Ladies and gentlemen, may I please have your attention? Please take your seats. We'd like to get this year's annual meeting started. Here is our Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Greg Brown.
Good afternoon, and welcome, everybody. We appreciate your personal attendance, and we're delighted that you joined us at the annual meeting. I'm gonna begin by introducing my fellow director nominees, and then Michelle Warner will preside over the formal business of the meeting. Then finally, I will rejoin up here for a couple of minutes to talk about 2013 results and a few thoughts about our future. As I introduce the other director nominees, I ask each of them to stand up as I call their name. Ken Dahlberg is the former Chairman of the Board and CEO of SAIC, and currently serves on the board of Teledyne Technologies. Ken chairs our board's Compensation and Leadership Committee. Dave Dorman is the Lead Independent Director of our board.
Dave is also the Chairman of the Board of CVS Caremark, serves on the board of Yum! Brands, and was formerly Chairman and CEO of AT&T. General Mike Hayden is the Principal at Chertoff Group and was formerly the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency. Judy Lewent is the former Executive Vice President and CFO of Merck, and currently serves on the boards of GlaxoSmithKline and Thermo Fisher Scientific. Judy chairs our board's Audit Committee, although she was unable to be with us today. Anne Pramaggiore is the President and CEO of ComEd, and currently serves on the board of the Babcock & Wilcox Company. Anne had a family emergency and is also unable to be with us today. Sam Scott is the former Chairman, President, and CEO of Corn Products International, and currently serves on the boards of Abbott Labs and the Bank of New York Mellon.
Sam chairs our board's Governance and Nominating Committee. Brad Singer is a partner at ValueAct Capital and is the former Senior Vice President and CFO of Discovery Communications. Before we move on, I also want to acknowledge the contributions of Bill Bratton, who resigned from our board of directors after three years of service as a director to become the New York Police Commissioner in January of this year. I also want to acknowledge and thank Dr. John White for over 19 years of service as a director of Motorola Solutions. And Dr. White, personally, I thank you for all that you've done on behalf of the company. Now, for the formal business of the meeting, I'd like to introduce Motorola Solutions Corporate Vice President, Deputy General Counsel, and Secretary, Michelle Warner, who will serve as today's presiding stockholder meeting chair. Michelle?
Thank you, Greg. We will now attend to the formal business of the meeting, after which Greg will give the company report. Following Greg's remarks, the floor will be open for our general question and answer period. Representatives of KPMG, the company's external auditors, are also present and available to answer questions during this period. When you came in, you were handed a printed program, which sets forth today's agenda and includes the procedures we will follow on the back. If you do not have the program, raise your hand so you can be provided with one. I now call the 2014 Annual Stockholder Meeting to order. As a reminder, the proposals in the Proxy Statement are the only items of business that can be transacted at this meeting.
As we go through the agenda, any stockholder who wishes to comment on a specific proposal may do so during the time provided for comments on that proposal. Please limit your comments to the proposal then before the meeting. If you wish to comment on a proposal, please approach the microphone at the appropriate time. When recognized, please give your name. As a matter of courtesy to other stockholders, please limit your comments to two minutes to provide everyone with a fair opportunity to participate in the meeting. There is a total time limit of 10 minutes for the presentation and comments regarding each proposal under consideration. It is my job to enforce these procedures, so I thank you in advance for your cooperation.
The meeting is being held pursuant to a notice mailed on or about March 20th, 2014, to each stockholder of record at the close of business on March 7th, 2014. A list of the stockholders entitled to vote at this meeting has been available for the past 10 days at our corporate offices and is available at this meeting for inspection. I'm pleased to report that 223,080,928 shares of the 254,084,937 shares outstanding and entitled to vote are represented in person or by proxy at this meeting. This is 87% of the outstanding shares and represents a quorum for the purpose of this meeting.
