Everyone, thanks for joining us for the Cencora Fireside Chat. Hopefully, everyone is now well-fed and well-entertained by Dan Marino. But I have some better entertainment here today for you guys. Obviously, very thrilled to have Jim Cleary, Cencora's CFO, here with us today, and Bennett Murphy, Head of IR, Jack of All Trades, with us as well. For those of you who don't know, I'm Daniel Grosslight, the Health Tech and Distribution Analyst here at Citi. I'm going to start off with some stats, and it's really some stats to butter you up. You finished off a very strong fiscal year, fiscal 2025. EPS and adjusted operating income were both up 16%. Your stock's up about 55%. And here's some trivia for you. When's the last time Cencora had a down year?
A long time ago.
Almost seven years.
Almost seven years.
You've compounded your stock price at 25%, which is just amazing, so the number one question that I get from investors, I told you I was going to butter you up, which is a high-quality question to get, is, have I missed this trade? So that's the goal of this Fireside Chat: to determine, have we missed the trade, or can this trend keep on going? I guess we'll start with your 2026 guide, which was, again, very strong, and I think even more important, your long-term guidance outlook, which you raised. You raised your long-term operating income guidance to 6%-9% growth. And your 2026 guide calls for U.S. healthcare operating income growth even higher at 9%-11%.
And that contemplates a 1% headwind from the loss of Florida Cancer and slightly offset by an extra quarter of RCA, which we'll get into. But I was wondering if we could maybe start by helping bridge that gap between the strong near-term outlook and the still strong but a bit lower long-term guide. What specific drivers are giving you this exceptional near-term growth, and how do you see that normalizing post-fiscal 2026?
Yeah, well, Daniel, first of all, thank you for having us here to the conference. And thank you for the great work you do covering our company and industry. And as Daniel said, I'm joined today by Bennett Murphy. And Bennett leads our investor relations and also leads productivity at Cencora and the productivity capabilities that we're building to always be more efficient. And so, yeah, we've had a very good track record. And we introduced our guidance in November when we announced our fourth quarter results. And as Daniel was saying, on a consolidated basis, we're expecting operating income to grow 8%-10%. In the U.S., we're expecting operating income to grow 9%-11%. There's a 1% net headwind built into that as a result of an extra quarter of RCA acquisition that we did in January of last year.
And then that's offset by a customer we have in the oncology market that was acquired by a competitor. So if we exclude that 1% net headwind, we're actually talking about 10%-12% operating income growth in the U.S. And our long-term guide, we also increased by one percentage point at the low end and the bottom end. So for organic operating income growth, we were at 5%-8%. Now we're saying 6%-9%. And if we include growth from capital deployment, we're expecting EPS to grow at 9%-13%. And it had been at 8%-12% for our long-term guidance. And basically, the things that we've been benefiting from, and we've been saying this for quite some time, are the things that we'll continue to benefit from. We've seen very good pharmaceutical utilization trends.
We've seen very good sales of specialty products to physician practices and health systems. And so kind of those are some of the things that have been causing us to have outsized growth. And what we've done is we're really kind of building upon our highly successful specialty business. We're a leader in doing distribution. We're a leader in wraparound services like GPO services, which are services that are very much appreciated by our customer base and by manufacturers. And now we've extended our specialty position. And really, the next natural evolution of our specialty business was to get into MSOs, which we're doing in both the oncology space and the retina space. One thing that you'll see in our company is we're pharmaceutical-centric. So as we make investments and grow in these areas, everything that we will do is pharmaceutical-centric.
We have a high degree of confidence in our long-term guidance. It's really driven by a couple of macro things. Innovation in the pharmaceutical market is one thing that will drive it, and then demographics also, and so we expect to have a very good long-term growth rate, and as we do our long-term guidance, we just aren't expecting the same level of outperformance that we've had for the last few years, but having said that, we have a great deal of confidence in our business and our industry in the future, and one thing is that it's hard to. There's going to be so much innovation in pharmaceuticals, and it's hard to tell what pharmaceutical company is going to win if you look five years out, but in that we're such a leader in distribution and lead with market leaders, we know we'll be a natural beneficiary of that innovation.
