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: It's hosted by Marco Sala, executive chair; Vince Sadusky, chief executive officer; and Max Chiara, our chief financial officer.
We are presenting from multiple locations, so please bear with us if we encounter some technical difficulties.
We met and, in many instances, exceeded the financial targets we set for the year.
We also made important progress on several strategic objectives and reinitiated returning capital to shareholders.
As we enter 2022, the company is in a very strong place, with a solid financial condition and the strong foundation to build on.
We recently made some leadership changes that best position the company to realize its long-term growth initiatives and create significant shareholder value.
I have moved into a new role as executive chair of IGT, and Vince Sadusky was named the company's new CEO.
In June, I will be proposed as the next CEO of De Agostini, IGT's majority shareholder.
As you can imagine, I have been in parallel discussions regarding the leadership evolution at IGT and De Agostini for some time.
This was happening while we were managing through the pandemic and making important progress of sharpening IGT's strategic focus and growth objectives.
We outlined a new long-range plan at our investor day and the time is right for a strong leader to deliver on it.
We are very fortunate to have Vince, a seasoned C-Suite executive and longtime IGT board member, to be IGT's CEO.
I have enjoyed working with him over the last seven years and has every confidence he is the right person at the right time to lead the company in an exciting era of growth.
He has an impressive track record of creating shareholder value.
Obviously, I'm not leaving IGT.
I will remain engaged as executive chair, working with Vince on IGT's strategic direction, serving as a resource on customers and regulatory methods and focusing on corporate governance.
Vince will be responsible for establishing the company's priorities, managing day-to-day operations and delivering on strategic and financial goals.
We also enjoyed -- we always enjoyed a constructive dialogue, and I have valued your support of the company.
And now to Vince.
I am really excited to be here leading IGT in the next chapter of its evolution.
I've been a keen observer and advocate of the company's progress for more than a decade in my role as a board member, including as chair of the audit committee.
I've admired the way Marco and team have led the company, especially over the last few years, navigating a highly disruptive pandemic, while making important strategic decisions to position the company for the future.
There are many parallels between IGT and the media companies I've run in the past.
Both operate in regulated markets with high barriers to entry, expertise in content and technology, a culture of innovation and distribution power are critical to success, and each generate strong cash flows and have faced both disruption and opportunity with the emergence of digital.
Given these similarities, I see opportunity to create great value for all IGT stakeholders.
I'm excited to build on the strong foundation I am inheriting.
The company laid out some long-term financial and strategic goals at the November investor day, and I intend to deliver on them.
I signed off on them as a board member, and I'm doubling down as CEO.
Our mission is to strengthen IGT's global leadership position in the regulated gaming industry by offering innovative content, services and solutions.
That is the foundation of our strategy to grow top line and margins across all segments, while increasing operational efficiency and optimizing capital allocation.
And we're in a great position to do so.
Our core activities are in markets with secular tailwinds and accelerating digital growth.
We have set aggressive, but achievable financial goals that include impressive cash flow generation over the next several years, and we have a disciplined strategy to allocate that cash flow to maximize value for all stakeholders.
We have a powerful, diverse portfolio that not only offers compelling growth prospects, but also provides significant resilience.
This was clearly on display during the pandemic where strong lottery and digital and betting growth helped mitigate the impact of wide-scale casino and gaming hall closures.
The collection of assets also provides unique and sustainable competitive advantages, including a best-in-class management team with extensive global industry experience.
From an industrial perspective, the content, technology and management of our operations are highly complementary and are leverageable across slots, lottery, sports betting, and iGaming.
In the quest to sharpen our focus on core operations, we recently announced the sale of our Italy commercial services and payments business at a very attractive multiple, over 15 times 2021 EBITDA.
Net proceeds will primarily be used to reduce debt and potentially for strategic M&A if we see compelling opportunity.
I'd like to highlight some of the progress we're making in our goals.
Beginning with global lottery segment, where same-store sales were up over 20% compared to both 2020 and 2019 levels.
IGT's unique insights on game innovation, portfolio optimization and sales and distribution strategies are helping to drive record level wagers for our customers.
The broad appeal and high entertainment value of lottery games is clear.
