Our recode initiatives are progressing on track to generate savings of $300 million by the end of FY FY '24.
On Earth Day, we reaffirmed our climate change targets, which includes our pledge to be carbon neutral by 2040 across our direct operations.
Last week, we announced that we submitted our Alaris 510(k) premarket notification.
Over the past year we've improved our net leverage ratio by a full turn from 3.4x to 2.4x and taken actions to meaningfully strengthen our cash flows.
We secured our global supply chain to ensure that our essential medical devices were available to treat COVID patients in ICUs around the world including BD devices used in the treatment of an estimated 90% of US ICU patients.
And today we continue to add capacity and enable over 1 billion doses of COVID-19 vaccine to be delivered using our injection devices.
We acquired 11 tuck-in acquisitions since the beginning of 2020 along with early stage investments and we're reinvesting some of BD Veritor profits back into the business and behind our BD 2025 strategy.
Our second quarter revenues totaled $4.9 billion, up 15.4% on a reported basis and up 12.2% on an FX-neutral basis.
To call out a few, our market-leading BD Pharmaceutical Systems business continues to deliver robust revenue growth of nearly 10%.
Medication Delivery Solutions business was up over 8%, as we continue to deliver on our COVID vaccine injection devices commitments and our results were also driven by higher patient acuity.
In China, where we began to anniversary the impact of COVID-19 we saw a strong revenue growth of 62% and we continue to invest support our future growth including reinvesting some of the profits from our COVID diagnostics.
Our R&D spending was up 18.7% year-over-year on a currency-neutral basis.
Adjusted earnings per share was $3.19 representing year-over-year growth of 25.1% on a reported and 22.7% on a currency-neutral basis.
The performance of our business particularly our core, gives us comfort to reaffirm our fiscal 2021 guidance ranges which include currency-neutral revenue growth of 10% to 12% and adjusted earnings per share guidance of $12.75 to $12.85, up 25% to 26% on a year-over-year basis.
As vaccination campaigns continue to progress, I am pleased to announce, that we now have cumulative commitments for over 1.7 billion injection devices to administer COVID vaccines globally.
We submitted our 510(k) premarket notification to the FDA for our BD Alaris system.
The 510(k) submission is intended to bring our file up to date for all changes to the pump, since the last 510(k) was cleared.
Our Diabetes Care business generated $1.1 billion of revenue in fiscal 2020, is a global leader in insulin injection devices.
We estimate the uplift to our revenue growth rate to be about 30 basis points.
The spin-off is expected to be implemented by a means of a distribution of 100% of the shares of a newly traded -- publicly traded entity to BD shareholders, and is intended to be tax-free for U.S. federal income tax purposes.
Over the next several months, we'll be filing our Form 10, which will include the carve-out financial statements.
Again, we expect the spin-off to be completed in the first half of fiscal year 2022, subject to market, regulatory and other conditions, including final approval by the Board of Directors and the effectiveness of a Form 10 registration statement that will be filed with the SEC.
The Diabetes Care business has a long history of caring for patients living with the disease, dating back to BD's introduction of the world's first specialized insulin syringe, almost 100 years ago in 1924.
As Tom mentioned earlier, the business generated nearly $1.1 billion in revenue in fiscal 2020, derived from the sale of insulin injection devices such as, pen needles and insulin syringes as well as other accessories.
One factor that attracted me to this opportunity was the global breadth of the business with 48% of the revenues generated outside the United States, including 17% in emerging markets.
The International Diabetes Federation estimates that the number of adults living with diabetes is expected to grow from 463 million in 2019 to 578 million in 2030 and 700 million by 2045.
However, we'll also look to invest in novel insulin delivery technologies, including our internal type 2 patch technologies.
Over the past quarter, we continued to advance our companywide ESG initiatives, including our recent commitment to be carbon neutral across direct operations by 2040.
We also continue to make progress toward identifying our 2030 goals and we look forward to sharing more details behind our 2030 sustainability plan with you in future engagements.