Got it. So it sounds like the secular tailwinds are kind of here to stay. One of those tailwinds, as you mentioned, was utilization. As I look at the horizon and really kind of into 2026 and 2027, there may be a couple of bumps just in terms of coverage headwinds, insurance headwinds. Namely, who knows what's going to happen in the exchanges? Some of the big insurers are projecting 40%-60% reductions in exchange enrollment because of the enhanced subsidies going away if they do indeed go away, if there's some fix. We'll see. MA seems to be still a little bit challenged from an enrollment standpoint. But as we look to the next couple of years, what impact, if any, will some of these, call it policy-induced headwinds, have on your business?
Not just your core distribution business, but maybe some of the other downstream assets that you alluded to.
Yeah, I think it's always hard to pull apart policy change impacts. If you were to go back and look at our transcripts from when the Affordable Care Act came to fruition, it was hard for us to quantify the pickup at that time of the increase in insured population. I think the key thing to remember is, one, as you said, there's still a significant amount of information to be determined. But two, pharmaceuticals are the most efficient form of care, and access to them is critical for tamping down healthcare spend. Because if you think about the implications of a patient not being able to get on their medication, that typically results in them being either readmitted to a hospital or interfacing again with a doctor. So I think there's a good awareness of the efficiency of pharmaceuticals.
I think the key thing is always patients having access to them for a number of the, and then where are the utilizers? Where's the bolus of utilizers of pharmaceuticals? A lot of it is the older population that's on multiple therapies. So I think there's a lot to be determined, as you said, on some of the coverage pieces. I still think there is good employment data, good healthcare coverage data, and continued good proof points on the value of pharmaceutical access. So I think we'll still see that, and I think we'll have some, hopefully not have any disruption on people being able to get access to their pharmaceuticals.
Yeah, yeah, we shall see. But hopefully there is no disruption. Let's turn to the MSO business. Jim, you alluded to that as being one of the key growth drivers. And I think we talked about this last year too at the conference. It's become a big part of your story. And it's interesting, not just the MSO assets itself, but also the wraparound services that you can put through the MSO. A couple of years back, you made an investment in OneOncology. Since then, you've expanded your MSO footprint through smaller tuck-in acquisitions, but also, as you alluded to before, the acquisition of RCA, which significantly increased your, or got you into the retina space in terms of MSO. Can you just talk about how you see this business evolving from here? Obviously, your competitors are doing a similar thing with the MSO business.
How do you differentiate what you're doing vis-à-vis your competitors? And what other ologies, other than retina, oncology, and ophthalmology, could you potentially expand into?
Great. Well, thank you very much, Daniel, for asking that question. And of course, as I said earlier, the specialty market, particularly in Part B, has been a big growth driver for us. And so we're a leader in distribution and then a leader in wraparound services like GPO. And then what we started to do in 2023 is expand into the MSO business, which is a natural evolution of our strong specialty business. And so this is the opportunity to provide additional management services, even higher value services to physician practices that we've had relationships with for not only years, but in many cases, decades. And so we're doing practice management services and other back office and administrative services for the physicians so that they can focus on practicing medicine.
As I said before, as we do this, and this is a differentiator in some ways for us, is we'll continue to be pharmaceutical-centric. You'll see in every strategic move that we make, we'll stay pharmaceutical-centric because that's our area of expertise. And that's why we're focused on oncology and retina, which are the two most pharmaceutical-centric specialties. And so as you look at future growth in this area, in these two MSO areas, we'll see both very good organic growth and acquisition growth. And I'll give you examples of both. I'll start out with organic growth. We acquired the RCA MSO in January of 2025. And it's been growing through acquisitions and organically. And one of the ways it's growing organically is it is the leader. We are the leader in clinical trial sites. And so we're involved in all the clinical trials in the retina market.
And so that's one of the services that RCA does. And this is a very good, very important, and also profitable business. But one of the great things about it is it's very helpful in attracting top graduates out of schools because as they finish their fellowship programs, they like to go to work where they can both practice medicine and be involved in clinical trials. And as I've gone around to meetings of RCA doctors, I always like to ask the young doctors why they decided to join RCA. And they always indicate because it's a place where they can really kind of practice medicine at the very top, but also be involved in clinical trials. So that's just an example of what we'll see in organic growth in the market. And again, just one example.
If we look at growth through acquisition, both RCA and OneOncology are growing through acquisition, both larger practices and medium-sized and small practices. One of the things that'll really be a key component of our capital deployment over the years is that we presently own 35% of OneOncology. We're partnered with a private equity firm and the physician practices that own the other 65%. So from a capital deployment standpoint, over the next period of time, really a lot of our capital deployment is spoken for as we'll acquire the other 65% of OneOncology. We have a put-call structure in place to do that. We're very pleased with the business. So we look forward to ultimately owning 100% of that business.
