“we plan to continue investing in our business with CapEx of approximately 2% of sales on an annual basis.”

In context

“ave been reassigned to other nearby stores and the team has done a fantastic job continuing to serve our customers in the area. At the end of the quarter, inventories were $25.3 billion, up $6.1 billion compared to the first quarter of 2021 and inventory turns were 4.4x, down from 5.5x last year. This level of inventory reflects outsized demand for home improvement projects, actions taken to improve in-stocks and the impact of the delayed start to spring. While our in-stock position is not back to pre-pandemic levels, it is the healthiest it has been since the pandemic began. Turning to capital allocation, after investing in our business and paying our dividend, it is our intent to return excess cash to shareholders in the form of share repurchases. As we have mentioned on previous calls, we plan to continue investing in our business with CapEx of approximately 2% of sales on an annual basis. We also plan to maintain flexibility to move faster or slower depending on the environment. During the first quarter, we invested approximately $700 million back into our business in the form of capital expenditures. And during the quarter, we paid approximately $2 billion in dividends to our shareholders and we returned approximately $2.25 billion to shareholders in the form of share repurchases. Computed on the average of beginning and ending long-term debt and equity for the trailing 12 months, return on invested capital was approximately 45.3%, up from 45.1% in the first quarter of fiscal 2021. Now I will comment on our updated guidance for fiscal 2022. As you heard from Ted, we are very pleased with the strong performance we saw during the first quarter, which surpassed our expectati”