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Operator
Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the GSK Investor Analyst Call Core Earnings Reporting.
The form of the call will be some opening remarks from CFO, Simon Dingemans, followed by Q&A.
I will now hand you over to Simon to begin the call.
Simon Dingemans - CFO
Thank you.
Good afternoon everyone.
Thank you for joining us on this conference call to review our plans for transitioning to core measures of operating profit and earnings next year.
There will be no changes to our 2011 financial reports, and we will only start using these measures formally beginning with our 2012 Q1 earnings release.
That said, we've provided you in the press release that we released a short while ago with reconciliations of the new basis for all of the quarters in 2010 and the first three quarters of 2011, as I know it takes some time to get all of your models into the shape that you would like, and we wanted to give you as much advance notice as possible.
When we report 2011 results, we will do so on the existing basis, but we will also provide a reconciliation for the full year to the new core basis so that you can establish the baseline as we transition into the new measures for 2012.
With me today I have Paul Blackburn, our Corporate Controller, and Sally Ferguson, head of Investor Relations.
The Investor Relations team will be available after this call, as always, to answer any more detailed questions that you might have as you work through your questions on the schedules that we provided and any anticipation of the result as we transition this basis.
Sally has also asked me to remind you that the slide deck we'll be using today is available on our website.
So if we shift to the agenda for today's meeting, I am going to start out with a few summary comments on the rationale behind our shift to core earnings.
Then Paul is going to take you through the detail of the adjustments that will be required to shift this basis.
We also have a number of other reclassifications that we're going to be making with the results, again, beginning Q1 2012.
Again, I know some of these will cause some adjustments to your models, and we wanted to flag them up as early as possible.
We have also tried to make sure that we are going to do these all in one go, so that we cause the minimum amount of disruption.
Then we will run through the time lines just to make sure that those are clear, and finally return for Q&A to run through the detail.
Before we get into the presentation in more detail, I thought it was worth just reminding you of some of the thinking behind our shift to core measures of operating profit and earnings.
That really goes back to the financial strategy and the new financial architecture that we set out in July of this year.
If you remember, this was really put in place to try and ensure that we were being as effective as possible in driving the returns from the strategy that we've been following over the last several years.
This has demonstrated the progress that we have been making, but primarily at this stage at the top line.
Remember, to remind you, over the last seven quarters, we've delivered underlying sales growth of around 4.5%.
We expect that this momentum will become even clearer as we move into 2012, and the headwinds from the sales from Pandemic Avandia and Valtrex continue to drop away, and we remain confident that while we might still have one quarter in the fourth quarter of this year of disruption, as we go into 2012, that disruption should have largely disappeared.
But restoring momentum to the top line is just really the first step.
This is where the architecture comes in, because it is designed to align the Group consistently across all of our businesses on taking that sales growth and adding to it operating leverage.
We are going to be focusing going forward much more on the operating profit line and the operating profit margin rather than the individual lines in between, which we think we should be trading off to drive operating profits forward.
Secondly, adding financial efficiency in the way we run the balance sheet and think about our tax strategy.
Then, finally, converting more of that into free cash flow growth so that ultimately we drive from the bottom of that collectively better earnings per share growth and stronger free cash flow that in turn will allow us to either reinvest in the business or return that cash to shareholders, depending on where we see the better returns.
That returns calculation will again be consistently applied across the Group using CFROI as the primary measure, although IRR also has a role, particularly for longer-term investments in areas such as R&D.
This architecture is deliberately simple, so that we can apply it across all of our businesses and we can benchmark where we should put investment behind which areas, which countries, which businesses on a consistent basis.
But it is also simple so that you can track our progress on an easier basis.
This is really where core earnings come in, because if you look at the measures that we are using to identify our progress and measure business performance, we have simplified our topline disclosure, breaking it down more clearly in regional and business terms.
We focused on the cost lines driving operating leverage and giving you greater visibility on R&D spend.
