Andrew Bonfield: Yeah, and just to add to that a little bit, just to remind you that the first quarter of 2023 was very strong and actually the highest level of STUs in resource industries for over 10 years at the time. So that was a significant factor. Secondly, as we talked about, there are two product lines, where because of supply chain there was a backlog which was used up principally in 2023, off-highway trucks and also articulated trucks. Just as an FYI, large mining trucks are still growing, which I know is one of the factors that many of you look at. So there was no issue there at all with regards to that.
A – Jim Umpleby: And again, you think about just the market changing, we’re still very bullish on the fact longer term that we believe the energy transition will support increased commodity demand over time. That’ll expand our total addressable market and provide us further opportunities for long-term profitable growth. Just think about everything that has to happen for EVs. There’s no way around that being accomplished without our customers producing more commodities, and of course, they use our products to produce those additional commodities.
Operator: We’ll go next to Angel Castillo at Morgan Stanley.
Angel Castillo: Hi, good morning and thanks for taking my question. Just wanted to clarify, going back to North America CI in the second quarter, you talked about seeing continued kind of healthy demand there. But just wanted to clarify, as we think about kind of dealer inventories coming down in the second quarter, and you also have a little bit of tougher comps there as you think about retail sales. When we kind of look at retail sales for the second quarter of this year, just to clarify, is that expected to be still positive or do you expect that to turn kind of modestly negative? And as you kind of talk about that and provide more color on that, could you also talk about what you are seeing in April, in terms of kind of quarter-to-date trends in retail sales?
Andrew Bonfield: Yeah, as I think we’ve indicated overall, for the full year, we expect CI revenues to be, STUs to be slightly negative for the full year. The first quarter, in January we said we thought they would be about flat for the full year. So that does imply some acceleration through the year in order to get back to that sort of – to be just slightly negative. With regards to trends in April, look we’re not going to talk about what’s happening. I mean, as is always the case, quarter-on-quarter you see changes, which can relate to commissioning and all sorts of number of factors, but we’re comfortable with that full year forecast for CI.
A – Jim Umpleby: And North America is our strongest, largest geographic area for CI. And as we said earlier, we certainly expect demand in North America to remain healthy. We’ve got – we expect it to be flat to slightly higher in non-residential, flat to slightly down. So again, in that North American market, which is so important to us, business continues to be strong.
Operator: Our next question comes from Kristen Owen at Oppenheimer.
Kristen Owen: Great. Thank you for taking the question. I wanted to ask about capital allocation here, just given the ASR that you put in place. You’ve bought back more shares than historically you do in a year. I appreciate that that is in line with the ME&T free cash flow deployment, but your stock is also at all-time highs. So just wondering how we should think about intrinsic value at this stage and how to weigh that ASR versus, say, dividend increase.
Andrew Bonfield: Yeah. So obviously as you know, we have both a dividend policy as well as a share buyback policy. As far as the dividend is concerned, we have one more year of our high single digits. That’s a board decision which will probably be made around June time, and then after that we’ll probably come back and look at what the future policy will be. Remember, the objective is to pay out no more than 60% to 65% of free cash flow in a low environment for the dividend. So that will be part of our – that comes into part of the policy and the way we look at that. With regards to intrinsic value, obviously as is always the case, yes, we do take into account intrinsic value, and that decision has been made as part of the longer term ASR, obviously.
But remind you that the benefit of the ASR is really around the fact that you are in the market more consistently. We don’t try and market time. We are really just trying to be in the market consistently to return that cash to shareholders. Overall, we believe that’s the best approach, but we’re very comfortable with putting that in place. Audra, we have time for one more question.
Operator: Thank you. That question comes from Nicole DeBlase at Deutsche Bank.
Nicole DeBlase: Yeah, thanks. Good morning, guys. I also wanted to focus on CI. So a lot of discussion obviously about Europe kind of being the problem child this quarter. I guess, are you guys seeing as you kind of progress through the quarter, some signs of stabilization or is there risk that Europe could still get worse? And then I guess also like, with dealer inventories being up and not being the driver, are you concerned about the level of dealer inventories in Europe CI specifically? Thank you.
Jim Umpleby: Yeah, firstly, as I mentioned earlier, we believe that dealer inventory is comfortably within what we would consider the typical range. When we think about EAME, we talked about construction weakness in Europe, but also there’s strength in the Middle East, a lot of construction activity in the Middle East. So again, that provides a bit of a buffer there to the total EAME region. And again, I keep coming back to North America as our largest, most important region for CI and the fact that non-residential construction is underpinned by those government infrastructure projects, which again is a very positive thing for us. So I think it’s an important thing to keep in mind as you think about CI.
Jim Umpleby: All right. Well again, thank you for joining us and we certainly appreciate all your questions. I’d like to just close by thanking our global team for their strong performance in the first quarter, including higher adjusted operating profit margin, record adjusted profit per share and strong EM&T free cash flow. Our strong results continue to reflect the diversity of our end markets, as well as the disciplined execution of our strategy for long term profitable growth. With that, I’ll turn it back to Ryan.
Ryan Fiedler : Thanks Jim, Andrew, and everyone who joined us today. A replay of our call will be available online later this morning. We’ll also post a transcript on our Investor Relations website as soon as it’s available. You’ll also find our first quarter results video with our CFO and an SEC filing with our sales to users data. Click on investors.caterpillar.com and then click on financials to view those materials. If you have any questions, please reach out to Rob or me. Now let’s turn the call back to Audra to conclude our call.
Operator: Thank you. And that does conclude our call. Thank you for joining. You may all now disconnect.
