Running a company for the long term is like driving a car in a race that has no end. To win a long race, you must take a pit stop every now and then to refresh and refuel your car, tune your engine and take other actions that will make you even faster, stronger and more competitive over the long term. That’s what we did in 2012—we refreshed and refueled our growth engine to help drive superior financial returns in the years ahead.
We invested significantly behind our brands. We changed the operating model of our company from a loose federation of countries and regions to a more globally integrated one to enable us to build our brands globally, deliver breakthrough innovation to consumers and unleash significant productivity. Simply put, we took actions that we believe set ourselves up for long-term sustainable growth and superior performance.
I am delighted to report that our performance in 2012 reflected our operational excellence and was in line with our expectations and guidance on every key metric:
• Our organic revenue was up 5 percent;
• Core earnings per share (eps) were $4.10;
• We delivered +$1 billion savings in the first year of our productivity program and remain on track to deliver $3 billion by 2015;
• We achieved a core net return on invested capital3(roic) of 15 percent and core return on equity (roe) of 28 percent;
• Management operating cash flow,excluding certain items, reached $7.4 billion; and
• $6.5 billion was returned to our shareholders through share repurchases and dividends.