And we focused on greater visibility on some of the financial efficiency measures, but overall to date there have been a number of issues that have obscured the underlying trading performance, which we think, by adjusting for those, we provide a better and more transparent view through to core operating profits and core earnings per share.
It also moves us on a consistent basis to the measures reported by many of our global peers.
So that each of you can adjust or make your own versions of the earnings transitions, we will provide detailed schedules of all of the adjustments back to the statutory basis so that there is total transparency on the adjustments we are making, but we do believe that this will provide us with a more consistent set of measurements going forward and is a clearer basis of tracking the underlying earnings power of the Group and links it, most importantly, more closely to the cash that we are generating.
So, as we think about the core earnings measures, we think that it will provide that greater look through to underlying process on a quarterly basis.
However, that is not to say that the items that are not part of core, again, receive any less focus from our perspective.
We continue, for instance, to review our portfolio for opportunities where, by disposing of assets, we might release greater value than we can generate ourselves.
That will be an ongoing process that remains very much in focus, just to pick one example.
R&D, equally, will be held accountable for the performance and delivery of their investments, even though we might take out, as we are explaining today, out of core earnings some of the amortization charges associated with those assets.
So there is an overall Group view, which will include those measures not in core that keeps all of that under the same rigor and focus.
With that, Paul, maybe I could ask you to take people through the key adjustments.
Paul Blackburn - Corp. Controller, SVP
Thank you, Simon.
This chart summarizes the adjustments and the rationale for them.
Starting with amortization and impairment of intangible assets, these are non-cash charges.
Exclusion gives a better measure of underlying cash generation.
With regard to major restructuring, legal costs, other operating income, and profit on disposals of associates, all of these items can have a significant distorting impact.
Excluding these provides a better measure of underlying performance.
Finally, business combination, accounting adjustments for material acquisitions.
These are non-cash accounting adjustments which are unrelated to underlying performance and hence are excluded.
I am now going to clarify for these adjustments, costs that are included in core and costs that are excluded.
Starting with intangible assets and goodwill, amortization and charges related to impairment of non-computer software intangibles, including goodwill, are excluded from core.
These intangible assets are required R&D and commercial products that are recognized as assets at fair value at the time of acquisition.
Goodwill is also recognized on acquisitions, but not amortized.
Any goodwill impairments would be excluded from core.
Amortization and impairments related to computer software continue to be included in core.
Spend on computer software that meets capitalization criteria is no different to tangible capital expenditure.
So to be consistent with the tangible assets treatment, this item will remain in core.
Moving onto restructuring, only charges related to major restructuring programs will be excluded from core.
Major restructuring charges will only arise when separately announced by the Group and do include the remaining GBP700 million of charges to be recognized as part of the existing GBP4.5 billion restructuring program.
In addition, restructuring programs that are related to a material acquisition will be excluded from core.
Ongoing restructuring and restructuring related to non-material acquisitions will be included in core.
In terms of legal charges and expenses, those related to the settlement of product liability, litigation, antitrust, and government investigation matters are excluded from core.
Legal charges and expenses included in core include legal function costs and intellectual property protection costs.
With the exception of royalty income, all items currently within other operating income are excluded from core.
These items include profits and losses from the disposal of products and investments, quoted and non-quoted investment impairment charges, and fair value adjustments on financial instruments.
Now, these financial instruments are only those related to acquisitions and disposals of businesses, products, and investments.
Profits and losses from the disposal of associates and businesses are also excluded.
However, royalty income will be included in core and be shown on a separate income statement line.
Finally, moving onto business combination accounting adjustments for material acquisitions, any accounting adjustment will be excluded from core for material acquisitions only.
In our recent history, both the Stiefel and Reliant acquisitions will be considered material acquisitions.
The fair value gain or loss on existing holdings arises where we acquire a company in which we already have an investment.
On acquisition, the existing holding is recognized at fair value, resulting in either a gain or loss, which we will exclude from core.
