“We're still targeting to be around 2% of sales for the full year given the commitments that remain.”

In context

“another good story in the quarter. Cash flow improved as anticipated over the prior two quarters. We produced $1.4 billion of operating cash flow. All segments contributed to the results with particularly strong cash generation in technologies. Including capital expenditures, our free cash flow was $1.2 billion for the quarter, or 131% of net income. For the fourth quarter, we are expecting free cash flow to again be greater than 100% of net income, but we now expect the full year to fall short of our 100% conversion target as G700 deliveries pushed into 2025. As a reminder, total free cash flow generation between 2021 and 2023 was quite strong with a three-year conversion rate of 107%. Looking at capital deployment, capital expenditures were $201 million in the quarter or 1.7% of sales. We're still targeting to be around 2% of sales for the full year given the commitments that remain. We paid $390 million in dividends and repurchased a little over 150,000 shares of stock for $44 million during the quarter. We ended the quarter with a cash balance of over $2.1 billion. That brings us to a net debt position of $7.2 billion, down over $700 million from last quarter. As a reminder, we have an additional $500 million of fixed rate notes maturing in the fourth quarter that we plan to repay with cash on hand. Net interest expense in the quarter was $82 million, bringing interest expense for the first nine months of the year to $248 million, down from $265 million for the same period in 2023. Finally, the tax rate in the quarter was 16.5%, bringing the rate for the first nine months to 17%. The rate was slightly lower than expected, principally due to increased U.S. and foreig”