Good afternoon, and welcome to the MSCI 2019 Annual Meeting of Stockholders. I would now like to turn the conference over to Henry Fernandez, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of MSCI. Please go ahead.
Good afternoon, and welcome to the 2019 Annual Shareholders Meeting for MSCI Inc. My name is Henry Fernandez. I am Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of MSCI. The polls are open and you may now submit your votes online until we officially close the polls following the formal presentation of the proposals. Please remember that if you have already submitted a proxy, it is not necessary to submit your vote online unless you wish to change your vote.
Slide 2 of the presentation sets forth the agenda for our meeting. At our meeting today, I will present the proposals that you're voting on. If you have any questions about the proposals, you may submit them through the web portal. Following the presentation of all proposals, any questions about them will be addressed. Then we will hear the preliminary report of the Inspector of Elections and adjourn the formal annual meeting.
I will then proceed with a brief discussion of our financial results for 2018. And following that discussion, you will be given another opportunity to ask questions, but not related to the proposals. Our meeting rules require shareholders wishing to raise questions on topics other than the proposals to wait until such time. Slide 3 presents each of our directors nominees. I am pleased to announce that all of our the members of our Board of Directors are with us for the meeting this afternoon.
Alison McNearney, who is a partner at PricewaterhouseCooper, our independent auditor, is also participating and is available to answer your questions. American Election Services, the Inspector of Elections for this meeting is represented here today by Christopher Woods. Mr. Woods has executed his Inspector's Oath. The Board fixed February 27, 2019 as the record date for determining the shareholders entitled to vote at this meeting.
An affidavit is with the Inspector of Elections attesting to the fact that the notice of the meeting, the proxy statement and the 2018 annual report to shareholders were mailed to shareholders of record on or about March 15, 2019. We had 84,000,000 665,447 shares outstanding and entitled to vote on the record date and 91.7% of those shares are represented today by proxy or virtually, constituting a quorum. The Annual Shareholders Meeting is therefore now formally called to order. I will begin by presenting these 3 items to be voted upon. As a reminder, we will acknowledge any comments or questions submitted by shareholders on the proposals themselves after all proposals have been presented.
Item 1 is the election of directors. The current Board has nominated 10 directors: myself, Henry Fernandez Rob Ashe, who is our current Independent Lead Director Ben DuPont Gwen Elmont Alice Handy Kathy Keeney Jack Spirole, Linda Grifler, George Sigler and Marcus Smith. Before moving on to the next item, I would like to take this opportunity to thank Skip Valle and Patrick Turney, each of whom retired from our Board last May, and Wendell Lane, who decided not to run for reelection for their valuable contributions and service to our company and its shareholders. Moving on to Slide 4 of the presentation. Item 2 is the advisory vote to approve the compensation of our named executive officers as described in our 2019 proxy statement.
Even though this vote, which is often called say on pay vote, is a nonbinding vote, the Compensation and Talent Management Committee and the Board itself will take the results of the vote into account when making future compensation decisions. Item 3 is the ratification of PricewaterhouseCoopers as MSCI's independent auditor for the fiscal year ending December 31, 2019. All of the proposals on the agenda are now before the meeting. If any shareholder has a question or would like to make a comment regarding any of the proposals and you have not already done so, please submit your question through the web portal. Since there are no questions or additional proposals to come before the meeting relating to the business of the meeting as set forth in the agenda, this is your final opportunity to vote.
Any shareholder who has not voted or wishes to change his or her vote may do so by following the instructions on the web portal. We will now pause to allow such votes. The voting is now ended and the polls are The next item is the preliminary report of the Inspector of Elections. Cecilia Aza, our Corporate Secretary will summarize the report for us.
The preliminary report of the Inspector of Elections indicates that a minimum of approximately 96.64 percent of the votes of common stock voted for each of the director nominees, representing a majority of votes cast for or against. Approximately 97.89% of the votes of common stock represented at this meeting have voted on an advisory basis for the approval of the executive compensation of our named executive officers. Approximately 96.17% of the votes of common stock represented at this meeting have voted for the ratification of our audit committee selection, PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP as the company's independent auditors for 2019. Any ballots cast before the pools close, but not reflected in the preliminary report will be included in the final vote tally. We will file a report with the SEC containing the final tally no later than 4 days following this meeting.
That summarizes the preliminary report of the Inspector of Elections. I will now turn it back over to Henry.
Thank you, Cecilia. This concludes the formal part of our annual meeting. There being no further business to come before the meeting, the 2019 Annual Meeting of Shareholders of MSCI Inc. Is now adjourned. And now I will give a brief report on the company's 2018 financial results.
