Good morning. I'm Mark Fisher, General Counsel and Secretary of PVH Corp. I'm quite certain you're here to listen to what I have to say. So without further delay, please be aware that information provided at this meeting may include market and industry data from research, surveys, studies and publications issued by third parties and information from customers. While we believe that any such information is reliable, we have not verified it and do not represent its accuracy.
The presentation also contains forward looking statements that reflect our views as of May 30, 2018, of future events and performance. These statements are subject to risks and uncertainties, including those identified in our SEC filings. As such, our future results could differ materially from previous results or current expectations. These risks include our right to change our strategies, objectives and intentions, our need to use significant cash flow to service our debt obligations, our businesses' vulnerability to weather, economic conditions, fuel prices, fashion trends, loss of retail accounts, epidemics, war, terrorism, scarcity of raw materials and other factors our reliance on the sales of our business partners our exposure to the behavior of our associates, business partners and the celebrities and designers whose names we own and license, and the impact of new or revised legislation and regulation, such as U. S.
Tax Cuts and Jobs Act and tariffs on apparel imports. We do not undertake any obligation to update publicly any forward looking statement, including estimates regarding revenue and earnings. The presentations also include non GAAP financial measures as defined by the SEC. Reconciliations of these measures are included in our current report on Form 8 ks identified in the press release announcing this meeting. The 8ks are available on pvh.com and the SEC's website.
And now I'd like to introduce Manny Chirico, Chairman and CEO of PVH.
Good morning. Thanks, Mark. I would like to officially call the 2018 Annual Meeting of Stockholders of PVH Corp. To order. As the first order of business, I would like to introduce the directors and nominees for director who are present today, all of which are present today: Mary Baglevo Brent Kalanikos Juan Figueroa Joe Fuller Jim Marino Penny McIntyre Amy McPherson, Henry Nacella, Ed Rosenfeld, Craig Rydon and Amanda Sorie, all sitting in the front row here today with our senior management group.
Also attending today are our outside auditors, Ernst and Young, Becky Burke and David Verdamendi from E and Y are available here and will respond to any questions that any stockholders may have. The Secretary has informed me that we have an affidavit certifying the mailing of the notice of the annual meeting. The proxy statement, the form of the proxy, the annual and the annual report, it will be annexed to the minutes of this meeting. Eric Amundsen of EQ Share Owner Services, our transfer agent, has been appointed as the Inspector of Election for this meeting. An oath of Inspector has been filed and will be annexed to the minutes of this meeting.
Any stockholder who has not executed a proxy or wishes to change this proxy may vote shares in person by requesting a registration form and ballots. And if you need one, please raise your hand. The number of outstanding shares of our common stock eligible to vote as of April 24, 2018, was slightly more than 77,000,000 shares. The Inspector of Election has advised me that we have over 50% of the eligible vote represented at the meeting, and therefore, we have acquired. In fact, we have approximately 66,000,000 votes or 86% of the eligible votes represented at the meeting.
As indicated in the proxy statement, we have 3 matters to vote upon at this meeting. After the introduction of each matter, you will be given the opportunity to comment on the specific proposal. Please hold all other questions until the question and answer period later in the meeting after I do the business review. The meeting is now open to consider the election of 12 directors for the coming year. May I please have the proposal?
I move that the stockholders of PVH Corp. Electives Directors, Mary Baglivo, Brent Kaliknikos, Emmanuel Chirico, Juan Figuereo, Joseph B. Fuller, V. James Marino, G. Penny McIntyre, Amy McPherson, Henry Nacella, Edward R.
Rosenfeld, Craig Rydon and Judith Amanda Sorie Knox to serve for a term of 1 year, expiring at the Annual Meeting of Stockholders in 2019 as set forth in the proxy statement for this meeting.
Are there any questions or comments about this specific proposal? There being none, does anyone need to vote for this proposal and need balance? There being none, I'll move to the next matter. The meeting is now open to consider the approval of an advisory on an advisory basis of the compensation paid to the company's named executive officers. May you please have the proposal?
