Good morning. Welcome to 3M's 2018 Annual Meeting of Shareholders. Gregg Lawson, our Corporate Secretary, advises that a quorum is present and that all shareholders of record have been sent a notice of this meeting. On the record date of March 13, 2018, there were approximately 595 million shares of common stock issued and outstanding. 86% are present here today in person or by proxy. Therefore, I declare this meeting open for business. We have five business items on the agenda for today, which Gregg Lawson will discuss. First, however, I will make some brief comments about our enterprise, beginning with our 2017 performance. In 2017, we executed a 3M playbook and delivered on each of our four long-term financial metrics. We posted earnings of $9.17 share, a 12% increase year-on-year. Organic growth was a robust 5%, with growth across all business groups and all geographic areas.
We posted free cash flow conversion of 100%, along with a return on invested capital of 21%. In addition to these financial results, we continued to deploy significant capital to grow the business and to return cash to you, our shareholders. Last year, we invested more than $5 billion in a combination of research and development, CapEx, and acquisitions. We also paid $2.8 billion in dividends and repurchased $2.1 billion of 3M shares. As a reminder, we increased in Q1 the dividend for 2018 by 16%. Looking over the last five years, we have more than doubled our dividend. We have also increased the dividend for 60 consecutive years, and we have paid dividends without interruption for more than 100 years. In 2017, we also made good progress on our three key levers, which are significant value creators.
The first lever is portfolio management, an ongoing process that is making us more competitive and more relevant to our customers and the marketplace. Portfolio management includes acquisitions and divestitures, and we were very active on both fronts in 2017. Investing in innovation is the second lever. We have stated many times, research and development is the heartbeat of 3M. Last year, we invested $1.9 billion in research and development, or 6% of sales. These investments support organic growth, which is our primary growth strategy, along with ability to deliver premium margins and return on invested capital. The third lever is business transformation, which starts and ends with our customers. Our rollout is on track, and we are already seeing benefits for our customers and for 3M. In summary, 2017 was a successful year, and we executed well, delivered strong results, and made investments for the future.
Turning to 2018, I will now make some comments on our first quarter performance. Our team opened the new year with broad-based organic growth of 3%, with positive growth across all business groups. We expanded margins to 23% and posted a 16% increase in earnings per share. As we discussed on our earnings call two weeks ago, the quarter included many areas of strength, but also a few areas of softness that temper overall growth. As a result, we adjusted the top end of our full year guidance for organic growth and earnings per share. Going forward, I'm confident in the world-class capabilities of our enterprise, and we will remain well-positioned to deliver a strong result in 2018. That concludes my remarks, and at this point in time, I will introduce our board of directors.
I will ask our Board members to please stand as they are introduced and remain standing. Please hold your applause until all are introduced. I will start with Sondra Barbour, retired Executive Vice President, Information Systems and Global Solutions, Lockheed Martin Corporation. Tony Brown, retired Group Vice President, Global Purchasing, Ford Motor Company. Dave Dillon, retired Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer, The Kroger Company. Mike Eskew, who could not join us today, is the retired Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer, United Parcel Service. Herb Henkel, retired Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer, Ingersoll Rand. Amy Hood, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, Microsoft Corporation. Muhtar Kent, Chairman of the Board and retired Chief Executive Officer, The Coca-Cola Company. Ed Liddy, retired Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer, The Allstate Corporation.
Greg Page, retired Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer, Cargill, Incorporated. Pat Woertz, retired Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer, ADM Company. I would also like to introduce Mike Roman, 3M's CEO-elect. Mike will become CEO on July 1st, as I take on the new role as Executive Chairman. Today, Mike is also standing for election to the 3M Board. Let's recognize our entire Board of Directors with an applause. Thank you, and I will now turn the program over to Gregg Lawson. Gregg?
Well, thank you, Inge. Good morning, everyone. Before discussing the business items, please review the meeting rules you received this morning. They are summarized on the screen behind me. These rules allow 3M to better accommodate the shareholders who attend this meeting and to be fair to everyone who wishes to speak. As the agenda you also received indicates, the Board of Directors is presenting three proposals, and stockholders are presenting two proposals, all of which are described in the proxy statement. We will vote on all of these proposals together after presenting each one. No other items of business will be considered at the meeting. The first proposal is to elect 12 directors for a one-year term that expires at the 2019 Annual Meeting.
