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Text: Additionally, David Bray, Group President, Poultry; Noelle O'Mara, Group President, Prepared Foods; and Shane Miller, Group President, Fresh Meats will join the live Q&A session.
I'll start by saying that the safety of our team members continue to be our top priority and I'm very pleased that we now have a team in the US that is fully vaccinated.
As we focus on meeting the needs of our customers and consumers, vaccination is the best way that we can protect our team members from the impacts related to COVID-19 and ensure business continuity.
Earlier today, we reported strong fourth quarter and fiscal year 2021 results.
We delivered double-digit sales and earnings growth in a challenging year.
Our performance was supported by continued strength in consumer demand for protein.
Our retail core business lines which include our iconic brands Tyson, Jimmy Dean, Hillshire Farm and Ball Park have driven strong share growth in the retail channel delivering 13 quarters of consecutive growth.
Continued recovery in the foodservice channel led by QSRs also supported our strong results.
Overall, we saw our volume recovery in the second half from the pandemic lows to finish the fiscal year only slightly down.
We are taking several deliberate actions by segment to improve our volumes including investing behind capacities, brand and product innovation and our team members.
Our investments in team members include our successful vaccination mandate as well as automation and technology initiatives that I'll discuss in a moment.
The construction of the 12 new plants that we've mentioned previously are progressing well and once complete will enable Tyson to address capacity constraints and growing global demand for protein.
These new capacities include nine chicken plants, two case-ready beef and pork plants and one new bacon plant.
In parallel to our actions to improve volume, we have also work to recover inflation through pricing, achieving a 13% price improvement for the fiscal year and a 24% increase for the fourth quarter.
In this dynamic environment, we will be aggressive in monitoring inflation and driving price recovery activities.
And the diversity of our portfolio showed its value again this quarter as demonstrated by earnings, performance in our beef segment supported the delivery of a strong fiscal year earnings results.
Our performance has allowed us to build financial strength.
Our balance sheet is strong, resilient and provides Tyson the optionality needed to pursue strategic growth priorities.
And to that point, our investment in future growth across our portfolio continue.
We demonstrated resilience in fiscal year 2021 and we are entering fiscal 2022 with tremendous momentum.
Our results demonstrate the dedication of our global team, the importance of our diverse portfolio strategy and our ability to meet consumer demand across proteins, channels and meal occasions.
Now turning to financial results, let me give you some highlights overall.
I was pleased with both a strong quarter and full year.
Sales improved 20% in the fourth quarter and 11% during the full year.
Our sales gains were largely driven by higher average sales price.
Average sales price trends reflect successful pricing strategies during the ongoing inflationary environment, but we still have opportunities specifically in prepared foods where we delivered softer results than anticipated.
Like many other companies, we were faced with a range of higher levels of inflation notably higher grains, labor, meat and transportation cost.
Our teams have worked together with our customers to pass along that inflation through price increases.
On volume, we saw improvement in the second half relative to the same period last year.
Volumes were up 3% for the second half or nearly 350 million pounds.
Although we are working diligently to achieve optimal throughput across our segments, labor challenges are still impacting our volumes and ability to achieve optimal mix across our processing footprint.
Having said that, we're taking aggressive active actions as a team to address labor constraints and we're seeing improvements.
We delivered solid operating income performance, up 26% during the fourth quarter and 42% for the full year.
This performance was largely due to strength in our beef segment where continued strong consumer demand and ample cattle supply have driven higher earnings.
Overall, our operating income performance translated to earnings per share of $2.30 for the fourth quarter, up 35% and $8.28 for the full year, up 53%.
Looking at our results on volume, we are taking aggressive actions to optimize our existing footprint, add new capacity, adjust our product mix by plant and match our portfolio more closely with customer and consumer needs.
For the fiscal year, our volume was down slightly.
Customer demand during the fiscal '21 outpaced our ability to supply products, but we're working aggressively to fill that void.
We recognize how important service levels are to our customers and we're committed to improving our fill rates and reliability of supply.
With respect to supply, we have focused on ensuring our ability to maintain business continuity and our team has been resilient in the face of numerous supply chain challenges.
As we look toward fiscal '22, improving volumes will be key to delivering against our commitments.
We expect to grow our total Company volumes by 2% to 3% next year, outpacing overall protein consumption growth.
