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: Additional information and news about our company can also be found on Rockwell's Investor Relations Twitter feed using the handle @investorsrok that's at Investors ROK.
So with that, I'll hand the call over to Blake.
Let's turn to our quarterly results on Slide 3.
We saw another quarter of exceptional demand across all three business segments.
Total order surpassed $2.2 billion and grew 40% over the prior year, reflecting a very strong demand pipeline across our portfolio of core automation and digital transformation solutions.
Total revenue of over $1.8 billion grew 15% with additional sales that shifted in the fiscal '22 due to supply chain headwinds.
Organic sales grew 13% versus prior year.
We had very strong growth in core automation and the Information Solutions, and Connected Services grew double digits in both orders and revenue.
This performance was led by strong demand for software and cyber security services.
Turning to ARR, we continue to make significant progress to drive recurring revenue.
Our ARR grew organically by over 18% and including our recent acquisition of Plex now accounts for over 8% of total sales.
Segment margin of 18% came in line with our expectations with the execution of planned investments in Q4.
I'll now comment on our topline performance by business segment.
Intelligent devices organic sales increased 15% versus prior year, even with significant headwinds from supply chain.
From an orders perspective, this is the fourth consecutive quarter of record order intake in this segment with orders 30% above fiscal 2019 levels.
We continue to see significant strength across the automation portfolio and share gains particularly evident in motion led by our Independent Cart Technology.
Software and control organic sales grew 14% led by strong demand across the segment including double-digit growth in Logix.
Orders grew approximately 50% year-over-year, once again showing great momentum across the software, control, visualization and network portfolios.
In Lifecycle Services, organic sales increased 7% versus the prior year and increased 2% sequentially even with some projects delayed as a result of component availability.
Lifecycle Services book to bill of $1.09 was well above seasonal Q4 levels.
Total company backlog of $2.9 billion grew by over 80% year-over-year.
Over 40% of backlog is related to our Lifecycle Services business.
Turning to Information Solutions and Connected Services, which represent many of Rockwell's numerous digital revenue streams.
We had another great quarter.
Recent orders included a number of meaningful software and infrastructure as a service wins.
One of the more notable wins in the quarter which Ardagh Group, one of the world's largest sustainable packaging companies.
The company had placed million dollar order for fixed software in Q3 to reduce unplanned downtime.
Ardagh like a lot of manufacturers is trying to respond to a sharp increase in demand.
By Q4 as a relationship develop we pulled through an additional $4 million purchase of core automation products showcasing the tremendous synergy resulting from our new software capabilities and intelligent devices.
With their ARR going 45% and over 470 new fixed customers added in just the last nine months.
I'm very happy with the contributions Fiix has been able to make to our overall business.
We also had a great win with one of the world's largest Food and Beverage companies in two key application areas.
The first one is in the area of predictive analytics.
Where are our Kalypso digital consulting business will combine our FactoryTalk innovation suite with our automation technology to provide real time monitoring and analytics for their manufacturing environment.
The second application is in the area of sustainability for our software and automation technology will be used to help monitor water, air, gas, electricity and steam usage to develop real time KPIs that further reduce their carbon footprint and drive quantifiable production outcomes.
Kalypso continues to play a very important role within Rockwell and spearheading some of the most exciting digital transformation projects in all of manufacturing.
Our customers are recognizing Rockwell's expanding capabilities to converge IT and OT and be a strong partner throughout the digital transformation journey.
In fact, we now yesterday that we are adding to Kalypso's capabilities with our acquisition of Avata which will strengthen and expand our supply chain solutions domain expertise.
This expertise, combined with our operations management software and that of our partners drives great outcomes for our customers.
We are very excited to be expanding our presence in the connected supply chain, since it is such a critical high growth area.
We also accelerated our FactoryTalk SaaS offering with the acquisition of Plex in September.
The integration is going well and we look forward to showcasing the entire FactoryTalk software offering including Plex at our upcoming Investor Day on November, 10th in Houston.
We hope to see you there.
I'd also like to highlight the increasing traction we're seeing with our PTC partnership.
Our sales force seeing the number and size of engagement is growing.
The capabilities and versatility of the combined solution is a great way to win with both existing customers and new ones all over the world.
Not only the wins we saw this quarter we're in diverse industries around the world.
We're happy with this partnership, I think it's a great part of our software portfolio.
We had great performance in our discrete industry segment with roughly 15% sales growth.
Within this industry segment, automotive sales grew about 15% led by an increase in EV capital project activity including a strategic win at Magna.
