Joe Almeida: On the current fusion market, we have really good demand, really, really good demand. We haven’t lost 1% of market share at all. As a matter of fact, we gained market share. Our growth, our infusion hardware growth has increased in the mid-teens. And for next year, the demand is pretty solid for our product. Remember, our product has – SIGMA Spectrum has the right precision, the pump has the right precision, and it has what – it’s very well-liked in the marketplace. So we continue to get significant income interest from competitive accounts to our pump, okay. On the specifically Novum, I want to make sure that we continue to work with the FDA. We have given them all the information required. We submitted with a package.
We also give them all the incremental changes that we’ve made to the product, and we are in continual and regular conversations with them during their review period. This is where we are with Novum. But I just want to let you know, we really want to get this pump approved. We’re doing everything we can. But in the meantime, we have a very capable and really good pump out there. That continues to gain market share and has very good demand as you’ll see this year, and you’re going to see next year as well. So it’s altogether a good situation for Baxter. Of course, we are working very hard to have the other pump approved. We want to have that approved.
Pito Chickering: Okay. And then, next question. Oil and diesel have been very volatile over the last few months and why aren’t giving 2024 guidance? If oil and diesel stay in this range, can you help us quantify the headwind for 2024 as the costs roll through the balance sheet and on the P&L, and in any ways of how you can offset those costs? Thank you.
Joe Almeida: Yeah. We have put a significant amount of operational efficiencies in place, primarily in our logistics and transportation and supply group. We see the headwinds in parts of the business about the cost of energy, primarily fuel, but that has been more than offset by the programs that we put in place. So our initiatives are expected to, as I said, more than offset any increment impact from rising of oil and diesel and diesel prices.
Pito Chickering: Thank you.
Joe Almeida: Thank you.
Operator: Your next question comes from a line of Robbie Marcus from J.P. Morgan. Your line is open.
Robert Marcus: Great. Thanks for taking the questions and congrats on a nice quarter. Maybe to start, I know there’s been a couple of questions on ‘24 that have been centered around margins, but I wanted to ask on the top line. At the Analyst Day, your long range plan was for 4% to 5% organic top line growth. The street’s modeling 4% next year, coming off a year of around 2%. What’s your confidence level in being able to reach your long range plan targets? Don’t focus on that.
Joe Almeida: Robby, good morning. We expect, as I say, ex our kidney business, that our margin will be in line with the expectations, okay. Of the short term, and our objective for mid to long term for the company is 4% to 5% as we improve the WAMGR as well. But we have plans ex, to get back at a growth close to what it is today expected. So it is a good story there, as we have momentum in several different areas of the company with some product launches. As I said, one of the biggest headwinds that we had experienced in the past few years had been our pharmaceutical business that we were able to turn around with great launches. So not giving guidance in 2024, but our expectations is to be around the expectations of the market in terms of growth, and our mid to long term expectations is to be 4% to 5%.
Robert Marcus: Great, I appreciate that. And, I want to say it’s really helpful to get the segment margins, thank you for that. But I want to ask on sort of the trends here. We got year-to-date, and third quarter, and as well as ‘22. How should we think about maybe some of the past few years and your expectations for margins in the segments here? And now with four segments and more ownership on the leadership within each, what are some of the examples of things they could do that weren’t able to be done before to help improve margins on a segment basis? Thanks a lot.
Joe Almeida: Robby, we have a significant amount of programs in our manufacturing team, logistics team, also pricing initiatives, as well as new product launches. So it’s a mixed volume and cost reduction story. We will be improving sequentially our margins. As you’ve seen, as we said, remember we’re executing on everything that we said we’re going to do. We are improving our margins. You’re going to see that in the fourth quarter as we have guided, as well as you’re going to see that in 2024. So our confidence in continuing to improve our margins. And once we have the business spun off, the remaining Baxter we’ll have even further ability to continue to grow its margins, okay. So because it’s all about mix and new products and also pricing.
So our story is about the same, is the aspiration to 45% on the top and the bottom – top line I’m sorry. And the bottom line continued to improve sequentially and continue to find a ways of getting productivity improvement through volume, mix and pricing.
Brian Stevens : Yeah, and Robby, our plan right now, this third quarter, completing our verticalization and reporting out segment profitability was a big milestone for us, and we’re extremely excited to be able to share that with you. And I think our long-term plan is when we get to year end and we’re putting out information, we do plan to go back and provide supplemental information on history, to provide some better comparability as we’ve done in other situations in the past. But I think, the way to generally think about it, as you’re looking at the overall directionality of where Baxter margins have trended from the first half of the year, as we’re selling through some of our higher cost inventory to the second half of the year, pretty much across all of our segments, you’re going to see sequential margin increases in the back half, contributing not just to the items I’ve pointed out before, but also to additional operating leverage just from higher sales in the back half of the year.