Before I move on to discuss the 2018 financial results, I'd like to remind you that my remarks contain forward looking statements. You are cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward looking statements, which speak only as of the date on which they are made and are governed by the language on Slide 5 of the presentation. For a discussion of additional risks and uncertainties, please see the risk factors and forward looking statements disclaimer in our most recent Form 10 ks and our other SEC filings. In addition to results presented on the basis of U. S.
GAAP, we also refer to non GAAP measures. We believe our non GAAP measures facilitate meaningful period to period comparisons and provide insight into our core operating performance. On Slides 13 through 16, you'll find a reconciliation to the equivalent GAAP measure in the presentation and an explanation of why we deem this information to be meaningful, as well as how management uses these measures. We also present organic run rate growth figures, which exclude the impact of changes in foreign currency and the impact of any acquisitions or divestitures. Before I talk about MSCI's longer term growth strategy, let me first go over Slide 7, which provides a quick summary of the financial results for 2018.
Following on the momentum of recent years, we delivered very strong financial results for 2018. Our disciplined approach to investments continue to yield strong results as we deliver exceptional revenue and EPS growth as well as strong cash flows. Revenue growth in the year was driven by strong momentum in our recurring subscription revenue, which grew 10% and ABF revenue, which comprises 23% of our total revenue and grew 22%. Our 2018 expenses were in line with our expectations and guidance. We continue to take a very disciplined approach to expenses and prioritizing investments, therefore better positioning us for the coming years.
Adjusted EPS benefited from the growth in our core subscription business, which continued to be driven by exceptionally strong sales and high retention rates. Lower share count also positively contributed to adjusted EPS growth as we ramp up our repurchase activity to take advantage of the volatility in our share price. In 2018, metrics presented on Slide 8 reflect the positive impact of favorable secular trends, particularly with the continued growth in global investing, increase in index based investment strategies, adoption of ESG and factor based approaches and utilization of risk management frameworks. Our successes in 2018 also highlights the differentiated and mission critical nature of our solutions to an investment industry that is undergoing significant transformation as well as the resiliency of our business model. Despite the elevated market uncertainty we experienced in the last quarter of last year, we saw continuous strength in the selling environment across client segments with no noticeable changes to client behavior client buying behavior.
Cancels remains low, and we closed 2018 with our highest Q4 retention rate since 2,007. This strength and resiliency was fairly consistent across geographies. Even though many international markets have been in a sustained period of market pullback and volatility for 10 out of the 12 months in 2018. Even with our successes in 2018, our focus continues to be on creating additional shareholder value and maximizing returns for our shareholders. Slide 9 highlights the key pillars of our growth strategy.
We continue to see many potential areas of attractive growth aligned with our strategy within our core markets. We are increasingly confident that we have the right systems, processes and talent to identify, evaluate, prioritize and execute in flight opportunities and capture the new and the next wave of growth of the company. Our success in 2018 was a direct result of our deliberate and targeted investment in core strategic areas. For example, during 2018, we launched a significant number of new products, including new thematic indices that allowed investors to get exposure to trends such as cybersecurity, robotics, the aging society and efficient energy. A wide range of additional ESG indices were launched.
New data modules such as USA the USA module targeting specific exposures. The MSCI TADAL30 index as well as several other China Asia indices were also launched. We also continue to enhance our data and technology delivery model with improvements to our index production capabilities and the release on an important API that improves access to our content and is fully integrated into our analytics platform. Our disciplined approach to managing our investments position us to capitalize on favorable secular trends as well as drive best in class execution to maximize and returns for all of our growth opportunities. Finally, turning to Slide 10, which summarizes our long term model.
We believe we will continue to deliver attractive financial performance driven by the favorable secular trends you have heard us talk about, growth initiatives and deep, broad and client relationships. More specifically, for the long term, we are targeting a revenue growth rate of low double digits and adjusted EBITDA expense growth rate in the high single digits, which we are not targeting to accelerate unless the revenue growth accelerates. And therefore, when you put that together, we are targeting adjusted EBITDA margin rate of mid to high 50s for the longer term. We have been committed to and remain focused on delivering positive operating leverage and we plan to continue to do so. In summary, 2018 was another outstanding year for MSCI, delivering double digit top line growth, high margin expansion, record cash flows and attractive return of capital.
Our full year results demonstrate our strong track record of execution and our ability to deliver substantial shareholder value. Our disciplined approach to investments and managing our capital have paid off, and we expect to continue to invest in high return projects to drive top line growth in 2019 and beyond. We believe that long term market trends remain very much in our favor. We are confident in our long term growth prospects and we look forward to keeping you updated on our progress. We will now proceed with our questions and answer session.
There are no questions relevant to the business of the company. Thank you very much for your interest in MSCI and good day.