We are a Delaware corporation, and under Delaware law, I'm required to announce the time of the opening and closing of the polls. So at 5:05 P.M. on May 5th, 2014, I now declare the polls open for all matters of business. The polls will remain open until the items of business have been presented and discussed. If there are any stockholders present who have previously voted and now wish to revoke their vote, or who have not yet voted and wish to vote, they may do so at this time. Please raise your hand. Please raise your hand, and we will collect your votes or give you a ballot. If your broker or the registered holder of your shares provided you with a legal proxy evidencing your right to vote, please be sure to turn it in with your ballot.
You may vote until I announce that the polls are closed. We intend to close the polls following the introduction and discussion of all items of business as set forth on the agenda. The first matter to be acted upon is the election of directors for a one-year term. I hereby nominate as directors for the ensuing year, until their successors are duly elected and qualified. The board's eight nominees that were listed in the company's proxy statement, they are Gregory Q. Brown, Kenneth C. Dahlberg, David W. Dorman, Michael V. Hayden, Judy C. Lewent, Anne R. Pramaggiore, Samuel C. Scott, and Bradley E. Singer. Is there a second?
I second the motion.
Does any stockholder wish to make a comment directly related to the election of directors?
Yes, I wish to speak.
Is your comment on the election of the directors?
Yes.
Okay.
My name is Bernard Lubran. I'm a long-term shareholder in Motorola Solutions, and, I'm very pleased with the company's performance this past year and over previous years. I do object to the election of three of the directors that are nominated, Michael Hayden, Anne Pramaggiore, Bradley Singer. I note that none of them are shareholders of our company, and I believe that every director should be a shareholder, not with options that are given to them, but with their own money. And I want to know, will the company consider adopting a policy in the future requiring all shareholders to have a minimum number of share holdings? And also, I would like to ask a question if there have been any bylaw changes in the past year.
Thank you for your questions. The first one is we do have a minimum holding requirement. The directors do receive DSUs, and we consider that to be equity in the company. So we, we do believe that we've met that requirement. And I don't believe there were any share, bylaw changes in the last year. I'm not sure the exact date of the amendment, but we do post current bylaws in our, on our, website, so that is a current, copy of the bylaws, and I can check on the date for you before you leave today. Are there any other shareholder comments on this proposal? There being no further comments on this topic, we will now move on to the next matter. The next matter to be acted upon is the non-binding advisory vote to approve the company's executive compensation.
The resolution provided in the proxy statement to be acted upon states, "Resolved that stockholders approve, on an advisory basis, the compensation of the named executive officers as described in the Compensation Discussion and Analysis, the 2013 Summary Compensation Table, and other related tables and disclosures in this proxy statement." Is there a second?
I second the motion.
Does any stockholder wish to make a comment directly related to the stockholder advisory vote on executive compensation? There being no comments on this topic, we will now move on to the next matter. The next matter to be acted upon is the ratification of the appointment of KPMG LLP as the company's independent registered public accounting firm for 2014. The audit committee of the board has approved KPMG, and its appointment is now formally submitted for stockholder ratification. Is there a second?
I second the motion.
Does any stockholder wish to make a comment directly related to the ratification of the appointment of KPMG as the company's independent registered public accounting firm for 2014?
Yes. I have a question. My name is Sister Valerie Heinonen, and I work for. I do shareholder advocacy for Mercy Investment Services. I'd like to ask the auditors how they, how they audit policy, for example, equal employment, diversity, human rights policy.
If I can ask that you hold that question to the end. We're right now just going through the proposals here. This is a ratification of KPMG, but I'll ask the KPMG representatives in the room to answer that question during the general question and answer period, if that's okay?
I'd rather have it now.
Does a representative of KPMG want to answer that question now?
Sorry. My name is Bruce Piller. I'm a partner with KPMG. The scope of our work with respect to Motorola is auditing their financial statements that they're presented in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles. The scope of that does not encompass things like compliance with things around equal employment or diversity initiatives.
Do you see changes in the near future since there's been so much discussion related to, well, climate change, for example, the impact it would have on human rights policies, for example, sourcing of labor and so on?
