You are given a text that consists of multiple sentences. Your task is to perform abstractive summarization on this text. Use your understanding of the content to express the main ideas and crucial details in a shorter, coherent, and natural sounding text. 
Text: If you did not receive a copy of the release, you can find it on our website at hormelfoods.com under the Investors section.
On our call today is Jim Snee, Chairman of the Board, President and Chief Executive Officer; Jim Sheehan, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer; and Jacinth Smiley, Group Vice President of Corporate Strategy.
Jacinth becomes, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer on January 1.
Jim Snee will provide a review of the Company's current and future operating condition and a perspective on fiscal 2022, Jim Sheehan will provide detailed financial results and commentary in the fourth quarter and Jacinth Smiley will provide commentary on the Company's fiscal '22 outlook.
As a reminder, the fourth quarter of fiscal 2021 contained an extra week compared to fiscal 2020.
As a courtesy to the other analysts, please limit yourself to one question with one follow-up.
It will also be posted on our website and archived for one year.
Before we get started, I need to reference the Safe Harbor statement.
It can be accessed on our website.
Additionally, please note the Company uses non-GAAP results to provide investors with a better understanding of the Company's operating performance.
These non-GAAP measures include organic volume, organic sales and adjusted diluted earnings per share.
Jim will be retiring as CFO at the end of the calendar year, so this will be his last earnings call.
Jim has over four decades with our Company and under his tenure has built a world-class finance accounting and technology organization.
Jim was the guiding force behind Project Orion, an initiative that will benefit our Company for decades to come.
For over 43 years, with the last five years as CFO, Jim has been a trusted partner to me and many of my predecessors.
Jim helped complete over $5 billion in strategic acquisitions, including Justin's, Fontanini, [Indecipherable] Columbus, Sadler's, and our largest acquisition ever, Planters.
Equally impressive with Jim's contribution to reshaping our portfolio, as he was was also a guiding force behind many of the divestitures we made to transform our Company.
Jim's oversight to our evolution puts us on a solid foundation for the future growth of our Company.
Additionally, Jim has overseen the distribution of over $2 billion in dividends to our shareholders.
In addition to his business accolades, Jim was the key voice behind our game-changing Inspired Pathways program, which provides free college education for children of our team members.
Jim will be missed, and we wish him well in retirement along with his wife, Jean.
Jacinth Smiley succeeds Jim, and brings a wealth of experience from outside Hormel Foods, she has deep and broad domestic and international experience in areas such as corporate finance, public accounting and compliance.
Most recently, she served as the Group Vice President of Corporate Strategy.
Hormel Foods is fortunate to have Jacinth as CFO, and I'm looking forward to her leadership in her new role.
My sincere congratulations to both Jim and Jacinth.
In an incredibly difficult and rapidly changing operating environment, our team delivered outstanding top line results.
We achieved record sales in fiscal 2021, exceeding both $10 billion and $11 billion in sales for the first time.
For the full year, sales were $11.4 billion, representing 19% sales growth.
On an organic basis, sales increased 14%.
Our top line growth was incredibly balanced as each of our go-to-market sales channels and business segments posted strong double-digit sales gains, underpinned by value added volume growth, pricing and a better mix.
Adjusted diluted earnings per share for the full year increased 4% to $1.73, in spite of inflationary pressure and supply chain challenges.
Diluted earnings per share was $1.66.
We had an excellent fourth quarter and posted numerous records, including a fourth consecutive quarter of record sales, record diluted earnings per share and record cash flow from operations.
I want to commend our entire team for delivering this impressive performance and the numerous fourth quarter records.
Sales increased 43% and organic sales increased 32%.
Volume increased 14% and organic volume increased 8%.
We grew sales in every segment and every channel for the quarter.
Compared to pre-pandemic levels in 2019, all channels grew by over 25%, driven by strong demand and pricing action in almost every category.
It's all time record performance was led by further acceleration in our foodservice businesses.
Our foodservice teams across the organization posted 72% sales growth for the quarter, 33% higher than pre-pandemic levels.
