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Text: Before we begin, I would like to announce our next two investor events.
Also, please mark your calendars for our first quarter earnings conference call, which will take place on Tuesday, April 26.
During today's conference call, we will be making certain predictive statements that reflect our current views about 3M's future performance and financial results.
These changes are a result of discussions we have had with many of you over the last few years, along with recent benchmarking work that we have done.
First, we recognize that dual credit reporting has presented some challenges.
For example, having a clear understanding of the impact of disposable respirator performance over the past two years on our segment results, particularly safety and industrial and healthcare.
Therefore, we have decided to eliminate dual credit reporting and will no longer report dual credit within our business segments starting in Q1 2022.
We will provide a Form 8-K ahead of our February 14 meeting with updated history for the past three years reflecting this change.
And second, we will be providing organic sales change components in aggregate as opposed to reporting separate volume and price components.
With this change, we will also be updating the descriptor to organic sales versus organic local currency sales.
Please note, this change will be reflected in our 2021 Form 10-K filing.
We remain committed to providing strong transparency of reporting our financial performance.
3M delivered a solid performance in the fourth quarter, closing out a strong year as we focused on serving customers in a dynamic external environment.
Our revenue in the quarter finished better than we expected across all businesses, including an increase in respirator demand due to the impact from the Omicron variant.
Organic growth companywide was 1% on top of 6% in last year's Q4, with earnings of $2.31 per share driven by a good December strong execution and a lower-than-anticipated tax rate.
I am pleased with how we effectively managed production operations to meet customer demand despite ongoing logistics and raw material challenges that are impacting many companies.
While focusing on customers, we also saw good benefits from our actions to drive productivity, improve yields and control costs, which helped offset the margin impact of supply chain disruptions, inflation and COVID-19.
In addition, our selling price actions continued to gain traction with a year-on-year increase of 2.6% in Q4 versus 1.4% in Q3.
We expect this to be a tailwind for the full year in 2022.
Overall, demand remains strong across our market-leading businesses, and we are continuing to prioritize growth investments in large attractive markets.
We also took actions to strengthen our portfolio and advance our commitment to sustainability.
I will highlight examples of our progress later in the call.
In summary, we delivered a good finish to the year and are well-positioned to drive growth in 2022.
As Bruce noted, we will provide full year guidance along with strategic updates from our business leaders at our February 14 meeting.
Monish will now take you through the details of the quarter.
Looking back on the fourth quarter, the 3M team continued to manage through a challenging environment.
As Mike noted, revenues for December were better than previously expected across all the businesses, including disposable respirators as the Omicron variant increased near-term demand.
Though manufacturing, raw materials, and logistic challenges persisted throughout the quarter, the 3M team executed well by driving operating rigor and managing costs while continuing to invest in the business.
Turning to the fourth-quarter financial results.
Sales were $8.6 billion, up 0.3% year-on-year or an increase of 1.3% on an organic local currency basis against our toughest quarterly comparison last year.
Operating income was $1.6 billion with operating margins of 18.8% and earnings per share of $2.31.
On this slide, you can see the components that impacted our operating margins and earnings per share performance as compared to Q4 last year.
The biggest impact to fourth-quarter results was the ongoing effects from the well-known global supply chain, raw materials, and logistics challenges, which persisted throughout the fourth quarter.
Our enterprise operations teams continue to work tirelessly through ever-evolving changes in customer demand while navigating these challenges to keep our factories running, serve our customers and protect the health and safety of our employees.
We continue to experience significant productivity headwinds in our factories due to shorter production runs and more frequent production changeovers throughout the quarter as we focused on serving our customers.
As forecasted at the start of last year, we also had higher year-on-year compensation and benefits costs.
These impacts were partially offset through strong spending discipline along with benefits from restructuring and lower legal-related expenses versus last year's Q4.
We also continue to prioritize investments in growth, productivity and sustainability to drive long-term performance and capitalize on trends in large, attractive markets, including automotive, home improvement, safety, healthcare, and electronics.
All in, these impacts lowered operating margins by 2.4 percentage points and earnings per share by $0.33 year on year.
Moving to price and raw materials.
As expected, our selling price actions continue to gain traction as we went through the quarter.
On a year-on-year perspective, Q4 selling prices increased 260 basis points as compared to 140 basis points in Q3 and 10 basis points in Q2.
In dollar terms, higher year-on-year selling prices offset raw material and logistics cost inflation in Q4, which resulted in an increase in earnings of $0.03, however, remained a headwind of 20 basis points to operating margins.
Next, foreign currency, net of hedging impacts, was a headwind of 10 basis points to margins and $0.04 per share year on year.
