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 by our President and CEO, Joe Raver; our Executive Vice President and incoming CEO, Kim Ryan; and our Senior Vice President and CFO, Kristina Cerniglia.
These statements are not guarantees of future performance, and our actual results could differ materially.
Before I start, I'd like to take a moment to introduce our new Investor Relations' Director, Sam Mynsberge who kicked off today's call.
Sam brings more than a decade of finance experience to the position and has been with Hillenbrand since 2014 serving in a variety of finance roles.
Given Sam's knowledge of our business and strong financial acumen, we're excited to have him lead our Investor Relations efforts.
I'll now turn to an overview of the year.
Fiscal 2021 was marked by record performance for Hillenbrand, achieving new milestones for order intake, revenue, earnings and cash flow, driven by strong demand for our products and solutions and outstanding execution by our people.
We capped off this strong performance with a solid fourth quarter, as all three segments delivered margins and cash flow that exceeded our expectations coming into the quarter, which Kristina will discuss in more detail later in the call.
As we approach the second anniversary of the Milacron acquisition, the integration continues to progress well.
We accelerated our synergy realization and exceeded our goal for the year, achieving approximately $30 million of incremental cost savings, bringing our total synergy realization to date to nearly $60 million.
We remain confident in achieving our target of $75 million in run rate synergies by the end of year three.
The Milacron integration has served as a catalyst in establishing the foundation for accelerating value capture from future M&A and in driving many of the improved processes that have allowed us to effectively navigate this difficult operating environment.
We are a stronger company because of the Milacron acquisition, and I'm excited about the opportunities that lie ahead.
We also achieved significant strategic milestones, successfully streamlining our portfolio through the announced divestitures of Red Valve and ABEL during the fiscal year and just last month, TerraSource Global.
We made good progress on our sustainability journey this year, including the hiring of our first Chief Sustainability Officer and the issuance of our second sustainability report in September.
This year was not without its challenges however as global supply chains remain stressed, inflation in commodities and transportation has not abated, the impact of COVID-19 continues to persist, and labor shortages continue throughout the US.
Nevertheless, I'm proud of the dedication and resiliency displayed by our associates as they successfully executed our strategy and served our customers in the face of these external challenges.
Hillenbrand has a proven track record of execution, and I'm confident in our position as we enter fiscal 2022.
Our experienced leadership team, healthy balance sheet, strong backlog and focused portfolio position us well for continued growth and success.
As I've mentioned before, Kim and I have worked together for a number of years at Hillenbrand, and we have a high degree of trust.
Together with our Board, we've been executing a detailed plan to ensure a smooth and effective transition.
I'm confident that Kim and the rest of our executive team will do a great job leading Hillenbrand into the future.
Joe has led the transformation of Hillenbrand into a global industrial company through the integration of Coperion and the acquisition of Milacron.
He also led the transformation of talent and capabilities of the company by bringing in excellent leaders with strong industrial background and deep operational expertise at all levels of the organization.
I'm grateful for his mentorship and partnership over the years.
And I'm confident that our leadership team will be able to build upon our strong foundation to drive profitable growth for years to come.
Now, let me turn to our strategy.
The company achieved strong results in 2021 despite the escalating global challenges that we are all facing.
During these times, it's critical that we remain focused on executing our strategy to drive long-term shareholder value.
And I believe our performance demonstrated that throughout the year.
As you know, our strategy is comprised of four pillars.
The first strategic pillar is to strengthen and build business platforms, both organically and through M&A.
Over the past 12 months, we completed the divestitures of three businesses from our APS segment.
This enables us to focus our capital allocation toward driving growth in our large industrial platform where we partner with our customers to develop highly engineered equipment and solutions that optimize quality, output and energy efficiency to achieve a lower total cost of ownership.
The strength of our customer relationships, our deep application expertise and our innovative product offerings enabled us to achieve record order intake in fiscal 2021, resulting in a strong backlog that positions us well for growth in fiscal 2022 and beyond.
We continue to see significant opportunity in several areas of strategic focus, such as food, including texturized proteins, recycling, biopolymers and batteries, which tend to be less cyclical than our other industrial end markets and have attractive long-term growth prospects.
