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Text: These beliefs are subject to known and unknown risks and uncertainties, many of which may be beyond our control, including those detailed in our periodic SEC filings.
Please note that the company's actual results may differ materially from those anticipated and we undertake no obligation to update these statements.
There will be an opportunity for Q&A at the end of the call.
For those participating, please limit your remarks to one question and one follow-up if necessary.
I'm pleased with our company's performance in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2021.
In a challenging global supply chain environment, we grew sales 11% and expanded our gross profit and operating profit margins.
Our performance demonstrated our focus on product vitality and customer service.
We allocated capital effectively by closing the acquisition of OSRAM's North American digital business and have created permanent value for our shareholders through the repurchase of company shares.
2021 was a pivotal year for us as we advanced our corporate transformation and I'd like to take a few minutes to recap some of those achievements.
We returned the company to growth.
We grew sales in the third quarter, the fourth quarter, and the full year and we expect this growth to continue.
We expanded gross profit margins for the full year, despite a challenging global environment.
We realigned our businesses into ABL, our Acuity Brands Lighting and Lighting Controls business and ISG, our Intelligent Spaces Group.
This alignment creates the necessary strategic focus on each business and allows us to develop the leadership teams that will deliver on their potential.
We generated strong cash flow and allocated capital in a way that creates permanent value for shareholders.
We held our first ever Investor Day.
We built a strong and diverse leadership team and are attracting new talent throughout the organization.
Our continuing improvements around ESG, are central tenants to our strategy.
We have made significant progress by reaching carbon neutrality in our operations and by committing to the reduction of 100 million metric tons of carbon from our put in place products and services by 2030.
We made progress on diversity, equity, and inclusion and on governance.
And you can read more about all of this in our upcoming 10-K, our Annual Report, our annual EarthLIGHT report and our proxy.
And finally, we have positioned ourselves well for 2022 and beyond.
I now want to update you on our ongoing transformation in each of our businesses and I will start with ABL.
We've had a good year in ABL.
Our focus on innovation through product vitality and increasing our service levels for the benefit of our customers has delivered strong results.
And we are continuing our efforts to drive our product expansion.
The Compact Pro High Bay, which we've discussed before, continues to deliver from both a revenue and margin perspective in the high growth industrial sector.
Our product vitality efforts include improvements to existing products and the introduction of new ones.
In the fourth quarter, we introduced the HomeGuard LED Security flood light.
It's an exciting addition to our contractor select portfolio.
This new platform offers a technology upgrade, higher efficacy, greater safety options, and ease of installation.
Sales have been strong.
We're off to a great start in a category where we currently have low share and strong growth opportunities.
We are also continuing to increase our service levels and deliver productivity improvements.
We are using better, smarter, faster to improve our processes and our technology for better, more efficient, customer service.
Today, I'd like to focus on Agile.
Agile as our commerce platform that is used by our channel for all of the key step that they need to do business in lighting and lighting and controls.
From finding products to creating solutions for large projects, to bidding on those projects, to placing the orders and finally tracking those orders to completion.
Our team is constantly improving Agile.
One of our key areas of focus has been to improve the quality of the product data that we provide.
This improvement provides many tangible benefits including ease of use and improved order accuracy.
Another area of focus that I have spoken about before is order status.
I bring this up again because it has been essential during this complicated period.
We were able to provide clear information to our channel about their order status, which allows us to better meet their needs in the face of the global supply chain challenges.
These examples address significant historical pain points and our foundational, which allow us to improve our service levels today and in the future.
As we enter 2022, the priorities for Trevor and the rest of the ABL team remain the same.
Maintain high product vitality, continue to elevate our service levels, and continue to use technology to differentiate ourselves.
Now moving to the Intelligent Spaces Group.
The mission of ISG is to use technology to solve problems in spaces by making them smarter, safer, and greener.
We believe that each of these provides ample opportunities for future growth.
This tech controls is a collection of open protocol products necessary to effectively operate spaces.
Atrius provides applications which use data to deliver value in those spaces.