There were three other nonoperating items that impacted our year-on-year earnings per share performance.
First, a reduction in other expenses resulted in a $0.10 earnings benefit.
This included a $0.06 benefit from non-operating pension, which was similar to prior quarters.
We also have been proactively managing our debt portfolio, including the early redemption of $1.5 billion, which helped drive a $0.04 benefit year on year from lower net interest expense.
Second, a lower tax rate versus last year provided a $0.12 benefit to earnings per share.
Our Q4 tax rate was benefited by geographic income mix and favorable adjustments related to impacts of U.S. international tax provisions.
And for the full year, our tax rate was 17.8%.
And finally, average diluted shares outstanding decreased 1% versus Q4 last year, increasing per-share earnings by $0.02.
Fourth-quarter adjusted free cash flow was $1.5 billion or down 30% year on year, with conversion of 110%.
For the full year, adjusted free cash flow was $6 billion with adjusted free cash flow conversion of 101%.
The decline in our Q4 year-on-year free cash flow performance was driven primarily by lower non-cash legal and restructuring expenses versus Q4 last year, along with higher litigation-related payments and capex investments, which was partially offset by improvements in working capital velocity.
Fourth-quarter capital expenditures were $556 million, up $134 million year on year and $213 million sequentially as we continue to invest in growth, productivity and sustainability.
Looking at the full year, capital expenditures totaled $1.6 billion.
During the quarter, we returned $1.8 billion to shareholders through the combination of cash dividends of $848 million and share repurchases of $938 million.
For the full year, we returned $5.6 billion to shareholders in the form of dividends and share repurchases.
Our strong fourth-quarter cash flow generation and disciplined capital allocation enabled us to continue to maintain a strong capital structure.
We ended the year with $4.8 billion in cash and marketable securities on hand and reduced net debt by $1.2 billion or 8% versus year-end 2020.
As a result, we exited the year with net debt-to-EBITDA of 1.4 times.
Our strong balance sheet and cash flow generation capability, along with disciplined capital allocation, continues to provide us the financial flexibility to invest in our business, pursue strategic opportunities and return cash to shareholders while maintaining a strong capital structure.
I will start with our Safety and Industrial business, which posted an organic sales decline of 1.3% year on year in the fourth quarter.
This result included a disposable respirator sales decline of approximately $110 million year on year, which negatively impacted Safety and Industrial's Q4 organic growth by nearly 4 percentage points.
Our personal safety business declined mid-teens organically versus last year's 40% pandemic-driven comparison.
Looking ahead, we anticipate that COVID-related disposable respirator demand will decline as we move through 2022.
However, we remain prepared to respond to changes in demand as COVID-related impacts continue to evolve.
Turning to the rest of safety and industrial.
Organic growth was led by a double-digit increase in closure and masking.
In addition, the abrasives business was up high single digits.
Industrial adhesives and tapes and electrical markets were each up mid-single digits.
Automotive aftermarket was flat, while roofing granules declined against a strong comparison from last year.
Safety and industrial's fourth-quarter operating income was $543 million, down 22% versus last year.
Operating margin was 17.7%, down 440 basis points versus Q4 last year.
Year-on-year operating margin performance was impacted by a decline in sales volumes, higher raw materials, logistics, and litigation-related costs, manufacturing productivity impacts, along with last year's gain on sale of property.
Partially offsetting these impacts were selling price increases, strong spending discipline, net benefits from restructuring, and a smaller increase to our respirator mask reserve.
Moving to transportation and electronics, which declined slightly on an organic basis due to the continued impact of the semiconductor supply chain constraints.
Our auto OEM business was down mid-teens organically year on year, compared to the 13% decline in global car and light truck builds.
As we mentioned last quarter, we experienced an increase in channel inventory levels with the tier suppliers in Q3 as auto OEM production volumes decelerated from 18.5 million builds in Q2 to 16.3 million in Q3.
During the fourth quarter, OEM production volumes increased to 20.2 million builds or up over 20% sequentially.
This sequential increase in build activity drove a reduction of channel inventory levels with the tier suppliers during the quarter, which negatively impacted Q4 organic growth for our automotive business by approximately 10 percentage points.
For the full year, our auto OEM business was up low double digits, as compared to global car and light truck builds growth of 2%.
Throughout the year, we continued our track record of success of winning with our customers and gaining penetration on new internal combustion and electric vehicle platforms.
Our electronics-related business declined low single digits organically, with declines across consumer electronics, particularly smartphones and TVs.
These declines were partially offset by continued strong demand for our products and solutions in semiconductor and factory automation end markets.
Turning to the rest of transportation and electronics.