Yep. And that put-call structure, I think, becomes exercisable soon, in the next few months. Or I guess it's June, so in the next seven months. Are you thinking about exercising it in 2026? Or I think there's another time where you can also exercise in 2027. How are you thinking about that deal?
Yeah. And so there's really kind of a two-year period when that put-and-call is in place from June of 2026 through June of 2028. And we publish kind of the terms of the put-and-call. But we very much like the business and very much look forward to owning 100% of the business. It's very strategic and will really help to drive our long-term growth. And once we own 100% of the business, we'll really be able to drive the synergies also between OneOncology and RCA. And one thing I should add, and this is on really the oncology specialty, is I've talked about how it's really kind of helping to drive our distribution growth. And the OneOncology MSO is one of the reasons we've been growing so fast in the distribution market is because of the organic and acquisition growth that they've experienced.
It's also helped our distribution business.
Yep, yep. And what are the other synergies between RCA and OneOncology that you can, I guess you'll have to wait a couple of years to really start to realize, but what are some of those synergies?
Yeah, I think that, and it's really kind of too early to fully say, but I think, for instance, there'll be some synergies on the clinical trial front and just in terms of fully developing that expertise and then also some back office synergies also.
I think there's just each of them is a leader in their space, and each of them has some best practices that there's some value that we can do just by combining those under one roof and allowing that to kind of.
Yeah, but you have to wait until you own the full thing outright before.
Yeah, right. We would obviously want to wait until we own all of it in order to make sure that we fully get the value there.
Actually, before we move off of the MSOs, I do want to just ask about potential headwinds to drug pricing. Obviously, a lot of these practices are paid based on ASP. And if we do see a reduction in ASPs because of IRA or other just things in the market, that could impact the physician revenue and your revenue by extension. So how are you thinking about your pharmaceutical-first approach and potential pricing headwinds?
Yeah, so I think we've seen this topic come up a number of times over the past 15 years. And I think we've done a really good job over that 15-year period of being a strong advocate for community providers and not having an unintended consequence of some type of proposed changes to actually occur. I think it's important, as you get into the details and really understand how the system works, the community-based provider is the most efficient site of care. Better outcomes, better cost. And the last thing you want to do is have something that artificially pushes people into other settings that are more expensive or make them move great distances to go seek care elsewhere.
So I think that's why you've seen pretty good outcomes when the changes have been talked about, including the Bona Fide Service Fee change that was disclosed a couple of months back and in our 10-K. So I think that clearly that message resonates when you get into the discussion and start to understand what will the actual impact be and what's the real focus and then try and avoid some of the unintended consequences that could hurt community-based providers.
Yep, makes sense. Okay, let's switch over to a different but related topic, biosimilars. This morning, Dr. Marty Makary was giving a fireside chat, and one of his big focuses is streamlining the adoption of biosimilars to improve affordability. I'm wondering if you can just talk about how biosimilars specifically has been a tailwind for you guys, if it has, and relate that for me to your MSO acquisition strategy and how there's kind of this virtuous cycle between your MSOs, your GPOs, and your biosimilars.
Yeah, that's a great question. And biosimilars in Part B is something that has been benefiting us and will continue to benefit us from a distribution standpoint and from a GPO standpoint. Biosimilars are a higher margin for us than brands. And so we expect to continue to benefit from biosimilar trends in the Part B market. But I think overall, and you talked about being virtuous in terms of the overall cycle. And that's one thing that is a very good thing about our business and our industry is we'll just continue to benefit over time from innovation in pharmaceuticals and then also launches of biosimilars and then also generic launches as patents go off, excuse me, as products go off patent. And so we'll always be kind of going through that cycle and benefiting from the innovative products, the biosimilars, and the generic launches.
And the biosimilars in the MSO space, whether it be oncology or retina, has been a benefit for us.
I think there's been very different experiences, Part D and Part B. So I can tell you that in preparing for our May of 2020 earnings call, we were ready to start talking about biosimilars being a pickup in the quarter. Instead, we spent most of that earnings call talking about a virus that was traveling across the globe. But it's been in there. It's been in our numbers since then. As you look back to then, you started with Neulasta, and over time you have Avastin, Herceptin, RITUXAN. You saw pretty strong utilization of those biosimilars right out of the gate. And similarly with the PAV, you've seen good utilization. The part of the market where the doctor is able to, if the doctor's comfortable, that's the right course of treatment that they can move people to the biosimilar. You've seen that happen.