As customer needs in these markets evolve toward higher output and more technically demanding applications, we are confident in our ability to win due to three key factors, our leading product offerings, our application engineering expertise, and finally, our global service network.
Additionally, the opportunities we see in these end markets aligned with our purpose of shaping a more sustainable future.
We are making organic investments to better position ourselves to win in these end markets, while also evaluating strategic acquisitions to accelerate our growth.
In recycling, for example, our investments have resulted in the introduction of several new products, the establishment of reference sites across all three recycling processes and key strategic partnerships that position us well for our future in this exciting area of opportunity.
Our next strategic pillar is to manage Batesville for cash.
As we continue to grow our industrial product platforms, Batesville is becoming a smaller part of the portfolio, now comprising only about 20% of the company revenues.
Throughout this unfortunate and unprecedented pandemic, the Batesville team has remained relentlessly focused on serving our customers and living up to their mission of helping families honor the lives of those they love.
Batesville's strong execution over the last two years has delivered over $200 million of free cash flow paying -- playing a key role in the actions we took to aggressively pay down debt, accelerate growth investments in our industrial platforms and return cash to shareholders.
Our third strategic pillar is to build scalable foundations for growth using the Hillenbrand Operating Model.
The Hillenbrand Operating Model is at the core of how we run and grow our businesses.
During Joe's tenure, the Hillenbrand Operating Model evolved from a lean manufacturing system to a full operating model that enables continuous improvement across all aspects of the business, including operations, supply chain, global support functions and strategy.
I've been fortunate to partner with the leadership team and the development of the operating model, while also experiencing firsthand the benefits of its deployment during my time as President of Coperion and through my involvement in the integration of Milacron.
The Hillenbrand Operating Model is a key enabler of the success we've seen so far in the Milacron integration, but the benefits will go far beyond the synergies realized from this particular acquisition.
We are confident that the capabilities we have developed and the organizational structures we have established will enable us to accelerate the integration and synergy realization of future acquisitions.
As we continue to utilize the tools and expand the capabilities of the HOM, we expect to drive further efficiencies throughout the enterprise, while also enhancing our growth tools, specifically around innovation, digitization and commercial excellence.
Our fourth and final pillar is to effectively deploy strong free cash flow.
We generated record cash flow in fiscal 2021.
This allowed us to reinvest in the business for growth and productivity to strengthen our balance sheet and to return over $180 million in cash to shareholders through share repurchases and quarterly dividends.
Since acquiring Milacron two years ago, we've reduced our leverage by nearly 2.5 turns.
We have a healthy and flexible balance sheet enabling us to further accelerate our growth through strategic investments in our industrial platforms, exploring potential inorganic opportunities that maximize long-term shareholder value and considering opportunistic share repurchases.
As always, we remain disciplined in our approach to deploying cash.
We issued our second sustainability report this past September.
We introduced a framework for how we prioritize our efforts based on the feedback of our stakeholders.
We also aligned our reporting framework to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and the Global Reporting Initiative.
We believe sustainability is a source of opportunity, innovation and competitive advantage for Hillenbrand, which will ultimately drive long-term profitable growth and shareholder value.
This is a priority of mine, and I'm excited to continue sharing our progress with you over the quarters and years to come.
Throughout my section, I will be referencing year-over-year comparisons on a pro forma basis, which are adjusted for acquisitions and divestitures.
We believe these pro forma comparisons provide a better assessment of our ongoing operations.
And you will find a reconciliation of reported and pro forma results in the appendix of the earnings slide deck.
During the fiscal fourth quarter, we delivered total revenue in the quarter of $755 million, an increase of 12% on a pro forma basis or a 11% excluding the impact of foreign currency.
We saw year-over-year increases in all three segments, led by volume growth in the injection molding product line within MTS.
Adjusted EBITDA of $140 million increased 2%, while adjusted EBITDA margin of 18.5% decreased 180 basis points, as cost inflation, unfavorable mix and an increase in strategic investments more than offset operating leverage from higher volume, favorable pricing and productivity improvements, including approximately $7 million of year-over-year synergies realized in the quarter.