I move that the stockholders of PVH Corp. Approve on an advisory basis the compensation paid to our named executive officers as disclosed pursuant to the rules of the Securities and Exchange Commission in the proxy statement for this meeting. Are there any specific questions on this proposal? Does anyone need a ballot to vote for the proposal? There being none, I'll move to the next matter.
The meeting is now open to consider the ratification of the appointment of Ernst and Young LLP as auditors for the current fiscal year. May I please have the proposal?
I move that the stockholders of PVH Corp. Ratify the appointment of Ernst and Young LLP as independent auditors of the company for the fiscal year ending February 3, 2019, as set forth in the proxy statement for this meeting.
Are there any specific questions on this proposal? Does anyone need a ballot for this proposal? There being none, I'll move to the next matter, which is the business review. PVH is, as you know, one of the global leaders in the apparel industry. We're the 2nd largest apparel company in the world.
This just gives you a sense of our scale, approximately $9,000,000,000 in global revenues for the company. We're driven by our strategic priorities, which are a laser focus and drive to drive consumer engagement. We continue to try to expand our worldwide global reach. We continue also to invest in our platforms, our systems and then, of course, in our people by trying to develop their talents and giving them every opportunity to grow their careers here and to continue and as I've always said, our people are our most valuable assets. And then the business model is inherently cash flow positive.
We generate a significant amount of cash, which we've been able to invest back in the business to continue to drive our key brands forward and to also make appropriate returns to our shareholder base. We live and we operate our company by our core values. Diversity and inclusion are key among those. We really try to have allow our associates to be individuals to feel comfortable working in our environment. We try to build partnerships across the organization between our business and our divisions and our departments, our call centers and our global platforms.
If you work here, you know the passion that our associates have for the business and for the way we conduct our business around the world. And with everything we do, integrity is critical to how we run this business, having transparency to our shareholders and our other stakeholders and always trying to do the right thing for our owner base and our other stakeholders. And I think the other thing you'll find about the company is we are highly accountable for our results. We put forth what we plan to deliver each year. We hold ourselves to a high standard, not only how delivering the results, but how we conduct our business around the world.
And what I always say is we're very proud of our results, but we always have to be measured by more than just our bottom line or our balance sheet. We're very laser focused on having a positive impact on the environment, on our people and the communities where we live and operate, constantly looking to give back to those communities, constantly looking to make the environments where we work safer for our supply chain associates and safer for our partners that are in the value chain that we build across the globe. These are just some of the achievements we've had this year. We've expanded our 3 year partnership with World Wildlife Fund to preserve and protect the water resources around the world. We have a number of programs.
We're expanding our stewardship, a real focus in Africa, Asia, particularly China and Bangladesh, in particular, where we're focused as well as India to really have a focus on the environment where we operate. We've expanded our involvement with the UN, and we've really taken on the UN Global Rights Principles as part of our core strategy, how we operate our business around the world. And we continue to support Save the Children as our global sponsor, about where we try to give back to the community, focusing on early education and career development in the U. S, in China and in Bangladesh as well as starting up a new program in Ethiopia with a factory that we've opened there in the last 12 months. The company has had a rich history of delivering strong financial results over a period of time.
We always go back to 2,003 when we made the Calvin Klein acquisition approximately 15 years ago. And during that 15 year period, we have a record of 13% revenue growth during that period and 16% earnings per share growth. We have 3 distinct business groups that are critical to our growth. Our largest business brand is Calvin Klein with over $9,000,000,000 in global retail sales and a history of continuing to grow that business, particularly where we're seeing tremendous growth internationally the last few years. Tommy Hilfiger business continues to expand and grow, about a $7,500,000,000 business today, exceeding our growth expectations this year and looking to continue to see strong growth here in the United States and around the world.
