“In addition, the upcoming spin-off our Health Care business will further strengthen our balance sheet.”

In context

“l management, especially inventory, continues to yield results. Inventory was down $550 million year-on-year and is now at 14.8% of sales, a 90 basis points improvement year-on-year. I am pleased with the progress to-date and see significant opportunity to further improve performance in all aspects of working capital. Adjusted capital expenditures were $308 million, down 32% versus last year's abnormally high fourth quarter. For the year, we invested over $1.4 billion versus an expected range of $1.3 billion to $1.5 billion. And finally, we returned $828 million to shareholders via dividends during the quarter. Turning to the balance sheet. Net debt at the end of Q4, stood at $10 billion, a decline of $2 billion year-on-year or 17%. 3M continues to be a reliable and robust cash generator. In addition, the upcoming spin-off our Health Care business will further strengthen our balance sheet. As Bruce mentioned, we anticipate receiving a 1x dividend from Solventum at an initial leverage of 3x to 3.5x EBITDA. We will also retain a 19.9% equity stake, which will provide additional liquidity. This combined with our existing strong capital structure provides us with the ability to continue to invest in the business, return capital to shareholders and meet the cash flow needs related to ongoing legal matters. Now please turn to Slide 10 for a discussion on our business group performance. Starting with our Safety and Industrial business, which posted sales of $2.7 billion, down 3.9% organically. The expected decline in demand for disposable respirators was a headwind of approximately $50 million negatively impacting segment organic growth by 160 basis points. Organic growth was led”