One of the top Tier 1 auto manufacturers delivering EV content for GM and forward.
Semiconductor was strong from 20% off of a very good quarter last year.
E-commerce performance was also exceptional the sales growing approximately 30% versus a strong prior-year.
Turning now to our hybrid industry segment, the verticals in this segment also had a terrific quarter.
Food and beverage grew about 15% led by strong greenfield and brownfield project opportunities in North America and EMEA, as well as strong double-digit OEM demand.
Life Sciences grew over 15% in Q4 and remains one of our top growth verticals.
We see continued growth in the overall Life Sciences market and evidence that we are taking market share.
Once again, our fastest growing vertical in the hybrid segment was Tire, which is up about 35% in the quarter.
Process markets grew over 10% with strong sequential and year-over-year growth in oil and gas, especially in our Sensia JV.
In summary, we are clearly seeing very strong growth across discrete and hybrid segments as well as improving oil and gas trends.
Turning now to Slide 5 in our Q4 organic regional sales performance.
North America organic sales grew by 16% versus the prior year with strong double-digit growth across all three industry segments.
EMEA sales increased 7% driven by strength in Food and Beverage, Tire and Metals.
Sales in the Asia Pacific region grew 12% with broad-based growth led by EV, semiconductor, and mining.
In China, we saw double-digit growth driven by strength in mining, Life Sciences, Tire and the EV.
Record orders of $8.2 billion in 26%.
Reported sales grew 11% even with supply chain constraints.
Organic sales grew almost 7%.
ICS revenue exceeded $500 million at year-end and grew double-digits organically.
Adjusted earnings per share grew 20% and we once again generated significant cash flow due to our very profitable financial framework, strong focus on productivity and financial discipline.
At the same time, we made significant investments in our future to accelerate profitable growth.
That included organic investments as well as inorganic investments.
In fiscal '21, we accelerated funding of software development projects and deployed approximately $2.5 billion toward inorganic investments.
At the same time we returned $800 million back to share owners in the form of dividends and buybacks.
Turning to Slide 7.
You can see how these investments in our strong order momentum in backlog are helping to accelerate our top line performance heading into fiscal '22.
Our new fiscal '22 outlook expects total reported sales growth of 17.5% including 15.5% organic growth versus the prior year.
These projections take into account our latest view of supply chain constraints.
We have the people, supplier commitments and plant capacity to support this growth, but we will know now need to continue to manage new challenges as they emerge in this highly dynamic environment.
We expect global-digit growth in both core automation as well as information solutions, and connected services.
Acquisitions are expected to contribute two points of profitable growth.
We are increasing our margin expectations to 21.5% at 150 basis points over the prior year.
Our new Adjusted earnings per share target of $10.80 at the midpoint of the range represents about 15% growth compared to the prior year.
I should add that we expect another year of double-digit annual recurring revenue growth, including our recent Plex acquisition which adds approximately $170 million to our ARR totals in fiscal '22.
A more detailed view into our outlook by end market is found on Slide 8.
I won't go into the details on this slide.
But as you can see, we continue to expect broad based organic sales growth in fiscal '22.
I'll start on Slide 9, Fourth Quarter Key Financial Information.
Fourth quarter reported sales were up 15% over last year.
Q4, organic sales were up 12.6% and acquisitions contributed one point to total growth.
Currency translation increased sales by 1.5% points.
Segment operating margin was 17.9% in line with our expectations.
The 230 basis point decline was primarily related to higher planned investment spend, the reversal of temporary pay actions and the restoration of incentive compensation, partially offset by the impact of higher sales.
Corporate and other expense was $33 million.
The year-over-year increase was from deal costs associated with Plex acquisition.
Adjusted earnings per share of $2.33 was better than expected and grew 21% versus the prior year.
I'll cover a year-over-year adjusted earnings per share bridge on a later slide.
The adjusted effective tax rate for the fourth quarter was negative 3%, much lower than expected, compared to 15% in the prior year.
The lower than expected rate was related to the cumulative impact of several one-time discrete items recognized in the current quarter.
Free Cash Flow performance was in line with our expectations.
We generated $160 million of Free Cash Flow in the quarter.
The Free Cash Flow generation includes higher levels of working capital in the current year to support our increasing revenue and build inventory in anticipation of the accelerated revenue levels in fiscal year '22.
One additional item not shown on the slide, we repurchased 200,000 shares in the quarter at a cost of $61 million.
