On the Unplugged Day here at Citi Headquarters. Very, very pleased that the next presentation is with Joel Grade. Got the name from Baxter, in case you missed that. Joel, thank you for being here again, I love this conference and thrilled that you're participating.
I'm happy to be back. I had the flu last year, so I was listed last moment, so it's great to be back here, Joanne.
Excellent.
Just a reminder, I will be making some forward-looking statements. My legal and IR team told me I needed to say that, so that's right.
As long as you don't read it word for word for us. I appreciate that.
I haven't memorized that one.
Okay. starting big picture, and we're starting all these conversations big picture.
Mm-hmm.
The underlying fundamentals of medtech, despite what the stocks are doing, strike me as actually being solid, stable.
Yeah.
You know, the things that I usually worry about: pricing, patient volumes, CapEx, snow days, whatever it may be. To the degree you can, could you share with us what you're seeing?
Yeah. I would say, first of all, I generally agree with your comment. I think that, I think the fundamentals of the, again, you said despite valuations to some degree are decent. I think they are. You know, I think volumes, patient volumes, procedure volumes, some of those things I think are in a decent place. You know, we talk about capital spend, and whether, you know, there are concerns about that. You know, we really haven't seen that, and it's reflected in some of the order volumes in our CCS business. You know, I would say, again, and we don't really have a lot of things that from a input side are like, you know, sort of hyperinflationary or anything like that.
I think you know, I think the marketplace in general is in a decent spot, and I think that's certainly encouraging as we continue to go forward. There are obviously a few things in our world that are offsetting some of that. I'd say the most prominent being the impacts of the market and IV solutions. You know, since the hurricane happened, there certainly have been some clinical changes in the way that, you know, hospital systems are utilizing IV fluids. And so that is one part of our like, I won't say unique to us, but important to us, that actually is a market that does have some impact.
You know, we've talked about the fact that, overall demand in that space is probably 10-15% down from where it was pre-hurricane. That's sort of almost our new baseline in that area. So that's certainly one area that I would call out. And I would say almost residual to that or sort of combined with that to some degree, is we're seeing some of those impacts in our pharmaceutical injectable space, too. I think some of the IV protocols, including IV push and some of the other things, are sort of trailing that as well and have impacted that space to some degree.
While, again, there are certainly, I, again, don't in any way disagree with your comment on the, some of the fundamentals being solid, we certainly there are some things that are part of our world that are throwing a little bit of that, again, with some softness in those areas.
Excellent. One of the things that's also different or new for Baxter over the last year is there's a new CEO, or a new sheriff in town, some might say.
That's what they say.
That's what they say. Without costing you your job, what do you see, in terms of sort of the change in tempo?
Yeah. Yeah.
Maybe how it's flowed through to changes and thoughts around guidance.
Yeah. I think I would maybe just start out with the idea that I think the timing of Andrew's arrival is good for Baxter. Why do I say that? Well, you know, these last few years, there's been a lot of, you know, distraction. We've sold BPS, we've had the kidney sale. You know, a lot of things were announced in January of 2023 related to some of the, you know, verticalization of the business, et cetera. I think, you know, we're through a lot of that now. To the degree to which this, I almost look at it as a bit of a jumping-off point. You know, we've to some degree established, sort of tried to be really clear on here's where we are as a company.
I think Andrew's arrival comes to us at a time where we have the ability really now to build from this base of kind of here we are. I think timing-wise, that's good. His background, I think fits well with what Baxter needs. He obviously comes to us with really a kind of an operational background in terms of his time with GE, with Danaher, obviously, certainly at ATS. I think that our need to continue to be more consistent in terms of how we operate, how predictable we are, is, I think aligns really well with the skills and things that he brings to the table.
I think since he's been here, you know, there's really, I guess, a couple areas maybe I'd call out of, hey, kind of what's new and what's different with Andrew being around. I mean, you know, first and foremost, you hear him talk about GPS, which is really kind of this operating model that really allows for more consistent operating cadences, more consistent measurements of how we operate, and the tracking mechanisms to ensure we're on track or off track. I think that's really an important part of how we operate. I think it's gonna lead itself to more consistency in terms of our performance. The second thing I'd call out is just. There's been some restructure that's happened since he's been in.
