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: This is Jim Koch, Founder and Chairman, and I'm pleased to kick off the 2020 fourth quarter earnings call for the Boston Beer Company.
Joining the call from Boston Beer are Dave Burwick, our CEO; and Frank Smalla, our CFO.
As the COVID-19 panic slowly winds down, our primary focus continues to be on operating our breweries and our business safely and working hard to meet consumer demand.
I'm very proud of the passion, creativity, and commitment to community that our company has demonstrated during this pandemic.
We achieved depletions growth of 26% in the fourth quarter and 37% for the full year.
We remain positive about the future growth of our diversified brand portfolio and we believe that our depletions growth is attributable to our key innovations, the quality of our products, and our strong brands.
We see significant distribution and volume growth opportunities in 2021 for our Truly, Twisted Tea, and Dogfish Head brands, which remain our top priorities for 2021.
Early in 2021, we launched Truly Iced Tea Hard Seltzer, which combines refreshing hard seltzer with the real brewed tea and fruit flavor.
The launch has been well received by distributors, retailers and drinkers, but it is too early to tell if it will be successful.
We are working hard to further develop our brand support and messaging for our Samuel Adams and Angry Orchard brands to position them for long-term sustainable growth, in the face of the difficult on-premise environment.
We are excited about the response to the introduction in early 2021 of several new beers, Samuel Adams Wicked Hazy, Samuel Adams Wicked Easy and Samuel Adams Just the Haze, our first non-alcoholic beer, as well as the positive reaction to our Samuel Adams Your Cousin from Boston advertising campaign.
We are confident in our ability to innovate and build strong brands that complement our current portfolio and help support our mission of long-term profitable growth.
I will now pass over to Dave for a more detailed overview of our business.
Before I review our business results, I'll start with the usual disclaimer.
Now, let me share a deeper look at our business performance.
Our depletions growth in the fourth quarter was the result of increases in our Truly Hard Seltzer and Twisted Tea brands, partly offset by decreases in our Samuel Adams, Angry Orchard and Dogfish Head brands.
The growth of the Truly brand, led by Truly Lemonade Hard Seltzer, continues to be very strong and well ahead of hard seltzer category growth.
Truly Lemonade was the most incremental new product in the entire beer industry in measured off-premise channels in 2020.
The Truly brand overall generated triple-digit volume growth in 2020 and grew its velocity and its market share sequentially despite other national, regional and local hard seltzer brands entering the category.
In 2020, Truly increased its market share in measured off-premise channels from 22 points to 26 points and was the only national hard seltzer, not introduced in 2020, to grow share.
There remain many opportunities to expand package, channel and geographic distribution and we expect the Truly brand to continue to lead the growth of the business as it has come to stand for a great-tasting, refreshing, pure-play hard seltzer brand.
In early 2021, we launched Truly Iced Tea Hard Seltzer and, while it's still in the early stages, we're encouraged by the support our wholesalers have provided, the trial we are generating as a result of the brand's established equity, and the social media response from consumers.
We will continue to invest heavily in the broader Truly brand and work to improve our position in the hard seltzer category, as competition continues to increase.
Our Twisted Tea brand has benefited greatly from increased at-home consumption and continues to generate accelerating double-digit volume growth, even as new entrants have been introduced and competition has increased.
Our Samuel Adams, Angry Orchard and Dogfish Head brands have been most negatively impacted by COVID-19 and the related on-premise closures.
For 2021, we plan to build upon our success and work to drive our brands to their full potential, with a particular focus on our Truly and Twisted Tea brands.
We are expecting all of our brands to grow in 2021 and for the growth rate of our operating expenses to be below our top line growth rate, delivering leverage to our operating income.
During the fourth quarter, as we increased our brand spend, we also made investments in our supply chain to ensure we are prepared for increased competitive activity in the hard seltzer category.
We have invested to increase our can and automated variety pack capacity, but these capacity increases keep on getting eclipsed by our depletions growth, resulting in higher than expected usage of third-party breweries.
We will continue to take advantage of the fast-growing hard seltzer category and deliver against the increased demand through this combination of internal capacity increases and higher usage of third-party breweries, although meeting these higher volumes through increased usage of third-party breweries has a negative impact on our gross margins.
