“In the near term, we'll maintain that approach and don't intend to resume repurchase activity until it's compatible with our long-term credit rating goals.”

In context

“over time within the limits of our middle A credit ratings. Regarding the first priority, we made capital investments of $1.6 billion in the first quarter as we continue to remodel stores, open up new locations, build upstream inventory replenishment capacity and ramp up our sortation center strategy. With 1 quarter of the year behind us, we continue to expect our full year CapEx will be in the $4 billion to $5 billion range. Regarding the second priority, we paid dividends of $497 million in the first quarter, up from $424 million last year, driven by a 20% increase in the per share dividend, partially offset by a decline in average share count. And finally, given the impact of the current environment on our financial performance, we didn't repurchase any shares in the first quarter. In the near term, we'll maintain that approach and don't intend to resume repurchase activity until it's compatible with our long-term credit rating goals. On that note, I'm pleased with our progress in strengthening our balance sheet. Even as profitability remains well below our long-term potential, we've already seen an encouraging improvement in our operating cash flows. More specifically, our operations generated $1.3 billion of cash in Q1 in stark comparison to a year ago when our operations absorbed $1.4 billion. This dramatic year-over-year improvement was driven almost entirely by changes in our inventory investment compared with last year. And finally, I want to end my review of the quarter with our after-tax returned on invested capital. For the trailing 12 months through the first quarter of this year, our after-tax ROIC was 11.4% compared with 25.3% a year ago, reflecting both the change in profitability and the increase in wo”