“Looking ahead to the next couple of quarters, I'd like to point out that we expect operating cash flow to be significantly below typical levels, largely due to the timing of certain payments.”

In context

“urn and making value-enhancing share repurchases after delevering our balance sheet. During the first quarter, we returned $2.4 billion to shareholders via our quarterly dividend, invested $2.5 billion in internal R&D and, as expected, business development activity was minimal in the quarter. We are committed to delivering our capital structure with a gross leverage target of 3.25x, which we expect to achieve over time. In support of that goal, during the quarter, we paid down approximately $1.25 billion of maturing debt. And in May, we will pay down another $1 billion of outstanding notes. And importantly, during the quarter, we began to monetize our Haleon stake through an initial sale of $3.5 billion, which reduced our equity position in the company from 32% to approximately 23%. Looking ahead to the next couple of quarters, I'd like to point out that we expect operating cash flow to be significantly below typical levels, largely due to the timing of certain payments. Despite this near-term pressure, clearly, our objective is to return to a more balanced capital allocation strategy over time. Now let me spend just a few minutes on our outlook for the remainder of this year. As we entered 2024, the company was highly focused on delivering on its financial commitments, and our performance in Q1 demonstrates that we are off to a solid start. With that objective in mind and the fact that it's still early in the year, we are modestly updating the earnings outlook for this year. We are raising our full year adjusted diluted earnings per share guidance range by $0.10 to a new range of $2.15 to $2.35. Looking ahead, this increase takes into consideration both our improving line of sight to our cost savings targets and continued strength in our underlying b”