“We are committed to prudent financial policies, including maintenance of our current dividend, as we work to maintain and improve our investment-grade rating, and expect our leverage to return to more normalized levels as we continue to execute on margin recovery in the Aetna business.”

In context

“ments in our pharmacy services business, which were correspondingly lower than our expected cash flows in 2025. During the quarter, we returned $838 million to our shareholders through our quarterly dividend, bringing total shareholder dividend payments in 2024 to over $3.3 billion. We ended the quarter with approximately $3.8 billion in cash at the parent and unrestricted subsidiaries. Our leverage ratio at the end of the quarter was approximately 4.7 times, which remains above our long term target. During the quarter, we executed a liability management transaction that included the issuance of $3 billion of subordinated debt securities and the retirement of approximately $2.6 billion of outstanding debt principal. The net result of these transactions modestly reduced our leverage ratio. We are committed to prudent financial policies, including maintenance of our current dividend, as we work to maintain and improve our investment-grade rating, and expect our leverage to return to more normalized levels as we continue to execute on margin recovery in the Aetna business. Shifting now to our outlook for 2025, as David mentioned, we are establishing our initial full year 2025 guidance for adjusted EPS in a range of $5.75 to $6.00. Consistent with past practice, this range does not assume the recurrence of prior year reserve developments, which contributed approximately $0.18 to our 2024 adjusted EPS results. After excluding the favorable impact of prior year reserve development, our initial 2025 adjusted EPS guidance represents year-over-year growth of approximately 10% at the low end of the range. We believe this represents an appropriately achievable baseline with opportunities for outperformance. Incorporated across our guidance elements is the initial down payment on our multi-year $2 billion cost efficiency effort. Based on our work to date, we were su”