Welcome to Solstice's virtual shareowner meeting. Please note that this webcast will be recorded and will consist of copyrighted material. You may not record or rebroadcast these materials without the company's consent. I will now turn the call over to the Solstice team.
Good morning, and welcome to the inaugural Solstice Advanced Materials 2026 Annual Meeting of Shareowners. This is Rajeev Gautam, Chairman of the Board of Directors of the company. It is my privilege to serve as the first Non-Executive Chairman of the Board, having previously served in leadership roles of the businesses that are now part of Solstice. I have seen these businesses perform exceptionally well over the past two decades, and I am excited to continue to be involved with our continued growth and innovation. I believe that we have a board that aligns with the range of skills, perspectives, and background experiences needed to enable effective oversight and guide Solstice as a standalone public company. I look forward to continuing to work closely with David, serving as a sounding board for him in and outside of regular board meetings on business developments and Solstice's strategic direction.
We appreciate your investment and confidence in Solstice, and we look forward to a productive first Annual Meeting. I hereby call this meeting to order. With that, I will turn the meeting over to Brian Rudick, our Senior Vice President, General Counsel, and Corporate Secretary.
Thank you, Rajeev. Proper notice of the date and time of the meeting has been given to all shareowners as of the record date. All of our directors are attending the meeting, including Rajeev Gautam, David Sewell, Peter Gibbons, Fiona Laird, Rose Lee, William Oplinger, Sivasankaran Somasundaram, Matthew Trerotola, Patrick Ward, and Brian Worrell. Members of our senior leadership team and representatives of Deloitte, our independent auditor, are also in attendance. Debbie Daisley from American Election Services has been appointed as Inspector of the Election for the meeting and has joined the meeting. She has certified that enough shares of common stock are present or represented by proxy at today's meeting to constitute a quorum for the transaction of business. Therefore, I now declare the meeting properly convened for consideration of the items of business set forth in the proxy statement.
The agenda for the meeting appears on your screen, and you can access the rules of conduct by clicking the link at the bottom right-hand corner of the screen. For those of you who wish to vote during the meeting, the polls will open for one minute shortly after all proposals have been presented. Questions submitted in advance of the meeting that relate to one of the proposals to be voted on during the business portion of the meeting will be addressed when the proposal is presented. There will also be a question-and-answer period at the end of the meeting. We will use that time to answer general questions submitted by shareowners. To submit a question during the meeting, please use the text box on the virtual meeting portal. When submitting questions, please include your name and email address.
With that, I will turn the call over to our President and CEO, David Sewell, for opening remarks.
Thank you, Brian. I would like to thank everyone who has joined us today, including our board, our leadership, our employees, and our shareowners. Welcome to our first ever Annual Shareowners Meeting. 2025 was a transformational year for Solstice as we completed our spin-off from Honeywell on October 30th, 2025. We are now advancing toward our goal of becoming the world's premier specialty materials company. We are excited about our prospects for growth. Since completing our spin-off from Honeywell, our aim at Solstice has been to become the world's premier specialty materials company and to do so with an unrelenting focus on meeting the needs of our customers through innovation and collaboration.
We take great pride in blending the benefits of our 130-year history of innovation in specialty materials and chemicals with the agility of a startup that can quickly respond to customer needs and direct resources to the most promising growth areas. Because of the exciting markets we serve, Solstice is at the inflection point of several secular trends that we believe are on track to grow faster than global GDP in the respective markets for a sustained period. These trends include the ongoing energy and environmental transition, especially featuring increasing demand for nuclear energy, the impressive growth in advanced computing, data centers, and AI applications, and the rising need for personal safety and defense solutions. We are investing in each of these areas to ensure we have differentiated technology in place, both to meet today's needs and to anticipate the needs of tomorrow.
