“We anticipate lower testing volumes to continue through the first quarter of 2023 before gradually recovering through the balance of the year.”

In context

“vered 7.5% core revenue growth. Our base business core revenue growth was also 7.5% as our core revenue growth contribution from COVID-19 testing was neutral year-over-year. Geographically, core revenue growth in both North America and Western Europe was approximately 10%. We saw healthy demand across our major end markets with customer activity and funding levels largely consistent with the third quarter. High-growth markets core revenue was up slightly. China grew low single digits, driven by robust demand in our life sciences instruments and acute care diagnostic businesses. However, the reopening efforts associated with the ending of zero COVID policies and subsequent increase in COVID-19 infections resulted in reduced patients and testing volumes in our clinical diagnostics business. We anticipate lower testing volumes to continue through the first quarter of 2023 before gradually recovering through the balance of the year. Our gross profit margin for the fourth quarter was 59%, and our operating margin of 27.4% was up 100 basis points, including 105 basis points of core operating margin expansion. This strong margin performance was enabled by the disciplined cost management, productivity measures and price actions our teams implemented to help offset the impact of inflationary pressures across our business. While there continue to be supply chain disruptions and cost pressures, we saw a modest improvement in component availability again this year and this quarter. Adjusted diluted net earnings per common share of $2.87 was up 6.5% versus last year, and we also generated $2.2 billion of free cash flow in the quarter. Now before we get into the details of the quarter, I'd like to point out some updates we've”