We are having success across Europe and North America with our Distech platform, especially around campuses, data centers, and spaces that require a significant amount of control around the operation of the facilities.
We continue to add products to this ISG portfolio.
During the quarter we added the ECLYPSE Connected Thermostat, an open protocol device that reduces installation costs, helps manage energy costs, and improve the comfort of spaces.
In the face of a challenging global environment, we have demonstrably improved our company and its performance.
We have demonstrated our ability to grow sales through innovation and our ability to service our customers.
We've improved our gross profit margins through product and productivity improvements.
We have improved our operating profit margin by leveraging our costs, we have allocated capital efficiently through reinvestment in the business, acquisitions and share repurchase.
We have the talent and the tools to build upon the operating strength we have developed over the last 18 months.
As we look forward, we expect to continue this performance.
We are strategically positioned at the intersection of sustainability and technology.
We have assembled a world-class team.
We have demonstrated the ability to both build and acquire businesses.
We have strong organic cash generation and we have demonstrated that we know what to do with it to create value.
I want to start by recognizing the accomplishments of the team this year.
We have made progress on our transformational priorities, improve the financial performance of the business, and continue to thoughtfully allocate capital.
Our fourth quarter performance was solid.
Net sales were $192 million, an increase of 11% compared to the prior year.
This performance was driven by strong customer demand, improved execution across our go-to-market channels, and the addition of the OSRAM acquisition, which added approximately 200 basis points.
Gross profit margin was 42.2% for the fourth quarter of fiscal 2021, an increase of 10 basis points over the prior year, despite rising costs from raw materials, electrical component supply chain interruptions and a significant escalation of freight costs.
We were able to offset the increased costs with higher sales volume, product and productivity improvements and a benefit from price increases.
I'm extremely pleased with the team's execution around our gross profit margin that led to such a great result in a volatile cost environment.
Reported operating profit margin was 13.4% of net sales for the fourth quarter of fiscal 2021, an increase of 150 basis points over the prior year.
Adjusted operating profit margin was 15.8% of net sales for the fourth quarter of fiscal 2021, an increase of 110 basis points over the prior year.
The majority of this improvement was driven by the higher gross profit margin and leverage of our operating expenses.
The effective tax rate for the fourth quarter of fiscal 2021 was 21.9% compared with 24.5% in the prior year due to the impact of several discrete items.
Finally, we saw significant improvement in diluted earnings per share for the fourth quarter of fiscal 2021.
Diluted earnings per share of $2.72, increased $0.85 or 46% over the prior year and adjusted diluted earnings per share of $3.27 increased $0.92, or 39% over the prior year.
Our share repurchase program favorably impacted diluted earnings per share by $0.24 versus the prior year.
Before I move on to the segment results, I want to highlight a few numbers in our full year 2021 operating results.
Net sales were $3.5 billion, an increase of 4% compared to the prior year, driven by improved sales performance in the second half of 2021.
We delivered a full year gross profit margin of 42.6%, an increase of 40 basis points over the prior year.
Reported operating profit margin was 12.4% of net sales for fiscal 2021, an increase of 180 basis points over the prior year with adjusted operating profit margin at 14.6% for fiscal 2021, an increase of 90 basis points over the prior year.
The effective tax rate for fiscal 2021 was 22.7% compared with 23.5% in the prior year.
We expect this rate to be approximately 23% for the full year in fiscal 2022, excluding any unusual or discrete items and assuming no change to the corporate tax rate.
Diluted earnings per share of $8.38, was 34% increase over the prior year and adjusted diluted earnings per share of $10.17 was a 23% increase over the prior year.
We had 36.6 million diluted shares outstanding during fiscal 2021, with our share repurchase program favorably impacting diluted earnings per share by $0.07 versus the prior year.
Moving onto our segments.
During the quarter, the Lighting and Lighting Controls segment delivered a sales increase of 11% versus the prior year.
This was driven by improvements within our independent sales network, which grew approximately 10% and the direct sales network, which grew about 15% in the current quarter as a direct result of our strong go-to-market efforts as well as recovery in the construction market.