For the full year, our share repurchases totaled $301 million in line with our July guidance.
On September 30th, $152 million remained available under our repurchase authorization.
Slide 10 provides the sales and margin performance of our three operating segments.
Organic sales of both Intelligent Devices and Software & Control were up double digits.
Lifecycle Services' organic sales were up sequentially and up 7% year-over-year, led by oil and gas, Life Sciences including beverage.
All segments saw strong double-digit growth in orders.
Compared to last year, Intelligent Devices margins were up 100 basis points on higher sales.
This segment did see higher input costs both year-over-year and sequentially, however these costs were largely offset by price.
Segment margins for the Software & Control segment declined 330 basis points compared to last year.
With higher planned investment spend, partially offset by higher organic sales this segment benefited from positive price cost in the quarter.
Lifecycle Services segment margin was 8.1% and declined 820 basis points driven by the reversal of temporary pay actions, the reinstatement of incentive compensation, as well as unfavorable mix partially offset by higher sales.
The next Slide 11 provides the adjusted earnings per share walk from Q4 fiscal '20 to Q4 fiscal '21.
As you can see core performance was up about $0.70 on a 12.6% organic sales increase.
Approximately $0.10 was related to non-recurring accelerated investments that we announced earlier this year.
These investments are mostly in our Software & Control segment.
The reversal of temporary pay actions and restoration of incentive compensation contributed negative $0.45.
Acquisitions were a $0.15 headwind due to the deal costs associated with the acquisition.
As previously noted, our lower adjusted effective tax rate contributed $0.40.
Slide 12 provides a walk from our Q4 midpoint in our July guidance to our actual Q4 adjusted earnings per share results.
We usually don't provide this information, but I wanted to show how the quarter played out relative to the midpoint of what we had guided back in July.
The unforeseen impacts of the Delta variant in Southeast Asia added incremental pressure to the supply chain.
But the impact of the volume mix of $0.40 was mitigated to lower incentive compensation, further productivity and a favorable mix, all of which contributed $0.35.
As previously noted, a more favorable tax rate benefited our earnings per share versus guidance by $0.25.
Moving to Slide 13, product order trends.
This slide shows our average daily order trends for our products, which includes our software portfolio.
As a reminder, the trends shown here account for about two-third of our overall sales.
Order intake was broad based and improved sequentially for the fifth consecutive quarter.
Q4 product order levels grew at about 40% versus the prior year and are well above pre-pandemic levels as customers are increasingly interested in investing in our core automation and software.
Both of which are essential to drive the outcomes that come from digital transformation.
Slide 14 provides key financial information for the full year fiscal '21.
Reported sales grew 10.5% including over one point coming from acquisitions.
Organic sales were up 6.7% led by double-digit growth in our hybrid and discrete end markets and improving process verticals.
Full year segment margins remained at about 20% including close to $30 million of onetime accelerated investments mostly in our Software & Control segment.
R&D expense was up 14% compared to fiscal '20 and R&D as a percent of sales increased further to 6% of sales in fiscal '21.
Our core automation, which excludes the impacts-- Excuse me, our core conversion, which excludes the impact of acquisitions currency and our accelerated one-time investments was 34%.
Corporate and others was at just over $20 million.
Mostly related to acquisition costs associated with the Plex acquisition.
Adjusted earnings per share was up 20%, a detailed year over year adjusted earnings per share walk can be found in the appendix for your reference.
Free Cash Flow performance remained strong and was in line with our July expectations.
Free Cash Flow conversion was 103% of adjusted income.
Finally,ROIC remained well above our target of over 20%.
For the year we deployed about $3.3 billion of capital toward acquisitions, dividends and share repurchases in fiscal '21.
Our capital structure and liquidity remained strong.
Let's move on to the next Slide 15.
Guidance for fiscal '22.
As Blake mentioned, we are expecting sales of about $8.2 billion dollars in fiscal '22 up 17.5% at the midpoint of the range.
We expect organic sales growth to be in the range of 14% to 17% and about 15.5% at the midpoint of our range.
This outlook includes our latest assumptions on supply chain constraints.
We expect full year segment operating margins to be about 21.5%.
We expect positive price cost for the full year from the additional price increase we implemented this month.
At the midpoint of our guidance assumes full year core earnings, conversion of between 30% and 35%.
We believe we are in the early stages of a cycle of sustained growth and are making investments to fuel this growth in '22 and beyond.
Our fiscal '22 segment margin and core conversion outlook includes our plans to increase R&D and other growth-related investments by double-digit.