This followed second quarter growth of 28% and third quarter growth 45%.
Strength was broad-based with significant contributions from Refrigerated Foods, Jennie-O Turkey Store and MegaMex.
We also saw a strong recovery in our noncommercial segments, including college and university and K through 12 institutions.
Our foodservice portfolio remains perfectly positioned to meet the needs of today's foodservice operators with labor and time saving products.
I believe our growth in foodservice is a function of our differentiated value proposition in the industry, as well as our dedication during the pandemic.
We have grown with our distributor and operator partners during the recovery, strengthening many of our partnerships and decades long relationships.
The top line performances from our other channels were equally impressive, retail, deli and international each delivered a second consecutive year of growth.
Retail and international sales both increased 34% and deli sales increased 24%.
On an organic basis, each channel posted strong double-digit growth.
Growth came from numerous brands across all areas of our portfolio, including SPAM, Applegate, Columbus, Hormel Black Label, Wholly, Hormel Complete Gatherings and many more.
We continue to see very positive trends for consumer takeaway at retail.
According to IRI, key metrics for our brands such as buy rate and trips per buyer remain favorable, which indicates elevated consumer spending on our products has remained.
We also continue to grow share in many important categories, including Hormel Gatherings, party trays, Hormel pepperoni, SPAM luncheon meat and Hormel Chili.
Our One Supply Chain team has done an excellent job operating in and navigating constant supply chain disruptions.
We've also seen the positive impact of their strategic actions, namely, we're starting to see an increasing number of our open positions being filled, more automation being implemented in our facilities and a more simplified product portfolio.
In total, these actions are allowing us to maximize our throughput to meet the continued strong demand of our customers.
From a bottom line perspective, fourth quarter earnings were a record $0.51 per share, a 19% increase compared to 2020, an acceleration in our top line results and the addition of the Planters business led to the earnings growth.
As we said in the third quarter, we expected margins to improve as pricing actions took effect.
Indeed, margins improve sequentially in all four segments.
Pricing actions, improved promotional effectiveness and a more profitable mix, all contributed to the improvement.
We started to see relief in key raw materials in the fourth quarter compared to prior quarters.
However, labor rates, freight, supplies and raw material costs remain above year-ago levels and in the case of freight, increased further.
Looking at the segments, Grocery Products, Refrigerated Foods and International segments, each posted double digit segment profit growth.
Jennie-O Turkey Store profits declined due to higher feed costs.
A few highlights from the quarter includes the following.
Refrigerated Foods delivered strong volume sales and profit growth.
The team was able to leverage the numerous capacity expansion projects since the start of the pandemic for categories such as pizza toppings, bacon and dry sausage.
Within Grocery Products, our simple meals and Mexican portfolios generated excellent growth, in addition to contributions from the Planters snacks nuts business.
Notably, the SPAM brands delivered its seventh consecutive year of record growth, and we recently announced plans for additional capacity to support future growth.
Our international team achieved a seventh consecutive quarter of record earnings growth with strong results from all of their businesses.
The momentum this business has generated over the last two years supports our plans to aggressively expand internationally.
Lastly, Planters made a positive impact, especially in the fast growing snacking and entertaining space and within the convenience store channel.
This quarter's results were outstanding and we intend to build on this momentum going into 2022.
Over the past decade, Hormel Foods has deliberately evolved from a meet centric commodity-driven company with a heavy focus on retail pork and turkey to a global branded food company with leading brands across numerous channels.
Our Company today is more food forward than ever, with a sharp focus on the needs of our customers, consumers and operators.
As we begin fiscal 2022, we plan to continue our evolution.
First, we will complete the full integration of the Planters business across all functions.
The first of three production facilities was successfully integrated in the fourth quarter and the remaining two facilities are scheduled to be fully integrated in our first quarter.
Since acquiring Planters six months ago, our sales, marketing, innovation and R&D teams have been hard at work, developing new and innovative products and flavors, many of which will be rolled out this coming year.
They've also been working on refreshing the branding and packaging, which will also be launched in 2022.
