Great. Thanks everyone for joining us this morning. I'm Vijay Kumar, the MedTech and Life Science Tools Analyst at Evercore. Pleasure to have with us Becton Dickinson. Representing the company, we have Rick Byrd, EVP, President of BD Interventional, and the CFO, Chris DelOrefice. Chris and Rick, thank you both for joining us this morning. Yeah, thanks for having us. Good to be here. Fantastic. So Chris, maybe I'm going to start off with you. You know, when I look at your Q4 stock reaction, it's a pretty unusual reaction, you know, for BD. General view is BD is a pretty steady idea, and the volatility was something that caught people off. When I just think about the you know, guidance and the cadence here, Q1, right? You know, I guess the comment was expectation was double-digit EPS, and that was changed to, like, mid-singles. Why is FX having such an outsized impact for Becton Dickinson, right? Wasn't this something that was- Mm-hmm ... known, like, a couple of months prior to guidance? Maybe just walk us through on the guidance. Yeah, sure. Happy to. Thanks everyone for taking the time. Hope everyone had a good holiday, those celebrating Thanksgiving. So yeah, look, earnings call. Well, let me walk through the components of the guide, because there's really a lot to be excited about in the BD story. The only change versus what we shared, call it in August, and our commitment to top-line growth of five to 5+, and we've always characterized our earnings growth as double digits on an FX-N basis. It's obviously hard to predict. FX, there was literally one thing. When we talked in August through, call it, the early conferences in September, we were in, like, a net neutral FX position. FX literally moved that much in a three-month period. Some unprecedented movements that happened, both translational, transactional. We can certainly talk more about that, but the only reason we're having this discussion is because of FX. Everything else remains largely intact. And it's very difficult when you get that degree of movement, timing of movement, and mix of movement. When I say mix, for-- I'll give you an example, the Mexican peso strengthened against the US dollar to a degree that hasn't existed in 5+ years, and Mexico's an important sourcing location from us, where we get efficient manufacturing. And again, the timing of that was something that's just-- it's hard to pivot and adjust your organization to think of absorbing that quickly. With that said, the year is not over. We have a lot of good stuff in front of us, and we're going to continue to work hard. But I do think it's important to kind of unpack the guide, right, and like what was sort of true to what we've been doing. And maybe some of the questions that folks have had since I've you know been having various investor discussions. So first of all, growth, I think very much intact, right? 5%-7.5% at the midpoint of our guide, extremely strong growth rate. That includes absorbing another small step down in COVID-only testing. If you exclude that, it's really about 6%. That does include the benefit of Alaris coming back and getting that cleared, but growth is very much intact. As a matter of fact, our two-year growth rate, past two years, is about 7%. If you include this guide, it's just over 6.5% organic growth. So really strong there. Margin. We've been first quartile in managing margin over the past couple of years, since 2021, since we launched our Investor Day. We're going to have another year of margin growth. In 2023, we actually delivered on our original Investor Day commitment that we had set of about 400 basis points. We got back to pre-pandemic margin levels. We were 70% on the way towards our goal to get to 25% by FY 2025. And we're still improving margin by 50 basis points, despite all some of these other dynamics that we're going to talk about, including FX. FX is about a 75 basis point drag on margin in a year. If you exclude that, it would be well north of 100 basis points. When we think of margin, we do think of growing over FX, and we're doing that. So really well positioned from that standpoint, moving 80% towards our 25 by 25 goal. We absolutely have strong line of sight to 25% by 2025. We're still tracking ahead and pacing ahead of the goal, and we have more tailwinds coming as you think of 2025, whether it be Alaris, whether it be the getting more benefit out of our Recode programs or what we're doing from a manufacturing excellence. We can talk more about that. All that translated to a midpoint of our EPS guide, excluding FX, of 9.25%. It's our first guide for the year. Remember, we divested our V. Mueller business. That's worth 75 basis points of lost EPS. If you exclude that, you're double digits. Double digits is well within our range on an FXN basis. Additionally important to note, because there are some things in our guide this year that were around cash management. We're really focused on improving our cash conversion. We had a 14-point improvement in cash conversion this year. We grew our operating cash flow by 20%, our free cash flow by 40%. We made some intentional choices around inventory management, taking inventory down to keep improving cash flow in fiscal year 2024. It's going to give us more firepower for M&A, gives us more capital allocation flexibility. As a matter of fact, if anyone looked and had the chance to read through the multiple pages of the 10-K, we did actually formalize. We always do share repurchases to avoid any dilution from share-based compensation, but we did an outsized version of that. We've