“we remain committed to returning approximately $2.2 billion of capital to shareholders this fiscal year.”

In context

“ed earnings per share of $1.54, near the top end of our guidance. As expected, annual contract value of our software grew 9% year over year and ended the quarter at $1.64 billion. We are updating our full-year guidance to reflect the impact of the conflict in the Middle East, and we now expect sales growth of 4.5% with underlying growth of 3%. Adjusted segment EBITDA margin is still expected to be approximately 28%, and we are raising the bottom and midpoint of our adjusted EPS guide, now expecting $6.45 to $6.55 per share. We remain confident in our second-half plans for 2026 based on the orders momentum we are seeing and the visibility we have from our backlog, which is up 9% year over year. Throughout the first half, Emerson Electric Co. completed $542 million of share repurchases, and we remain committed to returning approximately $2.2 billion of capital to shareholders this fiscal year. Finally, I want to highlight the strength of our differentiated industrial software portfolio to address concerns in the broader software market regarding AI. We are seeing healthy growth in ACV and expect to finish the year up 10% plus. Our software is based on decades of deep domain expertise and serves mission-critical applications in highly regulated industries. These applications require real-time compute and traceability of data, where being right 99.9% of the time is not good enough. Further, we are well positioned to benefit from embedding AI in our solutions. This represents a great opportunity for Emerson Electric Co. as we advance the journey to autonomous operations. Emerson Electric Co. recently deployed an AI-driven optimization solution for Aramco, one of the world’s leadin”