“We plan to request that our Board approved another small increase in the quarterly dividend later this year, allowing us to build on our record of annual increases while moving us closer to our long-term goal of a 40% payout ratio over time.”

In context

“business in projects that meet our strategic and financial criteria. Next, we look to support the dividend and build on a more than 50-year record of raising the annual dividend. And finally, we look to deploy any excess cash beyond those first 2 uses to retire shares over time within the limits of our middle A credit ratings. Regarding the first priority, we deployed about $1 billion for capital expenditures in the first quarter and continue to expect about $5 billion of CapEx for the full year as we invest behind the growth priorities we outlined at our financial meeting in March. Regarding the second priority, we paid $516 million in dividends in the first quarter, up slightly from a year ago, driven by a 1.8% increase in the per share dividend, partially offset by a lower share count. We plan to request that our Board approved another small increase in the quarterly dividend later this year, allowing us to build on our record of annual increases while moving us closer to our long-term goal of a 40% payout ratio over time. And finally, regarding the third priority, we did not engage in any share repurchase activity during the first quarter. Looking ahead and assuming our business continues to perform well, we should have some capacity to repurchase shares later in the year with the magnitude and pace governed by our outlook and our goal to maintain our current middle A credit ratings. Now I want to turn to our expectations for the remainder of the year. As Michael said earlier, while we're very encouraged by our Q1 performance, we have a ton of work ahead of us, and we're maintaining a cautious outlook overall. Notably, in the quarter just ended, we faced the easiest prior year comparison of the year, and we'll be facing the hardest comparison in Q2, a nearly 2 percentage point difference as we begin lappin”