Our revenues came in just over $4.9 billion, up 15.4% on a reported basis and up 12.2% on an FX-neutral basis.
Our medical segment delivered 4.7% FX-neutral revenue growth led by our market leading BD Pharmaceutical Solutions Systems business, which continues to deliver robust revenue growth of nearly 10%.
MDS grew a solid 8.1%, which included $43 million from COVID-19 vaccination injection device revenues.
Our Life Science segment delivered revenue growth of nearly 38% on an FX neutral basis.
Our COVID-19 diagnostic testing revenues totaled $480 million and are included in our Integrated Diagnostics Solutions business.
There was virtually no traditional flu this year, so we did not have our usual flu test revenues and this impacted our IDS growth rate by 540 basis points and our BD Life Sciences growth rate by 410 basis points.
The impact to our overall BD growth rate was 110 basis points.
Our Biosciences business unit delivered strong growth of over 12% as research lab activity has recovered nicely.
In the United States, revenues were up 1.9%.
International revenues were up 25.7% on a currency-neutral basis as we begin to anniversary the initial impact of COVID-19, particularly in China where our revenues were up 62%.
Our gross margin was 53.8% driven mostly by the lower COVID diagnostic testing revenues.
On a year-over-year basis, the gross margin included a 70 basis point negative impact from foreign exchange and 70 basis points from reinvestment initiatives.
Our SSG&A spending rose 9% year-over-year on an FX-neutral basis, including a 380 basis point impact from deferred compensation, which as you know is fully offset in other income expense.
R&D increased 18.7% year-over-year on an FX-neutral basis to $295 million, representing 6% of our revenues.
Our operating income grew 14.3% on a year-over-year reported basis and 13% on an FX-neutral basis.
Our operating margin was 24.5%, up 20 basis points on an FX-neutral basis.
Deferred compensation was an 80 basis point headwind.
Our interest and other expenses totaled $111 million versus $170 million in the year ago period.
Our tax rate was 12% lower than expected due to discrete tax items that occurred this quarter.
Our adjusted earnings per share increased 25.1% over the prior year to $3.19 on a reported basis and were up 22.7% on an FX-neutral basis.
The average diluted share count used to calculate our earnings per share in the quarter was $293.6 million.
For the first half of the year, our cash flows from operations have more than doubled growing from $1.2 billion to $2.8 billion, driven by the improvement in our net income as well as working capital.
We ended the quarter with $3.7 billion in cash and equivalents and our net leverage ratio was 2.4 times, a full turn lower than a year ago.
As a reminder under the existing share repurchase authorization plan, we have just under 7.9 million shares or roughly $2 billion remaining.
We continue to expect reported revenue growth of 12% to 14% for the full year 2021.
This reflects FX-neutral revenue growth in the range of 10% to 12%.
BD Veritor revenues toward the higher end of the $1 billion to $1.5 billion range and foreign currency adding approximately 200 basis points.
We also continue to expect adjusted earnings per share in the range of $12.75 to $12.85, which represents growth of 25% to 26% year-over-year.
In fiscal 2022, excluding COVID-19 testing and Alaris 510(k) clearance, we expect our revenues to grow solidly in the mid-single digits.
We believe it would be prudent to think about Alaris' 510(k) clearance sometime during the second half of our fiscal 2022.

Summary:
Our second quarter revenues totaled $4.9 billion, up 15.4% on a reported basis and up 12.2% on an FX-neutral basis.
Adjusted earnings per share was $3.19 representing year-over-year growth of 25.1% on a reported and 22.7% on a currency-neutral basis.
Our revenues came in just over $4.9 billion, up 15.4% on a reported basis and up 12.2% on an FX-neutral basis.
Our COVID-19 diagnostic testing revenues totaled $480 million and are included in our Integrated Diagnostics Solutions business.
Our adjusted earnings per share increased 25.1% over the prior year to $3.19 on a reported basis and were up 22.7% on an FX-neutral basis.