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: As Julianne mentioned, I'm Christine Cannella, Vice President, Investor Relations, with Fresh Del Monte Produce.
Joining me in today's discussion are Mohammad Abu-Ghazaleh, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, and Eduardo Bezerra, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer.
You may also visit the company's website at freshdelmonte.com for a copy of today's release as well as to register for future distributions.
With that, I am pleased to turn today's call over to Mohammad.
Our performance in 2019 highlights the decisions we made in 2018 to realign certain production units and the progress we have made toward shifting our strategy to becoming a more value added and more diversified company.
We advanced on many fronts in 2019, which I will highlight in a minute.
However, I want to first touch on our fourth quarter performance.
The fourth quarter is traditionally a tough quarter for the industry.
Also, our quarterly results were impacted by our Mann Packing unit's voluntary recall in November.
To a lesser impact, competitive pressures on avocados and pineapples affected selling prices in the quarter.
Collectively, these fourth quarter factors constrained our full-year performance in 2019.
Now I would like to highlight a few of our accomplishments in 2019.
We gained strength in our fresh and value-added business driven by demand from both our existing and new customers.
Particularly for our fresh-cut fruit product line, which continues to expand globally.
We proceeded with our roll out of the new healthy innovative products by introducing our Better Break vegetable-based on-the-go convenience snack pack, snack line.
We opened our new avocado production facility in Mexico, which will allow us to increase our pack out capacity, further strengthening our competitive position.
In 2019, we commenced our strategic direction by expanding global customer supply partnerships.
I'm encouraged about how these key relationships are trending as they play important roles in the value-added product diversification strategy for our distribution channels.
We reduced our debt in 2019, we brought back our quarterly dividend and we repurchased shares.
We also initiated capital investments in technology, automation and logistics as part of our strategic goal to transform Fresh Del Monte to be a technology-driven and efficient producer.
Looking forward, 2020, I'm optimistic about the future of Fresh Del Monte.
We are a different company today than we were a year ago.
We have embarked on five-year plan to transform Fresh Del Monte.
The key elements of our transformation involve protect and grow the core business, drive innovation and expansion growth on value-added categories, evolve our culture to increase employee engagement and productivity, become a technology-driven company to drive efficiencies, become a consumer-driven company, and sustainability, which means waste less for better world tomorrow.
While this transformation is a multi-year strategic plan and there is still a lot of work to do, I continue to be inspired by the commitment and resilience of our organization as we transform our company.
I look forward to updating you regarding the actions we take on our path forward in our upcoming earnings call.
Due to service cancellations and containers being unable to clear at certain Chinese ports, and thus the supply is being shifted to traditional markets such as Japan and Korea and may have adverse impact on our operations.
Like everyone else, we are closely following developments of the rapidly changing situation and our ability to supply our customers in the region.
At this point, I would like Eduardo to take over.
As Mohammad mentioned, our Mann Packing unit announced a voluntary recall products in our fresh and value-added business segment in November 2019.
As a result, we reported adjustments of $11 million related to inventory write-offs, sales claims and other costs associated with the product recall.
We expect to have some continuing impact from the recall in 2020.
I'll now go into the results for the fourth quarter and full-year 2019.
In regards to the product line, I will update you on fourth quarter numbers.
For the full-year 2019, adjusted earnings per diluted share were $1.12, compared with adjusted earnings per diluted share of $0.40 in 2018.
Net sales were in line with the prior year at $4.5 billion, with unfavorable exchange rates negatively impacting net sales by $43 million.
Adjusted gross profit increased to $312 million, compared with $280 million in 2018.
Adjusted operating income for the year was $113 million, compared with $82 million in the prior year.
And adjusted net income increased to $55 million, from $20 million in 2018.
For the full-year 2019, net sales in our fresh and value-added business segment increased by $50 million to $3 billion compared to the prior year, primarily as a result of higher net sales in our fresh-cut, avocado and vegetable product lines.
Our gross profit increased $5 million to $195 million and gross profit was negatively impacted by the Mann Packing voluntary product recall.
For the full-year 2019, net sales in our banana business segment decreased $47 million, due to lower net sales in North America, Asia and Europe, while gross profit increased $30 million as a result of higher selling prices in Europe and Asia.
For the fourth quarter of 2019, adjusted loss per diluted share was in line with the fourth quarter of 2018 at $0.45, net sales were in line with the prior-year period at $1 billion, with unfavorable exchange rates negatively impacting net sales by $4 million.