A large percentage of that growth will come from the chicken segment and across our business we're working to optimize our product portfolio, remove complexities, enhance capacities and pursue operational improvement initiatives to deliver against these volume growth objectives.
We fully understand that this starts with an unrelenting focus on safety, every minute, every shift, every day.
The health, safety and wellness of our team members has been and will continue to be our top priority.
So I'd like to take a minute to stop and commend our team members and our leadership team for doing their part to keep themselves, their colleagues, their families and their community safe, which has helped us reach our vaccination goals.
The vaccines and investments in COVID-19 protection measures are certainly not the only actions that we've taken to become the most sought after place to work.
To ensure that every Tyson team member feels as though they can bring their true and complete self to work each day, we've invested behind diversity, equity and inclusion efforts and we also understand the importance of a strong compensation offering and we believe that we hold a leadership position in this space.
We have raised wages and across our business today, we pay an average of $24 per hour, which includes full medical, vision, dental and other benefits like access to retirement plan and sick pay, and we will continue to explore other innovative benefit offerings that remove barriers and make our team members lives easier.
We're also accelerating investments in automation and advanced technologies to make existing roll safer and easier while reducing cost.
We're confident that our actions will increase Tyson staffing levels and position us for volume growth.
Relating to operational excellence and market competitiveness, today we are announcing the launch of the new productivity program designed to drive a better, faster and more agile organization that is supported by culture of continuous improvement and faster decision-making.
The program is targeted to deliver $1 billion in recurring productivity savings by the end of fiscal '24 relative to fiscal '21 cost baseline.
These savings are included in the guidance expectations that Stewart will share in a moment.
Execution of the effort will be supported by our program management office that will ensure delivery of key project milestones and report on savings achievements connected to three imperatives.
The first is operational and functional excellence and is targeted to deliver greater than $300 million in recurring savings.
This includes functional efficiency efforts in finance, HR and procurement that are focused on applying best practices to reduce cost.
The second is digital solutions, which is targeted to deliver more than $250 million in recurring savings.
We'll achieve this goal by leveraging new digital solutions like artificial intelligence and predictive analytics to drive efficiency and operations, supply chain, planning, logistics and warehousing.
For example, we're using technology to ensure that our shipments are optimally loaded to say freight cost and enhance customer service levels.
In many ways the pandemic has already accelerated our push to more digital footing and our commitment in this space will continue that focus.
The third is automation.
We will leverage automation and robotics technologies to automate difficult and higher turnover positions.
For example, we have substantial opportunity to automate the debone process within our poultry harvest facilities using the combination of both third-party and proprietary technologies.
Chicken remains the top priority for me personally and for our Company.
We continue to execute against our roadmap to bring operating income margin to at least the 5% to 7% range on a run rate basis by mid fiscal '22.
Our goal has not changed and we remain committed to restoring top-tier performance.
The first imperative is to be the most sought after place to work.
I've outlined the investments we're making to enhance our team member experience in my earlier comments.
This will ensure that we have the right levels of staffing to fulfill our customer orders on time and in full.
The second imperative is to improve operational performance.
Critical to improving operational performance is maximizing our fixed cost leverage, which means having enough birds in our internal networks to run our plants full.
By reconfiguring and optimizing our existing footprint, we can increase our harvest capacity by more than 10% without building another plant.
In addition, we have clear initiatives to remove complexity from our plant, reduce transportation and handling and minimize waste.
Our operational improvements will unlock significant unused capacity in our network and take advantage of the fixed cost leverage.
Each of these initiatives will support leading operational performance from our chicken business in the future.
Hatch rates have impacted our ability to do this and we've shared the initiatives underway to correct this.
Our new male rollout is progressing as planned and we believe we've hit the inflection point that will lead to sequential improvements through the entirety of fiscal 2022.
The new male rollout at our pellet [Phonetic] farms is nearly complete and we continue to observe improved hatch rates associated with these new males.
We've also mentioned how strengthened spot prices for commodity chicken products throughout the fiscal year has put our buy versus grow program at a relative disadvantage versus history.
From Q3 to Q4, we again reduced our rate of outside purchases this time by nearly 30%.
The final imperative is to service our customers on time and in full.
