“We continue to anticipate strong cash flow from operations in 2023 and are maintaining our guidance range of $12.5 billion to $13.5 billion.”

In context

“corporate cash balances to persist in 2023 following the recent closure of both the Signify and Oak Street acquisitions. Finally, our new projection for interest expense is $2.7 billion, reflecting the incremental financing costs for Signify and Oak Street. We are also updating our share count guidance to approximately 1.293 billion shares as our previously announced accelerated share repurchase transaction yielded more shares than initially projected. In aggregate, the headwind of approximately $0.35 resulting from the impact of the Signify and Oak Street acquisitions and their associated financing, partially offset by underlying strength across the enterprise result in a net headwind of $0.20. This brings our 2023 adjusted EPS guidance range to $8.50 to $8.70. Shifting to our cash flow. We continue to anticipate strong cash flow from operations in 2023 and are maintaining our guidance range of $12.5 billion to $13.5 billion. Capital expenditures are unchanged at a range of $2.8 billion to $3 billion, and we continue to project an adjusted effective tax rate of 25.5%. I also want to provide an update on the progression of earnings for the year. Due to the strength of our results in the first quarter, the incorporation of Signify and Oak Street and the 340B headwind, we now expect second half 2023 earnings to be slightly more than 50% of the full year results with the third quarter modestly higher than the fourth quarter. We also want to highlight our expectations for quarterly MBRs. We continue to expect the year-on-year increases in MBR to be higher in the first half than the second half. This dynamic is due to COVID-driven lower utilization trends in the first half of 2022. We expect the MBR progression in t”