At the time of an acquisition, any contingent consideration expected to be paid is valued.
Any subsequent adjustments are recognized in the income statement.
Any such adjustments will be excluded from core.
Inventory is valued at fair value on acquisition rather than cost.
This uplift will be excluded from core as the inventory is consumed.
Acquisition costs, such as advisor and accounting fees, were historically charged to the cost of the acquisition, but since 2010 the accounting standard has changed.
Under the new standard, these costs are booked to the income statement as incurred.
These costs will now be excluded from core.
I will now hand back to Simon.
Simon Dingemans - CFO
Thanks, Paul.
As I mentioned earlier, there are a number of other reclassifications that we are going to be putting in place commencing with Q1 2012 results.
As I said, these are largely geographical in terms of the primary impact and align our external reporting more closely with the way in which we manage the Company internally.
So the restatements you should expect would be a combination of our geographical businesses into an EMAP region, so that is Emerging Markets in Asia Pacific.
We are going to exclude from that region Australia and New Zealand, given the nature of those businesses as a more developed market, and so that we can focus the emerging market's footprint on more consistent set of businesses.
Secondly, we will disclose rare diseases as a separate therapy area.
This is an area of focus that we have been working on for some time as some of you will be aware.
We wanted to create a greater profile for that, and it is now managed separately as a group inside the Company.
Thirdly, we are going to reallocate some of the Consumer brands out of Stiefel into the Consumer business.
To date, they have been sitting inside the Pharma sales lines, and in -- consistent planning with the way in which we are having Consumer and Pharma work together, we are going to move those brands across and they will be monitored and managed by the Consumer business going forward as part of a growing dermatology business within the Consumer group.
Then, finally, just a piece of alignment, and this is a non-core item, so in the context of the broader discussion today, just wanted to make it clear, when you look at the reconciliations, you will see us move some of the amortization and impairment charges related to intangible assets that are attached to marketed products; we will move these from SG&A up into cost of sales.
That is really to align them with some of the royalty charges for in-licensed products, which currently sit in COGS.
We have got equivalent charges here for assets we bought earlier in the amortization, which we think should sit together in the same place.
So as -- to repeat, that will be a non-core item, so it is out of the core earnings, but you will see it in the reconciliations move around, so we wanted to flag that for you.
We will distribute restatements of all of these reclassifications well ahead of the Q1 2012 results.
We are currently planning that those will be posed post the year-end results for 2011.
That is really designed to avoid any confusion between the old basis and the new basis.
Sally and her team can obviously talk you through that in more detail, but I think, given that we're giving you quite a lot of adjustments today on core a non-core, we will leave those for Q1, but we will give you as much lead-in as we possibly can.
So if we go back to core, you have got various schedules attached to the press release, but here is a summary of the impact to the adjustments that Paul has just described for you.
I think you can see immediately on the page why we want to make this transition, given some of the noise in these numbers and how lumpy some of the adjustments have been.
Particularly if you look at restructuring or legal, or even OOI, where you've got gains and losses on disposals, which could be GBP0.03 in one year, GBP0.08 in the next year, to pick these examples for the periods we're presenting here.
And so an underlying basis, a much more consistent tracking performance, which between '10 and -- 2010 and 2011, really impacted primarily by the roll-off of Pandemic, Avandia, and Valtrex sales, which is really what's driving the decline.
Going forward, given that those are ongoing businesses, but hopefully a smaller element in the numbers, they will be included in core.
So that is why we have really restricted the restatement historically to this period, because if you go back much further, again, you get back into a relatively confusing trend.
So, we are going to establish a clear baseline for 2011 going forward.
So those are the numbers.
I don't propose to go through those in more detail, as they are pretty self-explanatory.
Just to repeat, as we transition here, there will be no changes to 2011.
We're going to present 2011 results on the current basis.
We will shift with Q1, but we will provide the baselines and comparisons so that you can look between the two very easily.