Despite the decline compared to prior year, adjusted EBITDA margins in the quarter exceeded our expectations for all three segments.
As communicated last quarter, we have been actively taking pricing actions to help mitigate the impact of rising inflation.
We had approximately 70% price/cost coverage in the quarter, which was more favorable than we had expected, primarily due to better pricing realization in some of our shorter cycle injection molding products and in Batesville.
However, we expect to see continued price/cost pressure in the first half of fiscal '22, due -- in part due to the delivery of longer lead time injection molding equipment from the backlog that was priced at pre-inflationary levels.
Additionally, we expect our primary commodity costs of steel, electrical components, wood and fuel to remain elevated through at least the first half of fiscal 2022.
We will continue to monitor our pricing structures and take further action as appropriate.
We reported GAAP net income of $55 million, or $0.74 per share, which increased from a loss of $0.09 per share in the prior year.
Adjusted net income was $74 million, or $1.00 per share, an increase of $0.08 or 9%.
And the adjusted effective tax rate for the quarter was 29.2%.
We had cash flow from operations of $86 million in the quarter, which was better than our expectations coming into the quarter, but lower than last year, primarily due to timing of working capital requirements.
Capital expenditures were approximately $18 million.
We repurchased approximately 1.8 million shares for $78 million in the quarter and returned $16 million to shareholders in the form of quarterly dividends.
Moving to segment performance.
APS revenue of $340 million increased 9% on a pro forma basis, driven by higher volume of large plastics projects and separation equipment.
Aftermarket revenue was relatively flat year-over-year, but up 6% sequentially.
And we had another solid quarter of aftermarket orders.
We expect continued growth in this highly profitable part of the business in fiscal year 2022.
Adjusted EBITDA of $69 million increased 8% on a pro forma basis, while adjusted EBITDA margin of 20.3% was higher than expected, down only 30 basis points from the prior year.
Cost inflation was largely offset by price, but the impact of unfavorable mix from a higher proportion of large plastics projects and strategic investments for growth more than offset operating leverage from higher volume and productivity improvements.
Order backlog of $1.3 billion increased 41% year-over-year on a pro forma basis, primarily driven by large plastics projects.
While backlog declined 2% sequentially, it remains at a high level, providing us a strong foundation for growth in fiscal '22 and beyond.
The pipeline for large plastics projects continues to be healthy, particularly in Asia.
And as Kim mentioned, we have made solid advances in our product innovations and strategic partnerships in recycling as well as food, biopolymers and batteries.
Although these areas are not significant portions of our revenue today, we are focused on building our capabilities to win in these end markets in the future through strategic partnerships and organic investments, while also evaluating inorganic opportunities.
Turning to Molding Technology Solutions.
We saw year-over-year growth in all product lines, led by strong volume growth for injection molding equipment.
Both revenue and margins exceeded our expectations coming into the quarter.
Revenue of $260 million increased 20% compared to the prior year.
The team executed well in the quarter and was able to largely mitigate the impact of a chip shortage that we communicated coming into the quarter.
Adjusted EBITDA of $54 million increased 6%, while adjusted EBITDA margin of 20.6% decreased 270 basis points, as higher volume and productivity were more than offset by unfavorable mix due to an increased proportion of injection molding equipment, which comes at a lower margin compared to hot runners, cost inflation, not fully offset by price, and higher labor and manufacturing premiums, including outsourcing.
We continue to deploy the Hillenbrand Operating Model in the MTS segment, particularly in injection molding where we expect to achieve sustained margin improvement over the coming years.
Order backlog of $366 million increased 51% compared to the prior year and decreased 6% sequentially as order volumes normalized, in line with our expectations.
Batesville performed above our expectations for both revenue and margin given the unfortunate circumstances with the Delta variant.
Revenue of $155 million increased 5%, due to higher average selling price and an estimated increase in deaths associated with the pandemic.
While we are closely monitoring the continued impact of COVID-19, we expect deaths to normalize as we progress through fiscal year 2022.
Adjusted EBITDA margin of 21.6% declined 270 basis points compared to the prior year, primarily due to cost inflation and higher transportation and manufacturing cost premiums required to respond to the increased demand driven by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
As we've discussed before, the Batesville team has been fully focused on meeting the elevated demand needs of their customers throughout the pandemic.