more than doubled it. It's about $500 million, capitalizing what we think is a very attractive price in the marketplace. So, we'll continue to look at that. You know, we have $1.4 billion in cash before doing this, so, you know, cash is earning strong interest, and we want to preserve firepower as well for M&A. We don't want to lever up just for call it a short-term impact when we think we have strong runway, but something we'll keep looking at. So I think all that's intact. Then when you get to the reported guide, it was all FX. And again, I don't know, maybe it's not fully appreciated, but literally again, sitting there August, September, it was either immaterial or almost no year-over-year FX impact. And then just the, again, the degree and mix of movement created an FX headwind that was hard to pivot to and cover north of 300 basis points. Some of that's just translational, by the way, which has no underlying economic impact that you shouldn't want me to cover, right? It's about 100 basis points of that. I think where there were questions was the dislocation on the bottom line, and some of that is the dynamics of, like, our sourcing structure, the Mexico dynamic that I outlined. Again, the year's not over. We're gonna work hard to see what we can get back. It's just the timing of all that happening and in good faith, being able to kind of lean in and commit to absorb all that day one, would have been challenging. I think the other question I've got asked, right, is where are—can you do 5+? Can you do 10 on the bottom or double digits, however you think of it? The past two years, including this guide, 2024, on a FXN basis, like 100%, like I said, top-line growth will be about 6.5% organic. Bottom line, we're well north of double digits. I think what's gotten a little bit lost in maybe the BD story is we had a spin. Like, obviously, you can't look back at past earnings and, and you have to sort of reset BD. Value was given, you know, with a spin there. And then we had $2 billion of testing revenue in 2021. Take testing out, you can... We didn't get any credit for it anyway. We're trying to drive a, a base business that can deliver this five, 5+ double-digit growth. We've been pretty prescriptive in sharing kind of like what a margin drop-through looks like on testing. You can run it at any number you want, but if you look at our base, even including FX, so now I'm pivoting to a reported metric, our CAGR through this period will be 14% base earnings growth, inclusive of FX headwinds, including this year. So the question of like, can BD do that? Yes, we can do it with a strong growth profile, we can do it with the outsized margin we've been driving, and that's what we're doing. There's been a little bit of an anomaly here with the timing of FX, but, you know, we think, you know, as we look at our guide, like we feel good about where we are and the, call it, upside opportunities we have that we're gonna try and deliver. Just, maybe on, some of those comments here, Chris. Where are we on FX? Has FX changed since guidance? You know, you mentioned sourcing, in a manufacturing sort of impact. Anything, any changes there? And when you say a commitment to 25% margins by 2025, is that on a reported basis, Chris? Is that the commitment or- We typically quote that on a reported basis. Yeah, so we're still well on track there. I mean, FX, you have to look at every currency. The peso hasn't moved in the right direction, but all the, like, the core, like euros, moved in the right direction. So if it plays out like last year, last year, it's actually, if you go back to our 2023 guide, the same thing happened. A bit different because it was a lot more translational versus the dislocation you got. But we had over 400 basis points, negative headwind on top line and bottom line on FX. Yet as the year progressed, we got a good portion of that back. It was about half of it back, or so just based on the natural FX movement. So it looks like the main, like the euro, the British pound, they're moving in the right direction. You have to start getting to its timing and averaging that happens over the time period. So certainly, we'd be happy to see it keep moving in that direction, and if it's there, that'll be part of the equation to give that back. Understood. And then, you know, tax was another drag for the guidance. Why did tax go up for fiscal 2024? Yeah, tax, tax was something that was expected. I mean, actually, if you go back and look historically, BD's tax rate has probably been more in like call it a 14%-16% tax, tax range. There's a series of things as you went through COVID and mixed dynamics of where your COVID testing was, and innovation and combination of discrete items, et cetera, that, that affect that. We haven't had significant benefit from tax over the past few years, and we've been more absorbing that within our, our growth rate. So I, I would call it more of a, a normalized tax rate, nothing major there. I see. And then, on our Q1 guidance, I think this cadence really caught people off, Chris. I think $0.55-$0.60 of EPS headwinds for Q1. Yeah. I think you called out top line, some headwinds from respiratory. When I look at your Q1 last year base business, right, I think that was the easiest comp. So, you know, that tougher comp from respiratory never—it was hard to digest. Maybe give us some— Sure. -flavor. Yeah. I'll come back to the growth. The growth is the smallest driver of the EPS dynamic. It's the biggest item is tax. We had a discrete tax item in Q1 last year that had us at, like, a 6% effective