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: With me on the call today are Denise Paulonis, our new President and Chief Executive Officer and Marlo Cormier, Chief Financial Officer.
I'm thrilled to be here with a little over a month under my belt and I'm looking forward to meeting and talking to our analysts and shareholders in the coming months.
Having served in the Sally Beauty board since 2018, I'm fortunate to be bringing the first hand perspective and a deep working knowledge of the business on day one.
I see a significant opportunity to utilize my leadership skills and retail and finance background to drive the business into a new era of profitable growth, capitalizing on all the new capabilities enabled by the transformation of the business over the past four years.
Virtually every aspect of the company's infrastructure has been retooled across technology, marketing, merchandising, supply chain, HR, finance, and talent, creating a robust platform from which we will grow.
I'm incredibly proud of our exceptional team who took on this challenge and helped us evolve into a modern dynamic omnichannel beauty retailer that is now set up for long-term success.
Before talking a bit more about our future, let me share a few highlights from last year.
In fiscal 2021 full year net sales grew 10%, gross margins exceeded 50% and adjusted earnings per share was up over 97%.
Additionally, we generated strong cash flow from operations of $382 million.
We delivered consistent performance throughout the year and concluded fiscal 2021 with fourth quarter results ahead of expectations, reflecting strong operational execution.
We're particularly pleased to see ongoing momentum and consistency across the business despite the various impact of the pandemic.
As we embark on our new fiscal year, our mission to recruit and retain color customers remains a core component of our roadmap and continued tailwinds around self-expression through hair, product sustainability and innovation and the growing number of independent stylists continue to reinforce the strength of our color and care business.
Putting the customer first and enhancing their experience with us is critical to our success.
We're continuing to prioritize the customer through personalization, inspiration, education and training.
We're also focused on creating the easiest shopping experience for our customers through our robust omnichannel platform and multiple fulfillment options our customers can get product, how they want it and when they want it, faster than ever before.
Against that backdrop, we'll be focusing on four strategic growth pillars to drive the top line in fiscal 2022.
Leveraging our digital platform, driving loyalty and personalization, delivering product innovation and advancing our supply chain.
First, I'll talk about digital.
As we increasingly become the unrivaled forced for color inspiration, education and training, our goal is to create an easy, reliable omnichannel platform for our DIY enthusiasts and stylists.
At BSG, we completed a critical set of strategic initiatives in fiscal 2021 that positioned us to become the go-to-platform for stylists.
We redesigned the CosmoProf website, introduced new value-added services around ordering and rolled out focus into our delivery.
In addition, we'll be connecting our store network to the CosmoProf app this month to further enhance focus into our delivery.
In short, our BSG stylists can now access everything sold by CosmoProf on their phone and within two hours.
Bringing together all these initiatives, truly positions BSG as a compelling resource for the stylist community, providing them with the tools they need to run their businesses most efficiently and profitably.
At Sally, we've seen a positive customer response to our expanded fulfillment model and we're continuing to gain traction across BOPIS, ship from store and rapid two-hour delivery.
In our most recent quarter, Sally U.S. and Canada stores fulfilled 34% of e-commerce sales as BOPIS fulfilled the 34% of e-commerce sales, as BOPIS comprised 22% and ship from store accounted for 8%.
Rapid two-hour delivery was launched in the middle of the quarter and represented 4% of Sally U.S. and Canada E-commerce sales.
Additionally, the adoption of these new fulfillment options exhibits our power of scaling our new tools and capabilities to meet the strong desire our customers have for this incredible convenience.
We're also laser focused on improving in stocks across our store and DC network through our new JDA platform.
So our customers are able to access our inventory.
However, they choose to shop and get most products in just two to three hours.
As we continue to scale and optimize a full suite of omnichannel services for both our Sally and BSG customers, we believe e-commerce can reach 15% or more of sales in the coming years.
In fiscal 2021, global e-commerce sales penetration was just over 7%.
Importantly, we know that an omnichannel customer at Sally U.S. and Canada spends approximately 75% to 80% more with us annually than a brick and mortar customer.
So this is not just a sales channel shift, it is a tremendous opportunity for growth.
Moving now to our second growth pillar: loyalty and personalization, which [Technical Issues] directly to our digital strategy.
As many of you know, the rise of personalization has changed the table stakes in retail.
With our rapidly growing loyalty program and a new push toward personalization, we have a significant opportunity to drive and increase customer engagement in sales.
At Sally U.S. and Canada, approximately 74% of our fourth quarter sales came from our loyalty program.
At BSG, because stylist have to register a shop with us, we have data on 100% of our customers.