When demand normalizes, the business plans to reallocate resources to drive productivity projects.
Now, I'll briefly cover our full year results.
Consolidated pro forma revenue of $2.8 billion increased 13% or 10%, excluding the impact of foreign currency exchange.
Pro forma revenue for APS of $1.2 billion increased 5% compared to the prior year, including a 4% contribution from the impact of foreign currency.
MTS revenue of $996 million grew 25% on a pro forma basis or 22% excluding the impact of foreign currency.
Batesville revenue of $623 million increased 13%.
Pro forma adjusted EBITDA of $534 million increased 20% compared to the prior year, while pro forma adjusted EBITDA margin of 18.8% improved 100 basis points, primarily driven by operating leverage from higher volume in Batesville and MTS and productivity improvements, including synergies.
We accelerated the timing of our synergy capture in the year, realizing approximately $30 million of incremental cost savings, which exceeded our target of $20 million to $25 million, and we remain on track to achieve our three-year run rate synergy target of $75 million.
GAAP net income of $250 million resulted in GAAP earnings per share of $3.31.
Adjusted net income of $286 million resulted in adjusted earnings per share of $3.79, an increase of $0.60, or 19% compared to the prior year.
And our adjusted effective tax rate was 28.7% for the full year.
We generated record operating cash flow for the year of $528 million, up $174 million compared to the prior year, and our free cash conversion rate was 171% of adjusted net income for the year.
We continue to leverage the Hillenbrand Operating Model to drive greater efficiency across the business, including focused initiatives on improving working capital management, particularly within the MTS segment.
Capital expenditures for the year were $40 million, which was lower than originally expected due to longer lead times from suppliers.
We remain focused on investing for growth as we head into fiscal '22.
Turning to the balance sheet.
Net debt at the end of the fourth quarter was $767 million, and the net debt to adjusted EBITDA ratio of 1.4 times was down from 2.7 times at the beginning of the fiscal year.
As of quarter end, we had liquidity of approximately $1.3 billion, including $446 million in cash on hand and the remainder available under our revolving credit facility.
As of September 30, we had no borrowing on our revolver and no near-term debt maturities due.
Moving to capital deployment, we returned approximately $185 million to shareholders during the year through the repurchase of 2.8 million shares for approximately $121 million and $64 million through our quarterly dividend.
Subsequent to the year end, we repurchased an additional 620,000 shares for $29 million, and we have $50 million remaining under our share repurchase authorization.
Our top priorities for capital continues to be strategic investments to accelerate profitable growth and our large platforms in APS and MTS.
Additionally, we are evaluating acquisition targets that are a good strategic fit and that we expect will provide a high return to shareholders over the long term.
We will also continue to evaluate opportunistic share repurchases.
Our guidance will be on a pro forma basis, which excludes the divested Red Valve and ABEL businesses from the prior year.
Our guidance also excludes the divested TerraSource Global business from the prior year and the period of October 1 through October 22, 2021.
As the basis for our outlook, we expect supply chain disruptions, high transportation costs and labor market shortages to persist through the majority of the fiscal year.
And as I mentioned earlier, we expect commodity costs to remain elevated through at least the first half of the fiscal year.
Additionally, we expect currency to be a headwind on a year-over-year basis.
We expect full-year revenue of $2.8 billion to $2.9 billion, an increase of 1% to 4%, driven by our strong backlog and solid underlying growth in our industrial end markets, partially offset by Batesville, the impact of supply chain disruptions and foreign currency translation.
We expect adjusted earnings per share in the range of $3.70 to $4.00 for the full year.
Total material and supply chain inflation for the year is expected to be approximately $95 million.
We anticipate offsetting the majority of this impact with price on a dollar-for-dollar basis, but this will have a dilutive impact to margins.
We expect inflation to be more of a headwind in the first half of the year with price/cost coverage of approximately 70% improving to approximately 100% in the second half.