tax rate. So whenever we start the new guide, short of us being 100% aware of a discrete item, you always have discrete items throughout the years. You work through regulatory agencies, et cetera, get things confirmed and officially approved, that lend itself then to confirmed accounting treatment. So we just... That was half of it right there, call it maybe not quite 40%. We expect to probably have discrete items again this year. There could be another one in Q1 that could possibly temper that a bit. We have to see, though, those again play out quarter to quarter. We signal them as we become aware of them, and we certainly share if there's, like, an inflection in tax rate. Top line, so you're looking at last year's Q1 growth rate of about 3% organic. That was affected by. It didn't create an easy comp. That was all a 2022 to 2023 comp, so you had vaccinations still coming down. We had licensing revenue in our life science business in 2022 that created a negative comp for 2023. We had the dynamics of COVID stocking that was still happening in distributors in 2022 that created a comp for 2023. If you look back and see our UCC business, our surgery business, so there's those examples throughout. All that meant was 2022 to 2023 established, like, a true good baseline of volume, and now you have a different dynamic of 2023 to 2024. We actually have some changes that moderate the growth rate. I mean, one, we didn't really talk about this, but it was implied. Alaris, you start from zero, right? Versus having medical necessity in your growth rate. The other big one was China. We have two discrete items, kind of our medical business, MDS, in particular, volume-based procurement, which we can certainly touch on. And then we had a discrete China customer that had an inventory build that's in our anticoagulant part of our portfolio there. We don't share specifics on customers, et cetera, but they're basically in a situation where they were trying to penetrate outside of the China market. That strategy is not paying out. They're going to have to bleed down that inventory, and it creates kind of a, an inventory bleed-down dynamic that's one-time. In our Pharm Systems business, of course, is still really strong. And then you have a little bit of the respiratory dynamic. Every year, as you kind of come down and get to what I would call a normal respiratory season, last year was still a bit outsized in our life sciences business. I think more importantly, we don't need some outrageous growth rate from, call it Q2 to Q3. It's in the mid-6% range, and you have an Alaris ramp, and if you take Alaris out, you're right at 6%, consistent with our guide. So, I don't think the Q1 dynamic shouldn't be anything concerning. As a matter of fact, if I go back and talk about the past two years on margin progression and how we've executed in against growth, like, BD's been very good at predicting macro dynamics and, and then owning them and delivering them, within reason, within the quarters, and certainly for the full year. So, you know, manage things quarter to quarter. There's always going to be dynamics throughout the quarters to play out. Let's maybe start with that, Alaris. Chris, you mentioned you're starting pretty much at zero, and you've ramped throughout the year. Like, what is causing this first half or second half Alaris ramp dynamic? Is that because earlier customers that you upgraded, that's on BD's dime, and that's why we're not recognizing revenues? No. No, No, it's so before, our number one priority was to get clearance. You get clearance, until that point in time, you are starting from zero with customers. There's no pipeline build. You're not having discussions with customers. You don't even have a clear product to actually talk to them about. So you get clearance, and now you're starting from ground zero. We've engaged with every single customer. You're working through their portfolio of assets. They all have large fleets, across, you know, many locations, as you can imagine. Some of them are mixed fleets, both age and maybe even, you know, competitors. Obviously, BD has strong share, so we have the. You know, we talk about in the U.S., you know, 70% of infusions are typically done with a BD pump, as an example. So you're working through all those dynamics. There are, if you take the sort of bookends of how to think of this, our number one priority is to get all of our customers up to our cleared pump per the FDA. Some of those are near term, where we can go out and just actually simply remediate them. You do software upgrades. There are some component changeouts. Those will be done, but at the same time, you actually want to replace some pumps. So picture if you have a pump that's 10+ years old, those are just going to be replaced, fall into a more traditional kind of commercial cycle. But you do all those at the same time and coordinate them so that you're upgrading their fleet. So you have to coordinate timing with customers and do all that. So there's, as you can imagine, a huge ramp of all that planning, coordination, scheduling. In the meantime, you're doing your final supply chain ramp up. Obviously, we were very prepared as it relates to component buys, et cetera, but you would expect there to be a natural ramp up there. So it would be a normal dynamic. That's really what's playing out. Understood. And then maybe, you know, I'm switching my questions up a bit, but, you know, since we're on Alaris, I think your Q4 GAAP gross margins had a $600 million charge. I think it was mostly related to Alaris. You