Good afternoon, everyone. I'd like to welcome you all to and call to order the 2019 Annual Meeting of the Shareholders of Thermo Fisher Scientific. My name is Jim Manzi. I'm your Chairman. 1st and foremost, I'd like to introduce our directors who are here in the room with us, Nelson Chae, Doctor.
Martin Harris, Doctor. Tyler Jacks, Ms. Judy Lewent, Mr. Thomas Lynch, Mr. James Mullen, Mr.
Lars Sorensen, Mr. Scott Sperling, Ms. Elaine Yullian and Dion Whisler as well. They're all present today. We'll first conduct the formal portion of the Annual Meeting of Shareholders and then Mark Casper, our CEO, will then update you on the company's business.
And after that, we'll have plenty of time for general discussion and questions. This format allows us to complete the formal business of the meeting and then move on to matters of general interest. Sharon Bryansky, our secretary, will now introduce the company's auditors and the Inspector of Election reviewing the procedures for the annual meeting, report on the quorum for this meeting and then present the voting results. Ms. Briansky will file proof of the notice of the meeting within the minutes.
Sharon?
Thank you, Jim. Before we begin, I'd like to introduce the representative of our auditing firm, Freiswater House Coopers, who's attending today's meeting, Mike Pappetti. He's available to answer any questions you may have regarding the financial statements of the company. I'd also like to introduce our company's Inspector of Election, Thomas Watt from Broadridge Financial Solutions, has taken the oath of office and will review the meeting protocol for today's meeting. As Jim mentioned, time for questions has been reserved for after Mark's remarks.
If you wish to ask a question, please raise your hand and a microphone will be brought to you. And be considerate of others. Do not interrupt them and be as brief as possible with your questions, please. In the interest of fairness to all shareholders and in order to cover all topics of interest, access to microphones may be limited on any matter that the Chairman determines has become repetitive or has taken longer than 5 minutes. As a courtesy to other shareholders, matters of individual concern or not of general concern to shareholders should be taken up after the meeting with company representatives.
The meeting is being webcast live and will be archived on our website, thermofisher.com, through June 22. To reach a replay of the meeting on our website, click on Investors, then on Webcasts and Presentations. Various remarks that we may make at today's meeting about the company's future expectations, plans and prospects constitute forward looking statements for purposes of the Safe Harbor provisions under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Actual results may differ materially from those indicated by these forward looking statements as a result of various important factors, including those discussed in our Form 10 Q for the quarter ended March 30, 2019, under the caption Risk Factors, which is on file with the SEC. While we may elect to update forward looking statements at some point in the future, we specifically disclaim any obligation to do so even if our estimates change, and therefore, you should not rely on these forward looking statements as representing our views as of any date subsequent to today.
During this meeting, we'll be referring to certain financial measures not prepared in accordance with GAAP, The non GAAP financial measures of Thermo Fisher's results of operations referred to at this meeting are not meant to be considered superior to or a substitute for Thermo Fisher's results of operations prepared in accordance with GAAP. A reconciliation of the non GAAP financial measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measures is available under the heading GAAP, non GAAP reconciliation and financial package in the Investors section of our website. As indicated in the notice of meeting that was mailed to all shareholders, we are here today to consider the following business: election of directors for a 1 year term expiring at the next Annual Meeting of Shareholders and until his or her successor has been duly elected and qualified or until his or her earlier resignation, death or removal an advisory vote on executive compensation ratification of the selection of PricewaterhouseCoopers as the company's independent auditors for 2019. We'll consider each item in turn in the same order that they appear in the notice of meeting. The polls for each matter will open when the matter is called to a vote and will remain open until we announce that the polls are closed.
No ballots or proxies or revocations of or changes to ballots or proxies will be accepted after the polls are closed. I'll announce the preliminary results of the voting on each matter following the final closing of the polls. Voting at today's annual meeting is by ballot. However, if any registered shareholder has not voted their shares and would like to do so now or has voted their shares but wishes to revoke their proxy or make changes to their vote, please raise your hand and we'll provide you with a ballot. If you hold your shares through a broker and you have a legal proxy issued by that broker, please also raise your hand if you wish to vote now or make changes to your vote.