Seeing the great work of our teams has been even more confident about where we are able to take this brand in the future and further strengthen our conviction of the potential for Planters.
From a financial standpoint, the Planters business is performing at the top end of our expectations and we expect that trend to continue in fiscal '22.
Second, we are also taking a series of actions at Jennie-O Turkey Store.
Over time, we expect these actions to result in a more demand oriented and optimize turkey portfolio that is better aligned to the changing needs of our customers, consumers and operators that will result in long-term growth, improved profitability and lower earnings volatility.
The transformation starts with accelerating our efforts to shift from commodity to branded value-added products.
This is a similar to the successful strategy we have executed in Refrigerated Foods over the past 15 years.
As a result, we will close the Benson Avenue plant located in Willmar, Minnesota in the first half of fiscal 2022.
This plant is an older inefficient facility which produces numerous commodity items.
Value-added products will be consolidated into multiple other facilities.
Team members will transition to our newer and larger facility also located in Willmar, which will supplement staffing levels.
Finally, we will continue to integrate business functions into the Hormel Foods parent organization.
Over the past two years, we have successfully integrated IT services, finance and accounting and HR into the Hormel organization through Project Orion, and we will continue these efforts for other functions.
By doing so, we will bring the Turkey expertise and competitive advantages of the Jennie-O team to the broader organization.
I want to be very clear that Turkey will continue to play an important role in our Company for many brands, including Columbus, Applegate, Hormel Natural Choice, in addition to Jennie-O.
Turkey is vital to our balanced business model, serves to diversify our portfolio and it's important to consumers who are looking for high protein, lean and versatile offering.
We will provide further update and details on the financial components and timing on our first quarter call.
Finally, we made additional progress on optimizing our pork supply chain by signing a new five-year raw material supply agreement with our supplier in Fremont, Nebraska.
This new agreement more closely matches our pork supply with the needs of our value-added businesses, while simultaneously reducing the amount of commodity pork lease out.
Similar to the rationale for selling the Fremont plant in 2018, this new agreement further diversifies us away from commodity sales, increases our flexibility within our supply chain and decreases our earnings volatility.
This agreement should result in a reduction of approximately $350 million of commodity fresh pork sales at very low margin.
The impact is split between the Refrigerated Foods and International segment.
The contract will be effective at the start of calendar year 2022.
The success we are having with the Planters, the actions we are taking at Jennie-O Turkey Store and the continued progress we are making in our pork supply chain, all provide greater insights into how we are continuing to evolve Hormel Foods for next year and beyond.
And not only have we evolved our portfolio, but we will continue to evolve how we operate as a company with initiatives such as One Supply Chain, Project Orion and our Digital Experience group.
Looking at fiscal 2022, we expect net sales to be between $11.7 billion and $12.5 billion, and for diluted earnings per share to be between a $1.87 and $2.03 per share.
We expect growth in excess of our long-term goals due to organic growth across each of our segments and strengthen our Planters business.
I have confidence in our ability to achieve our guidance with all four segments delivering growth.
Jacinth Smiley will provide more color regarding key drivers to our fiscal 2022 outlook.
The company achieved record fourth quarter and full year sales of $3.5 billion and $11.4 billion respectively.
Organic sales increased 32% for the quarter and 14% for the full year.
Planters contributed $411 million in sales for the full year.
Earnings before taxes increased 26% for the fourth quarter, strong results in Refrigerated International and the inclusion of Planters led to the strong finish to the year despite ongoing inflationary pressures.
Earnings before taxes increased 1% for the full year compared to fiscal 2020.
Diluted earnings per share of $0.51 was a record.
This was a 19% increase over last year.
Adjusted diluted earnings per share for the full year was $1.73, a 4% increase from last year.
Diluted earnings per share was $1.66.
SG&A as a percentage of sales was 7.5% compared to 7.9% last year.
Strong sales growth and disciplined cost management contributed to the improvement.
Advertising investments increased 12% compared to last year.
As anticipated, operating margins in the fourth quarter increased compared to the third quarter as a result of effective pricing action.
Segment margins expanded from last quarter by 136 basis points to 10.7% with increases in each segment.