Where you have seen it not happen so fast is in the Part D space. And a lot of that is going through mail order, and mail order has some different challenges. But the doctor space, going back to the efficiency of that site of care, the doctor space moved people pretty quickly.
So Part D, not a lot of margin for you guys. And I know there's some things that PBMs are doing with their own kind of private label there, which kind of also takes out your margin. But Part B, that's where the margin is. So as we see more adoption of biosimilars, safe to say potentially a revenue headwind, but from a gross profit perspective, gross profit dollar perspective, challenged?
Yes, biosimilars, and as they're launched, that should be a tailwind for us. And of course, there's a lot of things that can kind of moderate our revenue growth, but at the same time, enhance our operating income growth. And this would be one example. And as a company, what we're really focused on is, of course, the operating income growth as well as our free cash flow and return on invested capital.
Yeah. And you're seeing that revenue dynamic play out right now, right? As you look at our calendar 2025 revenue cadence, you're seeing some of that HUMIRA, STELARA volume going by somewhere. And while that impacts our revenue line, it's not a material profit driver that we've called out.
Yeah. Speaking of that, a similar dynamic happens with GLP-1s. Obviously, very important from a revenue standpoint, minimally profitable. But I'm wondering how this dynamic changes as new drugs come to market. Lilly was just presenting a couple of hours ago, and they're very excited, obviously, about their orals and their portfolio of drugs here. So I'm just curious if, as orals come to market, they probably don't need the amount of handling that the injectables do. How does that change the profitability dynamic within the GLP-1 space?
Yeah, that's a great question. And as we've commented on, since the products have been launched, GLP-1s are a big driver of our revenue growth, but they're minimally profitable for us. And from a revenue standpoint, we're quite transparent. And every quarter, we announce how much revenue growth we're getting from GLP-1s. Now that orals will be launched, what we will see is a moderate decrease in our operating expenses because, of course, there won't be the cold chain. And so it'll be less expensive for us to handle the GLP-1s. And so, as a result, there'll be a moderate increase in our operating income from GLP-1s and our operating margin. But I'm going to say they'll still be minimally profitable. And it's not a huge driver of our operating income growth as we look at fiscal year 2026.
There'll be some incremental benefit there, but it's not the big driver of our growth.
Makes sense. Okay. One other dynamic which is playing out in the GLP-1 market, but I suppose this is not just specific to GLP-1s, is the growth of the DTC channel. Again, Dr. Marty Makary was talking about that as being an important driver of affordability. But I'm wondering how the DTC channel, either LillyDirect, NovoCare, the other Trump Rx, how that potentially impacts you guys, if at all.
Yeah. So one of those is an interface to other programs. But then as you think about what the DTC programs are in the market, a lot of them are generally just using the existing channel. In many cases, the programs that are being launched by manufacturers, what they're trying to do is solve for, one, a lack of access to a prescribing physician, so a telehealth solution, and then a knock-on digital pharmacy fulfillment of a prescription, which with those digital pharmacies or online pharmacies, they'd often be buying from a distributor in their normal course of business. So it'd still be leveraging the channel. And I think most of them, to the extent it's not solving for a physician interface problem, it's solving for a direct-to-consumer price. But it's still, in many cases, you're going through the normal channel because of the efficiency that's there.
There are some anecdotal evidence where the volume is small enough where it might be a direct-to-mail order pharmacy, but generally, a lot of them are just using the existing channel for the actual physical movement of the product.
Okay. And in that case, same economics, right? You don't differentiate where it comes from.
That's correct.
Okay, okay. Let's switch over to your large client relationships. Obviously, Walgreens went private. I'm wondering if that transaction has impacted your relationship at all, what your relationship is like with Sycamore, who bought Walgreens. Any changes in that since the company went private?
Sure. So, as you know, Walgreens has been an important customer for Cencora for quite some time. We've had the relationship with Walgreens since 2013, the relationship with Boots since 2021 when we acquired Alliance Healthcare. And we do publish every quarter what our revenues are to Walgreens, which you'll see in our 10-Qs and our 10-Ks. And it's a very important customer, and we always want to work with them to help to improve their business and have even more efficient operations. And we have the contract with Walgreens until 2029, and we have the contract with Boots until 2031.
