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: Ward and I will begin today's earnings call with a discussion of our full year operating performance.
Jim Nickolas will then review our 2020 financial results and liquidity position, after which Ward will discuss market trends and our 2021 outlook.
A question-and-answer session will follow.
We sincerely hope that you and your families remain safe and healthy.
By all accounts, 2020 was extraordinary for Martin Marietta.
We're proud to have extended our long track record of financial, operational and safety excellence, particularly in a year filled with unprecedented disruption.
Martin Marietta set new performance records, delivering our most profitable year and the best safety performance in our company's history.
These impressive results demonstrate our resilient business model and our team's commitment to Martin Marietta's vision and successful execution of our proven strategic operating analysis and review or store plan.
As noted, today's discussion focuses on our full year results and 2021 outlook.
Before doing so, I'll highlight a few notable takeaways from our record-setting fourth quarter.
Importantly, we achieved solid shipment and pricing growth across all product lines as construction activity stabilized from the spring and summer months when we saw a greater impact from COVID-19.
These top line improvements, along with our steadfast focus on cost controls, resulted in 7% growth in consolidated total revenues; 20% growth in adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization or adjusted EBITDA; and a 40% increase in diluted earnings per share.
For the full year, we established new records for products and services revenues, profitability and adjusted EBITDA.
Specifically, full year consolidated products and services revenues increased to $4.4 billion.
Consolidated gross profit increased 6% to $1.3 billion.
Adjusted EBITDA increased 11% to nearly $1.4 billion, and diluted earnings per share was $11.54, an 18% improvement.
Martin Marietta's 2020 results marked the ninth consecutive year of growth in these financial metrics.
Operating our business safely sets the foundation for our long-standing financial success.
Martin Marietta's industry-leading safety performance continues to trend near or exceed world-class safety levels.
We achieved a 25% reduction in total reportable incidents across the enterprise in 2020, and for the fourth consecutive year, we achieved a companywide world-class lost time incident rate.
These superior financial and safety results are directly attributable to the dedication and agility of our nearly 9,000 talented employees.
I'm extraordinarily proud of how our team managed the challenges and disruptions caused by the pandemic, while remaining focused on being good wingmen, working safely and efficiently together and seamlessly meeting our diverse stakeholders' needs.
With that overview, let's now turn to our full year operating performance.
Aggregate shipments declined 2% to nearly 187 million tons, reflecting anticipated lower infrastructure shipments in portions of North Carolina, reduced energy sector demand and headwinds from COVID-19 disruptions.
However, in line with broader macroeconomic trends, full year aggregate shipments to the residential market increased, benefiting from healthy single-family housing activity.
Aggregates average selling price increased 4% on a mix adjusted basis, in line with our expectations.
Importantly, all divisions contributed to this solid growth, a testament to this product line's resilient pricing power and our leading market positions in attractive geographies.
The disciplined execution of our locally driven pricing strategy, along with attractive underlying market fundamentals will continue to support sustainable pricing growth moving forward.
Our cement operations established new records for shipments, which increased 2% to nearly four million tons.
Large project activity supported underlying product demand in both North and South Texas throughout the year, offsetting weakness in the energy sector.
Pricing increased 3% on a mix adjusted basis, demonstrating the resilient price fundamentals of core products in the state of Texas.
We expect our cement business will continue to benefit from favorable shipment and pricing trends, supported by tight supply and healthy demand in Texas, diversified customer backlogs and April 2021 price increases.
Turning to our targeted downstream businesses.
Ready mixed concrete shipments increased 3%, excluding shipments from acquired operations and from our Southwest division's former concrete business in Arkansas, Louisiana and Eastern Texas, which we divested in January 2020.
Concrete pricing increased 2%.
Our Colorado asphalt and paving business established a new record for asphalt shipments, increasing 15% to three million tons.
This growth reflected solid underlying product demand together with carryover work following a weather challenged 2019.
Asphalt pricing increased nearly 3%.
We concluded 2020 with the highest full year adjusted EBITDA margin in Martin Marietta's history.
Driving this achievement was our Building Materials business, which delivered record products and services revenues of $4.2 billion, a 1% increase, and record product gross profit of $1.2 billion, a 7% increase.