Tyson's branded value-added product offerings have continue to gain share during both the fourth quarter in the latest 52 weeks and new capacity expansions will help us maintain momentum.
Inflation has clearly had an impact on the business.
Our commercial teams have successfully pursued inflation justified pricing delivering top line growth for the business to offset the cost increases.
As rates of inflation continue, so with our pricing actions with an equivalent level of instances [Phonetic] on disciplined operational execution and volume throughput.
We will staff our plants, service our customers, grow volumes and be the best chicken business.
The plan we have in place is still the right plan and our level of confidence, conviction and excitement as a team continue to grow.
Looking forward to fiscal year 2022, I feel confident in our ability to drive value creation.
We have strong consumer demand, a powerful and diverse portfolio across geographies and channels and the team that is positioned to take advantage of the opportunities in front of us.
Our priorities are clear, winning with customers and consumers, winning with team members and winning with excellence in execution.
With these priorities as our guide, we are taking aggressive actions to accelerate our growth relative to the overall market, improve operating margins and drive strong returns on invested capital.
We are committed to our team members with a focus on ensuring their health, safety and well-being as well as ensuring an inclusive and equitable work environment, every shift, every day, every location with no exceptions.
We have shown that we are willing to take bold actions in support of this commitment.
Second, we are working to enhance our portfolio and capacity to better serve demand.
This includes increasing the contribution of branded and value-added sales by focusing our product portfolio and by adding capacity to meet demand.
We expect our volume to outpace the market in the intermediate term.
Third, we are aggressively restoring competitiveness in our chicken segment.
This starts by returning our operating margin to the 5% to 7% level by the middle of fiscal 2022.
Fourth, we are driving operational and functional excellence and investing in digital and automation initiatives.
This is at the heart of our new productivity program.
We are working diligently to drive out waste, minimize bureaucracy, enhance decision making speed across the organization.
Finally, to address expected demand growth over the next decade, we're using our financial strength to invest in our business through both organic investments and strategic M&A.
On capital loan, we expect to invest $2 billion in fiscal year '22 with a disproportionate share focused on new capacity and automation objectives.
Tyson has the right portfolio, the consumer-driven insight and the scale and the capabilities to win in the marketplace across proteins, channels and meal occasions.
We also have the financial strength to invest behind our business to accelerate growth and to maintain our momentum.
I look forward to sharing with you our progress as we work through the year and I'll be sharing more details with you at our Investor Day in a few weeks.
Let me turn first to a summary of our total Company financial results.
We're pleased to report a strong overall finish to the year.
Sales were up approximately 20% in the fourth quarter largely a function of our successful pricing initiatives that we've pursued to offset inflationary pressures.
Volumes were down 4% during the fourth quarter primarily due to labor challenges hampering our efforts to fully benefit from strong retail demand and recovery in foodservice.
Fourth quarter operating income of nearly $1.2 billion was up 26% due to continued strong performance in our beef business.
For the full year, operating income improved to nearly $4.3 billion up 42%.
Driven by the strength in operating income, fourth quarter earnings per share grew 35% to $2.30 with the full year up 53% to $8.28.
Slide 11 bridges our total Company sales for fiscal year '21.
Sales dollars were up across all segments as you can see the most substantial sales dollars benefit came from the beef segment which saw market conditions that led to a wider than historical cut out margin.
At the same time, we sought price increases across the business to offset the high levels of inflation we faced.
Looking at our channel result, sales of retail drove over $1 billion of top line improvement versus last year even after exceptionally strong volumes in the comparable period.
Improvements in sales through the foodservice channel drove an increase of $1.6 billion and our fiscal year export sales were nearly $1 billion stronger than the prior year as we leveraged our global scale to grow our business.
Slide 12, bridges year-to-date operating income which was about $1.3 billion higher than fiscal 2020.
As I mentioned previously, volumes were down slightly during the year primarily result of a challenging labor environment.
Our pricing actions and strength in the beef segment led to approximately $5.6 billion of sales price mix benefit, which more than offset the higher COGS price-mix of $4.6 billion.
We saw inflation across the business, notable areas where in wages, grain cost, live animal costs and pork, meat cost and prepared foods and freight costs across the enterprise.
Incremental direct COVID-19 costs were favorable by approximately $200 million during the year although our total spending at $335 million was still substantial.