We expect the full year adjusted effective tax rate to be around 17%, we do not anticipate any material discrete items to impact tax in fiscal '22.
This rate is under current tax law, should tax laws change, we would provide an updated outlook with the impacts from these changes.
Our adjusted earnings per share guidance is $10.50 to $11.10.
This compares to fiscal '21 adjusted earnings per share of $9.43.
At the midpoint of the range, this represents a 15% adjusted earnings per share growth.
I will cover a year over year adjusted earnings per share walk on the next page.
From a calendarization viewpoint based on our current supply chain availability, we expect our first quarter sales to be relatively flat compared to our Q4 and fiscal '21.
Following the first quarter we expect sequential sales to improve over the balance of the year.
We expect segment margins and the adjusted earnings per share to decline sequentially in Q1 and then improve throughout the year in line with our sales volume and the timing of price increases.
We anticipate recent price increases to having more substantial benefit and subsequent quarter given the timing of when customer agreements are renewed throughout the year.
Also as a reminder, fiscal '21 Q1 included a non-recurring $0.45 gain related to the settlement of a legal matter.
Finally, we expect full year fiscal '22 Free Cash Flow conversion of about 90% of adjusted income.
This reflects $155 million bonus payout for the fiscal '21 performance.
$165 million of capital expenditures and funding higher levels of working capital to support higher sales.
Our working capital is targeted to be aligned with our historic amount of about 12% of sale.
A few comments, additional comments on fiscal '22 guidance.
Corporate and other expense is expected to be around $125 million.
Net interest expense for fiscal '22 is expected to be about $115 million.
And finally, we're assuming average diluted shares outstanding of about $117.5 million shares.
The next Slide 16 provides the adjusted earnings per share walk from fiscal '21 to fiscal '22 guidance at the midpoint.
Moving from left to right, core performance is expected to contribute $2.15 this includes the benefit of higher organic sales, we anticipate price realization will exceed input cost inflation by about $0.10.
Our pricing philosophy is built on the high value that we bring our customers.
In light of increasing input costs, we have taken several price adjustments this year to mitigate and we are prepared to take additional price actions as needed.
The removal of the onetime accelerated investments made in fiscal year '21 will be about $0.20 benefit the one-time gain from a legal matter that was settled in the prior year is $0.45 headwind.
Plex will be a $0.15 tailwind in fiscal '22 including the impact of incremental interest.
We have included further information showing the impact of Plex in both fiscal '21 and fiscal '22 in our appendix.
No real significant changes to what we showed in July.
We expect about a $0.05 impact coming from share dilution and the higher tax rate is expected to be about a $0.75 headwind.
Moving on to the next Slide 17, I'll make a few comments on our capital deployment framework.
Our long-term capital deployment priorities remain the same.
Our first priority is organic growth.
After that, we focus capital deployment on inorganic activities.
And then, we focus on capital returns to shareholders through our dividend and then share repurchases.
In addition to our organic and inorganic investments, our capital deployment plans for fiscal '22 include a focus on delevering.
Dividend of about $520 million and share repurchases of $100 million.
In summary, our guidance assumes a combination of order and backlog growth to drive this team and 0.5% organic sales at the midpoint and reaches the total sales of over $8 billion.
We continue to offset inflationary pressures through additional price actions yielding segment margins of 21.5%.
We expect adjusted earnings per share growth of 15% and continued strong Free Cash Flow.
As we look forward to fiscal '22, strong order trends and record backlog underpin a robust top-line outlook.
We are making investments in our capacity, technology and people to support our future growth.
Our people delivered great results this year, and I want to take a moment to recognize the tremendous work during this especially challenging times.
As the world recovers, investments in automation and digital transformation never been more top of mind.
Nobody is better positioned to help industrial customers be more resilient, agile and sustainable.
As many of you will see at our upcoming Investor Day, we're taking manufacturing to a whole new level and look forward to a great year ahead.
Let me now pass the baton back to Jessica to begin the Q&A session.
Before we start the Q&A, I just want to say that we would like to get to as many of you as possible, so please limit yourself to one question and a quick follow-up.
Press, we'll take our first question.

user
q4 adjusted earnings per share $2.33.
q4 sales were $1,807.8 million, up 15.1%.
sees 2022 reported sales growth 16% - 19%.
sees 2022 organic sales growth 14% - 17%.
sees 2022 adjusted earnings per share $10.50 - $11.10.

assistant