Our corporate accounts channel continued the positive momentum and saw an increase in sales of 16% compared to the prior year, as large retailers move forward with previously deferred renovation spend.
The performance in this channel is dependent upon our customers' renovation cycle and can be uneven quarter to quarter.
Sales in the retail channel declined approximately 20% as compared to the prior year and will continue to be impacted through the remainder of the calendar year as a result of a customer inventory rebalancing.
The retail channel continues to be an attractive channel for Acuity.
During the quarter, we closed the acquisition of OSRAM's DS business.
The acquisition contributed around 200 basis points of growth to ABL revenue and we expect a similar level of impact in 2022.
Now moving to ABL operating profit for the fourth quarter of 2021, which increased 23% to $149 million versus $122 million in the prior year, with operating profit margin improving 150 basis points to 15.8%.
Adjusted operating profit for the fourth quarter of 2021 improved 21% versus the prior year with adjusted operating profit margin improving 140 basis points to 16.8%.
2021 was a year of improvement.
To summarize the full year the ABL business saw sales growth of 3% to $3.3 billion versus the prior year and an improvement across profitability metrics.
Operating profit for the full year increased 12% to $476 million versus the prior year with operating profit margin improving 110 basis points to 14.5%.
Adjusted operating profit for fiscal 2021 improved 10% to $515 million versus the prior year and adjusted operating profit margin improved 100 basis points to 15.7%.
Now moving on to the results for our Intelligent Spaces Group.
For the fourth quarter of 2021 sales in spaces increased approximately 24% to $51 million, reflecting continued demand with strength across our building and HVAC controls.
Spaces operating profit for the fourth quarter of 2021 increased $3.6 million to $2 million versus the prior year.
Adjusted operating profit for the fourth quarter of 2021 of $6 million was $3.9 million greater than the prior year as a result of continued sales growth.
The spaces team had a great year.
We recruited an incredible leadership team and broke the business out into a stand-alone segment.
The team ended fiscal 2021 with sales growth of 21% to $190 million versus the prior year.
Operating profit increased $13.8 million to $9.9 million versus the prior year and operating profit margin of 5.2% for fiscal 2021 improved 770 basis points versus the prior year, with adjusted operating profit margin improving 400 basis points to 13.5%.
Now turning to cash flow.
We continue to generate solid cash flow.
The net cash from operating activities for fiscal 2021 was $409 million.
This was a decrease of $96 million or 19% compared to the prior year, largely due to the increase in working capital needed to support the higher level of sales.
We invested $44 million or 1.3% of net sales in capital expenditures during fiscal 2021 and we continue to believe that capital expenditures of around 1.5% of net sales is an appropriate annual level as we head into 2022.
We continue to allocate capital effectively by prioritizing growth investments, M&A, maintaining our dividend, and creating permanent value for shareholders through share repurchases.
During the year, we repurchased approximately 3.8 million shares of common stock for $435 million at an average price of $114 per share.
We have around 3.8 million shares still remaining under our current Board authorization.
I would now like to spend a few minutes reviewing some of the most important conversations around our company and offer insight into how we are thinking about them.
This is a complicated global environment and input costs have been changing frequently, for example, freight costs.
I'd like to use this as a window into how we are managing these challenges.
We balance our long term freight contracts, which are favorable costs with additional capacity at current cost to deliver high levels of service to our customers.
We have passed along some of these costs through price increases and we are balancing delivering on our margin expectations and delivering on our most important promise, which is to be the company which our customers can rely upon.
As we head into 2022 we are confident in our businesses and in our team.
We expect ABL to grow net sales in the high single digits for the full year of 2022.
We expect ISG to deliver net sales growth in the mid-teens.
We expect 42% plus annualized gross profit margin for the full year of 2022.
And we believe we can continue to leverage our operating costs as we increase net sales.
Finally, we will continue to allocate capital effectively.
We are transforming our business and focusing on our customers, our investors and our associates.
We enter 2022 a much stronger company and with clear opportunities.

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q4 adjusted earnings per share $3.27.
q4 earnings per share $2.72.

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