For example, since Solstice became a public company, we have already announced plans to invest over $400 million in order to expand and modernize our electronic materials facility in Spokane Valley, Washington, which enables the next generation of semiconductor fabrication. Expand production at our ballistic fiber manufacturing facility in Colonial Heights, Virginia, which produces fiber and composite materials used in helmets, vests, vehicle armor, and naval applications. Finally, debottlenecking our Metropolis Works Illinois facility to increase production of uranium hexafluoride used for nuclear conversion. It is highly gratifying to talk about Solstice's capabilities and the many significant investments we are making to support our customers, which also meet our high ROIC hurdle. None of our achievements would be possible without our exceptionally talented and motivated workforce. Our unique culture makes Solstice a highly desirable place to work.
Our people are highly collaborative and eager to work with each other and with our customers toward the best outcomes. If there's a secret behind our current and future success, it's our people. Solstice has already come a long way in the short time since establishing our independence, but w e are just getting started. On behalf of the board and our 4,100 exceptionally talented employees, I would like to thank you for your support and confidence in Solstice. I'll turn the call back over to Brian.
Thank you, David. Let's now proceed to the business of our meeting. The proposals we will vote on are fully described in our 2026 proxy statement. There are four management proposals to be voted on. The first proposal is the election of directors. Our four director nominees are Peter Gibbons, former Group President of Enterprise Supply Chain at 3M, Rose Lee, Executive Chair and Interim CEO of Resource Label Group, William Oplinger, President and CEO of Alcoa, and Patrick Ward, former Vice President and CFO of Cummins. The proxy statement contains more information relating to the four nominees standing for election. The Board of Directors has recommended a vote for each of the four nominees. We did not receive any questions or comments related to this proposal.
The second proposal is to ratify the audit committee's appointment of Deloitte & Touche as the company's independent registered public accounting firm for 2026. The Board of Directors has recommended a vote for this proposal. We did not receive any questions or comments related to this proposal. The third proposal is an advisory vote to approve executive compensation. The Board of Directors has recommended a vote for this proposal. We did not receive any questions or comments related to this proposal. The fourth proposal is an advisory vote to approve the frequency of the shareowner advisory vote on executive compensation. The Board of Directors has recommended a vote of one year for this proposal. We did not receive any questions or comments related to this proposal. I now invite shareowners who wish to vote to do so by clicking the Vote Here button on your screen.
The polls are now open for voting and will remain open for one minute. If you have already cast your vote by submitting a proxy or by voting online, then you need not vote again unless you would like to change your vote. I now declare the polls closed on all items of business. I have received a preliminary report of the Inspector of Election who has certified the results of the voting as of the time of the report. The results are: each director nominee has received a majority of votes cast in favor of his or her election; t he appointment of Deloitte as the company's independent registered public accounting firm for 2026 has been ratified; t he advisory vote to approve the compensation of the company's named executive officers has passed; a n annual frequency for the advisory vote to approve the compensation of the company's named executive officers has been approved.
Final voting results will be filed with the SEC on Form 8-K when they are available. The Form 8-K will also be available on our website. The final report of the Inspector of Election will be filed with the records of this meeting. This concludes the business portion of the meeting, which is now adjourned. We will now turn to the Q&A portion of the meeting. During this Q&A session, I will read questions submitted to us by shareowners and invite David to respond. In order to cover a wide range of topics, I will combine similar questions into one and limit the session to questions that are of general concern to all shareowners.
We will respond to questions that are individual in nature by directly sending a message to the email address submitted with the question. We have one timely shareowner question. David, can you provide an update on the timing of any new Solstice nuclear conversion capacity?
Well, nuclear is an area we're really excited about. Given the accelerating industry growth trajectories, we previously announced that we've hired an EPC firm to do initial feasibility work for us as we contemplate even further investments. While we don't have an update to provide today, we hope to be in a position to provide an update later this year. As a brief reminder, we will be hosting an informational webinar on our nuclear business on Thursday, June 4th at 10:00 A.M. Eastern, which will be a great opportunity to learn even more about this business.
Thank you, David. We've reached our allotted time. We will respond to any unanswered questions of general concern to all shareowners by posting the questions and answers on our investor relations website soon after the meeting. Similar questions will be combined. Thank you again, and I will now turn the meeting back over to Rajeev.
Thank you, Brian. To all our shareowners, thank you for your continued support of Solstice, and we look forward to engaging with you in the months and years ahead. With that, we will conclude our first Annual Meeting.
The conference is now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.