Yes, we do see greater interest these days in reporting around sustainability and things of the nature that you are speaking to. So I do see in the future that there will be more of that.
For companies like yours or?
There's a whole variety of companies that can provide those types of services, including companies like ours. Yeah, there's a wide number of choices.
Okay, thank you. Thank you.
Thank you. Are there any other shareholders who'd like to make a comment on this agenda item? There being no further comments on this topic, we will now move on to the next matter. This year's proxy statement contains a stockholder proposal, which the stockholder has titled Human Rights Policy. I will now recognize the sponsor of this resolution, who may introduce this proposal, make a brief supporting statement, and make a motion for adoption of this proposal. Proponent should limit his remarks to five minutes. In addition, please remember that a total of ten minutes will be allowed for all speakers on this topic.
Thank you very much. My name is William Somplatsky-Jarman. I work with the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), and we are one of few filers of this proposal, which you'll find on page 63, which included Mercy Investment Services. For the first time, three Swedish pension funds. I'm not sure what happened to the first or the fifth, but we got the second, third and fourth, and the United Church of Christ and their foundation. Human rights is an issue which is obviously important enough that you all have spent some time reviewing your policy as you do on a regular basis, and made some changes.
I'd just like to point out that even though it said in 2013 that whatever changes were informed by various conventions and international agreements listed in our proposal, I found note there were some specific references, Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the ILO, et cetera. There was no reference to the Fourth Geneva Convention or the Hague Conventions, which cover situations of conflict, which certainly in the Middle East, which is a big area of the company's business, would be, important to, to look at.
Secondly, I'm not quite sure when there's mention that there's a regular assessment of the policy, if that is in terms of how the policy are stated, or if there are issues that are not covered, or does it include human rights assessment of how well the policy is being implemented in different business divisions of Motorola Solutions in different parts of the world? More and more companies are turning into trying to be sure that their policies are actually having an effect and conducting such assessments. The other point I wanted to make is that we were very pleased to see in the 2012 report some information regarding inclusion and diversity, the performance of the company in terms of... Somewhat in terms of equal employment opportunity.
We could either do it later or just want to signal, perhaps the chairman can address this. The statistics that are given, however, interestingly, in terms of the global performance, only differentiate by gender and not by any other category. And it, it does provide some window into employment practices in senior management, but not in the other areas like professionals, technicians, et cetera. So further disclosure would be very helpful, so we can be sure that the commitment, which is stated in the human rights policy, is actually being implemented in how the company hires, attracts, recruits, maintains, and treats its employees. So thank you very much for the fact that you did work on it.
I hope that we can spend some time in conversation, so we get a little clarity on these issues, and, as such, I move the proposal number 4. It's on page 63 of the proxy statement.
Okay, great. Thank you. For the reasons stated in the company's Proxy Statement, including our belief that we have already addressed the concerns raised by this proposal through our comprehensive policies and procedures that address human rights, the Board of Directors recommends that you vote against the adoption of the stockholder-submitted proposal. Is there a stockholder who wishes to second this proposal to put it to a vote of stockholders?
Yes, as Sister Valerie Heinonen in Mercy Investment Services, I was specifically asked to indicate the United Church Funds in support of this proposal of what Reverend Somplatsky-Jarman spoke to. So I would like just to make that acknowledgment. Thank you.
Thank you. We'll consider that the second. Does any stockholder wish to make any further comments directly related to this proposal? There being no further comments on this topic, we will move on to the next matter. There's one remaining item of business to address, and the polls will close shortly. If you are voting by ballot and have completed your ballot, please raise your hand so that we can collect it. This year's proxy statement contains a second stockholder proposal, which the proposing stockholder has titled Political Contribution Disclosure. I will now recognize the sponsor of this resolution, who may introduce this proposal, make a brief supporting statement, and make a motion for adoption of this proposal.
