Hello, and welcome to the annual meeting of stockholders of Pacific Biosciences of California Incorporated. Please note that today's meeting is being recorded. During the meeting, we'll have a question and answer session. You can submit your questions or comments at any time by clicking on the Q&A button or the Q&A icon. It is now my pleasure to turn today's meeting over to Christian Henry, the Chief Executive Officer and President of PacBio. Christian, the floor is yours.
Good morning, all, and welcome to PacBio's 2024 virtual annual meeting of stockholders. I am Christian Henry, President and Chief Executive Officer of PacBio, and a member of the company's board of directors. The agenda for today's meeting consists of formally addressing the proposals set forth in our proxy statement. Following the adjournment of today's meeting, the conference line will remain open, and you may direct questions about the company's business to the company's investor relations team. As provided by the company's bylaws, I will act as the chairman of the meeting. I've asked Brett Atkins, our General Counsel and Corporate Secretary, to act as the secretary of the meeting and to record the minutes. Before proceeding further, the other directors who are in attendance virtually: John Milligan, Chairman of the Board, William Ericson, Randy Livingston, David Meline, Marshall Mohr, Kathy Ordoñez, Lucy Shapiro, and Hannah Valantine.
Also in attendance virtually are Susan Kim, our Chief Financial Officer, Natalie Welch, our Chief People Officer, Michele Farmer, our Chief Accounting Officer, Todd Freeman, our Head of Investor Relations, Andrew Hoffman of Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, Betsy Branch of Ernst & Young, our independent and registered public accounting firm, and Ken Frank, our Inspector of Election. I will now turn the meeting over to Brett Atkins, who will conduct the formal part of this meeting. Brett?
Thanks, Christian. Good morning, everyone, and again, welcome to PacBio's 2024 annual meeting. The meeting is being held virtually in accordance with the company's bylaws and Delaware law. During the formal meeting, we will address the matters described in the proxy statement, which was first made available to all stockholders on or about April 29th, 2024, and is available on the company's website and the SEC's website. I have proof by affidavit that notice of this meeting has been duly given, and that the notice of annual meeting of stockholders, proxy statement, and proxy were mailed on or about April 29, 2024, to stockholders of record as of 5 P.M. Pacific Time on April 22nd, 2024, which is the record date for the meeting. A complete list of these stockholders of record is available on the virtual meeting website until the end of this meeting.
The affidavit will be filed with the minutes of the meeting. Ken Frank is acting as our Inspector of Election for this meeting. The Inspector of Election has signed an oath of office, which will be filed with the minutes of this meeting. Based on information provided by the Inspector of Election, I can confirm we have present, virtually or by proxy, a sufficient number of shares to constitute a quorum. Having been duly constituted, we will now commence with the business of the meeting. If you have previously submitted to your proxy, it is not necessary that you complete another proxy or vote. Those stockholders who have not submitted proxies and who wish to vote remotely, or who want to change their vote, please follow the instructions provided online.
After voting is completed on all matters on the agenda, we will close the polls and announce the preliminary results of the voting at the end of the meeting. It is now 9:07 A.M. Pacific Time on June 18th, 2024, and the polls for each matter to be voted on at this meeting are now open. The first item of business is the election of the company's Class II directors. As indicated in the company's proxy statement, Randy Livingston, David Meline, Marshall Mohr, and Dr. Hannah Valantine have been nominated by the board of directors to serve as the company's Class II directors with terms expiring in 2027. The board of directors recommends voting for each of these nominees.
The second item of business is the ratification of the appointment of Ernst & Young LLP to serve as the company's independent registered public accounting firm for the fiscal year ending December 31, 2024. The board of directors recommends voting for the ratification of the appointment of Ernst & Young. Third item of business today is an advisory vote on the compensation of our named executive officers. Although this vote is non-binding, the board will consider the outcome when making future compensation decisions for our executive officers. The board of directors recommends voting for the approval of the compensation of our named executive officers. The fourth item of business is the approval of an amendment of our 2020 Equity Incentive Plan to increase the number of shares reserved under that plan by 20 million shares and to make certain other changes.
Our board believes this amendment is in the best interest of PacBio and its stockholders and will allow PacBio to continue achieving its goals of attracting, retaining, and motivating our employees, directors, and other service providers through grants of equity awards. The board of directors recommends voting for the amendment of our 2020 Equity Incentive Plan. The fifth item of business is a vote to approve an amendment to the company's Certificate of Incorporation to declassify the board of directors over a three-year period, beginning at the 2025 annual meeting of stockholders. If this proposal is approved, commencing with the election of directors at our next annual meeting in 2025, all directors whose terms are expiring shall be elected annually for terms of one year.
