FINANCIAL HIGHLIGHTS FROM OUR CFO We enjoyed a good year in  2004. We met our financial objectives, made significant progress toward our strategic  imperatives, and successfully complied with the rigorous Sarbanes-Oxley requirements. During the year, we increased our dividend for the 23rd consecutive year, repurchased $200 million  of common stock, and consummated over $400  million of acquisitions. We also maintained an unlevered after-tax return  on capital of over 14 percent. We achieved this  investment return despite the addition of goodwill to our balance sheet during the year as a result of  our acquisitions. Without this incremental goodwill, our return on capital would have been over 15 percent and an increase from the 2003 level. As we look to the current year, we are optimistic that we will see continued strengthening in our financial performance. We are seeing improving sales trends  in our mailing and management services businesses and portions of our revenue portfolio are experiencing especially positive momentum—mail services,  small business, supplies, international, payment solutions and software. Also, our reengineering and restructuring programs are facilitating an enhanced customer experience and a lower cost structure. As a final note, I want to express my unvarnished pride in the way that our financial organization met the new documentation and controls requirements,  as well as my gratitude for the unwavering support and cooperation that we received from our corporate and business unit leaders. Through a lot of hard work, we made a good system even better. We grew our revenue by 8 percent. More  importantly, if we subtract the impact of strategic transactions and foreign currency translation,  we achieved organic revenue growth of 3 percent.  While this wasn’t quite up to our target of 4 to 6  percent, it was a significant increase from recent years and an indication of improving fundamentals. On a GAAP basis, we showed a decline in our  earnings per share from $2.10 in 2003 to $2.05 in 2004. However, if we exclude restructuring charges and other special items (which we believe is a useful way to measure our earnings trends) our  earnings per share increased from $2.41 to $2.54. We were especially pleased that our earnings growth exceeded our original expectations when we started  the year and that we were able to overcome two  significant “headwinds.”First, our decision to exit the Capital Services business is producing lower net income each year as we wind down the asset base. Second, we are absorbing higher pension costs as we amortize investment losses due to the stock  market decline in the 2000-2002 period. Our earnings performance was helped by currency translation gains (about five cents per share) but  the large majority of our growth came from organic  revenue gains, cost reduction programs, and a  positive contribution from the acquisitions that we have consummated during the past four years. Excluding special items, we generated $694 million  of free cash flow, which substantially exceeded our  target of $600 million. Also, if we exclude the impact due to our Capital Services strategy, we increased our free cash flow by $29 million from the prior year, a 6 percent increase. Bruce P. Nolop Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer Rıua sb 27