Yeah. And other than price, which is, I assume, locked in via the contracts, what other things are you doing to strengthen that relationship with Walgreens?
Sure. And one thing I will comment on, as I said, we publish the revenues for Walgreens every quarter. It is a very high revenue business for us. But, of course, our operating margins on Walgreens are much, much lower than they are on the balance of our business. It's a substantially lower margin business for us. But we're always looking for operational things that we can do to further improve our efficiency. And one of the things that we've worked with them on over the years is they operate a lot of micro-fulfillment centers, which help to improve their operations. And we will work with them to help facilitate their micro-fulfillment centers, which is just one example, Daniel.
Got it. Okay. Let's switch over to your other largest relationship with Cigna. They're a little bit of a unique beast because they do own a specialty distributor as well, CuraScript, which does, I think the last time they disclosed this a few months ago, about $25 billion of distribution business goes through that. It's growing double digits. And they recently highlighted a new strategy to leverage CuraScript, particularly for biosimilars, which, as we mentioned, are kind of a big growth driver for you on the Part B side. Part D is different. Given this, how do you kind of reconcile their increasing reliance on CuraScript to drive specialty distribution with your strong relationship?
So it's not much different than actually, it's not different than how the relationship has been. If you go back in time, well, one, CuraScript's been there the whole time for at least 10 years. If you think about the way the relationship has always worked, it's when a product is on patent, they're generally buying it from us. And once it goes off patent, they've generally gone direct. So it's the same dynamic here. It's just it's a biologic, but it's not a new dynamic. It's certainly something they're talking more about. But I would say it's more kind of normal course for the relationship. There's not a material change there.
Okay. So more of a change in how they're talking about it, nothing that would economically impact you in terms of that relationship.
Yeah, no change.
Got it. Okay. Let's switch over to the international side of the business, which I think has been a little bit weak recently, and you're making some changes there to focus on the stronger areas, but let's start with the core distribution, which actually has been quite strong there in the international distribution business. Is it the same dynamic that has driven the strength in the U.S. kind of core distribution over there? Or is there something unique about international distribution that's driving that?
Yeah, it's a great, great question. And let me just take a step back and say that if we look back to fiscal year 2025, we did have just outstanding growth in the U.S., but we had a much weaker year in our international healthcare solution segment. And if we look at overall at Cencora from an operating income mix standpoint, 85% of our operating income is in the U.S. segment, and 15% of our operating income is in the international segment. And really, the kind of the issues that we saw in international in fiscal year 2025 were driven by a couple of businesses that are smaller than our biggest business. They are our global specialty logistics business and our international consulting business, which were impacted in part by subdued clinical trials. But our core distribution business is performing better. It had a solid year in fiscal year 2025.
And probably the biggest growth driver there is the 3PL market. That would be kind of the faster growing part of our distribution business internationally. And from an international standpoint, specialty products, which are the growth driver for us in the U.S., they're distributed principally 3PL in Europe. And so, as a result of that, our 3PL business is our fastest growing business. But one thing I do want to add is, from an international standpoint, we did see a turnaround in our global specialty logistics business in the fourth quarter. And we had both revenue growth and profitability growth there. And so we do feel much better about the international business in fiscal year 2026 and our guiding to operating income growth there.
Great. Yeah, let's stick on that World Courier, the global logistics business. Obviously, you're coming off a difficult year, so it's an easier comp year. But as you mentioned, it does seem like there's really kind of durable tailwinds there, at least in the near term. What are you seeing on the clinical trial front, on the biopharma funding front, which is so important to this business?
Yeah, that's a great question. And World Courier has been a fantastic business for over a decade. It's really had terrific growth. And fiscal year 2025 was a down year for us. As I said, we saw improvements in volume, both volumes and profitability. Had good volume growth and profitability growth in the fiscal fourth quarter. And so we are seeing some market improvements there, which give us some optimism. We also have seen some internal improvements that we've made. And so it's been a great business for almost the entire time that Cencora has owned it, with fiscal year 2025 being the exception. And we have optimism for that business going forward because of the market. And we're also well-positioned, given the specialty distribution that we do related to clinical trials.
As the cell and gene market grows, we think that World Courier is very well-positioned to participate and lead in that market.