There's been, you know, certain layers of management and certain, just parts of restructuring the business that actually, I think are gonna, certainly allow him and others to be closer to customers, closer to the businesses. Also align our, again, our organization and our structure in a way that it allows us to be both more size-right for volume, but also more nimble in our decision making. That includes, by the way, some of the, I'll say, kind of additional evolution of some of the verticalization that was already started. Finally, around innovation, I think, you know, you'll hear from him and us, moving forward, like more consistent innovations.
You've heard a couple things now already with our Connex 360 in the Front Line Care space, as well as, you know, our stretcher. We talked about Dynamo, the new stretcher platform. I do think he's really continuing to focus the organization on innovation. Those are things I think are really good outcomes of him being here.
There's a phrase you use in there, the evolution of verticalization.
Uh-huh.
I don't know if I've heard that phrase used before. Describe to me what that means for Baxter.
Yeah. You'll remember that part of the goals of the three years, from starting in January 2023, was to verticalize the business. What that meant was really this idea of having this more end-to-end ownership of P&L that included, say, the commercial and manufacturing, versus what was previously a country-led structure, where you had countries that sold, but didn't have responsibility for kind of the end-to-end P&L. While that started to happen, when prior to Andrew's arrival, I think what Andrew's done is continued to move more and more functions within that. Yeah, you'll hear him talk about decentralized, his view that there's, that really and truly is an end-to-end decentralized ownership of those businesses, which includes more areas that are actually underneath that vertical.
it's, I think, when I refer to an evolution in that way, it is, more and more of the functional areas that are actually now under what is actually now the division presidents within our-
I would assume that that streamlines decision making.
Mm-hmm.
I would assume it maybe streamlines cost also.
It does.
Maybe re-remove some layers of organization.
Yeah, yes, and all those things, and also from an accountability standpoint...
Yeah
it's, you know, obviously, it's, I'd say, clarity on role definition and accountability is probably the other part I would add to what you said.
Okay, I wanna go back to something you spoke earlier. You gave me, like, five different leads off of one of your answers. almost sell-side analyst like. you talked about the IV solution conservation in the U.S. hospitals. you've pivoted this past quarter from walking from, well, recovery back to where it was pre-Hurricane Helene to, this is a new baseline. What was the recognition that allowed you to say, "Okay, fine, this is where we are, and how do we build from here?
It wasn't necessarily one thing, as you can imagine, but it was one of those things that as we continued to evolve in the year, meaning we originally started with a perspective that, you know, there was an expectation of what was gonna happen from recovery. You know, we'd somewhat indexed that based on 2017 hurricane. That was. I don't know, I'll call it a proxy for what we thought may happen.
Yeah.
Having said that, you know, that was a smaller bag. Those are mini bags that were produced at that time. What became clear as the year continued to evolve was that there just was simply a change in clinical practices. Now, we did a lot of things to try to validate this for ourselves because, you know, number 1, we wanted to be really clear with ourselves that this is a clinical practice change and not a share loss. We had literally hundreds of conversations with customers. We also had, external, I'll say, external sources that went out on a no-name basis and interviewed customers and said, "Hey, how, you know, what are you thinking about this?" All of it, so much came back to the fact that, you know what?
There are clinical practices that have changed. In fact, here's our new baseline. You know, that impacted us last year in the sense that, you know, we'd had the assumption of that recovery, you know, set us up for a year's halt, the staffing levels in our manufacturing, inventory production levels. It was really important for us to understand this internally, and then to be transparent with you all externally, that basically said, "Look, here's kind of our new baseline, we're gonna continue to build from here.
It also impacted some of the premix products within pharmaceuticals.
That's right. Yeah.
Does that go back to a new baseline also from here?
We're certainly assuming that. There's a couple elements, the premix story, I.
Yeah
... and that I'd say, one is, as you said, there's, you know, IV pushing in some of these protocols.
Yeah
... that have impacted, the injectables on the pharma. There's also some element in the marketplace there that I would say, yeah, there's been more purchasing of vials than the premix. That's something certainly, you know, that's been a value add for us for a long time. I think over time that will return, but that certainly has been an impact.
There's also an element of that space that was on us that we called out in the fourth quarter that said, "Hey, look, we've had some supply issues, supply challenges, and we've had some production challenges that we've identified, that we are on top of and expect to improve really starting, I'd say, in the second half of next year." Yes, to your answer, your question directly, there is an element of this that contributed to some market challenges in the injectable space as well, in the pharma.
Okay. I've lasted, I think, 20 minutes now before I got to the Novum pump. I can't last anywhere, sorry.
All right.
Are we calling this a recall, a shipping pause, or just a, "Forgive me. Oh, well"?