In the last two years, we have established a much higher baseline to grow from, and it is important to highlight the tremendous operating leverage in the business as operating income increased at more than double the top-line growth rate in 2021.
iLottery and instant ticket services are two areas of incremental opportunity for us.
We are making good progress on both evidenced by strong KPIs for the year.
In the markets served by IGT's iLottery platform, our lottery same-store sales increased over 60% in 2021, including nearly doubling in the U.S., where iLottery penetration reached 12% in the fourth quarter.
Our innovative new eInstant games are consistently delivering higher average revenue per user for our iLottery customers.
Instant ticket Services had a record year, fueled by a more than 35% increase in standard units produced.
The multiyear outlook for our lottery business is compelling.
We expect innovation, higher average player consumption, increased iLottery adoption and market share gains in instant ticket services to fuel sales growth.
We have a favorable contract renewal cycle ahead of us, and our investments here have attractive returns.
Focused product strategies and the global market recovery are driving a strong rebound in sales and profits for the global gaming segment, which continues to see sequential improvement in sales and profits.
The expansion of our multilevel progressive game portfolio on the new Peak cabinets is strengthening our leased game portfolio and generating some of the strongest sales funnels ever.
Our award-winning Resort Wallet cashless gaming technology recently received regulatory approval in Nevada.
With this achievement, IGT's entire cashless gaming solution, which includes the option for one-step external funding via IGT pay on personal mobile devices is approved for deployment throughout the state.
It is an important milestone for this emerging technology as Nevada is widely viewed as a future forward gaming jurisdiction.
Continued execution on well-defined product strategies is expected to drive market share gains in key categories for us over the next several years.
The digital and betting segment continues to grow at a fast clip, propelled by our strong leadership positions and new iGaming and sports betting regulations in the U.S.
We are investing in R&D and talent to build a solid foundation to support the high revenue and profit growth trajectory we expect over the next several years.
New leadership for both the iGaming and sports betting verticals are already making an impact.
This year, we expect to significantly increase the number of new iGaming titles, and we will also begin distributing our first third-party games.
Our PlaySports solution powers over 60 venues in more than 20 states and was recently recognized as the Platform Provider of the Year at the SBC Awards North America.
The turnkey sports betting solution is gaining traction, including new partnerships with Meruelo Gaming and Cliff Castle Casino.
We also have a robust pipeline of new turnkey customers teed up for 2022.
We are making progress on creating a strategic optionality for the digital and betting segment.
The separate legal entity and organizational realignment is underway along multiple work streams.
It's an exercise that will likely last until year end.
Like many others, we are facing some incremental near-term challenges in four main areas: the impact of the Omicron variant in certain markets, labor shortages, increased supply chain pressure and cost inflation.
Omicron has impacted Italy lottery sales, especially venue-based draw games, like Lotto, since late December.
It has also led to incremental casino restrictions, mostly outside the U.S.
We have found that negative COVID-related impacts on lottery sales proved to be short-lived.
In addition, casino GGR trends and our sales funnel remains strong in North America, which represents about 70% of our global gaming segment.
Low unemployment and higher attrition are impacting our ability to fill open positions as quickly as we'd like.
We are investing in our people and have made talent acquisition and retention a top priority.
IGT's culture of innovation and commitment to diversity and inclusion have proved to be important advantages in attracting and retaining talent.
We are also experiencing increased pressure on product deliveries due to longer lead times and availability of certain components.
We are mitigating this by prioritizing key product and customer deliveries.
A sustained focus on cost discipline and avoidance is also helping to mitigate inflationary pressure on things like components, freight and wages.
It is hard to know if we will experience any impact from the conflict between Russia and Ukraine.
We have minimal direct exposure to those countries, but the repercussions throughout Europe and the rest of the world are difficult to assess at this time.
Net-net, based on what we know today, we expect to offset the impact of the incremental headwinds and maintain the 2022 outlook provided in November.
Six weeks in, I get more and more excited about what we can achieve in the next few years.
The team is extremely motivated to deliver on the plan to take IGT to the next level, and I have tremendous confidence that we will do just that.
And now over to Max for some insight into our financial results.
The figures we reported today demonstrate the highly resilient nature of our business as we not only deliver meaningful revenue and profit growth year over year but also exceeded pre-pandemic levels on all key financial metrics.