know, why are we having an Alaris charge, now post-approval? What is that charge related to, Chris? Yeah, this is directly related to our commitment to ensure that pumps in the field are remediated and brought up to the cleared standard. It goes to that example and analog that I had talked about. So these pumps that are near term, they may need software upgrades, you have to do component upgrades, and you have to go out in the field, you have to fix them. We've been doing this throughout this time period, but we've only been focused on the official recalls. That was all we had line of sight to. Then you get a cleared pump, and you, the amount of changes we've made to bring this pump up to, you know, call it best-in-class, current day standards, requirements, et cetera, is very different than just the nuanced recalls that may have been out there at the time. And so when we got clearance, there was also dialogue, of course, with the regulatory authorities about how best to do that, what needs to change, what timeline does that need to happen under. And we have a commitment to make sure that our customers that have a pump that's a couple years old, actually has a pump that's brought up to those cleared standards. So you look at all the cost associated with that, that'll be incurred over a multi-year period. So you're talking about, call it, $250 million per year, roughly. Very much contemplated in our cash flow. I think the important thing is it doesn't affect our capital allocation strategy at all. We've actually been inclusive of that, taking actions that'll further improve our cash conversion over time. And so that's basically what that charge represents. So this charge, just to be clear, Chris, that's for expenses BD will be incurring over time to upgrade existing field pumps? Not for anything we're selling in, just for ones that are pure remediation. So again, components, labor, software upgrades, obviously, like, you know, the travel and engagement back and forth to do that. Gotcha. There may be one last here on China before we switch to interventional. China VBP, again, this was surprising. Like, why didn't we know a VBP impact was coming, Chris, and what does this relate to within MDS? Yeah. So one, I mean, we were one of the first to signal that, like, there's macro dynamics playing out in China. We actually had a lot of discussions back there. But that said, we hadn't seen a big impact on our business. Even last year, our total China business, when you take out that Pharm customer dynamic, that's a one-off, it was really still high single-digit growth. But we were certainly aware that, like, as, as China was going through kind of the COVID dynamics, coming out of that and having their own sort of macroeconomic dynamics they were dealing with, you started seeing a ramp-up of the number of provinces that were again going through, through tenders and the, the scale of the tenders, et cetera. And so, you know, we, we basically signaled that there's likely to be something there. This is very different from last time. We're managing it within our growth rate, right? I mean, our growth rate's 5.75%. When you think of our book of business in China, we still have Interventional growing double digits, which Rick can certainly touch on. Our Life Sciences business remains extremely strong. It's primarily in our medical business and kind of vascular access space. And now the more you go through that, obviously, you've kind of run that through the system, and it creates like a baseline where it can't just keep going down, right? So look, China's still a strong market. There's a ton of unmet need. We have a good strategy for China, where for more kind of localization, we've got local manufacturing. We have a cadence of local innovation. We have a really strong interventional business. Life Sciences is doing well. We've been able to manage that within our holistic growth rate. We're not exposed in terms of China sourcing for outside of China, so if there's other, like, macro geopolitical kind of disruptions, we're relatively insulated, feel good about our strategy there from a manufacturing standpoint. So, and remember, the numbers that we're projecting, we're trying to project full year. We'll still have, we said, you know, lowish single-digit growth for the market this year. So it's not like it all just happened. It's also a, I think, an appropriate kind of posture in terms of an initial guide. As we go through these, we've done really well in terms of winning tenders, maintaining volume, and maintaining a healthy business. You know, we'll continue to still a contributor to growth. It just moderated back this year, and we're absorbing that within our total growth rate. Sorry, did you say low single-digit growth for China in fiscal 2024? Yes. That is inclusive of the customer impact and this VBP. Are we done with that VBP, Chris, or should China ever work back to normalcy when you look at the out years? Yeah, when you say we're done, first of all, no one's insulated from VBP. It's a strategy that they have. Anyone that says that it's just a question of when they go through it. It's how do you best position your portfolio through new innovation? What are the relationships you've built, from think of, like, a government affairs standpoint? You adapt your go-to-market strategies to maintain profitability, et cetera. I think BD's been earlier going through this, and I think our portfolio, again, the more your portfolio sort of goes through it, by definition, your base becomes smaller, where it becomes less