In 2021, inflation, labor shortages in the Planters deal cost all negatively impacted margins.
The fourth quarter results, including the continued strong demand of our products are an indication of improved market conditions as we exit the year.
Net unallocated expenses in 2021 increased primarily as a result of one-time acquisition costs for Planters and higher interest expense.
The effective tax rate for the year was 19.3% compared to 18.5% last year.
Operating cash flow for the fourth quarter was a record, resulting from strong earnings and disciplined working capital management.
Our balanced business model and consistent cash flow provided protection against the complex and challenging business dynamics we navigated during the year, allowing us to invest in numerous capital projects, acquired Planters and grow the dividend.
We paid our 373rd consecutive quarterly dividend effective November 15th at an annual rate of $0.98 per share.
We also announced a 6% increase for 2022, marking the 56th consecutive year of dividend increases.
During 2021, the Company repurchased 500,000 shares for $20 million.
Capital expenditures were $232 million.
The Company ended 2021 with $3.3 billion in debt or approximately 2.5 times EBITDA, although no mandatory debt repayments are required until 2024.
Based on our strong cash flow, we expect to make incremental payments as soon as the second half of 2022.
We remain committed to maintaining our investment grade rating and deleveraging to 1.5 times to 2 times EBITDA by 2023.
Market conditions for pork input cost remained elevated during the fourth quarter.
The USDA composite cut out averaged 33% higher compared to last year, supported by strong demand for pork and historically low cold storage levels.
Hog prices averaged 62% higher than last year, but were down 27% compared to the third quarter.
Belly, pork trim and beef trim markets were also significantly higher for the quarter compared to last year.
The latest estimates from the USDA indicate pork production for the year to decreased 2% compared to 2020, and remain relatively flat in 2022.
Labor shortages may continue to be a significant factor affecting industry production.
Turkey industry fundamentals were strong.
The Whole Turkey and thigh meat markets reached all time highs during the fourth quarter with breast meat prices above a year ago.
Supporting these prices were historically low cold storage levels, lower poult placements and decline in egg sets.
Higher feed cost and labor shortages continue to negatively impact Jennie-O.
The cost increased over 60% from last year in the fourth quarter.
In 2022, we anticipate pork, beef, turkey and feed prices to remain above historical levels.
We delivered strong results in the fourth quarter as the team overcame challenging operating conditions and volatile markets.
The performance is a testament to the strength of our brands, pricing power, balanced model and the team's ability to execute in a dynamic market environment.
I appreciate the support of Jim Snee, the Board of Directors and my team over my tenure as CFO.
I take great pride in the evolution and accomplishments of the Company during my career and leave with the greatest confidence in the future.
I've enjoyed my interactions with the shareholders and analyst community and I wish you will.
I know the Company is an excellent hands with Jacinth, and you will have an opportunity to get to know her better in the coming months.
Jacinth will provide an overview of the fiscal 2022 guidance and further context on our expectations for next year.
For analysts and the investment community on the call, I look forward to meeting you in the coming weeks and months.
I'm excited to be stepping into the Chief Financial Officer role at Hormel Foods, a Company known for its financial strength, it's powerhouse brand and its commitment to employees and communities.
In the time I've been at the Company, I have found that the Hormel Foods is innovative and has a results driven focus for all stakeholders.
As Jim mentioned, allow me to share a bit more commentary regarding key drivers to our fiscal 2022 outlook.
Building on the momentum we established during the second half of the year and the strategic investments we have made throughout the pandemic, we expect to generate sales and earnings growth in fiscal 2022 above the long-term goals we announced at our Investor update in October.
We anticipate growth from all four segments, driven by continued elevated demand for our products, the impact from our pricing actions, improve production throughput, new capacity for key categories such as pizza toppings and dry sausage, and the full-year contribution of the Planters business.
We also expect operating margins to show improvement throughout the year similar to the dynamic, we experienced in the fourth quarter.
It is important to note that rapid changes in raw material input costs can shift profitability between quarters.