And then our heritage businesses, which is the platform that built the company, some of the key brands there are Van Usen, our Arrow, our Izod, our Speedo and Warner's brands there, making up just under $3,500,000,000 of sales, having a very strong performance, particularly here in North America that continues to drive that business this year. We're coming off a very strong Q1 where we reported $2,300,000,000 of revenues, which exceeded our guidance and was 16% growth for the quarter. Our earnings per share came in at $2.36 which was a 43% growth over the prior year's Q1, exceeding significantly exceeding the guidance that we set up for ourselves by about at the top end of the guidance by about $0.11 a share. And we were, at the same time, able to take up our guidance for the year. For 2018, we're looking for 6% top line overall growth, taking us to about $9,500,000,000 of revenues, and we're looking for earnings per share growth of approximately 15% next year.
And we feel that we're well positioned if the trends in the business that we've seen and that I've talked about extensively on the Q1 earnings call were to continue that we can continue to exceed the guidance that we've given The Street. We feel very optimistic about our business, but in the context of living and we're operating in a very uncertain environment today. The only thing that's certain is that there's change and that there's volatility, be it on the trade front, be it on the foreign currency front or just the general business environment that we're dealing with around the world in every region of the world as we go forward. We've built the company over the last 15 years through internal growth and the ability to take on significant acquisitions at the same time. We've used our balance sheet very efficiently to drive that growth.
And you could see post the acquisitions, post the Wanaco acquisition, which was at the end of 2012, during that 4 year to 5 year period, we'll pay down we have paid down approximately $2,000,000,000 of our debt. The balance sheet is very well positioned. It positions ourselves for growth and positions ourselves to make further acquisitions if those arise and meet our strategic guidelines. And since we hold ourselves highly accountable for our financial results, we also measure ourselves from our corporate responsibility initiatives. And one way to do that is some of the external awards that we've won as a company.
We're very proud of these, not to pound our chest, but I think it's just a recognition of the efforts that we've had. Some of the ones I just a couple that I really want to touch on is Forbes Best Employer for Diversity and then our continued position on CR Magazine's top 100 companies in the world. We were ranked number 1 for apparel companies last year on that list, and we're very proud to be on that list, and I think it's indicative of the type of company and how we try to operate the company at the highest levels. And with that, I will open up the meeting. If there's any questions that anyone would have, I'd ask them to identify themselves and ask the questions.
Yes, sir. Just wait for the mic, please. And please thank you.
Yes. Good morning. My name is Howard Tynbaum, shareholder. I just have 3 areas, types of questions I want to ask you. On the annual report on pages 30, 38, you mentioned about in the Tax Act and I just want to know, I know previously our effective tax rate was previous year was fiscal year was 33.7 percent and of course now it's going to go down to 21%.
So my question is, what are we going to do with the tax? How much tax savings do you estimate we will have in the upcoming year in terms of your guidance and what we're going to do with the tax savings and whether we're going to expatriate any cash back here in the U. S. In that regard? And my second area, do you want me to answer that or do you want me to run by all 3?
I'll answer the question. For us, when you look at the given the fact that 60% of our earnings are outside the United States, we will have a tax savings this year. And as we look out beyond that, we expect our tax rate overall to be relatively flat. There will be some savings, and I think we will continue to look at the opportunity to return capital back to our shareholders in the form of probably stock buybacks and we'll look at our dividend, but I think stock buybacks has been our preferred method to do that. And secondarily, I think we've been very clear, one of our major priorities is potential additional acquisition, be it of another brand or be it of a geographic area where our current brands are operating potentially under licenses and potentially take those back.
So we'll be looking particularly in those two areas. We've talked about some of those areas with all of our shareholders and we've identified them in the annual report, and I think we'll look very hard at those areas.
Okay. So in other words, you don't intend to bring any expatriating cash?
That's fair. I'm sorry, I missed that question. Most of our cash is not trapped overseas like some of the larger public companies. So I think there is some limited opportunity to bring some cash back. But if you look at our growth, a lot of our growth is occurring internationally, particularly in Asia and also in Europe.