Adjusted gross profit was $47 million,compared with adjusted gross profit of $42 million in the fourth quarter of 2018.
Adjusted operating loss for the quarter was $6 million, compared with an adjusted operating loss of $8 million in the prior year.
And adjusted net loss for the quarter was $21 million, compared with an adjusted net loss of $22 million in the fourth quarter of 2018.
In our fresh and value-added business segment for the fourth quarter of 2019, net sales were $597 million, compared with $618 million in the prior-year period, and gross profit decreased to $21 million, compared with $45 million in the fourth quarter of 2018.
The decrease in net sales and gross profit was primarily the result of Mann Packing's voluntary product recall.
In our pineapple category, net sales were $115 million, compared to $116 million in the prior-year period, primarily due to lower sales volume and the selling prices in Europe, and lower selling prices in Asia.
Overall volume was 2% lower, unit price was 2% higher, and unit costs were 6% higher than the prior-year period.
In our fresh-cut fruit category, net sales were $116 million compared with the $113 million in the prior-year period, primarily due to increased demand in North America, Europe and Asia.
Overall volume was 2% higher, unit pricing was in line with the prior year, and unit cost was 1% higher than the fourth quarter of 2018.
In our fresh-cut vegetable category, net sales were $96 million compared with $120 million in the fourth quarter of 2018.
The decrease was primarily due to lower sales volume as a result of Mann Packing's voluntary product recall.
Volume was 21% lower, unit pricing was 1% higher, and unit cost was 19% higher than the prior-year period.
In our avocado category, net sales increased to $65 million, compared with $65 million in the fourth quarter of 2018, supported by higher sales volume as a result of increased customer demand.
Volume increased 8%, pricing was 2% lower, and unit cost was 8% higher than the prior-year period.
With the opening of our new packing facility and changes in how we procure of avocados, we believe we will see reduced costs and improvement in margins in this product line.
In our vegetables category, net sales decreased to $47 million compared with the $49 million in the fourth quarter of 2018, primarily due to lower sales volume and selling prices as a result of Mann Packing voluntary product recall.
Volume decreased 4%, unit pricing decreased 2%, and unit cost was 1% higher.
In our non-tropical category, which includes our grape, berry, apple, citrus, pear, peach, plum, nectarine, cherry, kiwi product lines, net sales increased to $33 million compared with $29 million in the fourth quarter of 2018.
Volume increased 1%, unit price increased 11%, and unit cost was 2% higher.
In our prepared foods category, which includes our traditional canned products, and meals and snacks product lines, net sales for the fourth quarter decreased 1% compared with the fourth quarter of 2018.
The decrease was primarily due to lower sales in our meals and snacks product line, partially offset by higher sales in our canned pineapple product line.
In our banana business segment, net sales were $399 million compared with $395 million in the fourth quarter of 2018, primarily due to higher sales volume in the Middle East and higher selling prices in Europe, partially offset by lower sales volume in North America and Asia.
Overall volume was 1% lower than last year's fourth quarter, worldwide pricing increased 2% over the prior-year period.
Total worldwide banana unit cost was 2% lower and gross profit increased to $13 million compared with a loss of $2 million in the fourth quarter of 2018, reflecting 3.7 percentage point increase in gross profit margin.
Now moving to selected financial data.
On selling, general and administrative expenses during the quarter, they represented $49 million compared with $47 million in the fourth quarter of 2018.
The foreign currency impact at the gross profit level for the full year was unfavorable by $15 million and the foreign currency impacts at the gross profit level for the fourth quarter was unfavorable by $5 million.
Interest expense net for the fourth quarter was $5 million compared with $7 million in the fourth quarter of 2018, due to lower debt levels as well as lower interest rates.
Income tax expense was $1 million during the quarter compared with income tax expense of $3 million in the prior year.
Regarding cash from operating activities at the end of the quarter, our net cash provided was once $169 million compared with net cash provided by operating activities of $247 million in the same period of 2018.
The decrease was primarily due to lower accounts payable and accrued expenses, partially offset by higher net income.
Our total debt decreased from $662 million at the end of 2018, to $587 million at the end of 2019.
As it relates to capital spending, we invested $122 million in 2019, compared with $151 million in the same period in 2018.
Just a correction in our avocado category.
Net sales increased to $69 million compared with $65 million in the fourth quarter of 2018.
This concludes our financial review.

user
q4 adjusted loss per share $0.45.

assistant