We have begun a comprehensive program to transform our supply chain with the goal of making our integrated supply chain more efficient, reduce costs, increase our flexibility to better react to mix changes, and allow us to scale up more efficiently.
We expect to complete this transformation over the next two to three years.
While we anticipate the program to start delivering margin improvements in 2021, our gross margins and gross margin expectations will continue to be impacted negatively until the volume growth stabilizes.
While we are in a very competitive business, we are optimistic for continued growth of our current brand portfolio and innovations and we remain prepared to forsake short-term earnings as we invest to sustain long-term profitable growth, in line with the opportunities that we see.
Based on information in hand, year-to-date depletions reported to the company through the 6 weeks ended February 6, 2021 are estimated to increase approximately 53% from the comparable weeks in 2020.
Now, Frank will provide the financial details.
For the fourth quarter, the reported net income of $32.8 million or $2.64 per diluted share, an increase of $1.52 per diluted share or 136% from the fourth quarter of last year.
This increase was primarily due to increased net revenue, partially offset by lower gross margins and higher operating expenses.
Shipment volume was approximately 1.94 million barrels, a 54% increase from the fourth quarter of 2019.
Shipments for the quarter increased at a higher rate than depletions and resulted in higher distributor inventory as of December 26, 2020, when compared to December 28, 2019.
The Company believes distributor inventory as of December 26, 2020 averaged approximately 5 weeks on hand and was at an appropriate level, based on supply chain capacity constraints and inventory requirements to support the forecasted growth.
Our fourth quarter 2020 gross margin of 46.9% decreased from the 47.4% margin realized in the fourth quarter of last year, primarily as a result of higher processing costs due to increased production at third party breweries, partially offset by cost saving initiatives at Company-owned breweries and price increases.
Fourth quarter advertising, promotional and selling expenses increased $48.1 million from the fourth quarter of 2019, primarily due to increased investments in media and production, increased salaries and benefits costs and increased freight to distributors because of higher volumes.
General and administrative expenses were flat from the fourth quarter of 2019, primarily due to non-recurring Dogfish Head transaction-related expenses of $2.1 million incurred in the comparable 13-week period of 2019, partially offset by increases in salaries and benefits costs.
Our full-year net income per diluted share of $15.53 increased $6.37 or 70% compared to the prior year.
This increase was primarily due to increased revenue, partially offset by lower gross margins and increases in advertising, promotional and selling expenses.
Our full-year 2020 shipment volume was approximately 7.37 million barrels, a 38.8% increase from the prior year.
Looking forward to 2021.
Based on information of which we are currently aware, we are targeting 2021 earnings per diluted share of between $20 and $24, but actual results could vary significantly from this target.
This projection excludes the impact of ASU 2016-09.
We are currently planning increases in shipments and depletions of between 35% and 45%.
We're targeting national price increases per barrel of between 1% and 2%.
Full year 2021 gross margins are currently expected to be between 45% and 47%, a decrease from the previously communicated estimate of between 46% and 48%.
We plan increased investments in advertising promotional and selling expenses of between $120 million and $140 million for the full year 2021, a decrease from the previously communicated estimate of between $130 million and $150 million, not including any increases in freight costs for the shipment of products to our distributors.
We estimate our full-year 2021 effective tax rate to be approximately 26.5%, excluding the impact of ASU 2016-09.
This effective tax rate also excludes any potential future changes to current federal income tax rates and regulations.
We are not able to provide forward guidance on the impact of ASU 2016-09 will have on our 2021 financial statements and full-year effective tax rate, as this will mainly depend upon unpredictable future events including the timing and value realized upon exercise of stock options versus the fair value of those options were granted.
We are continuing to evaluate 2021 capital expenditures and currently estimate investments of between $300 million and $400 million.
The capital will be mostly spent on continued investments in capacity and efficiency improvements at our breweries.
Similar to the last couple of calls, Dave will be the MC on our side and coordinate the answers when needed since we are in different locations.

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compname reports q4 earnings per share $2.64.
q4 earnings per share $2.64.

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