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: I'm joined today by Scott Buckhout, CIRCOR's president and CEO; and Abhi Khandelwal, the company's chief financial officer.
These expectations are subject to known and unknown risks uncertainties and other factors, and actual results could differ materially from those anticipated or implied by today's remarks.
You can find a full discussion of these factors in CIRCOR's Form 10-K, 10-Qs and other SEC filings also located on our website.
2020 was another transformational year for CIRCOR.
And despite the continued challenges presented by COVID-19, our team made significant progress on executing our strategic plan.
I'm proud of the resilience and efforts of the entire CIRCOR team in navigating such a challenging year while continuing to deliver for our customers and shareholders.
s we saw throughout the year, our diversified product portfolio across multiple end markets and geographies helped mitigate the impact of a weaker macro environment.
Our defense business delivered strong results for the year, which mostly offset lower demand for our commercial products.
Our differentiated technology and market positions enabled us to increase prices across the portfolio.
We executed well throughout this year's downturn and exited the year with positive momentum.
With the health and safety of our employees as our foundation, we focus on the things we control.
We achieved decremental margins of 25% for the year through value-based pricing and difficult but necessary cost actions of $45 million.
Aerospace and defense improved their margins by 290 basis points despite lower volume.
Notably, aerospace and defense won 20 new programs, including 60 defense and four in commercial.
We continue to implement the CIRCOR operating system across the company, resulting in improved operational performance.
CIRCOR is well positioned to take advantage of an eventual market recovery in 2021 and beyond.
With the sale of instrumentation and sampling and distributed valves earlier in the year, our exit from upstream oil and gas is complete.
We continue to invest in innovation, launching 49 new products in 2020 versus 33 in 2019.
We delivered on our free cash flow commitments throughout the year and ended with strong free cash flow of $20 million in the fourth quarter.
And finally, we reduced our debt by $126 million or 22%.
I want to highlight some new mission-critical technology we introduced in 2020.
On the defense side, our new missile arming switches are designed to operate in more severe environments with respect to temperature, radiation and G-force.
We launched self arming switches in support of various missile programs, including hypersonic applications.
On the commercial side, we introduced a switch, which activates the aircraft's location transmitter in case of an in-flight emergency.
In industrial, we launched a series of new gas pressure reduction systems to help our customers in Marine, Medical and public utility industries.
These systems help our customers transport and manage high-pressure industrial gas, LNG and CNG, biomethane fuels and medical oxygen.
Now, I'd like to provide some financial highlights from the fourth quarter.
We booked orders of $168 million in the quarter, which was flat sequentially and down 25% organically.
Sequentially, industrial was up 12% in the quarter.
A&D had lower orders sequentially, down 21% and due to the timing of large naval program orders that pushed into 2021.
Revenue in the quarter was $208 million, up 10% sequentially, driven by strong defense deliveries, mainly on U.S. Naval programs and moderate growth across most end markets in industrial.
Adjusted operating income was $23 million, representing a margin of 11.2%, up 200 basis points from the prior quarter.
Margin improvement was driven by sequential volume recovery, pricing, cost actions and productivity.
As a result of improved operating income, the company delivered $0.66 of adjusted earnings per share.
Finally, we generated strong free cash flow of $20 million during the fourth quarter, as we exited the year with operational cash flow unencumbered by transformation disbursements.
We are providing both comparisons due to the significant impact of COVID-19 on our end markets and year-over-year comparison.
Starting with industrial on Slide 4.
In Q4, industrial segment orders were up 12% sequentially, down 22% organically.
The industrial segment saw a sequential recovery in all major end markets, driven by opening economies.
Revenue in the quarter was $131 million, up 4% from prior quarter and down 13% organically.
Sequential improvement was primarily driven by strength in aftermarket sales across the portfolio.
We exited the year with an operating margin of 9%, a sequential improvement of 160 basis points, driven by price increases and cost actions taken throughout the year.
Lower sales volume continued to drive a lower operating margin versus prior year.
Turning to Slide 5.
Our aerospace and defense segment booked orders of $47 million in the quarter, down 21% sequentially and down 33% versus prior year.
Both declines are primarily driven by timing of large defense program orders and the ongoing impact of COVID-19 on our commercial business.
We remain confident in the segment's growth outlook in 2021.
Revenue in the quarter was $78 million, up 25% from prior quarter.
Strong defense deliveries mostly offset the COVID-19 impact, on commercial Aerospace, resulting in only 3% lower revenues versus by year.
Finally, operating margin was 24% in the quarter, roughly flat sequentially and year over year.
Pricing, up 3%, combined with factory and cost actions drove strong margins in line with prior year despite lower revenue.
Moving to Slide 6.
For Q4, the effective tax rate was approximately 14%.
The company took a non-cash charge of approximately $15 million to record a valuation allowance against its remaining deferred tax assets in Germany.
This non-cash charge is acquired under GAAP accounting rules.
This charge does not impact our non-GAAP after tax results for the quarter and is not expected to have an impact on our future non-GAAP after tax results.
Looking at special items and restructuring charges, we recorded a total pre-tax charge of $13.4 million in the quarter.
The acquisition-related amortization and depreciation was a charge of $12 million with the remaining charges associated with restructuring activities in the quarter.
Interest expense for the quarter was $8.5 million, down $2.3 million compared to last year as a result of lower debt balances.
Other income was approximately $1 million, primarily driven by pension income.
Finally, corporate costs were $7.8 million in the quarter.
Turning to Slide 7.
As Scott mentioned previously, our free cash flow was $20 million in the fourth quarter, up 11% compared to 2019.
