· Reported net sales (£12.1 billion) and operating profit (£3.6 billion) were up 15% and 25%, respectively, reflecting favourable exchange and accelerated organic growth
· All regions contributed to broad based organic net sales growth, up 4.3%, and organic volume grew 1.1%
· Organic operating profit grew 5.6%, ahead of top line growth, driven by good progress on productivity partially offset by implementation costs and one-off items
· Free cash flow continued to be strong at £2.7 billion, increasing by £566 million compared to the prior year, with net cash from operating activities up £584 million to £3.1 billion
· Basic eps of 106.0 pence was up 18%. Pre-exceptional eps was 108.5 pence, up 21%, as higher organic operating profit and associate income along with favourable exchange more than offset the impact of disposals and a higher tax rate
· We continue to expect mid-single digit organic net sales growth and are raising our margin improvement objective from 100bps to 175bps over the three years ending 30 June 2019
· On 26 July 2017 the Board approved a share buy-back programme to return up to £1.5 billion to shareholders during F18
· The Board recommended a final dividend increase of 5% bringing the full year dividend to 62.2 pence per share