We will provide each of the restatements that Paul has described for you in a tabular form, so that you can track those.
Clearly, if you want to make your own adjustments to those, then you will be able to look at our earnings measures on a different analysis, given the information that you will have.
Lastly, future guidance and commentary will focus on core measures.
That is how we manage the Company.
That is how the management team aligns itself, and that is the basis on which we think about the business, not to say that we won't be focused on the other areas, as I have described, but the commentary we give you will, from 2012 onwards, focus on those core measures.
With that, very happy to take any questions.
Thank you.
Operator
Ladies and gentlemen, the question-and-answer session will now begin.
(Operator Instructions).
Alexandra Hauber, JPMorgan.
Alexandra Hauber - Analyst
For the presentation, it was all very clear.
I have three questions.
Firstly, on the working capital yardsticks that you have started to provide since the second quarter, unfortunately, based on your quarterly reporting, we are not able to calculate those ourselves.
So any thoughts on providing additional balance sheet information [at] the quarter so that I would be able to track your progress, where it's actually coming from, from which part of the working capital?
Second question is on segment reporting.
I was under the impression that at some stage, Simon, you were flagging a simplified segment reporting which right now is still along management lines.
Any thoughts on -- and potential time lines on that?
The third question, is your new therapy area for rare diseases, is that to include pulmonary arterial hypertension, which has about 150,000 eligible patients, which is about a factor 5 to 10 times larger than what I would typically consider rare disease.
Can you comment, just ballpark-wise, where you think the rare diseases segment ends and especially Pharma segment starts, just to help us to put GSK's previous strategic comments on this area into context?
Thank you.
Simon Dingemans - CFO
Okay, let's take those in order.
In working capital, I think what you should expect going forward is that we will give you the full detail at each of the half-year presentations in terms of days breakdown between inventory receivables and payables.
At the quarters, we will give you an aggregated combined cash number, but I will give as much commentary as I can on where that is coming from.
But with a group of our scale to sort of monitor working capital movements much more frequently than that, you get into probably unhelpful volatility, but I think the overall trend we're trying to track and make as visible to you as possible.
But I think we will give you as much color as to where the progress is coming from.
I think, as I said back at the third quarter, also we're looking at the Vaccines business differently from the Consumer business, differently from the Pharma business.
While we are not going to publish those independently, because you get down to microlevel disclosure, I will try and give you a bit of color on that because against where we might get, to the fact that we have businesses like a Vaccines business in the mix means that some of the benchmarks people might align us to are perhaps less realistic than other businesses that look more like us, so have those long cycle businesses like vaccines in them.
On the segment level, what we have done at the half-year and in Q3 I think is establish a segment basis that we are happy with going forward.
That really aligns around a cascade of the group, Pharma, Vaccines and Consumer, regional splits across the major markets.
As we have just described today, we will be aligning those two an EMAP presentation as well as to the US, European, Japan breakdowns that we have already presented.
Then within the Pharma and Vaccines combination, given those two businesses distribute together, we are giving, again, geographical splits.
So I think, for the time being, we feel that gives pretty good visibility as to where our growth is coming from and what is really driving the overall Group performance.
But I am very happy off-line to take any other feedback you might have as to how we could improve that.
But that is how we run the business internally, so my basic principle is align the external with what we're doing internally and then there isn't a gap between them that could cause trouble.
Alexandra Hauber - Analyst
The only point of feedback is that it is still a bit too complex.
It's two levels.
But -- so it is actually quite a lot of work to track it.
So that is why I was hoping you could simplify it.
But I do see where you are coming from.
Simon Dingemans - CFO
Well, I think the other point I would put back to you is whenever we've canvassed people, and you suggest taking things away, then suddenly people become very attached to a particular level of disclosure.
So what we've tried to do is at least cascade it so you can stop at a level that you're comfortable with and then there is more detail further on.