A high-level summary of our fourth quarter financial results with comparisons to both the prior year and 2019 is shown here on Slide 14.
In the quarter, we generated over $1 billion in revenue, up 19% year over year on solid global same-store sales growth in lottery, higher replacement unit shipments and ASP in gaming and 25% growth in digital and betting, propelled by continued market expansion and customer demand for our products and technology.
Strong profit flow-through and operating leverage drove adjusted EBITDA to $387 million and the associated margin to 37%, up 31% and 400 basis points, respectively.
It is important to mention that this substantial increase in profit already incorporates higher cost related to the reestablishment of incentive comp programs and favorable supply chain impact and work associated with establishing digital and betting as a separate legal entity.
The solid financial performance and our rigorous approach to invested capital led to record level cash flow generation with cash from operations of nearly $400 million and free cash flow totaling $326 million, inclusive of favorable working capital performance, part of which is timing with Q1.
I would now like to shift the focus to full year results to provide perspective relative to the multiyear outlook we provided during our investor day in November.
In 2021, we delivered over $4 billion in revenue with significant growth across segments versus the prior year.
Strong operating leverage, bolstered by structural cost savings, drove significant increases in profit with over $900 million in operating income and nearly $1.7 billion in adjusted EBITDA, exceeding both prior year and 2019 results.
As we continue to recover from the extreme measures taken during the pandemic, our cost structure is benefiting from the execution of our OPtiMa program, where we overachieved our $200 million cost savings target.
As a reminder, about 3/4 were achieved in our P&L, while 1/4 of that was achieved with structural efficiency in our capital expenditure.
The overachievement piece to our cost savings target primarily comes from temporary actions that are an important mitigant to the increased supply chain costs, primarily in logistics that have impacted our '21 performance and will continue into 2022.
More on that later when we speak about our outlook for '22.
Cash flow generation exceeded our expectations with cash from ops of over $1 billion and free cash flow more than doubling to over $770 million, both record levels.
Now let's review the results of our three business segments.
Global lottery achieved record financial results during the year.
Revenue increased 30% to $2.8 billion as strong customers' demand drove global same-store sales up over 20% year on year and versus 2019.
As a reminder, extremely high play levels in the first half of '21 were bolstered by certain discrete items, including gaming hall closures in Italy, elevated multi-stage productivity and LMA performance in the U.S. These items contributed about $165 million in revenue and around $140 million of profit.
The high flow-through of same-store sales growth and a positive geographic mix also led to record profit levels with operating income rising nearly 70% to $1.1 billion.
Adjusted EBITDA increasing over 40% to $1.5 billion and operating income and adjusted EBITDA margins of 39% and 55%, respectively.
Global gaming returned to profitability during the year with significant increases in revenue and profit compared to the prior year.
Revenue rose 33% to $1.1 billion, driven by solid increases in active units, yields, number of machine units sold and ASPs.
The installed base in North America reflects changes in the WLA markets of Delaware, New York and Rhode Island.
Unit reductions in this market of about 840 units year over year and 650 units sequentially were partly offset by increases in the balance of the portfolio.
In the rest of the world, the installed base rose over 380 units year on year and 180 units sequentially, primarily driven by increases in Latin America and plus two units in South Africa.
Global unit shipments increased 62% year on year as operators began increasing capital budgets in the midst of the market recovery.
Shipments totaled 57% of pre-pandemic levels during 2021, indicating there is still some runway to a full recovery in this area, which we don't expect to happen completely until 2023, although we expect North America unit shipments will get close to 2019 levels in 2022.
IGT sold over 23,800 units globally during 2021 compared to about 14,700 units in the prior year and at higher average selling prices.
2021 ASP of over $14,000 exceeded both prior year and 2019 levels on an improved mix of products and new cabinets.
Strong operating leverage, which was accentuated by savings realized from the OPtiMa program, drove a substantial recovery in operating income and adjusted EBITDA with contributions of over $40 million and $170 million, respectively.
Operating income margins in the fourth quarter reached 11%, nearly matching the 12% pre-pandemic level achieved in the fourth quarter of 2019 and are expected to continue to improve in 2022.
The digital and betting segment continues to grow at a fast pace, generating revenue of $165 million in 2021 with double-digit growth achieved in both iGaming and sports betting.
