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: These statements involve a number of risks and uncertainties, including impacts from the pandemic and related governmental responses and their impact on the general economy, as well as other risks and uncertainties that are described in our filings with the SEC, including our most recent Form 10-K and Form 10-Q.
Also during the call, we will reference a number of non-GAAP financial measures.
The impact of foreign exchange rate changes subsequent to the end of the fourth quarter, interest rate increases differing from assumptions outlined in guidance, impact from the further spread of COVID-19 or other variants, and environmental and litigation charges.
It was a successful year across EnPro as we continue to rise to the occasion to meet the challenges and opportunities that have arisen over the past 12 months.
To begin, I will provide financial and strategic highlights for the full year, and then Milt will share details on our fourth quarter results.
2021 represented another transformational year at EnPro.
We continue to successfully reshape our portfolio and shift toward our growth markets with products and services that command higher margins and cash flow returns.
With the acquisition of NxEdge and the divestiture of CPI in December, as well as the divestiture of the polymer components business in the third quarter, we achieved meaningful strides in our portfolio reshaping strategy, which is positioning our company for a very promising future.
As volumes recovered from the 2020 pandemic lows, we saw positive momentum across the organization.
For the year, sales grew 6.3% to $1.14 billion.
Organic sales grew 14.4%.
We saw strong demand in most markets, including general industrial, semiconductor, heavy-duty truck, petrochemical, food and pharma, and aerospace.
Adjusted EBITDA of $208.4 million, increased by 23.8% compared to 2020.
Adjusted EBITDA margin of 18.3%, increased 260 basis points, driven primarily by organic sales increases.
Select product, select price actions, and the net benefit of strategic portfolio reshaping completed in both 2020 and 2021, partially offset by raw material inflation, as well as supply chain labor and logistics constraints.
As we said last quarter, we still expect raw material inflation and supply chain challenges to continue.
And we will see uncertainty and volatility in the macro environment as we enter 2022.
Our commercial and supply chain teams continue to evaluate all opportunities to mitigate these current circumstances, while meeting the needs of our customers in the Strong demand environment.
We are realizing the substantial benefits of our portfolio reshaping actions, which have enabled us to capture incremental margin expansion in 2021 while keeping a close eye on cost and further simplifying our already agile organization.
Our strong order trends continued during the fourth quarter and we are beginning 2022 with solid demand.
In particular, we continue to see broad-based strength across our businesses and are encouraged by what we are hearing from our customers, particularly in semiconductor, heavy-duty truck, aerospace, nuclear, and food and pharma markets.
As we look forward, we continue to invest both organically and inorganically in our Advanced Surface Technologies and Sealing Technologies segments, while driving cost and return improvements in the Engineered Materials segment.
We will build upon this core industrial technology foundation, now in place, maintaining our focus on margins and cash flow returns.
Further, we expect to maintain our strong recurring revenue streams with aftermarket revenue across our businesses approaching 50% of total company revenue.
Finally, we remain focused on driving long-term shareholder returns through a disciplined approach to capital allocation supported by our steady cash flows and also through our commitment to sustainability and diversity.
2022 marks our 20th year as an independent public company.
As I enter my first year as EnPro CEO, I marvel at how far we have come and could not be more excited for what the future will hold for all of our stakeholders.
I will now hand the call over to Milt for a deeper dive into our financial results for the fourth quarter.
We had another solid quarter despite the well-publicized headwinds we and many others faced.
As reported, sales of $280.8 million in the fourth quarter, increased 1.7% year over year.
We saw strong demand in the semiconductor, heavy-duty truck, aerospace, general industrial, and food and pharma markets, as well as contributions from the acquisitions of Alluxa and NxEdge, which were largely offset by the reduction in sales due to divestitures and weakness in the automotive market.
Organic sales for the fourth quarter increased 10.4% compared to the fourth quarter of 2020.
Adjusted EBITDA of $47.7 million, decreased 0.8% compared to the prior-year period.
Adjusted EBITDA was impacted by inflationary pressures affecting raw materials, freight and labor costs, and higher SG&A, more than offsetting pricing initiatives and the benefit of the reshaping actions completed in 2020 and 2021.
Corporate expenses of $26.9 million in the fourth quarter of 2021 were up from $10.6 million a year prior, driven primarily by acquisition-related expenses associated with the NxEdge transaction, as well as increased incentive compensation expenses, driven mainly by our fourth quarter share price performance.
Adjusted diluted earnings per share of $1.23 was essentially flat compared to the prior-year period.
Such amortization -- amortization of acquisition-related intangible assets in the fourth quarter was $12.7 million, compared to $10.9 million in the prior-year period, reflecting the additions of Alluxa and NxEdge.
Now, let's move to a discussion of segment performance for the fourth quarter of last year.
Due to the impact of divestitures, Sealing Technology sales of $143.9 million, decreased 7% versus the prior year.
Excluding the impact of divested businesses and foreign exchange translation, sales increased 12% versus the prior-year period, driven primarily by strong demand in heavy-duty truck, aerospace, nuclear, and food and pharma markets.
Also due to businesses divested in 2020 and 2021, adjusted segment EBITDA decreased 12.3% versus the prior-year period.