of a headwind. I think the other thing I would say is, like, our interventional business is much more, the categories are much smaller. They're even our life sciences business to a degree, so they're one, maybe not like the initial targeted areas, and two, it'd be hard to have the same degree of impact unless they literally went through every single category across your business at the same time, which is an unlikely scenario. Understood. And maybe, Rick, switching over to you, that Q4 Interventional number was a really, really strong number - I'm surprised you lead with that on the call. I'll make sure to bring it up on the next call. Which means your Q1 better be strong. And it was really a broad base, right, across all segments. Maybe just high level, what drove that performance? Were there any one-offs in the most recent quarter that drove interventional? Great. Yeah, thanks, Vijay, for the call and the recognition. I think it was a really, really strong quarter and a great year for Interventional. I think all businesses, Q4 double digit, led by, led by our surgery business on the organic piece. And then, as Chris said, you know, we had the divestiture of the surgical business as well, which will allow that team to now focus on the growth drivers. You know, I think when we think about the growth across interventional, probably think about it as maybe these three pillars. The first ones are the markets that we play in, right? We play in really strong markets. And so in PI, it's the peripheral vascular disease, oncology, incontinence in our UCC business, and the advanced repair and reconstruction. So really strong markets that really drive good growth in those markets. The second being, you know, the investments in the innovation and the products that we have. So Rotarex, Venovo, Venclose, when we look at our peripheral business, our Phasix, you know, within our surgery business. PureWick, great product within our UCC business. So these are really strong platforms that are driving growth. Recently, we just launched our Trek Bone biopsy needle in our oncology business. So that investment in innovation is driving our growth. And then the third piece, I thought, you know, you've heard us talk about, especially in intervention, the work that we're doing in operational effectiveness. Improving our supply, improving the flow of our products from a supply chain perspective. So that was a tailwind for us, and it'll continue to be a tailwind for us. So all of those forces are really, you know, putting a nice, sustainable growth within the Interventional segment. When you look at the macro, Rick, and I, I think your division comes closest to, you know, from a utilization perspective when we look at hospital trends, how would you characterize the macro from a utilization standpoint, what you're seeing globally across the regions right now, stable versus last quarter? Yes, definitely stable. I mean, we've seen good momentum within the growth, but again, I think, you know, the portfolio that we have, and you've seen this throughout, you know, the last quarters, we don't really have those one-off impacts from utilization. It's been somewhat stable from that aspect. So, you know, continued, I think, momentum within utilizations, but nothing, you know, nothing really outsized. Gotcha. And then you did, you know, within surgery, I think, you called out Phasix. How big is that product for you guys, and, and are you gaining share? Who do you compete with in, in that space? Sure. Well, I think just hernia alone, the category is around, I think we've said, you know, over $2 billion, just in the category of hernia alone for Phasix. And so, you know, Phasix is... Our strategy there is, we call it hernia transformation, is moving people from traditional, you know, mesh to this higher value clinical product, in that. And so, you know, we acquired Phasix from a Tepha acquisition, and the first applications were kind of moving bioresorbable—I mean, bio, biomaterials into Phasix for maybe the complex abdominal walls. And now what we're seeing is people are choosing to go from standard mesh, moving towards, towards the Phasix material, the bioresorbable material. And so we have a whole strategy to move them and upgrade them, and we're just in the midst of that journey. And then, you know, we saw on our call, we're going to actually be launching a first specific product for Phasix in the umbilical space. So again, just continued great growth of the product, great demand for the product. It's, you know, a trend moving into these bioresorbable in order to get this permanent mesh, you know, out of the body. Both patients and physicians are choosing to go to the product that, you know, removes itself over time. So really great growth out of Phasix, and lots of application, and we're just in the beginning, really, of that runway. Understood. I liked your Q4 earnings presentation, Rick, where you laid out a number of key product pipeline products within that segment. I think a few you called out as having a greater than $50 million revenue potential. Can you touch upon them, and what is launching right now? What is expected to launch in the coming years? What are you most excited about? Sure. Great. You know, first off, just recently launched, which we're really excited about. You've heard us talk about our PureWick male product and our PureWick franchise, and so we launched that in the beginning of 2023. It has outpaced. I think we've talked about our PureWick female as one of the most rapidly growing products for BD. You know, the