The decrease was driven primarily by cycling one time bonuses that were paid last year and a large portion of that was reinvested in permanent wage increases for our team members this year.
Lower one-time bonus costs were partially offset by higher testing and vaccination cost incurred during fiscal 2021.
While these costs are expected to reduce in fiscal '22, we will continue to spend against initiatives to keep our team members safe.
And finally, SG&A was over $100 million favorable to prior year, which was largely a result of a net benefit associated with the beef supplier fraud [Phonetic].
Now moving to the beef segment.
Segment sales were over $5 billion for the quarter, up 26% versus the same period last year.
Key sales drivers included strong domestic and export demand for beef products.
Offsetting higher sales prices were higher cattle costs, up more than 20% during the fourth quarter.
We had ample livestock available in the quarter driven by strong front-end supplies and we have good visibility into cattle availability through fiscal '22 and currently believe it will also be sufficient to support our customer needs.
Sales volume for the quarter was up year-over-year due to continued strong demand in contrast to a soft comparable period a year ago driven by lower production volumes.
We delivered segment operating income of $1.1 billion or 22.9% for the fourth quarter.
This improvement was driven by strong global demand for beef products and a higher cut-out which were partially offset by higher operating costs.
While our beef segment experienced strong results during the quarter and fiscal year, we are still not at optimal levels of capacity throughput due to labor challenges, which we expect to normalize over the course of fiscal '22.
Now, let's move on to the pork segment on slide 14.
Segment sales were over $1.6 billion for the quarter, up 30% versus the same period last year.
Key sales drivers for the segment included higher average sales price due to strong demand and increased hog costs, partially offset by a challenging labor environment.
Average sales price increased more than 40%, our volumes were down relative to the same period last year.
Segment operating income was $78 million for the quarter down 52% versus the comparable period.
Overall, operating margins for the segment declined to 4.7% for the quarter.
The operating income decline was driven by higher hog costs and increased labor and freight costs.
Moving now to prepared foods.
Sales were $2.3 billion for the quarter, up 7% relative to the same period last year.
Total volume was down 5.7% in the quarter with strength in the retail channel and continued recovery in food service more than offset by labor challenges.
Sales growth outpaced volume growth driven by inflation justified pricing and better sales mix.
During the fourth quarter, retail core business lines experienced their 13th straight quarter of volume share growth driven by consumer demand for our brands and continued strong brand execution by our team.
Operating margins for the segment were 1.7% or $39 million for the fourth quarter.
A slowdown in segment operating margins versus the same quarter last year was driven by significant increases in raw material input costs that we were not able to fully recover through price during the quarter.
For the full year, operating income margin was 7.6% or $672 million.
As we mentioned last quarter, the ongoing inflationary environment created a meaningful headwind for prepared foods during the fourth quarter.
Raw material cost, logistics, ingredients, packaging, labor have increased our cost of production.
We've executed pricing, revenue management and commercial spend optimization initiatives while ensuring the continued development of brand equity through marketing and trade support.
We expect to take continued pricing actions to ensure that any inflationary cost increases that our business incurs are passed along.
Pricing has lagged inflation, but we expect to recover those cost increases during fiscal '22.
Moving into the chicken segment's results.
Sales of $3.9 billion for the fourth quarter, up 21%.
Volumes improved 1.3% in the quarter as strong consumer demand offset both labor challenges and the detrimental impact of a fire at our Hanceville rendering facility.
Our teams have been focused on streamlining our plans to deliver higher volumes and we expect to deliver substantial volume improvements in fiscal '22 as the hatch rate recovers and we operate our plants more efficiently.
Average sales price improved over 20% in the fourth quarter and 11.4% for the fiscal year, compared to the same periods last year.
This increase is due to favorable product mix and price recovery to offset cost inflation.
Our pricing has admittedly lagged our realization of cost inflation, but we made tremendous progress in the last few months to close that gap and are now seeing those benefits.
We have restructured our pricing strategies given our experience in fiscal '21 to ensure that we have the flexibility to better respond to market and inflationary conditions.
Chicken experienced an operating loss of $113 million in the fourth quarter.
The segment earned $24 million representing an operating margin of 0.2% for the fiscal year 2021.
Operating income was negatively impacted by $945 million of higher feed ingredient cost, grow-out expenses and outside meat purchases.