Yep. Yeah, makes sense. And one of the other more challenging or challenged areas of the international business that doesn't seem to have recovered quite yet is the PharmaLex business, right? Can you just maybe give us a little bit more detail on what actions you're taking there to kind of streamline the operations? And I know that you're going to be taking or keeping the more attractive parts of that business. How have the more attractive parts performed relative to your expectations? So kind of separate those two out for us.
Yes, absolutely. And I'll take us a step back and say that Bob Mauch, our CEO, became CEO about 14 months ago. And Bob established four strategic drivers. And one of those strategic drivers is prioritizing growth-oriented investments. And that's why you'll see our investments in specialty and MSOs. But what this meant is we really looked across the portfolio to determine what were going to be the best businesses long-term that really had competitive advantage or brought competitive advantage to the balance of the enterprise. And so what we did is we set up the other segment, and we moved some businesses into the other segment, which were evaluating strategic alternatives. And these are good businesses, but they don't necessarily bring competitive advantage to the balance of the enterprise.
What we did with PharmaLex and PharmaLex had underperformed during the year is we determined what parts of PharmaLex, where do we have the right to win, and where are we going to have good growth, and what parts of PharmaLex do we feel are okay businesses, but we don't have the ability to win. So what we did is we decided there in consulting and that consulting business, we're really going to focus on pharmacovigilance, market access, and regulatory affairs, which were the bigger part of the businesses, performing better, where we thought we had an ability to win. So we have taken that action, and kind of we're very pleased with the position that we're in moving forward.
In those three businesses that you're retaining, did they grow in fiscal 2025? Or is there some kind of operational change, or do you need that to turn around as well and it just fits better within your portfolio?
Yeah, those businesses are both the better-performing parts of PharmaLex and the parts where we think we're well-positioned for growth and have a right to win.
Got it. Okay. And on that other segment, you're evaluating strategic alternatives.
Yes.
Any timeline for when we could potentially see a transaction there?
Yeah, we don't have a specific timeline. And I want to emphasize again that many of the businesses in other are very good businesses. And by far the biggest business in other is our MWI Animal Health business. And that business has performed very well in its market. But again, we determined it didn't bring competitive advantage to the balance of the enterprise. And so we'll evaluate strategic alternatives. And that would be by far the biggest business in other. And again, it's a very attractive business in its market. And the other businesses in other are our Profarma distribution business in Brazil, which we own part of, and then the PharmaLex businesses, and then also our legacy U.S. consulting business. And again, we're evaluating strategic alternatives but haven't established a specific timeline.
Got it. Okay. Let's end our conversation on capital deployment because it is such an important part of your business, given the amount of free cash flow that you guys throw off. You remain committed to returning cash to shareholders. You increased your dividend recently. You're buying back a bunch of shares, all the while investing organically and inorganically. So how do you prioritize some of those areas of capital deployment?
Yeah, that's a great question and a really important question because, as Daniel was saying, one of the very good things about Cencora is we have really strong free cash flow, and we also have very strong return on invested capital, two things we're very focused on. And so how well we invest that free cash flow is very important. And we have had and will continue to have balanced capital deployment. And we'll really kind of be doing four different things. One is continuing to invest in the business. And this year, we'll have capital expenditures of about $900 million, continuing to invest in the business. This will be in infrastructure and technology. And it's higher this year than in past years because utilization trends and volumes have been so strong that we'll be putting money into infrastructure, including some of our specialty infrastructure for distribution.
We'll continue to do strategic acquisitions. A lot of the strategic acquisitions for capital deployment is spoken for, given the OneOncology put call where we'll ultimately buy the other 65%. And we very much look forward to the opportunity to do that. And then we'll continue to do strategic excuse me, we'll continue to do opportunistic share repurchases. And you'll see that as you've seen over the last few years that we've done opportunistic share repurchases. And then we'll also continue to pay a dividend and grow our dividend. And this year, we increased our dividend growth rate to 9%. And again, our guidance that we put out there, long-term guidance for EPS growth, is 9%-13%. And so we wanted to make sure that our dividend growth rate of 9% was within that range.
And so again, capital deployment is just so important to us, given our level of free cash flow. And we'll continue to have that sort of balanced capital deployment, Daniel.
Sounds good. You're keeping Bennett busy with all these things. What was the new title?
Investor Relations and Enterprise Productivity.
Enterprise Productivity. All right. Well, I think we're just about out of time. Jim, Bennett, thanks so much for joining us this afternoon. Very interesting stuff.
Thank you.
Daniel.
Thank you. Thanks to everyone.