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: I will now read the safe harbor statement.
Specifically, the COVID-19 pandemic has and is currently having a significant impact on the company's business, financial conditions, cash flow and results of operations.
At this time, there is significant uncertainty about the duration and extent of impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.
I hope you, your colleagues and loved ones are doing well.
As we mark our 30th year in business, we remain focused on the wellbeing of our teams worldwide and are extremely proud and grateful that the entire organization continues to operate with flexibility, resiliency, efficiency, and above all, safely.
Skechers achieved a new fourth quarter sales record of $1.65 billion, the second highest quarterly sales in the company's history, and gross margins of 48.6%.
This is a remarkable achievement, given the challenges we faced as the global pandemic continued to impact our business.
For the full year, Skechers achieved record sales of $6.29 billion with strong gross margins of 49.3%.
These exceptional results bring us closer to our goal of $10 billion in five, or $10 billion by 2026.
While the disruptions and costs remained a challenge in the global supply chain for the fourth quarter, our logistics team worked diligently to navigate around them.
We saw improvements in December with more goods moving through our distribution centers than in the previous months.
The improvement continued through January as port congestions eased, and more containers reached our distribution center.
However, we believe these challenges will remain through the first half of 2022.
But we are optimistic they will ebb in the latter half of the year.
We continually monitor the developments within the supply chain to deliver our products as efficiently as possible.
The fourth quarter sales gain of 24% was the result of a 10% increase in our domestic sales and a 34% increase in our international sales.
International represented 65% of our total sales for the fourth quarter.
All our reportable segments achieved growth for the quarter and full year, with international wholesale registering the highest gains for both periods.
We attribute this exceptional global growth to the ongoing broad-based demand for the Skechers brand and products.
Consumers continue to embrace the outdoors for exercise, dining and many other activities and sought out Skechers for our comfort, innovation, style and quality, all at a reasonable price.
Our international wholesale business grew 30% year over year in the fourth quarter, with increases coming from all our channels, reflecting the global strength of our brand.
Our distributor business was the largest growth driver with a 124% increase, led by the Middle East and followed by Russia, Scandinavia, Indonesia, and Turkey.
Subsidiary sales increased 47% with double-digit growth coming from nearly every country.
Several even achieved triple-digit growth.
The strongest gains came from the United Kingdom and India, two of our largest markets.
We believe this impressive sales growth is due to both strong demand for our product and our ability to deliver goods as some of the port pressure eased.
Our joint venture business increased 10% for the quarter on strong sales in China and Mexico, as well as the addition of the Philippines, which transitioned from a distributor model to being directly managed by Skechers.
China's high single-digit growth in the quarter is particularly notable, given temporary store closures in select provinces due to COVID-19 and the supply chain restrictions, which resulted in a delay of some 11.11 inventory.
E-commerce still achieved double-digit growth for the quarter.
The improvements in our joint venture business were partially offset by declines in several markets in Asia due to COVID-19, inventory challenges and a decline in tourism.
An additional net 128 third-party Skechers stores opened in the fourth quarter across 30 countries, including our first in Bhutan, a notable number of franchise locations in China and India, as well as through our distributors in Australia, New Zealand, Turkey, among others.
In total, at quarter-end, there were 2,946 third-party Skechers stores around the world.
Skechers' direct-to-consumer business achieved quarterly sales gains of 30%, driven by a 52% increase in international and a 17% increase domestically.
Worldwide comparable same-store sales increased 21%, including 15% domestically and 36% internationally.
Further, our direct-to-consumer average selling price per unit increased 25%.
This was reflective of our less promotional stance, higher-priced products and the continued strong demand for the innovative features in our comfort technology footwear.
The increase of 17% in our domestic direct-to-consumer business was the result of a 24% gain in our brick-and-mortar stores, partially offset by a decrease of 12% in domestic e-commerce, which was challenged by low inventory availability during periods in the quarter.
As compared to the same period in 2019, our domestic e-commerce business increased 115%.
The increase in our international direct-to-consumer business was primarily driven by strong retail sales across Europe and Latin America.
