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Text: Fuller president and chief executive officer; and John Corkrean, executive vice president and chief financial officer.
First, a reminder that our comments today will include references to organic revenue, which excludes the impact of foreign currency translation on our revenues.
We believe that discussion of these measures is useful to investors to assist the understanding of our operating performance and how our results compare with other companies.
Unless otherwise specified, discussion of sales and revenue refers to organic revenues; and discussion of EPS, margins or EBITDA, refers to adjusted non-GAAP measures.
Many of these risks and uncertainties are and will be exacerbated by COVID-19 and resulting deterioration of the global business and economic environment.
Last evening, H.B. Fuller reported strong fourth quarter results, including 15% year-over-year revenue growth, a $134 million of EBITDA at the high end of our guidance and $1.09 of adjusted EPS.
Organic revenue was up 15% versus 2020 and increased 20% compared with the pre-COVID fourth quarter of 2019.
We had double-digit organic revenue growth in all three segments as a result of our innovation efforts, pricing strategies and service levels.
We also saw significant margin recovery with gross margin up 340 basis points versus the third quarter as a result of decisive pricing actions taken during the year.
And we continue to pay down debt in the quarter to substantially reduce our debt-to-EBITDA ratio to 3.3 times from 4.1 times a year ago.
We delivered on our commitments in the quarter as we have all year, despite a rise in virtually every cost associated with serving our customers and unprecedented supply chain challenges.
Our global team of 6,500 employees again demonstrated outstanding operational execution in this environment.
At the beginning of 2021, we set three operating priorities: volume growth, pricing to value and improved productivity and operational capacity.
We delivered on all three of these priorities throughout the year.
Volumes are up, productivity has improved.
And in the fourth quarter, we saw significant benefits from our strategic pricing actions.
We took swift actions early and throughout the year, as persistent inflation impacted our raw materials.
And in the fourth quarter, our pricing actions enabled us to catch up with material inflation and restore our margins.
In 2021, we implemented over $450 million of annualized price adjustments overcoming the annualized value of raw material cost inflation.
While inflation and supply chain management have been important drivers of the results this year, it's the overall strategy, the culture and the organizational capability that we've built that is enabling the company's success.
Our strategy is to deliver innovative adhesive solutions to customers faster than our competition, to collaborate effectively within our technical teams and with our global suppliers, to solve challenges and serve customers first and fastest.
And to do that while consistently demonstrating H.B. Fuller's values and principles as a great place to work.
It is this culture and strategy that is enabling our success.
Our ability to execute today is a result of the organization we've built and designed over the last several years.
In 2019, we reorganized into three global business units centered on 30 end markets, each focused on the needs of customers within that segment.
We invested in our supply chain and manufacturing systems to promote flexibility, and we streamlined the organization, better aligning all employees with our strategic objectives.
Because of these actions, our agility, speed to market and operational efficiency have increased, enabled us to successfully navigate widespread inflationary pressures, shipping disruptions, raw material shortages and numerous COVID-related impacts.
Shortages still persist for many, especially chemical raw materials, for plastic and metal packaging and shipping containers, but we continue to effectively leverage our global footprint and our sourcing capabilities to deliver for our customers.
Most importantly, we continue to capture new opportunities and gain share across end markets by delivering innovative adhesive solutions to meet new consumer needs and greater demand for sustainable goods.
Fuller roofing adhesives led the way to a 29% increase in this segment sales over the fourth quarter last year as we help customers deal with labor shortages.
Our innovative sprayable bonding roofing solutions increases installation speed with more efficiency and is approved for use in all VOC regulated markets.
Our new level-setting products, ready-to-use grouts, mortars and pressure-sensitive adhesive products enable new flooring to be installed more quickly and more reliably.
In 2021, we won significant new business in engineering adhesives with our solutions in support of sustainable markets, including electric vehicles, energy-efficient insulated glass, automotive electronics and solar panels.
And in hygiene, health and consumable adhesives, we are delivering innovation to meet increasing demand for more efficient and environmentally friendly packaging.
In 2021, we launched new adhesives that decompose with no residue or microplastics, while at the same time, managing demand spikes, supply chain delays and raw material shortages to deliver record levels of adhesives for our customers.
Now let me move on to Slide 4 to discuss fourth quarter segment performance in a little more detail.
Strong performance continued in our hygiene, health and consumables segment, where organic revenues increased by 13% year over year with double-digit growth in most of our end markets and very strong results in packaging applications, tapes and labels, tissue and towel and health and beauty.