In addition to generating strong sales and earnings growth, we will continue to invest in our leading brands through increases in strategic marketing and advertising, capacity expansions for, for high growth platforms and capabilities to drive industry leading innovation.
The Company's target for capital expenditures in 2022 is $310 million.
We are scheduled to open a pepperoni expansion to our newest facility in Omaha during the second quarter, which will provide the needed capacity to meet growing demand in our retail and foodservice businesses.
We are also beginning work on another expansion for the SPAM family of products, scheduled to be operational in 2023.
In addition to these larger projects, we are continuing to invest in cost savings, technology and automation projects to drive long-term savings and efficiency.
Pivoting to innovation, we achieved our 15% goal in 2021.
We have strong innovation platform for brands such as Planters, SKIPPY, Justin's, Herdez, and Hormel Black Label and Retail as well as the Jennie-O and Happy Little Plants brands in the foodservice channel.
In addition to our continuous process and product improvement initiatives give us the confidence going forward to consistently achieve our stated innovation goal.
I want to speak for a moment about the complexities of our operating environment.
The operating environment is expected to remain complex in fiscal 2022 and our guidance accounts for the near-term impacts from labor shortages, higher costs and supply chain disruption.
Our entire team has done an excellent job executing our business strategies in this dynamic environment.
In many ways, we have enhanced our competency for solving the day to day challenges inherent to our industry.
We have increased our efforts higher and maintain team members and have developed many strategies to mitigate the effect of labor shortages to meet elevated demand.
This includes maximizing our flexibility to produce the items that are most in demand and leveraging our manufacturing partnerships to increase throughput wherever possible.
Our One Supply Chain team allows us to continue to actively manage our raw material procurement, logistics network and supply partnerships to minimize the impact of further inflation and supply chain disruption.
We will also benefit from our expanded logistics network which has added capacity for both the Refrigerated and Grocery Products business.
As a result of these actions, we expect improved fill rate and load factors in fiscal 2022.
The announcement of the Jennie-O Turkey Store transformation is another step in our evolution to become and stronger global branded food Company.
Consistent with our long-term strategy, we are continuing our efforts to actively shift away from commodity businesses toward branded, value-added businesses.
We expect our strategic and intentional actions to create a better, more profitable and sustainable business model.
Taking all of these factors into account, as Jim has mentioned, we are setting our full year sales guidance at $11.7 billion to $12.5 billion and our diluted earnings per share guidance at $1.87 to $2.03.
Additionally, this guidance reflects the Benson Avenue facility closure, our a new pork raw material supply agreements and and effective tax rate between 20.5% and 22.5%.
Fiscal 2022 will be 52 weeks.
As we move forward to execute against our strategic imperatives.
In 2022 and beyond, I'm pleased to be with a Company that continues to evolve as a global branded food Company.
Jim often says, we are uncommon.
I have seen that first time in my time with the Company thus far.
This starts with our unwavering commitment to employee safety and remaining an employer of choice in the communities we live and work.
We're taking purposeful actions to transform our Company as we embark on our most ambitious corporate responsibility journey yet, our 20 by 30 challenge, which is certainly important from an ESG standpoint.
Our experienced management team, the tireless work of our team members around the world and the progress made to implement the Project Orion and One Supply Chain initiative, gives us added confidence in our ability to deliver growth in fiscal 2022 and beyond.
I am excited to be with Hormel Foods and be part of this -- its continued success.

user
qtrly net sales of $3.5 billion, up 43%.
qtrly diluted earnings per share of $0.51.
expect all four segments to deliver sales and earnings growth in fy22.
qtrly operating margin of 10.4% compared to 11.4% last year.
expects to close benson avenue facility, located in willmar, minn.
, in first half of fiscal 2022.
have signed a new five-year raw material supply agreement with our supplier in fremont, neb.
sees 2022 diluted earnings per share guidance $1.87 - $2.03.
sees 2022 net sales guidance (in billions) $11.7 billion - $12.5 billion.
hormel foods - new material supply agreement will result in a reduced supply of commodity fresh pork.
company expects a $350 million sales reduction in fiscal 2022.

assistant