This was despite the temporary closure of several stores in Austria and the Netherlands due to local health restrictions.
We continue to invest in our direct-to-consumer capabilities in the quarter by upgrading our POS systems in North America and the U.K. And we are currently in the process of completing updates in Japan, with Europe to follow.
The rollout of new e-commerce sites continued in the fourth quarter with the launch of new platforms in the United Kingdom, India, Germany and Austria.
More markets are planned for 2022, including several in Europe slated for this quarter.
These investments further our progress as an omnichannel retailer, capable of addressing consumer demand whenever, wherever and however the shopper wants.
In the fourth quarter, we opened 16 company owned Skechers stores, including eight in India, two in Colombia and one each in France, Italy, Peru, and Chile.
We closed three locations in the quarter.
This brings the global company owned and third-party Skechers store count to 4,306 at year-end.
To date, in the first quarter, we've opened six stores in the United States and one in Italy, and we plan to open an additional 120 to 150 company-owned locations by year-end.
We closed 11 stores in the United States at the end of January, and by the end of the year, expect to close another five to 10 locations, the majority of which are mall-based concept stores.
Sales in our domestic wholesale business improved 5% in the fourth quarter.
The growth came primarily from our women's and kids categories, though our men's running and walking categories also performed well.
We believe our domestic wholesale growth is particularly positive, given the supply chain challenges that continue to impact consumers in the United States.
We are able to improve our deliveries in December from earlier in the quarter and are continuing to maintain a current flow of goods through our North American distribution center with the pace of shipments to our wholesale partners picking up, allowing us to better meet the demand for Skechers in our largest market.
One of our main priorities is to meet consumers' needs with comfortable footwear at a reasonable price, and we're doing just that.
We have seen consumers react positively to our product globally with the consistent and universal demand for Skechers comfort technology.
The expansion of our offering with more comfort fits, fresh collaborations and styles that incorporate recycled materials allow Skechers to appeal to an everwidening consumer base and for shoppers to meet more of their footwear needs with the brand they trust.
As always, we drove awareness to our various product offerings through multichannel marketing efforts that united the Skechers message across all touch points, online and in-store, as well as through television, radio, magazines, outdoor, and social media.
While 2021 was a record year, we expect the momentum to continue into 2022.
We are strategically investing in both our distribution and corporate infrastructure.
In India, we purchased our corporate headquarters in January and finalized the location for a new DC to be opened in 2023.
We relocated our Japan distribution center, more than doubling our space.
And we also recently relocated to a slightly larger distribution space in Panama with the intent to build an additional center, allowing us to grow from 270,000 square feet to approximately 800,000 square feet in 2023.
The expansion continues on our LEED certified Gold North American distribution center, which will bring our facility in Southern California to 2.6 million square feet later this year.
2021 proved to be yet another challenging year with more COVID-related operating restrictions, closures and supply chain disruptions, many of which continued in the fourth quarter.
Despite these challenges, Skechers delivered another exceptional quarter and year.
Strong product and brand momentum yielded higher average selling prices in our direct-to-consumer business, as well as among many of our wholesale partners.
This translated into record sales and a recovery in our operating margins above what we expected at the beginning of the year.
We also continued to make investments throughout the year in our core strategies, growing our business internationally and increasing the depth of our relationships with consumers in our direct-to-consumer business.
Before getting into specifics about this quarter's performance, let me spend a moment to provide an update on the supply chain disruptions we spoke about last quarter.
First, we note that many of those disruptions, manufacturing delays, extended transit times, port congestion and elevated freight rates persisted throughout the quarter, and we worked diligently to mitigate the impact of these obstacles.
Alongside our factories, distribution partners and wholesale accounts, we worked to get product on to shelves as quickly as possible.
The effect of these challenges was most evident in our inventory balances, which include an incremental $325.1 million in in-transit inventory, a year-over-year increase of over 130%.
This inventory supports orders to our wholesale accounts and our own direct-to-consumer business, which could not be sold in the quarter.
As David mentioned, we recently started to see an improvement in the delivery rate of containers and are optimistic this will continue.
We are monitoring events daily but expect some level of these challenges to persist well into 2022.