Our Upstream Materials businesses, namely, aggregates and cement, established all-time records for both full year product revenues and gross profit.
Aggregates product gross margin expanded 130 basis points to 30.6%, a new record, and unit profitability improved 8%.
These accomplishments, which resulted from strong pricing gains, disciplined cost management and lower diesel fuel costs demonstrate the cost flexibility and resiliency of our aggregates-led business.
The Cement business benefited from the planned kiln maintenance outage that occurred through the end of 2019.
The timing of that outage resulted in some expenses being recognized in 2019 versus early in 2020.
More importantly, that and other capital investments have dramatically improved our cement operations.
We achieved 90% kiln reliability this year, up from 82% in 2019, which facilitated increased throughput and fixed cost absorption at both our Midlothian and Hunter plants.
These factors, combined with mix adjusted pricing strength and lower fuel costs contributed to the 510 basis point improvement in cement product gross margin to 37.8%.
Our targeted downstream businesses also delivered solid full year financial results.
Ready mixed concrete product gross margin increased 10 basis points to 8.4% as pricing growth offset higher raw material costs.
Asphalt and paving achieved gross profit of $60 million and a 100 basis point improvement in gross margin, driven by double-digit revenue growth.
Our Magnesia Specialties business returned to revenue and profitability growth during the fourth quarter.
The 12% top line improvement in the quarter, however, was not enough to offset demand declines experienced earlier in the year.
As a result, full year product revenues decreased 12% to $221 million.
We anticipate fourth quarter strength in line with chemicals demand to continue in 2021, now that steel utilization has rebounded from last summer's COVID-19-driven trough and our cobalt customers are resuming activity.
Impressively, product gross margin improved 80 basis points to 40.6% as we proactively responded to lower shipments with effective cost control measures.
Turning now to cash generation, capital allocation and liquidity.
Martin Marietta ended 2020 with the strongest cash generation in our history.
Operating cash flow of $1.05 billion increased 9%, driven by earnings growth.
We continue to balance our long-standing disciplined capital allocation priorities to responsibly grow our business while maintaining a healthy balance sheet and preserving financial flexibility to further enhance shareholder value.
Our priorities remain focused on value-enhancing acquisitions, prudent organic capital investment and the consistent return of capital to shareholders while maintaining our investment-grade rating profile.
For 2020, we invested $360 million of capital into our business and returned $190 million to shareholders through both an increased dividend and the first quarter repurchase of 211,000 shares of our common stock.
In August 2020, our Board approved a 4% increase in our quarterly cash dividend, underscoring its continued confidence in our future performance and continuing Martin Marietta's track record of dividend growth.
Since our repurchase authorization announcement in February 2015, we have returned more than $1.8 billion to shareholders through a combination of meaningful and sustainable dividends as well as share repurchases.
We ended 2020 with a debt-to-EBITDA ratio of 1.9 times, slightly below our target leverage range of two to 2.5 times, which offers us the flexibility to pursue accretive investment opportunities.
Our solid balance sheet, combined with $1.1 billion of availability on our credit facilities, provides the financial strength for Martin Marietta to respond to, then execute on disciplined capital allocation priorities and continue profitably growing our business.
Looking ahead, we believe 2021 will be a year in which we see a return to a more normalized state as underlying demand fundamentals reset and the nation's economy regains momentum.
We remain confident in Martin Marietta's attractive business drivers and are encouraged by accelerating long-term secular trends across our three primary end-use markets and key geographies.
We expect these trends to drive construction-led aggregates intensive growth.
Infrastructure activity, particularly for aggregates-intensive highways, roads and streets, continues to prove resilient.
With the One year extension of the Fixing America's Surface Transportation Act, or FAST Act, at current funding levels, state and local governments have the visibility needed to plan, design and award transportation projects through the 2021 construction season.
Importantly, estimated fiscal 2021 lettings for our top five departments of transportation, or DOTs, are currently above or near prior year levels.
Keep in mind, our top five states: Texas, Colorado, North Carolina, Georgia and Florida, are disproportionately important to us, representing 71% of our 2020 Building Materials business total revenues.
Additionally, DOTs were recently granted nearly $10 billion of targeted relief as part of the Coronavirus Response and Relief Act passed in December 2020 to help offset pandemic-driven transportation revenue shortfalls.
