We supplement the reporting of our financial information determined under U.S. generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) with certain non-GAAP financial measures. These non-GAAP financial measures exclude certain significant items that may not be indicative of, or are unrelated to, results from our ongoing business operations. We believe that these non-GAAP measures may be useful for period-over-period comparisons of underlying business trends and our ongoing business performance, however, they should be used in conjunction with GAAP measures. Our non-GAAP measures should not be considered in isolation or as a substitute for the related GAAP measures, and other companies may define similarly named measures differently. We encourage investors to review our financial statements and publicly-filed reports in the entirety and not to rely on any single financial measure. We utilize the following definition for the non-GAAP financial measure included in this release:

Manufacturing cash flow before pension contributions
Manufacturing cash flow before pension contributions adjusts net cash from operating activities (GAAP) for the following:

• Deducts capital expenditures and includes proceeds from the sale of property, plant and equipment to arrive at the net capital investment required to support ongoing manufacturing operations;

• Excludes dividends received from Textron Financial Corporation (TFC) and capital contributions to TFC provided under the Support Agreement and debt agreements as these cash flows are not representative of manufacturing operations;

• Adds back pension contributions as we consider our pension obligations to be debt-like liabilities. Additionally, these contributions can fluctuate significantly from period to period and we believe that they are not representative of cash used by our manufacturing operations during the period.

• Excludes taxes paid related to the gain realized in 2018 on the Tools and Test business disposition. We have made this adjustment to the non-GAAP measure because we believe this use of cash is not representative of cash used by our manufacturing operations.

While we believe this measure provides a focus on cash generated from manufacturing operations, before pension contributions, and may be used as an additional relevant measure of liquidity, it does not necessarily provide the amount available for discretionary expenditures since we have certain non-discretionary obligations that are not deducted from the measure.