“At this point, our expectation for interest expense for the year remains unchanged at approximately $360 million.”

In context

“der 2.5% of sales for the year. Also in the quarter, we paid $360 million in dividends and repurchased approximately 1.4 million shares of stock for $288 million. That brings year-to-date repurchases to 1.8 million shares for $378 million. We also repaid $750 million of debt that matured in May and ended the quarter with a cash balance of over $1.1 billion. That brings us to a net debt position of $8.6 billion, down nearly $700 million from year-end. As a reminder, we have an additional $500 million maturing in the third quarter that we plan to repay with cash on hand. Our net interest expense in the quarter was $89 million compared to $95 million last year. That brings the interest expense for the first half of the year to $180 million, down from $193 million for the same period in 2022. At this point, our expectation for interest expense for the year remains unchanged at approximately $360 million. Finally, the effective tax rate for the quarter was 16%, bringing the tax rate for the first half to 16.5%. There’s no change to our outlook for the full year of approximately 17%. But of course, that implies a rate in the mid-17% range for the second half of the year. To shape that for you, we’d expect the rate to be somewhat lower in the third quarter and higher in the fourth due to typical timing items. Now turning to operating performance in Technologies. It was another solid quarter with revenue of $3.2 billion, which is up 7% over the prior year and continues to build on the strong start to the year we saw in the first quarter. In fact, each business grew year-over-year, both in the quarter and the first half. The measures implemented at Mission Systems to overcome what seems to be”