“In the first half of the year, we returned $3 billion to shareholders via dividends and share repurchases, and we'll continue to be opportunistic on buybacks in the second half of the year while preserving balance sheet flexibility.”

In context

“apacity assets and proactively decommission aging, less productive assets in the network. This thinking can be extended to all of our core manufacturing processes, making coating, slitting, packaging, and over time, more holistically to the design of our future network. We're also making progress on quality. In the second quarter, our cost per quality was 6.1%, down 30 basis points sequentially and 90 basis points year-over-year. We're using AI-enabled models to optimize machine settings for more efficient changeovers, leading to better utilization and higher yield. Quality is a core element of our enterprise-wide 3M excellence operating model, and we're extending our efforts to improve quality in every function in everything that we do. Our third priority is effective capital deployment. In the first half of the year, we returned $3 billion to shareholders via dividends and share repurchases, and we'll continue to be opportunistic on buybacks in the second half of the year while preserving balance sheet flexibility. In May, we announced a settlement with the state of New Jersey on PFAS claims, taking the opportunity to settle both site-specific and statewide claims with broad protections against future litigation and cash payments spread over 25 years. We continue to manage other state, federal and international matters, all of which are extensively covered in our 10-Q. On the back of the progress, we're making on our priorities and the strong results in the first half, we're increasing our earnings guidance to a range of $7.75 to $8, now inclusive of the anticipated impact of tariffs. We expect organic growth to be approximately 2% for the year, reflecting the current macro environment as we see it today. Slide 4 highlights several of the key macro trends we're tracking and their impact on 3M. All m”