And we've clearly been we've benefited from making investments in that part of the world. So I think we'll look at the balance of how our cash is positioned and determine where the best use of that cash is from a geographic point of view. But there's very little limitations that we have about moving cash around the
globe. Okay. My second of the three questions is this, concerning proposed tariffs as well as renegotiation of NAFTA, will that have any adverse effect in terms of our company, any material adverse effect from what you see
in the fall? Let me take the last piece first on NAFTA. I think we're big supporters of NAFTA, not necessarily because it's a huge benefit to our value chain and supply chain because we don't I would say those countries, relatively speaking, are a very small portion of our supply base. We're very supportive of NAFTA because we think it's been good for the United States. We think it's been good for North America.
We think it needs to be modernized. It is 20 years old and needs to move forward. And we support all those initiatives to move it forward. And we look we feel the impact that NAFTA will have on us with a continuation of this threat of tariffs on both sides of the border, that threat psychologically has the effect of impacting our consumer and impacting the great American brands that we own that the international markets and international consumers want today in great demand, we do get concerned about tarnishing those brands as we go forward. With the also understanding that we do recognize the treaties need to be modernized and brought up to speed, we encourage all three countries on the NAFTA side to continue to work together in a positive fashion to move this forward because we think it's in the best interest of all three companies.
Tariffs, just we don't work as an appropriate and efficient way to work with partners around the world. We think carrots are better than sticks. We don't think tariffs into China makes sense. We don't think tariffs out of China makes sense. We also recognize that there are challenges with some of our trade arrangements and that those also need to be modernized.
And we support the administration's move with China to modernize those agreements and work positively as they go forward. I think we all can do it a little less brinkmanship as we go through these negotiations. And we continue to really impress on the administration that long term tariffs just don't work and make sense. Tariffs, as they've been proposed so far, don't appear to be directly impacting our industry yet. There's some tangential impacts that have an impact on us.
But clearly, as you get into the broader scheme, China is a major source of goods for us. It's probably our 2nd largest import company country today. And tariffs there would have an economic impact, have a bigger economic impact on the U. S. Consumer, and we would really just need to understand how that all shakes out.
Hopefully, comma heads prevail and we can move forward as we've always had with our partners around the world together.
And last is this, in terms of cryptocurrencies, have we had any transactions in cryptocurrency or do you anticipate doing any future transactions regarding with cryptocurrencies down the road?
I think the technology is very interesting for us. Our use of cryptocurrencies has been close to 0, very small. It just hasn't been a major factor at this point. And we'll continue to explore if there's any rationale. We're concerned about all the volatility that people talked about.
We're concerned about a number of levels issues, but at the same time, we're not ignoring it.
Thank you very much.
Thank you for your questions. Are there any other questions? With that, I'd like to move on to the voting results. The voting has concluded, and I'll ask Michelle O'Donnell, Secretary of the company, to read the results of the vote.
The Inspector of Election has certified to the results of the matters voted upon at this 2018 Annual Meeting of Stockholders. The certification, which will be appended to the minutes of this meeting, provides in part that the Annual Meeting was held pursuant to notice duly given. The inspector was sworn to execute faithfully the duties of Inspector of Election with strict impartiality and according to the best of his ability. There were present in person or by proxy holders of 65,998,554 shares of common stock or 85.64 percent of the shares eligible to be voted at the meeting. A quorum for all purposes was present at the meeting.
Each of the 12 nominees for Director received a majority of the votes cast and was declared to be duly elected for a term of 1 year. The advisory proposal to approve the compensation paid to our named executive officers was approved by 94% of the votes cast and was declared to have been duly adopted. The resolution ratifying the appointment of Ernst and Young LLP as auditors for the fiscal year ending February 3, 2019, received an affirmative vote of the majority of the shares present and was declared to have been duly adopted.
I'd also like to thank Michelle for and Mark Fisher for all their hard work in preparing for the shareholders meeting. And there being no further business for this for our shareholders, I thank you all for coming. I thank you for your support throughout the year. And this meeting is now adjourned. Have a great day, everyone.