So I hope that is more helpful, and we have certainly have that feedback from others.
I think, on the rare diseases side, look, overall we take a relatively pragmatic approach.
The product you refer to is clearly at the upper end of the sort of size range.
Generally, we would be inside that envelope.
But I think, to the overall value proposition that I know Andrew has talked about on previous quarterly calls, the rare diseases organization is designed to promote and identify opportunities that are perhaps a little bit outside of the main therapy areas that we're focused on.
If ultimately something becomes too large for the rare disease footprint and it should be developed in a different way, well, we will move it into a different place or into a different structure.
So I don't think we're at all dogmatic about it.
But there are some interesting products in there, as you have just highlighted.
We wanted to lift the visibility so that you can see what is going on.
Alexandra Hauber - Analyst
Okay.
Operator
Michael Leacock, RBS.
Michael Leacock - Analyst
Thank you for taking my question.
Just a simple one.
If I understood you correctly, Simon, you were suggesting that these accounting and advisor fees that would normally be part of an acquisition, in fact that were part of an acquisition, I think the advisory -- the accounting standards, you said move them away from the acquisition and back to the business making the acquisition.
You have chosen to put them back the other way.
I just wondered if that is correct, why the accounting standards people decided to move those fees away from the acquisition and why you've decided to go in the opposite direction.
Simon Dingemans - CFO
Paul, do you want to --?
Paul Blackburn - Corp. Controller, SVP
Well, I'm not so sure we've gone in the opposite direction.
I think that the standard has come in and historically we used to be able to include these fees in the cost of the acquisition.
We can no longer do that, so as a result, if any material acquisition that we undertake, if we incur material fees that are distorting, it will distort our underlying performance, which is what we are trying to do with core.
So what we are saying is we have no choice.
We have got to charge those to our income statement as we incur them.
What we're proposing on material acquisitions is that we would take them out of core, because they are one-off in nature and they can be distorting, particularly on material acquisitions.
Simon Dingemans - CFO
I think we think about them in the same bucket as the restructuring charges and other costs of integrating an acquisition.
There are costs of getting the transaction done.
That is why we have put them in the same category as those charges and taken them out of core.
Ultimately, the statutory earnings are presented on the basis of the accounting standards.
Core is a non-GAAP measure, and that is why we'll give you the breakdown, so you can always put it back in if you choose to do that.
But we think those measures -- those costs are all similar and should be grouped together and taken out together.
Michael Leacock - Analyst
Thank you for that.
If I might also ask, on the material acquisitions, I now we were expecting bolt-on acquisitions and obviously a material and major one will be blindingly obvious.
But in terms of the bolt-ons, will any of those -- where will they fit in the scheme of material acquisitions.
Will they be excluded or included in the core?
Simon Dingemans - CFO
Well, I think, as Paul highlighted, only two of our recent acquisitions would count as major acquisitions.
Any acquisition that triggers such classification we'll tell you.
Everything else will stay in.
Michael Leacock - Analyst
Perfect.
Thank you, Simon.
Operator
Jo Walton, Credit Suisse.
Jo Walton - Analyst
I've got three quick questions, first just one on the finance side.
Just looking at the individual reconciliations, quarterly, going through at least 2010, you have GBP1 million for major restructuring in your net finance line.
Just wonder what that could be.
It doesn't sound very major.
Secondly, and more seriously, I'm just wondering about your choice of excluding intangible asset amortization, not the one-off write-offs, the volatile element, but the relatively stable intangible asset amortization.
If -- as I understand it, there are two ways that you can get products.
You can do R&D, get the products yourself, in which case the cost is taken through the R&D line, or you can do deals, which you do lots of with other companies.
You get an intangible asset and then, as and when the product comes to the market, you have an amortization charge.
How does the management get measured on those deals?
Because effectively those don't go through the P&L, whereas an identical product that was developed internally by yourself would go through the P&L.
How is management renumerated?
You've lifted the level of EPS.