For our fiscal first quarter, we expect adjusted earnings per share in the range of $0.87 to $0.94, down versus the prior year, primarily due to lower volume in Batesville, higher inflation and supply chain costs, and the impact of the divestitures.
We expect free cash flow as a percent of adjusted net income to be approximately 100% for the year.
Including capex of approximately $75 million.
Now to our segment outlook.
Turning to Advanced Process Solutions, we expect full-year revenue to be up 8% to 12%, primarily due to continued strength in large plastics projects as well as solid growth in aftermarket revenue.
This growth includes an anticipated currency headwind of 3%.
We expect adjusted EBITDA margin of 21% to 21.5%, up 150 basis points to 200 basis points.
We anticipate supply chain challenges will more heavily impact the segment in the first half of the fiscal year, and we expect price to generally cover inflation for the year.
For the first quarter, we expect low-double-digit revenue growth year-over-year, but down high-single-digits sequentially, which is in line with historical seasonality trends.
Turning to Molding Technology Solutions, we expect full-year revenue to be up 2% to 5% with modest growth in both hot runners and injection molding equipment.
We have a strong backlog, and underlying demand trends remain solid, but we anticipate supply chain disruption and labor shortages to be a headwind throughout the year.
Additionally, we expect sales for the hot runner equipment to be negatively impacted over the near term, primarily in the first quarter due to disruptions in China.
We expect adjusted EBITDA margin of 20% to 21% compared to 20.3% in fiscal '21.
We anticipate a higher degree of price/cost pressure in the first half of the year, due to injection molding equipment converting to revenue from the backlog, which was priced pre-inflation.
We expect price/cost coverage to improve in the second half.
For Q1, we expect revenue to be modestly higher than prior year, but down sequentially.
And we anticipate modest year-over-year margin pressure, due to inflation and unfavorable mix from a higher proportion of injection molding equipment, which comes at a lower margin.
Finally, with Batesville, we expect revenue to be down 11% to 13%, due to an anticipated decline in burial demand as just normalized during the year.
We expect COVID-related volumes to be significantly lower than the prior year, in line with external estimates.
While we anticipate price/cost coverage will be better than it was in fiscal '21 due to the pricing actions we have taken, we expect adjusted EBITDA margin of 19% to 20% to be down 570 basis points to 670 basis points, primarily due to lower volume as well as supply chain premiums and inflation, not fully covered by price.
We expect price/cost coverage to be approximately 60% in the first half of the year, and we anticipate this will improve in the second half.
For Q1, we expect Batesville to be approximately flat on revenue with modestly higher margin on a sequential basis compared to Q4.
We expect the impact of the price increase to be largely offset by lower base deaths and continued pressure from inflation and other supply chain premiums.
Overall, heading into fiscal year 2022, we have a strong backlog and our key industrial end markets remain healthy.
We continue to be focused on investing for growth and serving our customers, while continuing to leverage the Hillenbrand Operating Model to help us navigate through the difficult global operating environment.
Our teams have demonstrated the ability to execute through challenging circumstances, and I'm confident that we will continue to drive sustainable improvement and achieve our targets for the coming year.
First, underlying industrial end market demand remains solid, and we have a strong backlog as we head into 2022.
This provides visibility and gives us confidence as we operate in this uncertain macro environment.
Second, through the Milacron integration, we've significantly expanded our capabilities and improved our operating model.
And this has enabled our strong execution during the past year, provides a scalable foundation for future growth.
And last, we have a talented and experienced leadership team to drive Hillenbrand's profitable growth strategy into the future.
Finally, it's been a great honor and privilege to serve at Hillenbrand over the last 28 years.
I've been fortunate to lead the organization through a period of significant transformation, which could not have been possible without our dedicated employees, our talented leadership team and the support of our Board, shareholders, customers and other stakeholders.
I'm excited about Hillenbrand's future, and I'm confident in its continued success under Kim's leadership.

user
compname reports q4 gaap earnings per share of $0.74.
q4 gaap earnings per share $0.74.
q4 adjusted earnings per share $1.00.
sees q1 adjusted earnings per share $0.87 to $0.94.
sees fy adjusted earnings per share $3.70 to $4.00.
qtrly revenue of $755 million increased 9%.

assistant