For the fourth quarter, feed ingredients were $325 million higher than the same period last year.
Segment performance also reflects net derivative losses of $75 million during the fourth quarter, which was $120 million worse than the same period last year.
Turning to slide 17.
In pursuit of our priority to build financial strength and flexibility, we have substantially de-levered our business over the past 12 months, reducing leverage to 1.2 times net debt to adjusted EBITDA as we paid down $2 billion of debt while growing our earnings and cash flow.
Investing organically in our business will continue to be an important priority and will help Tyson increase production capacity and market capability.
Each of these levers will support strong return generation for our shareholders.
We will also continue to explore positive -- optimize our portfolio through M&A through the lenses of value creation and shareholder return.
Finally, as our track record has demonstrated, we are committed to returning cash to shareholders through both dividends and share buybacks.
We're pleased to announce that last week our Board approved $0.06 increase to our annual dividend payment now totaling $1.84 per Class A share.
Let's now discuss the fiscal '22 financial outlook.
We currently anticipate total Company sales between $49 billion and $51 billion which translates to sales growth of between 5% and 7%.
We expect 2% to 3% volume growth on a year-over-year basis as we work to optimize our existing footprint and run our plants full.
Our new productivity initiative is expected to deliver $300 million to $400 million of savings during fiscal '22 driven by operational and functional excellence initiatives, the rollout of digital solutions across the enterprise and extensive automation projects that are currently underway.
Now as we look at the organic growth opportunities ahead for our business, we expect a meaningful increase in capex spending to pursue a healthy pipeline of projects with strong return profiles.
We currently anticipate capex spending of approximately $2 billion during fiscal '22, an increase of roughly $800 million.
This investment will support our initiatives to meet global protein demand growth into the future, allow us to gain share and will deliver strong financial returns for our shareholders.
Excluding the impact of changes from potential tax legislation, we currently expect our adjusted tax rate to be around 23%.
We anticipate net interest expense of approximately $380 million because of intentional deleveraging during fiscal '21.
Liquidity is expected to significantly exceed our target, while net leverage is expected to remain well below 2 times net debt to adjusted EBITDA.
It is important to note though that over the last two years, working capital has been a source of cash.
We don't expect this to be the case in fiscal '22.
Moving forward, our business growth will require increased working capital, which combined with deferred tax payments under the CARES Act taxes on the gain of the pet treats divestiture, litigation settlements and other discrete items will lead to a substantial use of cash during fiscal 2022.
Now let's look at how each of our segments will contribute to that total Company performance.
Prepared Foods is expected to deliver margins during fiscal '22 of between 7% and 9%.
We will remain disciplined and agile in our pricing initiatives to ensure that any additional inflationary pressures are passed along to customers, while also working diligently to deliver productivity savings to reduce costs.
We expect the beef segment to continue to show strength due to prolonged industry dynamics leading to segment margins of between 9% and 11%.
We expect the front half of the year to be meaningfully stronger than the back half as industry and labor conditions are expected to normalize part way through the year.
In chicken, our operational turnaround is working and we still expect to achieve run rate profitability of 5% to 7% by the middle of the year.
We expect this will be achieved through sequential quarterly margin improvements during the first half of the year resulting in full year margins that fall between 5% to 7% although expected at the lower end of that range.
In pork, we expect similar performance during fiscal '22 to what we accomplished during fiscal '21 equating to a margin of between 5% and 7%.
In International and other, we expect margins of 2% to 3% as capacity expansions and strong global demand support volume growth and improved profitability.
Our segments individually and in aggregate have clear and compelling role within Tyson's portfolio strategy.
They deliver diverse counter cyclical performance that supports the Company's long-term earnings objectives and delivers strong value for shareholders.
Operator, please provide the Q&A instructions.

user
compname reports q4 adjusted earnings per share $2.30.
q4 adjusted earnings per share $2.30 .
delivered double digit sales and earnings growth during q4 and fy.
expect sales to approximate $49 billion to $51 billion in fiscal 2022.
targeting $1 billion in productivity savings by end of fiscal 2024 and $300 million to $400 million in fiscal 2022.
expect capital expenditures of approximately $2 billion for fiscal 2022.
expect capital expenditures of about $2 billion for fiscal 2022.
q4 adjusted earnings per share $8.28.

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