As a result, each director elected after the annual meeting would hold office until the next succeeding annual meeting and until his or her successor has been duly elected and qualified. The Board of Directors recommends voting for the amendment to the company's Certificate of Incorporation to declassify the Board of Directors. The sixth item of business is a vote to approve an amendment to the company's Certificate of Incorporation to provide for the elimination of monetary liability of certain officers of the company in connection with circumstances as permitted by Delaware law. The Board of Directors recommends voting for the amendment to the company's Certificate of Incorporation to limit the liability of officers as permitted by law. We will now proceed to the question and comment period. You will have an opportunity to vote after discussion has taken place.
I remind you that the meeting has been called for the purposes of considering the sixth item of business previously described. Accordingly, all questions and comments should be confined to those matters at this time. The virtual webcast is now open for stockholder questions or comments concerning the business before the meeting. Any stockholder who has questions or comments, submit your questions or comments following the instructions on the meeting site. If you are voting today, you must submit your votes online at this time in order for them to be counted by the Inspector of Election. The Inspector of Election will not, will not accept votes or any change or revocation submitted after the closing of the polls. We will now briefly pause to enable those who are voting virtually to finish voting.
Okay, it is now 9:11 A.M. Pacific Time on June 18th, 2024, and the polls for each matter to be voted on at this meeting are now closed. The proxies and votes will be tabulated by the Inspector of Election. With regard to Proposal One, the election of directors, Randy Livingston, David Meline, Marshall Mohr, and Dr. Hannah Valantine, have been elected to the board of directors to serve as Class II directors. With regard to Proposal Two, the ratification of Ernst & Young LLP to serve as the company's independent registered public accounting firm, has been approved. With regard to Proposal Three, the advisory approval of compensation of the company's named executive officers has been approved. With regard to Proposal Four, the amendment to the company's 2020 Equity Incentive Plan has been approved.
With regard to Proposal Five, the amendment to the company's Certificate of Incorporation to declassify the board of directors has been approved. With regard to Proposal Six, the amendment to the company's Certificate of Incorporation to limit the liability of officers as permitted by law has been approved. These are the preliminary results of voting. The final count may vary following the final examination of the proxies and ballots. The final results of voting will be set forth in the report of the Inspector of Election and will also be reflected in the current report on a Form 8-K to be filed with the SEC. I will now turn the meeting back to Christian.
This concludes the formal business of the annual meeting of stockholders. The meeting is now adjourned. At this time, we would like to entertain questions or comments from our stockholders. If you would like to submit a question, please do so by clicking the Q&A icon. We will now pause for a moment to review any questions submitted. Before we proceed, I would like to note that during the question and answer period, representatives of the company may make forward-looking statements regarding future events or the future performance of the company, which involves risks and uncertainties. These forward-looking statements speak only as of our most recent press release, announcing results for the first quarter ended March 31st, 2024. The company disclaims any obligation to update these forward-looking statements, except as may be required by law.
Such statements are only predictions, and actual events or results could differ materially from those predictions due to a number of risks and uncertainties. I refer you to the documents the company files from time to time with the Securities and Exchange Commission, specifically the company's annual report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended December 31st, 2023, and its quarterly report on Form 10-Q for the fiscal quarter ended March 31st, 2024. These documents contain and identify important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in our projections or forward-looking statements. Okay, so we have one question. Someone is asking to discuss the declining price in our stock, our share price.
What I would say is, if you look at the life sciences tools industry, particularly genomics companies, over the last 24 months, we have seen significant declines in share prices across the industry. So we are not the only ones that have had a decline in our share price. However, one of the reasons for our share price decline is principally the macroeconomic environment that is impacting the entire industry. Specifically, high interest rates along with inflation have caused weakness across the globe, including in China, Europe, and the United States, which has had an impact on companies like ours that sell capital equipment into life science research.
However, we have best-in-class products in long-read sequencing as well as short-read sequencing, and I believe that our business model enables us to to build a great business, and we're in the process of doing that. We're very well capitalized, and we have the ability to weather weather these financial challenges that that we've seen with respect to our share price. And so we're focused on executing our business plan, enabling the world with the leading long-read and short-read sequencing technologies, and really, working towards of our our mission of leveraging genomic technologies to improve human health. And so we are hard at work on building our business, and, we'll see how the results go
Okay, I don't think there are any other questions, so, I don't see any in the queue, and I would like to thank all of you for attending today's meeting and for your interest in PacBio. We very much appreciate your attendance, and as always, thank you for your support.