Excluding the impact of divestitures and foreign exchange translation, adjusted segment EBITDA increased 3% compared to the prior-year period.
Results in the quarter were also impacted by inflationary pressures affecting raw materials, labor and freight costs with such pressures concentrated in our trucking business.
These costs were offset by pricing initiatives and leverage on the organic volume increase in the segment.
Turning now to Advanced Surface Technologies.
Fourth quarter sales of $69.1 million, increased 38.5% versus the prior-year period, driven by strong demand in the semiconductor market and the acquisitions of Alluxa and NxEdge.
Excluding the impact of acquisitions and foreign exchange translation, sales increased 16.6% versus the prior-year period.
For the fourth quarter, adjusted segment EBITDA increased 35.7% versus the prior-year period, driven by the acquisitions and strong organic sales growth.
Excluding the impact of the acquisitions and foreign exchange translation, adjusted segment EBITDA increased 10.4% compared to the prior-year period.
The growth in EBITDA while strong was partially impacted by timing delays and the launch of advanced node chips.
Moving forward, our qualification and production work with semiconductor customers gives us confidence in the organic growth and profitability profile for our semi business, both in the coming year and over the long term.
In Engineered Materials, sales decreased 7.3% versus the prior-year period, driven by the divestitures of the GGB bushing block and CPI businesses.
For the quarter, sales to the automotive market were weak due to chip shortages affecting auto production, particularly in comparison to a strong auto market in the fourth quarter of 2020 that continued in the first half of 2021.
Excluding the impact of divestitures and foreign exchange translation, sales were flat.
Fourth quarter adjusted segment EBITDA decreased 21.9% versus the prior-year period, driven by raw material inflation and supply chain headwinds, as well as the decline in automotive production in Europe and the United States.
Excluding the impact of divestitures and foreign exchange translation, adjusted segment EBITDA decreased by a comparable amount around 20.2% compared to the prior-year period.
Turning to the balance sheet and cash flow.
We ended the fourth quarter with cash of $338.1 million, $310 million of which is located outside the United States.
We have initiated efforts to repatriate portions of this cash for use in debt reduction, where it makes sense to do so from a tax efficiency perspective.
At December 31, we had $213.6 million available for borrowing under our revolving credit facility.
Free cash flow in 2021 was $123.2 million, up from $39.3 million in the prior year, driven by higher operating profits and lower cash taxes resulting from a tax refund associated with a federal income tax audit resolution, partially offset by working capital investments supporting stronger demand.
During the fourth quarter, we paid a $0.27 per share quarterly dividend.
For the year, dividend payments totaled $22.4 million.
Our board of directors voted to increase our quarterly dividend to $0.28 per share effective with the March payment representing our 7th consecutive annual increase in our quarterly dividend since we began paying dividends in 2015.
Moving now to 2022 guidance.
Taking into consideration all the factors that we know at this time, we expect low double-digit revenue growth over reported 2021 sales of $1.14 billion and we expect adjusted EBITDA to be in the range of $263 million to $275 million, implying adjusted EBITDA margins north of 20%.
Further, we expect adjusted diluted earnings per share from continuing operations to be in the range of $6.70 to $7.25 using a normalized 27% tax rate, reduced from 30% last year.
The reduction in our normalized tax rate assumption for 2022 results from the portfolio actions completed late in 2021 which tilt our portfolio to a higher portion of earnings in the United States.
Our guidance assumes depreciation and amortization expense, excluding amortization of acquisition-related intangible assets of $37 million to $39 million and net interest expense of $30 million to $33 million.
Our net interest expense estimate factors in 425-basis-point increases in our variable borrowing rate as 2022 progresses.
Underlying demand and order trends remain strong as we enter 2022, even as inflationary raw material cost, the impact of the omicron variant on labor availability, and supply chain and logistics constraints that put early year pressure on growth and margins.
We will be implementing additional pricing actions across the company as the year progresses in response to inflationary headwinds.
Finally, I want to note that we continue to monitor the current COVID situation and will remain attentive to the safety and well-being of our colleagues, who have demonstrated great resilience in the face of the very challenging conditions over the past two years.
EnPro had a remarkable year.
I am proud of our team and our many accomplishments as we perceive and doing what we said we would do, execute on our multi-year strategy to transform EnPro into a leading industrial technology company, leaning into our best businesses, while investing in markets with faster growth, higher margins, and higher cash flow returns.
Our 2022 guidance implies adjusted EBITDA margins around 21%, up from the 14% in 2019 when we first began our portfolio reshaping strategy.
All the while remaining steadfast in our dual purpose of delivering outstanding financial results and enabling and supporting development of our colleagues and the communities in which we operate.
Our journey is just beginning.
We appreciate your interest in our company.
Now I'll open the line to questions.

user
compname reports q4 adjusted earnings per share of $1.23.
q4 adjusted earnings per share $1.23.
q4 sales rose 1.7 percent to $280.8 million.
introducing guidance for 2022: revenue growth in low double-digit range.
sees 2022 adjusted ebitda of $263 million to $275 million.
sees 2022 adjusted diluted earnings per share from continuing operations of $6.70 to $7.25.

assistant