I assume that management have options, et cetera, which are tied in some ways to EPS performance.
How does that get dealt with now that you have restated your EPS?
Simon Dingemans - CFO
Was that --?
Jo Walton - Analyst
That was it.
Simon Dingemans - CFO
That was it, okay.
The finance item is a small item left over from one of our acquisitions, so that is a hangover, so I wouldn't pay much attention to that.
I think on the sort of R&D do-it-yourself versus acquire, I think -- look, remember the nature of the R&D strategy that we have set out, which is to externalize our discovery efforts.
That will necessarily involve going and working outside the Group with research capability, but also acquiring or partnering or joint-venturing with other companies to help them develop things that they can't develop on their own or where we can bring something to the party and hopefully both parties are better off.
All the costs of doing that do flow through the P&L, and so those are charged in the way that normal R&D expense is charged.
There is equally a quite specific budget and returns-based approval process for any new investments to put capital at work in partnership with joint venture setups.
And so there is a rigor around the investments that we make and the way in which we then invest and develop them, whether it is flowing through the P&L or through the cash flow statement.
The R&D management are held accountable for that budget and the performance of those projects and assets.
They are reviewed in the normal way on a regular basis inside the Company to make sure they're on track.
So I don't think we see a big distinction between those.
I think that the reason for stripping them out of the core measure is that, inevitably, in the nature of R&D, some things fail.
There are write-offs that occur, but they're lumpy and unpredictable.
It is not really a measure of the ultimate earnings power of the Group, which is about delivering successful products, not the things that fall over along the way.
So that is kind of I think the approach to the second of your questions.
On renumeration and incentivization, then going forward, management will be absolutely aligned to these core measures.
You start from a different place clearly, but they're also aligned on a number of other measures -- cash generation, so spending cash outlays on projects that don't produce a return is going to impact that clearly.
The measures on total shareholder return, they are measured on delivery of new products in terms of output from R&D.
These measures are all set out in the annual report.
So you can see a number of measures which are aligned to exactly the point you are pushing at that says, if you go off and invest in R&D in a way that might look as if it's stripped out of core earnings, there are plenty of other places where that behavior is going to be caught.
The incentives are aligned to make sure that we don't do things like that and that we actually focus on investments that will drive and generate shareholder return across the Group.
Jo Walton - Analyst
I hate to add to the level of disclosure, but it takes a while and your annual report is produced quite late in the cycle.
If you want to look and find effectively the capitalized value of external R&D, which runs into the many hundreds millions of dollars a year, and which arguably a different company doing essentially the same thing, but in a slightly different way, would put through the P&L, I would ask that that number is given earlier so that we can say, if you're not going to charge it via the amortization route, let's make sure it's very upfront what you're putting on the balance sheet.
You did make the comment earlier that -- or the comment was made that computer amortization, et cetera, that all goes through.
After all, that is like the amortization depreciation of tangible assets.
I would argue, in a pharmaceutical company, the real assets that you have are products.
Therefore, they should be treated the same way.
But I clearly can get the data that I need from your documents.
It is not that you're not providing it, but your annual report is one of the last to come out.
Simon Dingemans - CFO
Well, we will certainly look at that in the cycle that we are about to go into for this current year's annual report and see if we can improve that.
But on a quarterly basis, the reconciliations that we are showing will certainly allow you to look at the amortization.
We do produce balance sheets pretty regularly that give you an update on that.
I take the point.
Let's have a look at it and make sure we're doing the best we can.
Certainly, we are looking at the annual report as I recognize that perhaps it is a bit of a read.
Jo Walton - Analyst
Thank you.
Operator
Brian Bordeaux, Barclays Capital.
Brian Bordeaux - Analyst
Thanks very much.
Good afternoon.
Yes, it is Brian Bordeaux from Barclays Capital.
Thank you for your presentation.
Also, thank you for the advance warning of changes to your reporting scheme.