Okay. 90.7 percent of the shares of the company outstanding on the record date, March 27, are represented here today in person or through representation by proxy, and that constitutes a quorum for the transaction of business at today's meeting.
The first matter to be voted on is the election of directors. The 12 nominees for election are Mark Casper, Nelson Che, Martin Harris, Tyler Jacks, Judy Lewent, Thomas Lynch, myself, Jim Manzi, Jim Mullen, Lars Sorensen, Scott Sperling, Elaine Yullian and Dion Wiesler. Is there any discussion on this matter before we proceed to a vote? We'll now proceed to the vote. Anyone voting in person should complete the portion of their ballot covering this matter.
The next matter to be voted on is the advisory vote on executive compensation. Is there any discussion on this? We'll then proceed to the vote on it. And again, anyone voting in person should complete that portion of their ballot. And then finally, the last matter to be voted on is the ratification of the selection of PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP as the company's independent auditors for the current fiscal year.
Any discussion here? We will now proceed to the vote. And once again, people voting in person should complete their portion of ballot. This concludes the business items of our annual meeting. The polls, I will declare, as being closed now.
And will the usher please collect the ballots for inclusion in the final tabulation of the votes? We now have a preliminary report and the results of this meeting, which I'll ask Ms. Bryansk to read.
The preliminary tally of proxies shows that each of the nominees for Director received a majority of the votes cast by shareholders entitled to vote at the meeting, that the advisory vote on executive compensation received more than the affirmative vote of majority of the shares present or represented and entitled to vote at the meeting and that the management proposal to ratify the Audit Committee's selection of PricewaterhouseCoopers as the company's independent auditors for 2019 received more than the affirmative vote of a majority of the shares present and entitled to vote. Mr. Chairman, this completes my voting report.
Thank you. I declare that the nominees for Director for the 1 year term expiring in 2020 of Thermo Fisher Scientific have been elected. The advisory vote proposal on executive compensation has been approved. And the proposal to ratify the selection of PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP as the company's independent auditors for 2019 has been approved as well. The final vote results will be published in the current report on Form 8 ks as filed with the company by the company with the SEC.
So once again, this concludes the formal portion of our meeting. I'd now like to introduce Mark Casper, who will give you a state of the union, as it were, of our company and its prospects for the future.
Thank you, Jim. Thank you for joining us today. I'd like to give you a quick update on the company, and happily, we'll take your questions thereafter. In terms of the focus, I want to focus on who we are as a company, the customers that we serve, how we succeed and ultimately why it all matters. The world leader in serving science, Thermo Fisher Scientific, we've built a company with $25,000,000,000 in revenues, $1,000,000,000 in annual investment in R and D and an incredibly set of strong brands known by our customers for our industry leading scale and the unmatched depth of capabilities that we have to serve them.
And the capabilities continue to get strengthened because of the strength of our Practical Process Improvement business system. What really makes the company special is the 75,000 colleagues that we have and their focus and passion on enabling our customer success. We have a strong financial track record. We've grown our financial metrics in double digits since 2011. The top line growth of 11%, adjusted earnings per share by 15% and our free cash flow by 14%.
The growth strategy that we have been executing upon has resulted in very strong financial performance, and our goals are to continue that performance ahead. From the markets that we serve, we serve a very large industry, dollars 160,000,000,000 served market, an attractive market growing 3% to 5% going forward. The second point is that the mix of our customer base we have evolved to today, Pharma and Biotech is almost 40% of our revenue, up from about 27% in 2011. So that conscious execution of our strategy in serving that customer base has increased our exposure to the fastest growing portion of our end markets. And the third point I'd like to make is that the future is bright for our end markets.
The combination of favorable demographics, the scientific advances that are happening and the fact that technologies are migrating from research applications to the clinical and applied markets bodes well for the future. So we're well positioned to serve an attractive end market. When we think about success, it starts with aligning our team on our goals. Our vision for 2,030 is something that we introduced last year externally and before that internally. And it really measures what do we need to do every day, every month, every quarter and every year to ensure that we achieve long term success.