Nonetheless, we remain confident in the strength of our brand and trajectory of our business and have fully embraced the goal of achieving $10 billion in sales by 2026.
This confidence in the long-term health of the business encouraged our board to authorize a new three-year share repurchase program of up to $500 million, which we expect to fund through free cash flow.
Now, let me turn to details of our fourth quarter financial results, where we will provide comparisons to both the prior year and where appropriate to 2019.
Sales in the quarter achieved a new fourth quarter record totaling $1.65 billion, an increase of $323.2 million or 24% from the prior year and a 24% increase over the fourth quarter of 2019.
Direct-to-consumer sales increased 30% year over year, supported by growth in domestic and international markets of 17% and 52%, respectively.
Both markets delivered meaningful improvements in gross margins and strong year-over-year average selling price growth.
As compared with the fourth quarter of 2019, direct-to-consumer sales increased 22%, the result of an 8% increase domestically and a 45% increase internationally.
International wholesale sales increased 30% year over year and grew 33% compared to the fourth quarter of 2019.
Our distributor business grew 124% year over year but remains slightly below pre-pandemic levels.
This channel continues to make good strides toward recovery, particularly in critical markets like the Middle East and Russia.
Subsidiary sales increased 47% year over year, and as compared to the fourth quarter of 2019, grew 66%.
The improvement was primarily the result of a strong recovery in many markets heavily impacted by the pandemic last year, including the United Kingdom, Spain, and India.
Our joint ventures grew 10% year over year, led by a 9% growth in China.
As compared to the fourth quarter of 2019, this reflects a 32% increase.
The growth in China was driven by strong e-commerce demands, somewhat tempered by slower traffic patterns in retail stores, as well as temporary pandemic-related store closures.
Continuing weakness in several adjacent markets also weighed on joint venture growth in Asia.
Domestic wholesale sales grew 5% year over year, and we continue to see very positive underlying trends among our domestic wholesale partners, including strong sell-through rates and higher average selling prices.
Gross margin for the quarter was 48.6%, a decrease of 30 basis points year over year due to higher freight expense and the mix impact of higher sales in our distributor business, which is an inherently lower gross margin business with very attractive operating margins.
These were partially offset by higher average selling prices.
Total operating expenses increased by $119.4 million or 20% to $715.1 million in the quarter versus the prior year but improved 160 basis points as a percentage of sales from 45% to 43.4%.
Selling expenses in the quarter increased year over year by $24.2 million or 25% to $122.1 million, reflecting additional demand creation spending globally.
General and administrative expenses in the quarter increased year over year by $95.2 million or 19% to $593 million.
However, as a percentage of sales, this represented an improvement of 160 basis points.
The dollar increase was due to a combination of factors, including higher retail store labor, incentive compensation, settlements of multiple legal matters and distribution-related costs.
Earnings from operations were $93.1 million versus prior year earnings of $57.7 million, an increase of $35.4 million or 61%.
Operating margin improved 120 basis points to 5.6% as compared with 4.4% in the prior year.
Net earnings were $402.4 million or $2.56 per diluted share on 157.3 million diluted shares outstanding.
We recorded an income tax benefit of $346.8 million in the quarter, resulting from an intra-entity transfer of certain intellectual property, which will be amortized in the future.
Excluding the effects of this nonrecurring tax benefit and the settlement of multiple legal matters, adjusted diluted earnings per share were $0.43.
This compares to prior year net earnings of $53.3 million or $0.34 per diluted share on 155.4 million diluted shares outstanding.
Our effective tax rate for the fourth quarter was a negative 399%, which reflects the benefit of the intellectual property transfer.
The company's effective income tax rate was a negative 43.2% for the full year, which includes a 60.9% impact from the intellectual property transfer in the fourth quarter.
Excluding this benefit, our effective tax rate would have been 17.7% for the full year.
And now turning to our balance sheet.
Our cash and liquidity position remained extremely healthy.
We ended the quarter with $1.04 billion in cash, cash equivalents and investments.
This reflects a decrease of $539.6 million or 34% from December 31, 2020.