Great. Hi, thank you. So the proposal is on political disclosures, and it's brought by Michael Loeb. Good afternoon, Mr. Chairman, members of the board, fellow shareholders. My name is Emily Kaiser, representing Trillium Asset Management and Michael Loeb. I hereby present proposal number five, seeking to establish greater accountability and transparency in our company's political spending. The sponsor of this proposal, together with numerous other mainstream investors, considers disclosure of political expenditures made with corporate funds and payments to third-party groups to be an important board accountability issue and a new standard in good governance. As everyone in this room is well aware, public attention and scrutiny of corporate political contributions has reached a new level of intensity in this country. Business and other interest groups donate increasing amounts of money to influence political campaigns, especially after the Citizens United case.
Indeed, an analysis of the 2012 election cycle data from the Federal Election Commission showed that outside groups spent almost $1.3 billion in political campaigns, setting a new record. The analysis also showed that almost a quarter of this amount, about $299 million, was considered dark money, of which sources of funding were unknown. There is an effective resolution, or excuse me, solution to this lack of accountability, and that is disclosure. The Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy supported this idea in his final decision in the Citizens United case.
Through disclosure," he said, "Shareholders can determine whether their corporation's political speech advances the corporate, the corporation's interest in making profits, and citizens can see whether elected officials are in the pocket of so-called moneyed interests." However, MSI ranked poorly in the 2013 CPA-Zicklin Index of Corporate Political Accountability and Disclosure, which rated the top 200 of the S&P 500 companies, scoring just 47 out of 100 points. While a review of limited reporting indicates that MSI contributed at least $500,000 in corporate funds since the 2002 election cycle, it is virtually impossible to obtain a full accounting of corporate political spending from public sources. The only way to get a full picture of MSI's contribution is for the company to disclose them.
As of the spring of 2014, well over half of the S&P 100 and approximately 100 companies overall have adopted disclosure of their political spending and implement board oversight. The leaders of these companies include Exxon, Microsoft, and MSI's peer, Qualcomm. Disclosure of political spending from corporate funds has become a mainstream corporate governance practice. We're asking MSI to disclose all of its corporate political spending so that shareholders and our board can appropriately evaluate and mitigate these risks. MSI's board of directors have a fiduciary duty to ensure that the company's assets are being used to further the long-term interests of the firm.
When MSI helps to finance the political activity of a trade association or other political organization, or uses company funds for political contributions, it is appropriate for the board to question what policy positions are being furthered and whether they're in the company's best interest. Thank you.
Thank you. For the reasons stated in the company's proxy statement, including the fact that the company complies with all campaign finance and disclosure laws, our policies and procedures for making political contributions, our trade association memberships over 50,000, and our PAC contributions are published on our website, and we believe the political contribution disclosure should apply equally to all participants in the political process, the board of directors recommends that you vote against the adoption of this stockholder-submitted proposal. Is there a stockholder who wishes to second this proposal to put it to a vote of the stockholders? Thank you. Does any stockholder wish to make any further comments directly related to this proposal? There being no further comments on this topic, we will move on.
There are no other matters that may be properly voted on before this meeting, and I ask that you complete your ballot. If you have not already done so, please raise your hand and your ballot will be collected. I now declare the polls closed at 5:21 P.M. on May 5th, 2014. I will now read the preliminary results of the items acted upon at today's meeting, each as reported by the Inspector of Election. More than 97% of the shares voted in person or by proxy at this meeting were voted for the election of each director. As a result, the 8 persons who have been nominated for election have been duly elected as the directors of the company, each to hold office for the term specified in the company's bylaws.
Approximately 98% of votes cast were voted for the approval of the company's executive compensation. Approximately 98% of the votes cast were voted for the ratification of the appointment of KPMG as the company's independent registered public accounting firm for 2014. Approximately 5% of the votes cast were voted for the resolution on human rights policy. As a result, the stockholder proposal has not been approved by the stockholders. Approximately 20% of the votes cast were voted for the resolution on political contribution disclosure. As a result, the stockholder proposal has not been approved by the stockholders. We will report the official results of the stockholder vote with respect to each proposal on a Form 8-K within four days of this meeting. I now declare the formal portion of the meeting adjourned.