update, the initial launch of male has been even stronger than our female product, and we've just launched that in the acute care setting, and we'll be launching it in the home care setting, later in this year. We also launched, and I mentioned it before, our Trek Bone biopsy needle in 2023, which is doing really well competitively in the oncology space. So two products that launched in 2023 that are really starting to take off and are going to contribute here in 2024. Short term in 2024, we talked about the Phasix umbilical, so we're in interactive review with FDA right now, looking for a 510(k) early this year. And then we also have, we've mentioned it in the past, our multimodality breast biopsy system. So this is one of the only vacuum-assist biopsy that's all modalities of imaging, X-ray, MRI, and ultrasound. That'll launch at the end of this year. Really exciting, gives an opportunity to consolidate into one product. It's also a product that's used for vacuum-assist excision, not just biopsy, but a lot outside the US, when they find these lesions, they'll excise the lesion, and so there's a big opportunity there for us to kind of grow there. So excited in the short term for them. And then you may have seen, primarily in our peripheral vascular space, really two exciting products that were just got either IDE approval or we've just started our clinical trial. Our TIPS product, our Venous Shunt for portal hypertension, great product. It's in clinical trials right now, early stage of those trials, but we're, you know, we're of good enrollment within patients and seeing good results there. And then we have our low-profile arterial stent, which is going to be a really exciting product. We're in the midst of the IDE approval to be able to start that clinical trial. Both of these categories are really brand new for us and are really all about both growing the market and taking competitive share. And we mentioned China, portal hypertension, these are, these are big issues in China, and so these are, these are markets that these products will be really exciting for, and that'll be purely incremental for us. ... Gotcha. Just given you a touch on a number of categories within interventional, are there any product gaps or interesting products from an M&A perspective which would fit that portfolio? Sure. You know, and I think it's nice to hear you know, when Chris talks about firepower, you'll you know, you know that we compete in the interventional segment for that, for that capital. But you know, when you think about the armamentarium that that clinicians use in this space, technology keeps advancing here, and there's always great opportunities for us, Vijay. So both, you know... And if you look at the history of how we've grown, a lot of these businesses is to grab onto these early stage products and then innovate on them, right? PureWick is a perfect example where that was a small acquisition. We continued to iterate on it. You know, we the female product was the first product. Mm. Then we iterated and made the male, and now through innovation, we're going to be growing into functional incontinence. So, Rotarex, perfect example of these products. So we have a history of taking these early, early stage products and, and advancing them, scaling them up, and, and doing extremely well. So yes, there's lots of exciting categories that we have our eye on. Understood. Chris, maybe on that topic of M&A and capital deployment, you did mention share repo. Have you just given where the stock is, have you ever, you know, has the priorities changed? Maybe share repo makes more sense versus M&A. Or just, you know, talk about your- Yeah ... capital deployment strategy. Yeah. I mean, holistically, like, we would always be opportunistic with share repo. We certainly thought this was a good time to take that action and not only accelerate what we normally do from a share-based comp dilution, but basically double that. There's a, you know, there's a couple factors. I mean, one, you don't want to overreact to sort of, like, short-term dynamics, so we're trying to capitalize on that. We'll see how the year keeps playing out as we build cash. We're committed to our dividend. We just had our, you know, 52nd year of dividend increase. We have a competitive payout ratio of about 30%. That'll stay intact. We're going to be committed to an increasing dividend. It's not something we would push to sort of, like, we don't see the need to drive towards outsize, especially in this kind of interest rate environment. So really beyond that, it's tuck-in M&A, which has been extremely successful. I mean, Rick's business has done an outstanding job across the board. He just named multiple ones in PVD. When you think of PureWick franchise, when you think of Tepha, really driving that, that's contributing 40 basis points to our growth profile this past year on an organic basis, so after anniversarying the deals that you do, so not counting the one-time lift. So it's been a very effective way. It's actually also been profitable growth. I think Parata has been a great example, right? $1.5 billion acquisition, double-digit growth. We now have a $700 million pharmacy automation robotics platform within BD. The Parata market TAM is north of $1 billion, also growing very strong, so there's more runway in that market. It was immediately accretive to margins, actually accretive to future margins. And we, of course, absorbed and managed. It was actually basically neutral to accretive, like, day one, which is rare to find an asset like that. But we've