James H. Bloem
Analyst · A.J. Rice of UBS
Yes, I think -- and again, it's a very good question, comes back to the ROIC a little bit. But if you look at basically what we have as an opportunity, always in front of us are -- we're looking for acquisitions, strategic investments and CapEx. Those are the things that really improve the value of the company. And then we look at the appropriate level of capital that it takes to do this. It's got a regulatory component. It's got a rating agency component. And it's got, as you would say, there's some value in keeping some optionality. So when you look at all of that, I think that we've done a fairly balanced job in the last 3 years of returning about 50% of what's available back to the shareholders in the form of cash dividends, which, 3 years ago, we didn't pay and now we do. And much enhanced share repurchase. And then -- but again, always focusing on how can we make the company more valuable through CapEx, through strategic investments, which are the noncontrolling kinds of things we did. So for example, last year, we spent basically $1.8 billion doing that. We increased the leverage ratio or the debt-to-total cap ratio from 15% to 22%, still below our peer group, but now toward the bottom end. And we also, when in discussing it with the regulators and with the credit rating agencies, have said that we think that, for our category, a 25% to 30% is an appropriate level. And they've acknowledged that in writing, in terms of when they write up about, for example, their credit rating of us. So again, it's an optionality. It's appropriate use of capital. As I said earlier, it's an efficient use of capital to build out these capabilities so that we still have a lot more optionality left and we can weather what other -- whatever uncertainty is out there or whatever opportunity presents itself.