It's now my pleasure to turn the meeting over to Greg Brown, who will report to you on the company's business.
Michelle, thank you. So first, I'd like to just summarize for a minute the performance of Motorola Solutions over the last 3-plus years since we split the company, and to remind everybody, we took Motorola Mobility and spun that business out. And on January 1st of 2000. Actually, a little bit before, we started trading under the new stock ticker, MSI. The performance of the firm against the Standard & Poor's and Dow Jones has been quite good. And while we're proud of that, we also are mindful that there is a significant amount of work to be done and value to be, to be created. To remind you retrospectively, a quick profile of the company. It's about finishing 2013, about $8.7 billion of revenue.
We turned 86 years old in September. We have a significant global presence and intellectual property portfolio. And this view, looking back at the end of 2013 on the bottom, illuminates the major product categories where we lead worldwide, both government, as we like to say, as well as the enterprise segment. What you see on the far right is a distribution of revenue for last year, with about $6 billion of government revenues and $2.7 billion for enterprise. Coming off of record years in 2011 and 2012, top line revenue was flat in 2013.
Gross margins were comparable, but at the same time, we drove greater efficiencies by below gross margin cost structure, taking out about $118 million, which commensurately expanded operating margins to drive the financial performance of the company even a bit stronger. Less than a month ago, on April fifteenth, we announced a very exciting transaction for the company as a whole. We decided to best position the enterprise business of Motorola Solutions. We entered into an agreement to sell that business to Zebra Technologies, a fellow Illinois neighbor, about 30 minutes away in Lincolnshire, Illinois, from where we are in Schaumburg.
And in addition to strengthening the position of the enterprise business by taking complementary products from Motorola's enterprise business with what Zebra Technologies does in asset tracking, barcode printing, asset identification, we thought it would be a very compelling end-to-end business, best owned by Zebra to further the value for them. Remaining for us, we are very excited because it says that Motorola Solutions, your company, will be singularly focused, around public safety as well as mission-critical communications for our commercial customers. This transaction is for about $3.45 billion in cash. Approximately 4,500 people will transfer to Zebra Technologies upon closing, and we expect this deal to close between now and the end of the year. What that says is, going forward, the profile of Motorola Solutions is about $6.2 billion in revenue.
We will segment report going forward, products and services, and you see the financial disposition and composition, I should say, of both revenue and operating margin. We are the worldwide leader in mission-critical communications, domestically and globally, and our services business continues to grow healthy as well. Lifecycle managed services, systems integration, and what's largely involved with doing complex implementations of the systems that we provide globally. To remind you on capital allocation, looking back from a 2013 standpoint, we returned $293 million in dividends. And from a framework standpoint, our guidepost is returning about 30% of our operating cash flow on an annual basis, for dividends.
We have a $7 billion share repurchase program, of which we have purchased $5.2 billion at a little over $50 a share, as you see, reducing the net shares by 26%, and we've been very aggressive in terms of returning capital to shareholders. We take very seriously our commitment to the community. Our emphasis is around science, technology, engineering, and math, as well as, of course, as you might imagine, given what we do, public safety, public safety grants, disaster relief. I'm particularly proud of all the Motorola Solutions employees worldwide who have done over 71,000 hours of volunteerism, and we've touched about 1.5 million plus students and teachers and first responders and community members. We take it very seriously as part of our ongoing responsibility to give back to the community.
So I think in summary, I think the company is very well positioned. There's always work to be done. We think this company can grow in the low to mid single digits. We're a leader in what we do. We have a very comprehensive product portfolio, and a lot of the fine work that's been done on the product management teams and research and development, continues to drive the growth and solidify our market position worldwide.