Commercial solutions grew low double digits, advanced material was up high single digits, while transportation safety declined high single digits.
Fourth-quarter operating income was $406 million, down 15% year on year.
Operating margins were 17.6%, down 270 basis points year on year.
Operating margins were impacted by higher raw materials and logistics costs, manufacturing productivity impacts along with an increase in comp and benefits costs.
These year-on-year headwinds were partially offset by increases in selling price, strong spending discipline, and net benefits from restructuring actions.
Turning to our healthcare business, which posted a fourth-quarter organic sales increase of 1.6%.
This result included a nearly four-percentage-point drag from the year-on-year sales decline in disposable respirators.
Our medical solutions business declined low single digits organically, which included a six-percentage-point impact from the year-on-year sales decline in disposable respirators.
Fourth-quarter elective medical procedure volumes were approximately 90% of pre-COVID levels, which is similar to Q3 and last year's Q4.
Sales in our oral care business grew low single digits year on year as patient visits continue to be near pre-COVID levels.
The separation and purification business increased high single digits year on year with sustained demand for biopharma filtration solutions for COVID-related vaccines and therapeutics.
Health information systems grew mid-single digits, driven by strong growth in revenue cycle management and clinician solutions.
And finally, food safety increased high single digits despite continued COVID-related impacts of the global hospitality industry.
In December, we announced the planned separation of this business, which will be combined with Neogen.
Health care's fourth-quarter operating income was $536 million, down 2% year on year.
Operating margins were 23.6%, down 50 basis points.
Year on year, operating margins were negatively impacted by raw materials and logistics costs, manufacturing productivity, compensation and benefits costs, and food safety deal-related costs.
These impacts were partially offset by benefits from leverage on sales growth, strong spending discipline, and restructuring actions.
For the quarter and full year, healthcare's adjusted EBITDA margins were strong, coming in at nearly 31%.
Lastly, our consumer business finished out the year strong with organic growth of 4.9% year on year on top of last year's 10% comparison.
Our home improvement business continued to perform well, up low single digits on top of last year's strong double-digit comp.
This business continued to deliver strong growth with our home improvement retail customers in our category-leading Filtrete, Command, and Scotch Blue brands.
Stationery and office, along with the consumer health and safety business, each grew low double digits organically in Q4 as both of these businesses continue to lap last year's COVID-related comparisons.
The holiday season demand drove strong growth for our Scotch-branded products during the quarter.
We also posted strong growth in Post-it-branded products despite workplace reopenings being pushed out due to the resurgence of COVID cases.
And finally, our home care business was up low single digits versus last year's strong COVID-driven comparison.
During the quarter, we took a small portfolio action to divest our flow care business in Europe, which is expected to close in Q1.
Consumer's operating income was $316 million, flat compared to last year.
Operating margins were 21.4%, down 100 basis points year on year.
Operating margins were impacted by higher raw materials, logistics, and outsourced hard goods manufacturing costs, manufacturing productivity impacts, along with increased compensation and benefit costs.
These impacts were partially offset by leverage on sales growth, which included good price performance, strong spending discipline, and net benefits from restructuring actions.
That concludes my remarks for the fourth quarter.
The macro-environment in 2021 was defined by strong but fluid end markets, semiconductor constraints, supply chain, and logistics challenges, along with ever-evolving impacts from COVID-19, particularly on the global healthcare industry.
These dynamics were further compounded by winter storm Uri in mid-February, which led to significant disruptions to raw material supply and logistics availability, which further disrupted global supply chains.
All of these factors collectively helped contribute to broad-based and accelerating inflationary pressures throughout the year.
Against this backdrop, the 3M team kept a relentless focus on serving customers, ensured continuity of raw material supply, managed ever-changing manufacturing production plans, navigated logistic constraints, and delivered strong full-year organic growth of 9%, with all business segments posting high single-digit growth.
We also worked hard to raise selling prices, control spending, and drive improvements in operating rigor through daily management, leveraging data and data analytics while continuing to execute on our restructuring actions.
These actions, combined with strong organic growth, helped to deliver full-year operating margins of 20.8% or down 50 basis points year on year on an adjusted basis.
This result included an 80-basis-point headwind from raw materials and logistics inflation net of selling price actions, along with increased spending to advance our sustainability efforts and higher legal-related expenses.
In addition, we continue to focus on working capital improvement, which helped contribute to another year of robust adjusted free cash flow coming in at $6 billion.
We made good progress in 2021 and are well-positioned for 2022.
And in the spirit of continuous improvement, there is always more we can do and will do.
As I look back at 2021, I am proud of our team and our performance.
Our results demonstrated the strength of the 3M model and our investments in growth, productivity and sustainability advanced our company.