It's around continuing to build our leadership as the unrivaled leader in serving science, continuing on our journey to be one of the world's most admired companies, to have a great team that's focused on building a culture that is centered around customer success and that we will continue our unwavering commitment to innovation to have great products. And that combination of a great place to work with a great team, a strong culture and innovative products will allow us to continue to deliver exceptionally strong financial performance. How we drive success and how we execute that is around a strong organic growth strategy where we have a focus on high impact innovation, leveraging our scale in high growth and emerging markets and a unique customer value proposition for our customers. That combination drives top line growth. Our PPI business system translates that growth into a strong growth in profitability and cash flow.
And then with all of the cash flow we generate, we're able to deploy that cash flow both through strengthening the company through M and A as well as through return of capital. That generates strong EPS growth going forward. In terms of why it all matters and why it matters as an organization, it all starts with our mission. We enable our customers to make the world healthier, cleaner and safer. That noble mission allows us to attract and retain the very best colleagues who are passionate about doing business in the right way to enable our customer success, whether it's our own impact on the environment, whether it's the impact in terms of giving back in the communities that we live and work or how we operate from our footprint around the world, Our focus is on doing business the right day.
And it's more than just the metrics around this. It's about deeply ingrained in our organization about our environmental responsibility, social and governance stewardship. And then ultimately, it's our mission, right? We enable our customers to make the world healthier, cleaner and safer, whether it's helping our customers bring out the next vaccine or therapeutic, helping our customers monitor and control air and water pollution or helping governments ensure the safety of their society by providing the technologies that they need. We do our best because our customers have such noble work.
So with that, I'd be happy to take any questions and turn it back to Jim as well.
Thank you. Thanks, Mark. If there are questions, this would be a great time to ask them. Sure. Please.
Mr. Chairman, my name is Michael Picariello. I represent the Carbon Union Pension Fund that holds shares in Thermo Fisher. The Carbon Pension Funds collectively have assets of $60,000,000,000 and they hold 406,000 shares of the company's common stock. Mr.
Chairman, I would like to compliment the Board's compensation committee and staff for an excellent job formulating and providing clear disclosure of a very well conceived executive compensation plan. The starting point of aligning the plan with the company's strategic plan is excellent. The plan includes a range of complementary compensation instruments and financial and strategic performance metrics Connected to driving long term business success. The clarity of the disclosure is very good. One addition I would offer for consideration is possibly a realized additional level of compensation insight to shareholders.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
So Mike, thank you for the question. Thank you for being a large and important shareholder. And thank you for the feedback on the proxy. We actually went through a process this past year of very active shareholder engagement to improve the feedback. And we'll take your feedback now as the first of the feedback for the 2020 season in terms of preparation and improving our disclosure around realized pay.
It's an important point, and our objective of this year's proxy was to make things as clear as possible, and there's always opportunities to make it better. So we'll do that. And myself or Czambrianski or Ken Apicerno will reach out before the next one is filed and get the more insights and the details around that.
Okay. Great.
First of all, I think last year, the stock was around $2.14 around this time and are in the $2.60 So thank you for your efforts in that regard. My name is Doug Romatikus. A quick question on how is the company dealing with the China tariff situation?
Sure. So, Bill, thank you for being shareholder and thank you for the question. So tariffs, we take about from 2 different lenses. What does tariffs mean on demand for our products? And then what is the financial cost of the tariffs.
Demand has been unchanged to this point. So that when we look at what is our growth in China, how has our growth been in North America, it continues to be strong, right? So tariffs have not slowed down the kind of end market environment. When you look at the cost of tariffs, there's about a $40,000,000 cost increase this year relative to last because of the tariffs or about $0.10 a share on roughly a $12 earnings stream for just to give you the sense of the magnitude. What we have done is in our guidance is taken a number of actions to offset the impact.
So we were able to pass through some price increases in China to help offset that. We have worked hard to manage our costs and have our suppliers help us with our costs as well. So we've been able to, in a way, offset the impact, but it's meaningful. It's still $40,000,000 a lot of money in terms of the impact on the company.
Are there any other questions? I want to thank you all for coming. And if there's nothing further to come before the meeting today, I'll declare it adjourned. Thanks again. Thank you.