HHC organic revenues also increased 18% versus the pre-coated fourth quarter of 2019, demonstrating strong underlying consumer demand and share gains.
HHC segment EBITDA margin of 13.6% reflected the absorption of significantly higher raw material costs, as well as increased variable compensation compared with last year, offset by strong pricing.
EBITDA margin was up 160 basis points sequentially versus the third quarter, as strong pricing gains are driving higher margins as we exit the year.
Construction adhesives had an extremely strong quarter, with organic revenues up over 29% versus the prior year and up 31% compared with Q4 of 2019.
Year-over-year performance improvements in all three construction end markets were driven by volume growth associated with improving market conditions and share gains, as well as outstanding pricing execution.
Construction adhesives EBITDA margin of 16.3% increased significantly year over year, up by 390 basis points.
CA's EBITDA margin also improved by 390 basis points over the third quarter of this year, driven by volume leverage and pricing gains.
The construction adhesives team drove extensive operational improvements in 2021.
They have met strong demand in an extremely challenging environment and the business is positioned with strong momentum as we enter 2022.
Engineering adhesives delivered another strong quarter of results.
Organic revenue increased 13% year on year, led by strong double-digit growth in new energy, recreational vehicles, insulated glass, woodworking, technical textiles and footwear.
Engineering adhesives EBITDA margin remained strong at over 15% and up slightly versus Q3 on strong pricing execution, offset by higher raw material costs and higher variable compensation expense.
Looking ahead to 2022, we will pursue continued growth opportunities and share gains in a business environment where we believe that underlying demand remains strong and that cost inflation will persist.
We anticipate the continued solid demand for hygiene and health products, packaging, paper tissues and towels will continue into 2022.
And we anticipate construction adhesives end markets will show strong improvements for the first half of 2022, with commercial activity improving throughout the year and residential activity remaining solid.
And we believe that engineering adhesives end market demand will also remain strong given a backlog of consumer demand for electronics, vehicles and durable goods.
In total, our base case planning assumptions are for organic growth in the low-teens, driven by pricing and modest volume growth.
Our current outlook is for raw material costs to continue to increase in 2022 versus the fourth quarter 2021 exit rate.
The inflation we're seeing in Q1 is sizable, though less than the fourth quarter of 2021.
We expect the raw material increases to be broad-based across the businesses and relatively consistent by region, with Asia showing less inflation to start the year at EMEA and the Americas.
We will continue to price the value and will remain vigilant regarding raw material inflation.
We have over $100 million in pricing actions taking effect in Q1, and we will take whatever pricing actions are necessary in 2022 to fully offset raw material cost increases and enable us to restore margins.
Against a challenging economic backdrop, our performance in 2020 and in 2021 demonstrated that our business is diverse and resilient, our operations are nimble and we are executing our strategy well.
And we expect to continue to outperform our end markets again in 2022 as we face the challenges ahead.
I'll begin on Slide 5 with some additional financial details on the fourth quarter.
For the quarter, revenue was up 15.4% versus the same period last year.
Currency had a positive impact of 0.5%.
Adjusting for currency, organic revenue was up 14.9%, with volume up 1.4% and pricing having a favorable impact of 13.5% year on year in the quarter.
Adjusted gross profit margin was 27.1%, down 40 basis points versus last year as pricing more than offset raw material increases from a dollar standpoint in the quarter, but not from a margin standpoint.
However, gross profit margin was up 340 basis points versus the third quarter of this year, driven by pricing execution.
Adjusted selling, general and administrative expense was up year on year, reflecting higher travel and other investments to support growth, as well as higher variable compensation related to the company's strong fiscal 2021 performance.
For the full year, adjusted SG&A as a percentage of revenue was 17.2%, down by 130 basis points versus 2020.
Adjusted EBITDA for the quarter of $134 million was up 9% versus last year and at the high end of our planning assumptions for the quarter, reflecting strong top-line performance, driven by good pricing execution and construction adhesives market share gains.
Adjusted earnings per share were $1.09, up versus the fourth quarter of 2020, despite a higher tax rate in Q4 2021, which drove a negative year-on-year impact of about $0.10 per share.
Our results for the full fiscal year were also very strong.
Full year organic revenues grew 15% versus fiscal 2020.
Adjusted EBITDA increased by 15% year on year, and adjusted earnings per share was up 22%.
For the year, cash flow from operations continued to be strong, while absorbing higher working capital requirements to support the significant sales growth and higher raw material costs throughout 2021.
And we continued to reduce debt in the quarter, paying off about $40 million of debt driving our net debt to EBITDA to 3.3 times as of the end of the year.