We are calling it a voluntary ship hold.
voluntary ship hold?
Yes.
All right, what are the dynamics of this voluntary ship hold and the path to getting it un-held?
Yeah. The voluntary ship hold in and of itself basically said that we, Baxter, have, as it sounds like, voluntarily stopped shipping this or the Novum product. There's really two areas that are kind of, say, what do we need to solve?
Yep.
You know, one of the areas is really around, again, not to get too detailed on this, but sort of the way, when there's transitional infusions, there's been some impacts in terms of, you know, under or over infusions based on when there's a transition in terms of the infusion. The other is really just a loading of a set. There's a potential impact on how a set is loaded. Those two things are what we're working through. Now, to be clear, those are things that even today, where we have protocols about how customers can safely use our products.
Great.
Yeah, and now there's many customers still doing that. They're continuing to use our products safely. As we work through these things, again, You know, we're just not shipping new products, but there's still, again, a number of customers that are still using those. Now, we haven't set a timeline on what that looks like, but we have said for 2026, that from a guidance perspective, that we are not anticipating shipping Novums further in 2026. We did say that on the call.
The other thing I would just say is that we're certainly continuing to work closely with our customers and working with the regulatory authorities along with us, because I think we certainly think that's a best practice so that, you know, when the time comes and the ship hold goes away, that we won't have any surprises in that way.
As a voluntary ship hold, you were responsible for lifting it, not the FDA?
Yes.
Okay. There were some pumps which were already shipped. I would assume people, some chose to keep it, while others may have returned it.
Yep
Or replaced it. Is there a way to sort of parse out those that were like, "I'll take a Spectrum instead of a Novum," and those-?
Yeah.
I'll keep this?
Again, any of those and all of those things could and are happening.
Yeah.
We haven't actually parsed it out, so to speak. The thing to keep in mind is, you may recall in the fourth quarter, part of our top-line guidance included, I'll say, accounting for some of those uncertainties, that these things could happen. Clearly, in the fourth quarter, they happened less than we had anticipated them happening. As I think about carrying some of that risk, I would say that we've carried some of that risk or uncertainty, if you will, into 2026. You know, at such time as we do have more clarity, kind of timing and where would we go from here standpoint, again, some of those things could happen, at this point, like I said, we haven't provided that clarity. There.
I'll say some of the actions or what could happen with customers has been somewhat muted at this point.
What was the impact to gross margins in the fourth quarter from all of this ship hold stages?
Again, we haven't actually quantified the margin impact specifically from the ship hold. There's a few things that did happen from a margin perspective in the fourth quarter. You know, I think, you know, again, they fell in a few different categories. One was what I'm gonna broadly classify as mix-
Yep
... that I would break down as sort of business mix, a product mix, and, ultimately, a, geographic mix, I'll call it.
Okay.
From a, from a business mix standpoint, it was things like, again, our compounding grew at 18%, our Injectables and Anesthesia grew -9%. That's obviously a significant kind of business mix issue. From a product mix perspective, to your point, the original view that we'd be shipping Novum is different than we ended up, and so that's certainly part of that. I would say other parts of our business, there were certain things that were lower margin, more lower-margin products shipped than higher-margin products. That was part of the mix issue.
In, I would say in CCS, specifically, we had a somewhat, and I'll call it an anomaly in this way, but a disproportionate amount of product shipped to GEM countries relative to our US shipments. I don't look at that as a trend. I look at that as it happened in this quarter, and it was one of those things that, you know, I would say, relatively speaking, the margin profile from our US business is higher than it is in our GEM markets, and that was also impactful. That was one thing. The operational items we talked about, from a Injectables pharma was part of the margin impact there.
Also, you know, we did say there, you know, there are some, you know, I'll call them non-recurring items. We called it out specifically as $40 million that we're not expecting to impact 2026. Obviously, the, you know, that's the word non-recurring for that, there's a few of those items that ultimately contributed to some of the margin challenge in.
Okay.
Q4.
There were some new products that are starting to percolate up.
There are.
There are. The two that I picked up on the fourth quarter were Connex 360 and Dynamo.
Uh-huh.
There are others that I'm sure we'll talk about. There's an acute care stretcher, and I'm sure you're gonna fill me in on some of the others. Let's talk about... At least start there with Connex 360 and Dynamo. What are those products, and why are they important?