The Board's nominees are Sondra Barbour, Tony Brown, Dave Dillon, Mike Eskew, Herb Henkel, Amy Hood, Muhtar Kent, Ed Liddy, Gregg Page, Mike Roman, Inge Thulin, and Pat Woertz. All nominees are standing for re-election to the Board, except Amy Hood and Mike Roman, who are standing for election to the Board for the first time. The second proposal is to ratify the audit committee's appointment of PricewaterhouseCoopers as 3M's independent registered public accounting firm for 2018. The third proposal is to approve our executives' compensation as described in the proxy statement. The Board recommends a vote for each nominee and for each of these proposals. We will consider the stockholder proposals. The first proposal is on special meetings. Lindsay Curricchio represents James McRitchie and may make a brief three-minute statement on the merits of the proposal. Is Mr. Curricchio here?
If not, the proposal is not before the meeting, and we will not vote on it. I would like to call on Sean Gilchrist to present the stockholder proposal on CEO compensation.
Good morning, fellow shareholders. My name's Sean Gilchrist. I'm representing the United Steelworkers Union today and the several thousand members who work for 3M, who are also members of our great union. Today's shareholders proposal number 5, we hope everyone here is considered voting in favor of it. According to the employee opinion study, What Makes a Great CEO? by Glassdoor.com, high CEO compensation can impact morale and productivity of non-executive employees. 3M is no different than most Fortune 500 companies when it comes to CEO pay. It takes into heavy consideration what other CEOs make, peer group benchmarks. Our company consistently slots the CEO above the median of this benchmark. Since 3M's board is mostly former CEOs, it's not a surprise that 3M's CEO, Inge Thulin's pay is on a rocket trajectory.
The rules of math dictate that when figures, in this case, compensation data, are consistently placed above the median, growth seems to compound. While the global median compensation for a 3M employee was over $63,000 in 2017, Mr. Thulin earned $20.5 million, which turns out to be 324 times the median employee compensation. To address such a staggering ratio, the USW, the Steelworkers, 3M Council, is sponsoring the shareholders' resolution at today's meeting. Our resolution, proposal 5, setting target amounts for CEO compensation, requests that the Compensation Committee of the Board of Directors take into consideration the pay grades and/or salary ranges of all classifications of company employees when setting target amounts for CEO compensation, in addition to the peer group benchmarks. Unsurprisingly, the Board of Directors disagrees with our proposal. Their main complaint is the significant time, cost, and resource burden of incorporating this policy and practice.
This argument is rendered meaningless now that the Securities and Exchange Commission compels companies to disclose the CEO pay ratio. Essentially, this work is already done, the heavy burden that was asked for in the proposal. Therefore, we can think of no reason for this objection. I would like to add, not knowing this prior, that our company will be getting a new CEO. This is a perfect opportunity for the shareholders to implement our proposal. We hope, Mr. Roman, in the future, you will consider looking into these ideas of helping to increase employee morale.
I've been working with some of the 3M Council members and some of the members who work for the company. My personal feeling is that the company really could do some more work to help the employees kind of feel a bit part of the company, that what they're doing really helps sustain the growth of the company on that aspect. I encourage you to kind of take a strong consideration into that. The 3M Council is there with the steelworkers, and we're willing to reach out and work as hard as we can for the company and the betterment of the shareholders. Thank you today for your time.
Thank you, Sean. The board opposes your proposal for the following reasons. The company uses global compensation practices to ensure fair and reasonable employee compensation. We benchmark pay components to those other premier companies and adjust them as necessary to attract, retain, and motivate employees at all levels throughout the company. Almost all stockholders support the current executive compensation program. For the last five years, 96% of the votes cast on our say on pay proposal approved the compensation of the CEO and other named executive officers. Finally, the actions requested by the proposal to consider the pay grades and salary ranges of 91,000 employees when setting CEO compensation are ambiguous and would impose significant implementation costs and burden company resources without discernible benefit. For these reasons, the board recommends voting against this proposal.
We are finished presenting the items of business in the proxy statement. Now it is time to vote. If you submitted your proxy over the internet, by telephone, or by mail, it will be voted as you instructed. Please ask for a ballot only if you did not previously vote or if you wish to change your vote. If you need a ballot, please stand and the attendant will give you a ballot. When you've marked your ballots, please stand and the attendants will collect them. The polls are about to close. If there's any stockholder who has not turned in a ballot and wishes to do so at this time, please stand so that the attendants can pick up your ballot. The polls are now closed. The preliminary results of the voting will be announced later in the meeting.
This concludes the business segment of the meeting and our live webcast. For those watching online, thank you for joining us.