been managing and, you know, any dilution within our earnings growth rate, and that's going to be the strategy. So I think look for us to do more tuck-in M&A. I would say we were trying to find these ones that are a little chunkier, like a Parata. With that said, we're sensitive to—like, we don't want to, you know, take on dilution or do things where it completely changes, like, the risk profile. We're not in a position where we need to do that. I think we have a good balance of, like, driving organic through our R&D funnel, what we're shaping there, and then the tuck-ins that fit those profile. Sorry, Chris, just a clarification. Did you say you bought a share in Q1? We announced that we're in process. It's a $500 million share buyback that we announced, which that's about 2x what you would do for a normal share-based comp dilution, which normally you would do throughout the year, but we accelerated that upfront to get the most benefit. Gotcha. In the environment right now, where cash is earning so much, you don't actually get a lot of, call it, EPS benefit. It's basically neutral. It's more just the thinking of it as the value of the cash, and we just think it's an attractive price to buy it. Understood. On leverage levels, you're, I think, close to, like, 3x gross leverage right now. Is that, is that a comfortable range, or would you consider taking those leverage levels up? Yeah, 2.5 was our, our net leverage target. We ended the year at 2.6, so we did a nice job with cash. The way to think of it is we'll, you know, use, use Parata as an analog. If we see an asset that's in that kind of chunkier range, you know, we would lever up a bit. We wouldn't look at all to... We can do that without changing our, our credit rating. We're looking to maintain the consistency there, and then be disciplined, integrate the asset successfully, drive growth, drive the value proposition, build cash, lever back down, to kind of that, that target level. So I think you'll, you'll sort of see us sequence within, within a range there. And we're going to be disciplined. Like, there's nothing out there. There's no need to act. I mean, you could see us actually get below 2.5 as well. It's not like we, we feel like when we get to a certain level, we have to act in the marketplace. Gotcha. And a couple of other topics. You know, GLP-1s have come up. I think you guys have said it, it's a tailwind- Yeah ... but there is some confusion on how big it is. Is that, like, meaningful for you guys, or how does BD participate here? Depends how you think of it. I mean, I'm not going to get into the size of our portfolio mix, but what I would share is, we talk about our Pharm Systems business is a $2.2 billion business. We framed it in Investor Day as being a high single-digit grower. It's had 13 quarters in a row of double-digit growth. And I would say these trends in biologics holistically, obviously GLP-1s are part of that dynamic, certainly enabling that. So I would say it's an important contributor to the growth. But we do have a broad portfolio. You've got biologics in other places, you have vaccines, you have the anticoagulant portion of the market. So, we certainly see it as a continued catalyst there. And then when you go back and think of our pharma systems business, BD's scale and capability is five to 6 x greater than the next largest competitor. We have relationships with 70% of the top 100 biopharma. So we're very entrenched. You know, when they think of, like, whose go-to they can provide reliable supply, has the scale to support growth, they understand the quality of regulatory processes and protocols, BD is certainly kind of go-to in that space. So it'll continue to be a catalyst for us. I mean, I've talked about six key platforms. One thing I know is BD's a massive portfolio, and like, what do you have to think about that are gonna create the inflections for, call it, outsized growth, right? And there's six areas, that's one of them. Our bioscience research is another. Rick touched on, too, our PVD portfolio within peripheral intervention, PureWick franchise with urinary incontinence. Then we kind of broadened it to MMS, because we have pharmacy automation in there, which is, again, $700 million platform, but now we have Alaris clearance as well. And then lastly, our molecular diagnostics business. So these, these are—they comprise over five, just over $5 billion of revenue, and they have potential to be high single-digit growth to even double-digit growth. So when you think of that against, to call it, a $20 billion roughly revenue base, I mean, you can get 200+ basis points of growth just out of that portion of your portfolio, and, and then kind of need everything else to grow more at that mid-single digit level. We have, as you know, a very, like, durable part of our portfolio there with strong leadership, and there's parts in that portfolio that are strong. You just talked about mesh and surgery and how that's doing. So it's not that there's not other really good exciting growth opportunities there. It's just a lot of that fits a bit more in, like, our durable core. Understood. So I think you look for us to keep driving those areas as being important catalysts. I will say pharm systems. I mean, we've been on this run of, like, double-digit growth. We have the China customer dynamic I talked about. You're gonna see some noise in our pharm systems business, that's acute there. We manage that business globally. And then the more these, you know, these biologics grow, you get into the dynamics of where... What's