This growth is propelled by new market adoption, new customers and organic growth.
We completed the successful launch of iGaming in both Michigan and Connecticut, and so our sports betting footprint expand to over 60 sports books.
Operating income grew to $33 million, and the operating margin reached 20%, a solid profit contribution from an emerging business and a nice profit flow-through even with increased investments in talent and resources to fund future growth.
Adjusted EBITDA increased to $48 million, more than double the prior-year level.
As I mentioned earlier, exceptional operational performance and disciplined capital management led to a record level of cash generation which, in addition to approximately $900 million in net proceeds from the strategic sale of our Italy gaming business, allowed us to reduce net debt by $1.4 billion.
Leverage is down to 3.5 times, the lowest leverage in company history, and reaching the 2022 year-end leverage target 12 months early.
With the improved risk profile, we now have a more balanced capital allocation framework that once again includes shareholder returns.
In Q4, we reinstated a quarterly dividend and implemented a $300 million share repurchase program, the first in company history.
We delivered over $80 million to shareholders during the quarter, including about $40 million in the purchase of 1.5 million shares at an average price of just about $27 per share.
Based on recent SEC filings, you can see we continued repurchasing shares in Q1 with another 570,000 shares repurchased through February 9.
Proactive management of our capital structure continued during the year, as evidenced by the redemption of nearly $1 billion of euro notes.
The refinancing of another $1 billion in U.S. dollar notes at a lower interest rate and the successful amendment and extension of our term loan facility.
The reduced debt, increased liquidity and extended maturities have greatly improved our credit profile and lower interest expense by about $60 million during the year.
We also recently accomplished the goal of raising our credit ratings, restoring our pre-pandemic levels.
Last month, S&P and Moody's upgraded our corporate credit rating to BB+ and BA2, respectively, citing the strong performance, improved leverage, EBITDA margin improvement and the use of asset sale proceeds to reduce debt.
These latest actions position us very well in the fixed income market going forward and strengthen our conviction in pursuing our long-term leverage objective.
Our debt portfolio is favorably structured in the current market environment with a heavily weighted mix of fixed to floating rates and no large near-term maturities.
In conclusion, let me summarize by saying 2021 was a very successful year, with compelling progress made on many growth initiatives and the successful achievement of our financial goals, with all key financial metrics exceeding 2019 levels.
We reduced debt and leverage to record levels and increased capital returns to shareholders.
More broadly, over the past couple of years, we have built a solid foundation for profitable growth in the future as we drove an accelerated recovery from the pandemic, readied our company to capture potential portfolio opportunities and realign our portfolio to high growth opportunities.
Based on the strong performance of 2021 and despite the recent headwinds, we are reaffirming the 2022 full year guidance we provided at the recent investor day.
We currently expect to deliver revenue of approximately $4.1 billion to $4.3 billion, operating income margins of 20% to 22%, cash from operations of between $850 million and $1 billion and capital expenditures ranging from $400 million to $450 million.
Leverage is expected to remain around 3.5 times x in '22 with some variability quarter to quarter.
The leverage outlook excludes any positive impact from the recent -- from the receipt of proceeds from the recently announced sale of our commercial service and payment operations in Italy.
On a pro forma basis, we see a further improvement in our leverage ratio to the tune of 1/4 of a turn.
That transaction is expected to close in the third quarter of 2022.
As Vince mentioned earlier, we are managing through some headwinds caused by near-term market dynamics.
We're confident we can mitigate the impact of these items with incremental product sales, financial rigor on cost and lower depreciation and amortization related to the capex efficiency as well as timings of spending.
It is fair to mention that our outlook does not factor at this point any material consequence from the recent conflict in Ukraine given our limited direct exposure to the affected region, although we continue to monitor events very closely and we'll adjust our posture accordingly as events unfold.
In order to provide some indications with respect to the first quarter of 2022, we expect to achieve revenue of $1 billion to $1.1 billion and operating income margins of 20% to 22% in the quarter.
This outlook implies a sequential improvement in profit from Q4 '21.

user
reaffirming full-year 2022 guidance provided at recent investor day.
sees q1 revenue of about $1.0 billion - $1.1 billion.
sees q1 operating income margin of 20% - 22%.

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