In the face of an uncertain environment, we delivered strong organic growth of 9%, with strength across all business groups, along with margins of 21%.
This drove a 14% increase in adjusted earnings per share.
These results exceeded our original guidance that we communicated in January of 2021 and recent updates to that guidance.
We generated robust free cash flow of $6 billion with an adjusted conversion rate of 101%, enabling us to invest in the business, reduce net debt by $1 billion and return significant cash to shareholders.
All in, 3M returned $5.6 billion to our shareholders through dividends and share repurchases, and 2021 marked our 63rd consecutive year of dividend increases.
We continue to help the world respond to COVID-19 with 2.3 billion respirators distributed last year for a total of 4.3 billion since the onset of the pandemic, while engaging with governments on how to prepare for future emergencies.
We stepped up our commitments to ESG, including sustainability as we made progress on new goals to achieve carbon neutrality, reduce water use, improve water quality and reduce plastics.
As part of our ongoing sustainability commitments, we proactively manage PFAS and deploy capital to make our factories and communities stronger and more sustainable.
As one example, we are on track to complete a new water filtration system in Cordova, Illinois by the end of 2022.
In Zwijndrecht, Belgium, we installed and activated a treatment system last month to reduce PFAS discharges by up to 90%.
This is part of a EUR 125 million commitment to improve water quality and support the local community.
As disclosed in our 8-K in November, we continue to work with local authorities related to a safety measure that shut down certain operations in Zwijndrecht.
We are also appealing and discussing with local authorities a new change to our wastewater discharge permit that if implemented, could have a material impact and potentially interrupt production at the entire site, impacting customers and the supply of material to other 3M factories.
We are actively working to address current and future potential impacts, and we'll update you as appropriate.
With respect to litigation, we reached settlements last year in certain PFAS cases and continue to vigorously defend ourselves on combat arms.
As always, we encourage you to read our SEC filings for updates on these matters.
As we advance our ESG priorities, we also continue to take actions to improve diversity, equity, and inclusion.
This includes multiple programs to make STEM education more available to underrepresented groups and achieve our goal to deliver 5 million learning experiences.
Our businesses have also made commitments.
Safety and industrial, for example, is focusing on access to skilled trades, and we are increasing transparency through an annual diversity, equity, and inclusion report.
At the same time, we are advancing our strategic priorities for long-term growth and value creation.
We are innovating faster and differently, including new ways to collaborate with customers and partners virtually, while investing $3.6 billion in the combination of R&D and capex to strengthen 3M for the future.
To make the most of long-term growth opportunities, we also continue to prioritize investments in large, fast-growing areas like automotive, home improvement, safety, healthcare, and electronics.
In 2021, for example, our automotive electrification platform grew 30% organically, and our biopharma business grew 26%.
Our home improvement business grew 12% on top of 13% growth in 2020, driven by iconic brands, including our Command damage-free hanging solutions and Filtrete home filtration products.
To accelerate our ability to meet increasing demand for Command and Filtrete, last week, we announced a nearly $500 million investment to expand our operations in Clinton, Tennessee, adding nearly 600 manufacturing jobs by 2025.
We look forward to sharing more about how we are capitalizing on growth trends and winning in these markets at our February meeting.
Last year, we also continued to reposition our portfolio to maximize value across the enterprise, including an agreement to divest and combine our food safety business with Neogen, creating a global leader that is well-positioned to capture long-term profitable growth.
We continue to make progress in transforming 3M, accelerating our digital capabilities, and expanding our use of data and analytics to better serve customers and improve our operational agility and efficiency.
This includes the ongoing deployment of our ERP system, which went live in Japan in Q4, and also moving more than 60% of our enterprise applications and global data center infrastructure to the cloud, while streamlining our business group-led operating model.
To help our people be at their best, we also introduced new employee work models rooted in flexibility and trust, along with investments to support their health and well-being.
As we enter 2022, I'm confident we will continue to grow our businesses, improve our operational performance and find new ways to apply science to improve lives, delivering for our customers, shareholders, and all stakeholders who have placed their trust in us.

user
qtrly earnings per share of $2.31.
qtrly sales of $8.6 billion, up 0.3 percent year-on-year.
qtrly organic local-currency sales increased 1.3 percent.
effectively managed supply chain disruptions, made good progress on pricing actions and controlled costs.
qtrly health care sales of $2.3 billion, up 0.7 percent in u.s. dollars.
qtrly transportation and electronics sales of $2.3 billion, down 1.5 percent in u.s. dollars.
qtrly consumer sales of $1.5 billion, up 4.1 percent in u.s. dollars.

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