures and the development process have reduced time to market, increased new project success rate, and expanded our served market, therefore increasing our potential for substantial financial outperformance. This improved organizational structure provides a solid foundation to pursue several broad, aggressive, and diversified strategic initiatives, including market share gains in both our largest and the most established market, as well as entries into multiple high-potential growth areas. As an example of this success, we began targeting new LED growth opportunities in early 2017. Largely viewed as too cost sensitive for our premium offering, our share in LED was significantly below our shares in traditional semiconductor applications.
We quickly closed this gap by developing and introducing market-leading LED tools. Over the course of 2017 and 2018, we shipped more LED tools than we had in the prior six years combined. In parallel, we continue to expand our served market in the growing advanced packaging space. We have rapidly developed several new tools that provide disruptive and innovative solutions for high-performance memory and high-performance logic applications, two critical markets which were historically unserved with our core offering. Toward the end of fiscal 2018, we released Katalyst, a high-accuracy flip chip tool, and also received a major offset qualification win for our APAMA thermal compression solution. We anticipate gradual market adoption of these highly competitive solutions. In parallel, we are continually identifying and participating in new high-potential and strategic opportunities in adjacent markets.
Our latest new market initiative during fiscal 2018 was the launch of the PIXALUX platform, which provides access and a very competitive solution supporting the emerging and high-potential mini and micro-LED display market. The entire organization is extremely focused on the success of this new growth prospect, which will further enhance our operational leverage. This increased operating leverage better enables us to further deliver meaningful value to shareholders. In June of 2018, we initiated a quarterly fixed dividend payment of $0.12 per share. Subsequently, we received authorization from our board of directors to extend our repurchase program by an additional $200 million, bringing our cumulative total authorization to $400 million. Through our recent December quarters, we cumulatively repurchased 13.8 million outstanding shares, valued at over $228 million in open market transactions. This has reduced our share outstanding by approximately 18%, directly adding value on a per-share basis.
On the long term, we are committed to extending our leadership in the markets we serve, increasing our presence in new markets, and ultimately, increasing our value on a per-share basis. We thank you for the support, and I look forward to updating you again on our success throughout 2019.
Thank you, Fusen. Now, as has been customary, we're happy to entertain any questions you may have. I ask that each person who has a question to please use the microphone and give his or her name, and state whether he or she is a stockholder or a proxyholder. There are no questions. I'm advised that the Judge of Election has completed the count of the votes and delivered the report to the Secretary. The Secretary will now announce the results as reflected in the Judge's report.
The Judge's report shows 61,010,815 shares of common stock present in person and/or present by proxy, which the Judge has certified to be a quorum of the outstanding common stock on all matters presented to the meeting. The Judge's report further shows that sufficient votes were cast for the election of Dr. Fusen E. Chen and Mr. Gregory F. Milzcik, for the ratification of the appointment of PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP, and for approval on a non-binding basis, the overall compensation of the company's named executive officers.
In accordance with the results certified by the Judge of Election, I hereby declare that Dr. Fusen E. Chen and Mr. Gregory F. Milzcik have been elected directors for the term for which they were nominated, that the appointment of PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP as the independent registered public accountants for the 2019 fiscal year has been ratified, and that the shareholders have approved on a non-binding basis the overall compensation of the company's named executive officers. I order that the report of the Judge of Election be filed with the minutes of the meeting. The meeting is now adjourned, and on behalf of the directors, officers, and employees, I thank you for attending the meeting. There are light refreshments outside the meeting room, which I invite you all to share with us. Thank you