As a reminder, we fully repaid our revolving credit facility in the second quarter of 2021, of which $452.5 million was outstanding last year.
Also, in December, we expanded our senior unsecured credit facility to $750 million, which retains a $250 million accordion feature that provides for total liquidity of up to $1 billion.
Trade accounts receivable at quarter-end were $732.8 million, an increase of $113 million from December 31, 2020, predominantly the result of higher wholesale sales.
Total inventory was $1.47 billion, an increase of 45% or $454.2 million from December 31, 2020.
However, as previously noted, this balance reflects an increase of $325.1 million in in-transit inventory, attributable mainly to supply chain disruptions.
Total debt, including both current and long-term portions, was $341.6 million at December 31, 2021, compared to $735 million at December 31, 2020.
Capital expenditures for the fourth quarter were $74 million, of which $28.7 million related to the expansion of our joint venture-owned domestic distribution center, $16 related to investments in our new corporate offices, $14.2 million related to investments in our direct-to-consumer technologies and retail stores and $5.9 million related to our distribution centers in China, the United Kingdom, and Japan.
Our capital investments remain focused on supporting our strategic priorities, growing our direct-to-consumer business, as well as expanding the presence of our brand internationally.
For 2022, we expect total capital expenditures to be between $250 million and $300 million, reflecting continuing investments, both in the U.S. and internationally in our distribution infrastructure, omnichannel retail capabilities and corporate offices.
Now, I will turn to guidance.
For fiscal 2022, our projections are predicated upon the expectation that the pandemic and its aftereffects such as supply chain disruptions will continue but will begin to ease in severity over the course of the year.
We expect sales to be in the range of $7 billion to $7.2 billion and net earnings per diluted share to be in the range of $2.70 to $2.90.
For the first quarter, we expect sales to be in the range of $1.675 billion to $1.725 billion and net earnings per diluted share in the range of $0.70 to $0.75.
We anticipate that gross margins will be down slightly compared to last year as freight costs will offset improved pricing.
Our effective tax rate for the year is expected to be between 19% and 20%.
Achieving record sales for the fourth quarter of $1.65 billion and for the year at $6.29 billion is a tremendous accomplishment, especially given the supply chain constraints and ongoing COVID-related challenges.
The comfort, innovation, style and quality of Skechers resonating with consumers around the world and drove an increase in sales of 24% for the fourth quarter and 37% for the full year, with gross margins of 48.6% and 49.3%, respectively.
Towards the close of 2021, we saw improvements in the moving of goods through our North American distribution center and are hopeful that the current COVID variant has reached its peak here, as well as in many countries and the world can begin to normalize again.
Our logistics teams are working tirelessly to address the supply chain challenges, monitoring the situation globally, with the goal of delivering Skechers comfort footwear to our customers and consumers as quickly as possible.
We do expect the supply chain disruptions to continue through at least the first half of this year.
2022 marks our 30th anniversary in business, and we're looking forward to the continued growth and implementing the many strategic plans underway.
We'll be introducing more innovative and comfort technology product, developing multi-platform marketing campaigns with our growing roster of ambassadors, including recently announced television personality, Amanda Kloots, and rolling out more Skechers e-commerce sites around the world, including Spain, Portugal and Italy shortly.
We are finalizing plans to enter the metaverse, creating an entirely new opportunity for the Skechers brand and are further driving home the message that Skechers is the comfort technology company.
Innovation, comfort and creativity will be at the forefront of our product and marketing efforts, supported by efficiency and determination in our operations to deliver product.
Our focus is on ensuring the health and safety of the Skechers team as we look to the future.
And together, as determined and driven organization, we will make 2022 another record year and continue on the road to $10 billion in sales.

user
compname reports q4 adjusted earnings per share of $0.43.
q4 adjusted earnings per share $0.43.
q4 earnings per share $2.56.
q4 sales rose 24.4 percent to $1.65 billion.
sees q1 earnings per share $0.70 to $0.75.
sees fy earnings per share $2.70 to $2.90.
sees q1 sales $1.675 billion to $1.725 billion.
sees fy sales $7.0 billion to $7.2 billion.

assistant