I think it's a very compelling investment opportunity for our customers that select product and solutions from us, and by that, I reference the return on investment, and we feel we're extremely well positioned for longer-term growth, with a backlog position of over $5 billion, and we define backlog as things that we have sold but not yet shipped, and that is about $5.3 billion, as of the first quarter, with our services backlog growing nicely. One other point I'd make is, we moved up a notch in Fortune Magazine's Most Admired Companies list. The category is network and communications equipment. We moved up to number three on that list on most admired, and I'm proud of all the employees. I thank the board, and I thank all of you, for your continued support.
That's my business summary, and I'd open it up for questions if you have any. Sir?
Chairman, thank you for that presentation, and compliments again to the wonderful work that you and the team have done.
Thank you.
My concern goes back to the concept of stock options and ownership by the board. With this additional cash and the cash that's already on the books, we're gonna have a lot of cash, and that's gonna be attractive for takeover companies. Now, our company's been around 86 years. I wish they'd stay around another 86, but with very few shares in the hands of the directors and senior management, and most in the hands of hedge funds or equity, how can—what, what is your plan regarding the use of the cash?
Mm-hmm.
Are you concerned about a hostile takeover, or are you in the planning for acquisitions by Motorola itself to broaden its base and to make it more solid and build a moat around the company?
Okay, so you asked a number of questions. Let me do my best to recount. First of all, management has significant stockholder ownership. So I think that the values of long-term shareholders and management are well aligned. I also believe the board is very well aligned as well. With the DSU, is what Michelle called deferred stock units, sir. I believe the board is well aligned with management and with shareholders as well. I might point out also that in the case of Bradley Singer and ValueAct, specifically, they're our largest shareholder. So they have as much skin or more skin in the game, and I think the alignment overall with board, shareholders, and management has been solid. We have a great company that generates cash. We don't need all this cash.
We spend about $1 billion a year on R&D, and, the new company, new MSI, or excuse me, new Motorola Solutions, looking forward, we will continue to invest several hundred million dollars in research and development to reinforce, sustain, and extend the leadership we have. We will always look at, acquisition opportunities. If it's compelling and it makes sense, we'll consider that. Given the nature of what we do, at the moment, I would expect them to be more along the lines of what we call surgical tuck-ins, as opposed to something larger than that. Our intention for cash is that we said we would, for the proceeds, $3.45 billion on the Zebra transaction, our intention is to return that cash to shareholders in a timely way. That doesn't impair our ability to grow. We have plenty of cash.
We'll generate sufficient and strong operating cash flow going forward to pump back into R&D, expand go-to-market, extend vertical market orientation beyond some of the core markets, and invest in what we call public safety LTE, which you can think about is the 4G version of public safety beyond the land mobile radio business. So we're well capitalized. We have excess cash. We expect and intend to return it, and I'm very optimistic about the future of the company. Thanks for asking. Any other questions? Yes, sir.
Thank you, Mr. Brown. I wonder if you might be able to comment a little bit on the Equal Employment Opportunity performance. I know that here in the States, we collect a lot of data. We also have a very robust civil society that promotes the concepts of equal employment opportunity, diversity, and so on. Many of the countries we operate in around the world, even if they do have laws forbidding discrimination, may not have that robust type of civil society in which you operate. So I was wondering if you could just comment on what Motorola Solutions does to ensure that its commitment to equal employment opportunity is followed in other countries besides the United States.
Sure. Well, we have a number of different policies out—thank you for your question, outside of the United States. We, on an annual basis, reevaluate them and consider whether they can be enhanced or strengthened in any regard. Equal employment is very important to the company and to me personally, as well as diversity and inclusion, and I think somebody pointed out some of the disclosures that we've done to date, and we will always look to strengthen that going forward. So, it's critically important. I think it's part of our competitiveness. By the way, just as a footnote, we were one of the companies that agreed to helping out the president, 60 or 70 companies, on the Business Roundtable, that signed a commitment to not disadvantage or discriminate long-term unemployed.
This was a comment more directed at the United States. So we're mindful of those issues, and we're very committed to the policies overall. Thank you for your question.
