We are taking action to mitigate these impacts across the enterprise and we are reaffirming our FY '22 earnings per share guidance of $5.60 to $5.90 per share.
And with our improved balance sheet, commitment to our dividend and now an additional $3 billion share repurchase authorization, we're positioned to return capital to shareholders.
Beginning with total company results; first quarter revenue increased 13% to $44 billion, driven by sales growth from existing customers.
Total gross margin decreased 4% to $1.6 billion driven by the Cordis divestiture and the net impact of elevated supply chain costs in Medical.
As a reminder, the sale of Cordis was completed on August 2 and impacted the quarter's results by approximately two months.
SG&A increased 1%, reflecting information technology investments and higher costs to support sales growth, partially offset by the Cordis divestiture and benefits from cost savings initiatives.
Overall, first quarter operating earnings tracked in line with our expectations, down 15%.
Moving below the line; interest and other decreased by $2 million, driven primarily by lower interest expense from continued debt reduction actions.
During the first quarter, we exercised a make-whole call provision to redeem $572 million of outstanding June 2022 debt maturities.
We continue to expect to repay the approximately $280 million of remaining June 2022 notes upon maturity.
Our first quarter effective tax rate was approximately 24%.
Average diluted shares outstanding were 289 million, about 4 million shares fewer than the prior year.
This reflects prior year share repurchases as well as the $500 million share repurchase program initiated in the first quarter and recently completed.
The net result for the quarter was earnings per share of $1.29.
We ended the first quarter with a cash balance of $2.5 billion and no outstanding borrowings under our credit facilities.
Revenue increased 13% to $40 billion, driven primarily by branded pharmaceutical sales growth from large Pharmaceutical Distribution and Specialty customers.
Segment profit grew 1% to $406 million which reflects an improvement in volumes compared to the prior year quarter which was adversely impacted by COVID-19.
Medical revenue increased 5% to $4.1 billion, driven primarily by PPE sales, partially offset by the Cordis divestiture.
Segment profit decreased 46% to $123 million, primarily due to elevated supply chain costs.
To wrap up the quarter, despite some impact from the Delta variant on elective procedure volumes, overall, our customers continued to manage effectively and total elective volumes exited the quarter near 95% of pre-COVID levels.
We are reiterating our earnings per share guidance range of $5.60 to $5.90 per share.
We now expect our annual effective tax rate in the range of 23% to 25%.
We also now expect diluted weighted average shares outstanding in the range of 280 million to 282 million.
This change is driven by the significant increases in supply chain cost inflation that I previously discussed which is expected to result in an incremental net headwind of approximately $100 million to $125 million on the year.
Given the anticipated timing of realizing these cost increases and our mitigating actions, as well as the timing of selling higher-cost PPE, we expect a sequential decline in Medical segment profit in the second quarter.
And as noted last quarter, we still expect the cadence of our earnings per share guidance to be significantly back half-weighted.
Our Board recently approved a new three year authorization to repurchase up to an additional $3 billion of our common stock, expiring at the end of calendar year 2024.
And we now expect approximately $1 billion of share repurchases in fiscal '22 which includes the $500 million of share repurchases executed to date.
We have announced and are in the process of exiting 36 initial markets which will allow us to focus on the markets where we have a competitive advantage.
We expect these simplification initiatives to contribute to our $750 million enterprise cost savings target and position us to generate sustained long-term growth.
And in at-Home Solutions which is now a $2.2 billion business, we continue to see volume growth as care is rapidly shifting to the home.
Over 50 years, we honed our distribution expertise and develop a strong customer base across multiple classes of trade with leaders in chain pharmacy, direct mail order, grocery and retail independent customers, all of whom play critical roles in providing healthcare access to their local communities.
We have a strong presence in other therapeutic areas, such as rheumatology which today is a $4 billion distribution market growing double digits.
For example, through our agreement with TerraPower, we will produce and distribute Actinium-225, a radionuclide involved in creating targeted therapies for several cancer types.
As I mentioned earlier, we recently increased our total cost reduction goal to $750 million by FY '23 and we are on track to deliver those savings.
These expectations are driven by our growth targets for our segments, our commitment to our dividend and our new $3 billion share repurchase authorization.

Summary:
We are taking action to mitigate these impacts across the enterprise and we are reaffirming our FY '22 earnings per share guidance of $5.60 to $5.90 per share.
And with our improved balance sheet, commitment to our dividend and now an additional $3 billion share repurchase authorization, we're positioned to return capital to shareholders.
Beginning with total company results; first quarter revenue increased 13% to $44 billion, driven by sales growth from existing customers.
The net result for the quarter was earnings per share of $1.29.
We are reiterating our earnings per share guidance range of $5.60 to $5.90 per share.
Given the anticipated timing of realizing these cost increases and our mitigating actions, as well as the timing of selling higher-cost PPE, we expect a sequential decline in Medical segment profit in the second quarter.
And as noted last quarter, we still expect the cadence of our earnings per share guidance to be significantly back half-weighted.
Our Board recently approved a new three year authorization to repurchase up to an additional $3 billion of our common stock, expiring at the end of calendar year 2024.
These expectations are driven by our growth targets for our segments, our commitment to our dividend and our new $3 billion share repurchase authorization.