With that, let me now turn to our guidance for the 2022 fiscal year.
Based on what we know today, we anticipate full year double-digit organic revenue growth in the range of 10% to 15%, and we estimate that currency will have a negative impact on revenue of about 2% to 3%.
We expect adjusted EBITDA to be between $515 million and $535 million, representing a 10% to 15% year-on-year increase, as pricing leverage and operational efficiencies more than offset higher raw material costs.
We expect our 2022 core tax rate to be between 27% and 29%, compared to our 2021 core tax rate of about 27%.
We expect full year interest expense to be between $65 million and $70 million and the average diluted share count to be about 55 million shares.
These assumptions would result in full year adjusted earnings per share in the range of $4 to $4.25.
All of this guidance reflects the fact that H.B. Fuller will have one additional reporting week in fiscal 2022 compared to 2021.
We estimate that the extra week will have a favorable impact on full year revenues of approximately 2% compared with full year 2021 and a favorable impact on full year EBITDA of approximately $8 million to $10 million versus 2021, all occurring in the fourth quarter.
Taking the extra week into consideration, as well as the typical seasonality of the business, we expect to realize 20% to 21% of full year EBITDA dollars in the first quarter.
After we reported strong fiscal 2020 results a year ago, I said that investors should continue to expect differentiated performance from H.B. Fuller.
I can say confidently today that we have demonstrated this in 2021: significant volume growth, rigorous execution of our price-to-value strategy and greater productivity and operational capacity enabled us to deliver a record level of revenue, volume and profit performance in 2021.
In 2022, we are positioned to again deliver double-digit organic revenue growth and nearly 20% earnings per share growth as we build upon the momentum we created in the last couple of years.
2020 Demonstrated the resiliency of our diversified portfolio of market-leading solutions in difficult end market conditions.
While 2021 showcased our ability to grow faster than our competitors and seize growth opportunities through our agile customer-centered collaborative business model.
Full year 2021 organic revenue increased by 15%, led by 10% volume growth and strong contributions from pricing.
Full year EBITDA dollars also increased 15% as we mitigated bottom-line impacts from the extreme raw material inflation.
Our momentum accelerated in the fourth quarter as margins expanded, which positions us well for another strong year in 2022.
In 2021, we also continued to increase the share of high-value adhesives in our portfolio.
We did this by pursuing and winning high-growth opportunities, including new wins in electric vehicles, sustainable buildings, compostable packaging, e-commerce packaging, solar panel sealants and new medical adhesives.
These wins exemplify the innovation that has driven the strategic repositioning of our portfolio over the last decade toward specialized, higher-margin adhesive solutions.
In 2010, we were a $1.3 billion company with a sizable portion of our sales in non-specified applications.
In 2021, we're a $3.3 billion company with less than 10% of our sales in non-specified applications.
Growth in specialized adhesive products in our portfolio has driven compounded double-digit growth in EBITDA dollars and a significant EBITDA margin improvement over that time period.
In 2022, we will continue to invest in innovation and organically expand our portfolio of specialized adhesive applications.
And where appropriate, we'll also make inorganic investments.
We have a strong track record of acquisitions and are viewed as a sought-after buyer within the industry, given our scale and proven integration strategy.
While we have an improved balance sheet and an exciting pipeline of opportunities, we will remain disciplined buyers and committed to our strategic balance sheet target of debt-to-EBITDA below three times.
2021 was a remarkable year with enormously complex global supply issues and volatile inflationary headwinds.
And H.B. Fuller lived up to the challenge: we served our customers, supported our employees and delivered consistently for our shareholders under exceptional business environment.
We've made tremendous strides in our business over the last decade, and we accelerated our performance in 2021 with double-digit top and bottom-line growth.
2022 is positioned to be another record year for H.B. Fuller with both the top and bottom line projected to grow double digits again.
Our company strategy and our execution capability is leading to year-over-year growth and margin expansion, which has us well-positioned to continue this performance beyond '22 into the years ahead.
Operator, please open the call so we can take some questions.

user
q4 adjusted earnings per share $1.09.
sees fy adjusted earnings per share $4.00 to $4.25.
q4 revenue rose 15.4 percent to $897 million.
sees fy2022 double-digit organic revenue growth of 10% to 15% including strong contribution from pricing.
sees fy2022 adjusted ebitda of $515 to $535 million; up between 10% and 15% year over year.
capital investments are planned to be in the range of $100 to $110 million for fiscal 2022.

assistant