“Based on our year-end asset base, we expect this change to benefit 2023 pre-tax profit by over $200 million, primarily in our Infrastructure segment.”

In context

“nd. But I'll remind you that we had over $650 million of hedging gains in 2022, which will not repeat in 2023, resulting in an impact to our profit and cash on a year-to-year basis. Second, as you know, we've taken a number of significant portfolio actions over the last couple of years, which has resulted in some stranded cost in our business. We expect to address these remaining stranded costs early in the year and anticipate a charge of about $300 million in the first quarter. We would start to see benefits in the second half and pay back by the end of the year. And then third, we regularly review the useful lives of our assets. Due to advances in technology, we are making an accounting change to extend the useful life of our server and networking equipment effective the 1st of January. Based on our year-end asset base, we expect this change to benefit 2023 pre-tax profit by over $200 million, primarily in our Infrastructure segment. Given this is a change to the depreciation, there's no benefit to cash. Looking at the first quarter, our constant currency revenue growth should be fairly consistent with the full year. Reported growth will also include about a three-point currency headwind at current spot rates. With operating leverage, we'd expect operating pre-tax margin to expand 50 to 100 basis points in the first quarter. And that's before the charge I just mentioned for the remaining stranded costs. Given the timing of currency and stranded cost dynamics, we'd expect about one-third of our net income in the first half and about two-thirds in the second half. To sum it all up, we have made a lot of progress this past year. While there's always more work to do, we're confident in the fundamentals of our business, an”