Over a decade, allocation decisions matter more to shareholder returns than operating improvements, because they compound. The test is simple: is capital going where return-on-invested-capital exceeds wacc, and is it leaving businesses where it does not?
The record is visible in financing-cash-flow and investing-cash-flow across several years, and the incentives behind it are in the def-14a. Both are more reliable than the strategy section of a presentation.
Example: over five years Northwind Tools generated $470M of free cash flow and deployed $310M on the Cloud acquisition, $95M on buybacks and $128M on dividends, funding the gap with $63M of new debt.
Related: financing-cash-flow, return-on-invested-capital, economic-profit, share-count-trend, def-14a