Question two has to do with the human rights. In the 2012 corporate report, there's a good deal, bit of attention paid to-
... Things like supply chain policies and purchasing policies from different vendors and so on. I wanna just focus a minute on moving out in terms of potential sales and services or any consultancies. Could you describe a bit about how the human rights policy informs potential business situations, and if there are any examples that you could share with us where the company has turned down potential business due to human rights considerations? I'd appreciate it.
So I can't think of an instance where we've turned it down. I'm not aware of that. Doesn't mean we haven't. I think human rights, beyond the sustainability and supply chain, is quite important. We have a number of policies around third-party sales reps, sub-subcontractors, other supplier compliance that we evaluate on an ongoing basis, and that's very important to us going forward. One example that comes to mind, that I think Motorola Solutions kind of led the way on a couple of years ago, was conflict minerals. And we were very aware of some of the human rights issues around minerals that went into certain construction around product, and literally started that work over 18 months ago, absent any requirement or mandate to do that, and I'm pleased with the organization as a whole, that we were a leader.
Being in Washington, D.C., when I've had the chance to visit legislators, I've had a number of them mention the fact that we were one of the leaders in that front. Any other questions? Yes, sir.
Yes, Mr. Chairman, again, regarding the wealth of cash that our company's going to come into, and I'm glad you mentioned about Mr. Singer and his background as a partner in an equity company. One of the mistakes that a lot of companies make is to repurchase shares when they happen to be at all-time highs. Now, today was an all-time high for Motorola, and it's a little puzzling because the company announced a drop in earnings the other day, but that's the market. But I would hope that you would avoid making the mistake a lot of companies make-
Yep.
and look at maybe returning a little more on dividends, you don't have to make a huge increase, but perhaps at acquisitions.
Uh-huh.
Because we may be the leader, but globally, there are lots of opportunities that I can imagine that might return higher return on investment than we would get from buying shares.
Uh-huh.
Just one shareholder's point of view.
I appreciate the perspective. As I said, we raised the dividend, I think it was 19% last year, 18% the year before. We'll have opportunities for the board to evaluate that, in normal due course. I appreciate your comments, and I understand them completely. I think, by the way, just as a footnote, I think, oftentimes, a stock, irrespective of a quarter or current day's events, trades on the future potential of the company.
And despite being down from a top-line revenue standpoint in Q1, in public safety, less than our primary competitor, which is a good thing, I think we're very well positioned moving forward on a number of fronts, whether it's capital structure, cash, intellectual property, product portfolio, and there will be, and very well may be, acquisition opportunities, and we'll evaluate them accordingly. Thanks for the comment. Anything else? Yes, sir.
One last question-
All right.
Mr. Chairman, do we face any political obstacles in China in breaking into or expanding into that marketplace, as other American companies have faced with strong competition from local companies that have locked out U.S. exports or U.S. investment?
Well, I remind you that Motorola Solutions, we were one of the very first industrial companies to move into China over 25 years ago, which is a tribute to the Galvins, and Bob Galvin, specifically, and his vision. We've had a great run of success there. That market's changing. Oftentimes, they sometimes look to implement local Chinese standards. On one product category that comes to mind, around wireless LAN or Wi-Fi, and we created a product that would comply to the Chinese standards. They had a cellular standard called TD-SCDMA, and we made the decision historically to provide some product to meet that. I think it's a very competitive market. Motorola's brand has significant equity in China.
It's more challenging and more competitive, but those are decisions that we'll make, and they oftentimes will come around standards, and whether we choose to invest the money around customized or indigenous, what's called indigenous standards. But overall, I still think it's a strong market. We grew 8%-9% last year in China, so the company continues to do well there. Any other questions? Not hearing any. Again, I thank you for coming today. Thank you for the questions. Thanks for taking the time to attend, and this meeting's adjourned.
Ladies and gentlemen, that concludes our 2014 Annual Meeting of Stockholders. Thank you for your attendance and your ownership of Motorola Solutions.