the timing of clinical trials? And what's the timing as they ramp up inventory? And like, so in the past, historically, it's been a little bit of a choppy business, quarter to quarter, but I do think it's something that we see as a consistent high single-digit grower. That China customer, is that just a Q1 dynamic, Chris, or? We largely cycle over that as you get through Q1. Yeah, it may be a small amount in Q2, but- Mm-hmm. And just given, you know, Parata Systems has been growing so strong, is the expectations for fiscal 2024 obviously have plus and minuses. Is that still like high singles, or should that be like double digits? Yeah, I don't—we didn't guide specifically. I would go back to Investor Day, high single digits. And, you know, I often get asked the question, like: "Where do you—Where do you see sort of like—What can drive you towards the high end of your guide?" kind of question. I'd point to those six areas that are areas that, you know, we double down in. Like, when I think of our guide, like, what we could control is where we're growing, and we feel really well positioned there. And, the... You know, think of the bottom end of the guide as more like macro unknowns. I think we feel really good about kind of where we're driving and the innovation cycle we have and what we can control. So I—that's a good place to be. Got you. By the way, it's an area where, I mean, we leaned in during COVID in some, you know, very uncertain times, but we committed $1 billion + of capital expansion to support the growth there. We're about halfway through that, and so doing well, it's paying off. And just maybe on that comment, Chris, when you look at the fiscal 2024 guidance, what are the sources of upside, and what would cause you to come in perhaps at the low end of the guide? What variables are you looking at? And maybe just touch upon the hospital CapEx environment. Yeah. It's those six areas, and again, if you broaden kind of pharmacy automation to MMS with infusion in there, right? Alaris, I think, is another source. We gave some color in August, but we didn't give a formal guide on Alaris, but, you know, there's certainly pent-up demand there. We have to see how that plays out. So I would point to those six areas, like, those are key catalysts for us to keep driving towards. FX, if, you know, if they kept moving in the right direction, that's not something I control as much, but it, you know, could hopefully, maybe—hopefully, we hit maybe more of a bottom, and it can move it. I'd take a point there if they... The, on the downside, it's really more the macro environment. It's the unknowns there, right? I mean, we still have a lot of, you know, geopolitical dynamics playing out. We have a war that's happening. It's just you never know. We scenario plan around the what-ifs of various things in different markets, whether it be Asia or what's happening in Europe. And, we feel really it's usually about preparing supply chain dynamics and logistics as we think of those. It's typically less about kind of your portfolio going to market because of the nature of what we do is critical medical need. So it's usually more on, like, supply chain disruption, and we were one of the best. navigating those complexities during COVID, and we do do scenario planning to try and prepare for those, but that would be, we'll be watching, I think, more on the, the downside, Just to be clear, so far, the war hasn't had an impact on the business, any supply chain disruption? We had said there was nothing significant or material there, really, with at this stage, though. Gotcha. And then, one on tax. I think you did mention some discrete tax item benefits. What are those discrete tax items, Chris? And I think you did mention on the call, Pillar Two GMT implementation- Yeah Could have some implications, maybe try to quantify it? Yeah, we, I mean, we don't get into the specifics of discrete. Every company has them. They happen at certain times throughout the year and typically relate to certain events or planning or, you know, so we'll leave that there. I mean, we're confident in the range of the tax that we planned and know that it, you know, that there can always be some choppiness to that that typically is easy to see. And, you know, as we have updated results, I'll certainly frame whether that's more of a timing dynamic or ongoing. Global Minimum Tax, the good news is, BD, we're sort of delayed in terms of our fiscal year, the fact that our fiscal year started early, so it's not an event for us until 2025. There's a lot that's still going to play out. We get the benefit, of course, of seeing how it gets operationalized for those that may be affected this year. And second, we still expect a lot of, you know, correspondence and communications from the respective countries as they enact this, and so we're going to watch that. I wouldn't want to share something too early without being fully informed, but certainly we know it's top of mind. It's, you know, folks have positioned it, of course, as a headwind. I do think there could be- it could be a multi-year kind of effect, too, as you think of how people navigate it. It may not just be a one-time thing, which could be better because it gives you a bit of a glide path into it. So we'll keep folks abreast as we learn more and see how this year plays out and we get closer to our fiscal year 2025. Fantastic. I think with that, we're out of time here. Chris and Rick, I thank you both for the time this morning. Yep, thank you. Appreciate it. Yeah, thank you. Thanks, everyone. Take care.