Connex 360 is in our Front Line Care, which is obviously part of HST. It is a next-generation monitoring device. It has all the kind of the neat features of, you know, security and, you know, easy updates, and it's a very kind of broad-ranging device to monitor a wide variety of things all in one spot. This has been something that we actually rolled out, brought to market in the fourth quarter.
We had some, I'll call, minor benefit from that in Q4, but something that we see as a really exciting new thing, and customers have received it really well and, you know, certainly part of the growth story as we head into 2026, in particular, the second half of the year as that starts to ramp up. The Dynamo is our stretcher. It's really our first, I'll say, serious foray into the stretcher space. It's a connected stretcher. It has, again, something we kind of officially announced at JP Morgan, and look to bring to market, you know, I'd say in the, you know, we'll say in the early part of Q2. Again, something, again, really, customers are really excited about. We...
You know, when I think about customer-centric innovation, this was something we developed in conjunction with customers. There was, you know, something that we're, you know, really addressing some of their needs and really the kind of next-generation area, and we're, you know, particular companies had a pretty strong hold in that space. Really excited about that, and I think, Joanne, the, maybe the important takeaway in this is, like, we're not a company that has sort of one big bang thing. You know, I know Novum got a lot of attention, understandably so, because it was kind of the, I don't know, the one thing that there hadn't been a lot of other things for a while.
As you think about our innovation, you know, going forward, I do think you're gonna hear more and more about some of these really neat products, and then again, key to our inorganic, or key to our, excuse me, organic growth heading forward.
You postponed the analyst meeting. Is it likely to come back on in 2026?
Yeah, still working through that. I wouldn't say that. Maybe, first of all, why did we do that? You know, I'd say the overarching reason for that is really a couple of things. One, from a prioritization standpoint, you know, our, you've heard Andrew talk about stabilizing the business, growing and solving the balance sheet, implementing continuous improvement. These, you know, from a priority standpoint, you know, those days are a lot of work. I think it was really important for us to prioritize that. Second is, you know, our new org structure is actually pretty new, allowing some time to settle in and get that kind of in place better, before we do that.
Then third, you know, just being candid, you know, I think, getting a few quarters under our belt where we, you know, continue to perform with consistency, I think, you know, puts us in a better position to have a really credible investor day that says, "Hey, here's, you know..." Look forward, and then with confidence, people can, I think that's just, some humility that I think is, the reality is where we're at today.
Yeah. It takes a lot of time-
Yeah, it does.
You know, for a fresh management team. Artificial intelligence, digital care, I'll throw robotics.
Sure.
Where does Baxter participate in that, or how does it become incorporated into your practice? Maybe a better-
Yeah.
Way of asking the question.
I would say that there's really a couple areas that AI, you know, plays a role. You know, number one, you know, in the spirit of how do we help our customers think through issues that they have...
Yeah.
Be a, you know, I'll say, a solutions provider for some of the challenges that they're facing. You know, certainly, we have opportunities and things we're working through together that are incorporated in some of our products that are really designed to allow that to happen in a better way, whether it's, you know, medication delivery, whether it's, you know, just certain areas that I think are just interesting in that space. We do use it in some of our, again, manufacturing operations as well for certain areas that, you know, automations that for whether it's quality, whether it's certain things that utilize AI. Then there's a back office component to that.
You know, I can tell you from, you know, running even in my finance organization, there's a lot of analytics and reporting and things that we do that actually drive efficiency and hopefully better decision-making, and allow our people to spend more time helping make good decisions versus generating content.
Yeah.
That's the way those I'd call it kind of the three areas that are probably most prominent in terms of how we use AI at Baxter.
There isn't a software-as-a-service aspect to it, is there?
Yeah, not really at this point.
Okay.
I think, again, I think it's certainly like with everybody, it's still evolving. That's not really a part of it at this point.
I'm going to get into the financials, which I know you know well, I want to ask the question, things have changed a lot on tariffs since the earnings call a few days ago.
They have.
Can you weigh in on your thoughts of those changes?
Yeah, I wish I could give you a more satisfying answer than I'm probably gonna give you. The reality of it is, it's not yet clear on what that looks like. Now, obviously, I think probably like most companies, we're putting a lot of kind of war room effort, if you wanna call it that, to really get a determination on where that's headed. Having said that, you know, obviously, as this thing evolved last year, we tried to be very clear and transparent with you all. You know, and again, as things were even moving along from the earlier part of the year to the later part of the year, as soon as we have some clarity on that, we will continue to do that.
At this point, I don't really have anything really to report, just because it's, again, it's not necessarily clear on where that's headed.