Just, actually, one question.
I was wondering if there are any implications for your dividend policy or how the dividend policy is implemented in calculation terms from these proposed changes.
Thank you.
Simon Dingemans - CFO
Well, I think that is something the Board will obviously have to consider when it gets to the end of the year.
I doubt that you should assume that there is a direct correlation between any uplift in earnings per share that comes out of these restatements and the dividend.
However, to reiterate, we remain committed to a consistent and growing dividend, and that is our primary commitment in terms of use of cash flow.
Brian Bordeaux - Analyst
Thank you.
Operator
(Operator Instructions).
Steve Scala, Cowen.
Steve Scala - Analyst
Thank you.
I have three questions.
First, Glaxo has called out legal as part of SG&A for many years.
To the best of my recollection, it had been running at about GBP450 million and now is about half that.
What portion of that would now qualify as core versus non-core?
Second, legal charges and amount of insurance recoveries would seem unlikely to be known at the same time, since it seems disputes often arise leading to court involvement and so forth.
So how will you handle this?
Then, thirdly, the move to core earnings might also be a convenient time to change your acquisition philosophy, or should we assume that Glaxo will continue to find partners on attractive acquisition targets.
Thank you.
Simon Dingemans - CFO
On legal, as Paul took you through, we will take out all legal charges from core.
We will give full disclosure around the legal charges that we incur on a quarterly basis, but we have taken a view that legal charges can be clearly volatile.
We are working hard to reduce them and keep them low, but quarter-to-quarter they can introduce significant distortion.
Certainly, I find it difficult to judge what is sort of ongoing legal versus special legal.
I think you would rightly challenge us that we're managing that decision-making process.
So we have taken a decision that we'll take everything out, give you the disclosure.
You can then take a view as appropriate.
I think, with that reference frame, the way we account for our legal charges is, in any particular quarter, those charges or provisions that we deem are necessary are netted off against those insurance recoverables that apply to any of the particular charges that we're taking.
So there may be timing mismatches between those, but overall, over a cycle, they net out, so I don't think that is something that particularly should be an issue.
So, I hope that deals with those two points.
I think, on the acquisition side, don't expect any significant change from us in terms of our M&A philosophy.
We continue to see considerable risk in larger scale transactions.
We continue to look for interesting bolt-ons, but in current markets, price expectation is not necessarily very realistic, and so we don't see attractive returns in very many places.
But M&A has been and will continue to be part of our strategy, but on a small scale.
Steve Scala - Analyst
May I follow up?
Simon Dingemans - CFO
Of course.
Steve Scala - Analyst
So in the past, when legal charges were running at about GBP450 million or so annually, my sense was that was just the ongoing cost of doing business, but you're portraying it as something that you're going to take out.
It's not an ongoing cost of doing business.
It's more one-time in nature.
So can you clarify whether the historical GBP450 million, if it existed today, would be in or out?
Simon Dingemans - CFO
It's -- today, on a core basis from 2012, it would be out.
Steve Scala - Analyst
Okay, thank you.
Simon Dingemans - CFO
I think we have got time for a last question.
Operator
[Nick Bennett], [Nomura] Securities.
Nick Bennett - Analyst Analyst
Well, actually, you have already answered it.
I was going to ask about the dividend, and I guess we will have to wait and see.
Thank you for answering it, anyway.
Thank you.
Simon Dingemans - CFO
Okay, any other questions?
Good.
Well, with that, I thank everyone for joining us this afternoon.
As I said at the beginning of the call, Sally and her team are available for any follow-up you might have once we finish the call.
I am pleased to ask for us to guide you through some of the schedules.
I know there's a lot of numbers in there, but we are obviously keen to make sure that we've got everyone established with the right baseline as we go into 2012.
So thank you again for your time this afternoon.
Operator
Thank you very much.
Ladies and gentlemen, that concludes [your call] for today.
You may now disconnect.
Thank you for joining.