This funding assistance has the benefit of no state matching requirements.
Based on preliminary estimates, over $2 billion of this assistance will be apportioned to Martin Marietta's top five states.
Over the medium to long term, we anticipate voter-approved state and local transportation measures and passage of a comprehensive federal transportation program package to promote multiyear growth in product demand.
In November 2020, voters sent a powerful message of support for state and local transportation investment, approving 94% of ballot measures, the highest ever approval rating.
These initiatives are estimated to generate an additional $14 billion in onetime and recurring transportation funding, of which 82% is in Texas, our top revenue-generating state.
Bipartisan support exists for new surface transportation legislation aimed at increasing funding levels not seen in over 15 years, with both the United States House of Representatives and Senate previously advancing proposed bills.
We believe this 117th Congress creates a path toward advancing a notable increase in funding over the FAST Act.
We're optimistic that agreement on a new bill could be reached this summer, generating meaningful benefits in 2022 and beyond.
We expect increased infrastructure investment to provide volume stability and drive aggregate shipments in that end-use closer to our 10-year historical average of 43% of our total shipments.
For reference, aggregate shipments to the infrastructure market accounted for 36% of 2020 shipments.
Nonresidential construction should continue to benefit from accelerating e-commerce and remote work trends that require increased investment in heavy industrial warehouses and data centers, particularly in our key metros of Dallas/Fort Worth, San Antonio, Austin, Denver, Des Moines, Indianapolis, Charlotte and Atlanta.
Importantly, this type of construction tends to be more aggregates-intensive than light commercial construction due to the size, scale and structure of these projects.
Light commercial and retail construction will remain comparatively challenged until COVID-19 vaccines are more widely distributed.
Over the longer term, light nonresidential activity will benefit from the attractive collateral effects of strong single-family residential trends.
Aggregate shipments to the nonresidential market accounted for 34% of 2020 shipments.
Single-family housing is poised for multiyear growth returning to more normalized levels during this economic cycle.
We believe Martin Marietta's leading southeastern and southwestern footprint positions the company to be a notable beneficiary of these trends given underbuilt conditions, favorable population and employment dynamics, land availability, mild climates and lower cost of living in these regions.
Single-family housing is two to three times more aggregates-intensive than multifamily construction, given the ancillary nonresidential and infrastructure needs of new suburban communities.
Aggregates to the residential market accounted for 24% of 2020 shipments.
In summary, we're confident in the fundamental strength and underlying drivers of our business.
As disclosed in today's release, we've returned to providing full year annual guidance.
We currently expect 2021 aggregates shipment growth to range from up 1% to up 4%, reflecting single-family housing strength, expanded infrastructure investment and heavy industrial projects of scale that will support our near-term shipment levels.
We remain confident that our favorable pricing trends are sustainable, supported by improved contractor confidence and healthy customer backlogs.
For 2021, we expect annual aggregates price increases, which become effective from January one to April 1, to increase in a range of up 3% to up 5%.
Combined with contributions from our Cement, Downstream and Magnesia Specialties businesses, on a consolidated basis, we expect adjusted EBITDA of $1.350 billion to $1.450 billion.
Keep in mind, when comparing this guidance range to prior year, we're not anticipating the same level of nonrecurring gains from land sales and divested surplus assets as seen in 2020.
To conclude, we're proud of our 2020 record financial results and industry-leading safety performance.
We're also extremely optimistic about our future.
Due to our work over the last several years, Martin Marietta is uniquely well positioned to capitalize on the emerging growth trends that are expected to support steady and sustainable construction activity over the long term.
Importantly, the disciplined execution of our strategic plan, coupled with our pricing discipline, operational excellence, prudent capital allocation and adherence to robust health protocols will continue to enhance Martin Marietta's solid foundation for enduring success.
As we move forward, we have the resources, team and capabilities to drive value-enhancing growth.
We're confident in Martin Marietta's opportunities to build on our successful track record of strong financial, operational and safety performance and remain focused on delivering superior returns for investors while meeting and exceeding our commitments to our other stakeholders, including our customers, employees and communities.

user
martin marietta materials inc - qtrly total revenue $1,179.6 million versus $1,100.4 million.
martin marietta materials inc - remains well-positioned to capitalize on emerging demand in 2021 and beyond.

assistant