“These efforts are starting to take hold and will support further gross margin expansion toward our goal of high 40s.”

In context

“sistently delivering to their customers at over 90% on time, our performance in Safety & Industrial remains well below expectations in the low 80s. It will take a fundamental shift in our approach to raise service levels to where they need to be. And we're doing this by standardizing the demand planning process, using new algorithms to improve forecast accuracy, improving supplier delivery performance, and driving consistency and reliability in logistics. These are key elements of our broader operational excellence program which continues to mature but is still in the early innings. Our goal remains to deliver 2% net productivity through sourcing efficiency, quality improvement, lean manufacturing and asset utilization, which I described last time as Operating Equipment Efficiency or OEE. These efforts are starting to take hold and will support further gross margin expansion toward our goal of high 40s. We also made progress on inventory days, which was down 2 days versus last year and 8 sequentially, ending the year at 94 days. This is just the start as our goal is to get to 75 days, freeing up cash for our capital deployment priorities, which include returning cash to shareholders. Last year, we returned $3.8 billion to shareholders, $2 billion in dividends, and $1.8 billion in share repurchases. Lastly, we continue to assess our portfolio, and we have several small actions underway. We'll update you on progress as deals are signed. Moving to guidance on Slide 5. Our strong finish in the fourth quarter gives us confidence in our ability to deliver in 2025. For the year, we expect organic sales growth in the range of 2% to 3%, adjusted earnings per share in the range of $7.60 to $7.90,”