Additionally, approximately 8% of our BSG's sales in the quarter came from our Rewards Credit Card that was launched about a year ago.
These are remarkable numbers and we've only scratched the surface in leveraging this asset.
In fiscal 2022, we'll be utilizing data science to engage our customers with inspiration, education and personalized offers at every touch point.
At Sally, this includes recommendations on product usage, reminders to replenish on time and incorporating DIY an educational component at key moments in their journey.
At BSG, this mean showcasing new product arrivals, reminding stylist to restock their backbar and notifications to replenish key styles products.
We believe these actions will drive higher customer lifetime value by minimizing attrition, growing spend per transaction and increasing purchase frequency.
Fiscal 2022 will also see us investing further in digital marketing and social media campaigns to drive traffic and sales.
Our current marketing campaign YOU by Sally continues to generate a tremendous amount of attention from customers and the trade.
Celebrating the transformative power of hair color, the campaign has received extensive coverage from Beauty editors and generated millions of views on social media.
Our third growth pillar is product innovation.
Fiscal 2022 will be highlighted by a big infusion of innovation across Sally and BSG and we'll be driving a large part of that ourselves.
The pipeline of new products is robust and includes our own and third-party brands across multiple categories.
We will continue to emphasize and support sustainable and clean products, which are increasingly being selected and commanding a premium from customers.
Importantly, we believe our authority in color and care provides a logical path and powerful platform for standing up new brands that go beyond our four walls.
The first initiative is our new exclusive brand line of vivid colors of Sally called Strawberry Leopard launched to positive response in October, this is a useful Gen Z focused brand that speaks to our ability to increasingly attract younger consumers through value of self-expression.
Concurrently with the launch, we created an individual digital platform for Strawberry Leopard that immersed the consumers in the brand ethos, enables a direct shopping experience.
As the brand gains velocity, we expect to unlock potential opportunities for expansion into additional distribution channels, including math, beauty and third party e-commerce.
The innovation pipeline at BSG is equally exciting, starting with Olaplex's new toning shampoo that just launched in September.
Olaplex is a great example of a high-profile brand that continues to innovate and remains a key partner to us.
Looking ahead, we're continuing to focus on being at the forefront of innovation with new product and brand launches to excite the consumer planned for 2022 and beyond.
Turning now to our fourth growth pillar, another critical element of our focus on putting the customer first is supercharging our supply chain to ensure that we are in stock in color and care every time.
A great deal of the heavy lifting has been done and we're now executing the final phase of JDA implementation.
The system is up and running in all BSG's locations and the majority of our Sally stores.
We're currently rolling out JDA to our remaining locations and fully integrating with our North Texas, DC.
Once completed, we'll have a highly automated integrated network with the best-in-class capabilities across inventory forecasting, localized assortment, pricing and promotions and in stock.
We believe that our initiatives underneath four growth pillars will allow us to drive top line growth of 3% to 4% and generate strong operating cash flows this year.
This reflects our ability to maintain strong gross margins, while mitigating inflationary pressures through careful cost controls, pricing levers and store optimization.
To that end, our 90-store optimization pilot remains in progress.
We are continuing to gather and analyze data from the sample and I'm pleased to note that we are significantly exceeding our sales transfer targets.
In fiscal 2022, we expect to launch a multi-year program designed to maximize the value of our large store portfolio, while offsetting inflationary headwinds.
By rationalizing the fleet, we can improve productivity and profitability, while delivering a convenient omnichannel experience that benefits our customers.
We're entering fiscal 2022 with solid infrastructure, a well-defined roadmap for growth and favorable industry dynamics that support the significant opportunity in front of us.
In the coming months, I look forward to working with the team to build out additional growth opportunities that will fuel our business and create meaningful shareholder value in 2023 and beyond.
We're pleased to conclude the year with strong fourth quarter performance, which exceeded the expectations we provided on our last earnings call and reflect strong consumer demand coming out of the pandemic.
Topline growth, solid gross margins and careful cost control, drove strong earnings and cash flow.
Net sales increased 3.4% and same-store sales rose 2.1% reflecting strong consumer demand with only some minor impact from pandemic related restrictions in Europe.
Fourth quarter traffic and conversion trends remain consistent with what we've experienced throughout the pandemic.
Traffic was down, but units per transaction, average unit retail and average ticket all increased versus prior year.
Basically, customers are still shopping less frequently, but are buying more when they transact with us.
Global e-commerce sales were $71 million, representing 7.1% of total net sales as compared to $63 million in the prior year.