Okay. When you started to put together guidance, there are a number of puts and takes, many of which we've already spoken about. Would you call your 2026 guidance conservative? Realistic?
Nah. Well, I think Yeah, maybe the word prudent would be the word I would use. I think it's when I think about, you know, our attempt to be transparent with what are some of the challenges in the business, you know, what are some of the opportunities in the business? I think it lands in a place that hopefully balances those things in the right way.
It doesn't include Novum. We know that.
Correct.
It does include a recovery in certain franchises, including HST.
I mean, I would say maybe a few kind of key things to think about from both a kind of a top and a margin perspective. Maybe I'll comment a little bit on, there's kind of an H1, H2 element to this.
Yeah
... as well.
Please.
Maybe on the top, you know, the things I guess I would contemplate, well, you just said the first one, is just, we're not planning to have further sales of Novum in 2026. The second really is around this sort of baseline of IV solutions. You know, we really haven't factored in any kind of growth or recovery in that space. It's kind of, Hey, here's our new baseline on that. You know, as we've said, that same thing really applies in a lot of ways to our U.S. injectables.
Again, the one part of that that I think is a bit of a caveat to that, and again, is we do expect some second half improvement based on the fact that, again, we'd solved some of the supply and operational issues in that space. To your point on HST, I think we've continued to see a strong order book on the CCS side. You know, this is an area that, you know, people often ask, "Hey, you know, are you concerned about capital spend?" This, that, and the other thing, and again, we really haven't. We continue to anticipate, you know, solid performance in that area. On the Front Line Care side, you know, we projected that in 2025, that would return to kind of a more stable place.
We saw that. That's, you know, as you've seen throughout the year, that business has continued to be, again, I would say, solid, and we expect that to continue as we head into next year. I think those are some of the top-line items. On the margin side, you know, there's a couple of things that I'd say are important to contemplate. You know, one is just the, you know, some of the work that we're doing from a, you know, structural restructuring standpoint, is, you know, we anticipate some of the benefit of that really happening in the second half of the year. That's one element of this.
There's, you know, there's also a mathematical thing where, we, you know, we capitalized in 2025, some of the, what I'm gonna call, some of the inefficiencies, if you will, that happened mostly in our solutions business, were capitalized into our inventory. We head into 2026, as that rolls into the first half, where we're selling against, I'll call it, higher cost inventory. As that has been, you know, impacted positively, where we have our staffing levels set more appropriately, to reflect the new baseline, we anticipate some of that margin improvement that'll happen in the, in the second half of the year as well.
When I think about first half margins versus second half margins.
Yeah.
Second half sounds like it's going to be accelerating.
It should, yeah.
On both gross and operating margins
Yes
Versus the first half.
Yes.
Okay, is it every quarter it gets better, or do I think about it collectively?
Yeah, I would say sequential. There is, I would call it sequential improvement, as we go through the quarters of the year. Again, certainly H2 being generally better than H1. I would just, again, I would say, you know, obviously, the other part of it is last year, you know, our tariff impact, we did not have in the first half of the year.
Right.
There is a bit of a comparison there. The other comment I'd just make in the first quarter is that, you may recall post-hurricane last year, the first quarter, we actually had a pretty strong, down channel distributor build.
Yeah
... in Q1. Again, we're up against that as well, so there's a bit of a comparison issue there. Those are a few of the things I would say are kind of the, you know, some of the puts and takes around our overall guidance for the year.
How are you thinking about pricing? There's a period of time where you couldn't raise prices, you had two to three GPOs.
Yeah
... being renegotiated. Where are we in that cycle?
Last year, two out of the three large GPOs, the negotiation itself happened in the end of 2024, but the impacts started in January and February of 2025.
Got it.
The benefit we got from those renegotiations, last year, again, we actually guided last year to have about 100 basis points of pricing improvement on an enterprise-wide basis, which we actually realized, unfortunately, got absorbed by some other things that happened. That was a, kind of a 2025 phenomenon. 2026, again, there'll be some kind of a cost of living increase-
Mm-hmm
... if you will, on those, GPO contracts and our pricing in general. Not the same large impact that we had in 2025 from a pricing standpoint. Just one other thing to remember, the third of those GPOs, actually, we'll be renegotiating that in the later part of this year, and with the impact of that in 2027.
Do you have a backorder on anything?
Yeah, other than in our pharmaceutical business-
Yeah
... which is based on some of the operational stuff we've talked about.