Free cash flow was positively impacted by improved operating income and lower working capital, particularly inventory.
Reducing working capital remains one of our top priorities, and we expect further improvement in 2021.
We used the proceeds from the sale of our instrumentation and sampling business to reduce our net debt to $443 million, a reduction of $126 million or 22% year over year.
Free cash flow generated in 2021 will be used to further pay down debt and we continue to target leverage ratio of two to two and a half tiems net debt to adjusted EBITDA.
Now, I will hand it back over to Scott to provide some color on our end markets.
Let's start with our industrial outlook on Slide 8.
As Abhi mentioned, signs of order recovery were evident in the fourth quarter across most major industrial end markets after hitting the bottom in Q3.
Geographically, we continue to see growth in China and India, and we started to see signs of recovery in Europe and North America in the quarter.
Downstream orders were up sequentially, driven by an increase in aftermarket orders, but down significantly versus last year due to a difficult compare.
We're expecting Q1 industrial revenue to come in between down 1% and up 4% year over year.
We expect to see a normal seasonal dip in revenue sequentially in Q1 versus Q4.
We're starting to see improvement in our short-cycle end markets, including machinery manufacturing, chemical processing and wastewater as consumer demand starts to improve.
We're also expecting a mid-single-digit increase in aftermarket as global economies open up and consumption increases.
Downstream oil and gas revenue is expected to be down as refiners continue to manage capex.
We're seeing a similar customer capex dynamic across midstream oil and gas, power generation and building construction, but to a lesser degree.
We expect these end markets to improve further as the year unfolds.
Pricing is expected to be a benefit of roughly 1%, consistent with prior quarters.
Moving to aerospace and defense.
aerospace and defense orders in Q4 were down sequentially and versus prior year.
Both declines were primarily driven by the timing of large defense program orders and the ongoing impact of COVID-19 on our commercial businesses.
We expect order strength across our defense programs to continue through 2021, driven largely by the joint strike fighter and multiple missile and drone programs.
We expect a modest improvement in commercial orders as aircraft utilization improves and OEM production rates increased through the year.
We remain confident in this segment's growth outlook in 2021.
Revenue in the first quarter is expected to be down 7% to 12% versus prior year.
defense revenue is expected to be down 1% to 5% due to the timing of large defense shipments and lower U.S. defense spares orders leading into the quarter.
We anticipate growth of 5% to 10% from our other OEM group, which includes products for drones, missiles and helicopters.
in the Rafal fighter and jet in Europe.
Commercial revenue is expected to be down between 35% and 40%, in line with the broader commercial aerospace market.
Our market position on both Boeing and Airbus aircraft is strong, and we expect revenue to improve throughout the year in line with aircraft utilization and production rates.
Pricing is expected to be a benefit of 1% in the quarter, but in line with 2020 for the full year.
Now, I'll hand it over to Abhi to discuss our guidance.
Before jumping into full-year guidance, I'd like to share a few more expectations for the first quarter.
In addition to the revenue guidance that Scott provided, we're expecting incremental margins of 30% to 35% in industrial and decremental margins of 30% to 35% in aerospace and defense.
Decremental margins in aerospace and defense are slightly higher than our full-year 2020 decrementals due to the expected mix of OEM and aftermarket revenue.
We're also planning for corporate cost of $8.5 million, higher than our expected full-year run rate, due to the timing of certain expenses, such as RFPs.
Interest expense is expected to be roughly $8.5 million in Q1.
Finally, free cash flow for Q1 will be negative due to seasonality of annual disbursements.
Now, moving to full-year 2021 guidance.
We are expecting organic revenue growth of 0% to 4%, and with aerospace and defense expected to grow at low to mid-single digits and industrial at low single digits.
We are planning for a continued slow recovery in commercial Aerospace, where we expect to be better than 2020, but remain significantly lower than pre pandemic levels.
Our defense business remains healthy as we continue to win new business and deliver on growing U.S. defense programs.
In our industrial end markets, we expect to see modest recovery with downstream activity improving in the back half of 2021.
We're expecting adjusted earnings per share of $2 to $2.20, a 40% to 54% increase versus 2020.
This improvement is driven by top-line growth and improved margins from price increases, structural cost out in 2020 and ongoing productivity.
Finally, we're planning to deliver free cash flow as a percent of adjusted net income of 85% to 95%.
We feel that this guidance reflects what we are seeing in our end markets and the operational improvements that we can control within the four walls of CIRCOR.
We're confident in our ability to deliver these results, not only for our shareholders but for our customers, suppliers and employees.
Now I'll hand back to Scott to wrap up.
To summarize, we remain focused on delivering our strategic priorities.
In 2021, we're taking actions to further improve our customers' experience and our operational and financial performance.
We remain focused on attracting, developing and retaining the best talent while fostering a diverse and inclusive culture.
We continue to invest in growth through innovative new products, aftermarket support technology to enhance our customers' experience and regional expansion.
Value-based pricing continues to be a top priority, leveraging our differentiated technology and our strong market positions in the niches where we compete.
The CIRCOR operating system will continue to drive operational improvement and margin expansion.
And by enhancing free cash flow through efficient working capital management, we'll continue to delever the balance sheet.

user
compname reports q4 adjusted earnings per share $0.66.
q4 adjusted earnings per share $0.66.
q4 revenue $208 million versus refinitiv ibes estimate of $207.6 million.
for 2021, expects organic revenue growth in range of 0 to 4%.
for 2021, adjusted earnings per share is expected to be in range of $2.00 to $2.20.

assistant