The year-over-year increase reflects ongoing strength as we continue to scale our digital capabilities and implement our strategic initiatives around fulfillment and customer engagement.
Looking at gross profit, we achieved fourth quarter gross margin of 50.6%, reflecting our ability to maintain solid performance above our 50% target level.
On a year-over-year basis, gross margin deleveraged by 50 basis points, reflecting a higher mix of BSG sales, which carried a lower margin profile in the quarter.
Moving to operating expense, fourth quarter SG&A totaled $387 million, up 5% versus a year ago, primarily reflecting higher labor costs and planned increases in marketing spend.
Looking at the new fiscal year, we anticipate that SG&A dollars will increase and rate will be up slightly on a year-over-year basis.
Our expectation takes into account increased labor and freight costs, increased expense planned in our international markets related to a full reopening in 2022, as well as investments across our growth pillars that Denise discussed earlier.
We believe our store optimization program will serve as an important offset to wage inflation beginning in the latter part of 2022 and then more significantly in 2023.
Turning now to earnings.
We delivered strong profitability in Q4.
Adjusted operating margin came in at 11.7%, adjusted EBITDA margin was 14.5% and adjusted diluted earnings per share increased to $0.64.
Looking at segment results.
At Sally Beauty, we saw strong consumer demand in the U.S. Same-store sales increased 2.3% and e-commerce sales totaled $29 million for the quarter.
For Sally U.S. and Canada, the color category increased 4%, while vivid colors grew 5%, representing 28% of our total color sales as comparisons normalized to prior year.
Other categories also performed well.
Styling tools increased by 31% and textured hair was up 16%.
Gross margin declined slightly at Sally, which reflected strong product margins, offset by higher distribution and freight costs.
Segment operating margin increased to 18.1% compared to 18% in the prior year.
In the BSG segment, same-store sales increased 1.7% as salons returned to more normalized capacity levels in virtually all of our U.S. markets.
E-commerce sales totaled $42 million for the quarter.
The color category grew 9%, hair care was up 5% driven by Olaplex and styling tools increased 9%.
Gross margin and profitability at BSG reflected same dynamics we saw in Q3.
Specifically, we're experiencing higher sales from our larger volume, full service customers coming out of the pandemic and those customers tend to be lower margin.
Segment operating margin was down slightly versus prior year at 13.3%.
Moving to the balance sheet and cash flow.
We ended fiscal 2021 in strong financial condition.
For the full fiscal year, we generated $308 million of free cash flow and retired approximately $420 million of debt.
We ended the quarter with $401 million of cash and cash equivalents and a zero balance outstanding under our asset-based revolving line of credit.
Inventories at September 30th totaled $871 million, up 7% versus a year ago as we reinvested in our inventory levels coming out of the disruptions from the pandemic.
In addition, we were pleased that our strong performance over the course of fiscal 2021 helped drive our net debt leverage ratio down to 1.69 times at the end of September.
Now turning to our full year fiscal 2022 guidance.
We are confident about how the business is positioned heading into 2022 and we expect to achieve the following: net sales growth in the range of 3% to 4%, net store count to decrease by approximately 1% to 2% driven primarily by Sally U.S. stores as we continue to optimize our portfolio.
Gross margin expansion of 40 to 60 basis points, GAAP operating margin growth of 90 to 110 basis points, and adjusted operating margin approximately flat to 2021.
The business has demonstrated remarkable resilience during the past 18 plus months and our teams have done a terrific job of navigating the dynamic macro environment.
As the business continues to strengthen and generate strong cash flows, you can expect to see us prioritize strategic growth investments, as well as return cash to shareholders through the restart of our share buyback program.
As a reminder, during the fourth quarter, our Board of Directors approved an extension of our share repurchase program through September of 2025, which currently has over $700 million remaining under the authorization.
Additionally, we are evaluating opportunities to further optimize our capital structure, which could result in incremental interest expense savings.
Finally, I want to call out a housekeeping item related to disclosure.
Beginning in fiscal 2022, we will be replacing our same-store sales metric with comparable sales, which will include sales from our full-service divisions and franchise operations including any related e-commerce sales.
In 2022, for each quarter.
We will disclose both current and prior-year comparable sales under the new definition.
Now, I'll ask the operator to open the call for Q&A.

user
q4 adjusted earnings per share $0.64.
q4 sales rose 3.4 percent to $990 million.
sees fy sales up 3 to 4 percent.
qtrly same store sales increase of 2.1%.
beginning in fiscal 2022, company will be replacing same store sales metric with comparable sales.
sees fy 2022 gross margin expected to expand by 40 to 60 basis points compared to prior year.

assistant