Yep
Our backorders are actually in a pretty good place.
Okay.
We don't have an issue for that. That's the one area I'd call out.
How are you thinking about capital allocation?
Yeah, I think, for now, I mean, we're certainly focused, very clearly on de-levering the balance sheet.
Three times or what?
Yeah, three times is our target.
Okay
... we're focused on achieving by the end of this year. Certainly debt paydown. The other thing I would say, though, I want to remind people that even with that, though, our internal focus on R&D and capital spend is also again, sort of one and one A with that. Obviously, what we haven't done, again, we had a little bit lower R&D spend in the fourth quarter, but that's not a other than that was a, call it, an accounting reclassification. As we go forward, our R&D is very much.
Yeah
... into where we've historically been in the, you know, mid-four is plus. Capital allocation-wise, again, you know, internal investment, focus on paying down debt, obviously de-levering our balance sheet, are really the key focuses right now. We obviously, this, we'll see the impact of the dividend cut that we had.
Yeah.
Obviously, once we achieve our three times target, then certainly, you know, looking forward to that time and being able to then refocus some of our capital allocation really around how we drive value, whether it's, you know, bold in tuck in M&A, whether it's share repurchase, those types of things. For now, we're clearly focused on de-levering. That's the focus.
I can imagine the cutting of the dividend decision was very difficult.
Yeah.
Is that accurate? Okay, you have some... I'm making this up. You have extra cash. Did you say, "Okay, we're gonna make this acquisition?" Do you say, "We're gonna repurchase shares," or are you motivated to be like, "Now I can put the dividend back?
I mean, I guess the way I would answer that is, I think the, I would not anticipate changes to our dividend in the near term.
Okay, great.
I think for now, you know, we've got some debt coming due in the early part of 2027. We'd like to be able to pay that down with existing cash.
Yeah.
Certainly, obviously, it would continue to positively impact our leverage situation. Again, I would not anticipate near-term changes to our dividend.
What do you think at this stage the street needs, and what do you think they misunderstand?
You know, I think the biggest thing, I would say is a little bit back to maybe where we started this conversation around this idea that we're at a, what I almost call a jumping off point or a point to build from.
Yep.
You know, I think, you know, Baxter's gone through a lot of stuff. I think we find ourselves in a place where we have the opportunity to be a, again, a more, again, a focused organization, one that I think needs to start again. Andrew's talked about this. There's, you know, stabilizing our business is an important part of this today, where we accomplish that, we accomplish, again, focus on de-levering the balance sheet, and we really start to drive this continuous improvement mindset in the organization. I think, you know, we've rebased our solutions... We've rebased our, in a lot of ways, our, you know, pharmaceuticals on the injectable side.
I think this is, again, this is a place where now a lot of the distraction, a lot of the things that were going on, give us an opportunity now to build the organization from here. I think the other one is from a cash flow perspective. You know, I do think we. You know, these last two years from a free cash flow perspective, has been pretty tough. 2024 had a lot to do with sort of the cash that we spent on separating Vantive. 2025 included some of that yet, but also, obviously, expenses that were, what I call the payables, came due for the hurricane. We paid a lot of you know, cash in the early part of last year for that.
In addition to kind of the challenges we had with our inventory build from both the Novum pump situation, as well as the not recovering as quickly as we wanted to you know, from the IV solutions perspective. I think as we head into 2026, we certainly expect a better free cash flow. The focus on working capital, a more efficient inventory, the again, not paying hurricane expenses, I think puts us in a position again, to continue to make good progress on our deleveraging, and therefore, closer and closer, obviously, in addition to the dividend cut, closer and closer to a point where we're actually be able to, as we head into 2027 and beyond, really start to think about making better and different investments.
Joel, when we are together this time next year, what do you think we're gonna be talking about?
Yeah, I mean, what I look forward to talking about is getting through having a year in 2026, where we continue to again, build credibility with all of you in terms of our operational execution, our performance relative to expectations, our performance, again, relative to stabilizing our business, deleveraging our balance sheet, and really continuing to, you know, move the company forward from an innovation perspective, and just in general, a place that again, people feel better and more confident about. I can tell you, again, as I said it, I think we find ourselves at a good jumping-off point, and really excited about the year ahead, and look forward to talking all about it with you a year from now.
I look forward to the quarters. Thank you so much for joining us, and we'll see you soon.
All right. Thanks. Thanks, everyone. Appreciate your interest in Baxter.