I'd like to again begin my remarks today by expressing my gratitude to our TreeHouse employees, especially the roughly 9,500 frontline workers in our supply chain.
As part of that effort, we reduced roughly 11,000 SKUs, exited 11 manufacturing facilities and meaningfully reduced the number of warehouse shippoints.
We also turned our attention to simplifying our systems by consolidating finance and IT platforms, going from 13 ERPs to 3 and 100% order to cash on SAP.
In total, we delivered on each of our commitments our efforts resulted in meaningful financial impact including delivering approximately $400 million in run rate cost savings, offsetting a roughly similar amount of headwinds due to inflation and lost volume.
In the fourth quarter, we delivered organic revenue of $1.17 billion with Riviana contributing another $12 million.
Our results were just over the high end of our guidance range, representing 3.3% growth or 4% on an organic basis.
This was driven by strong organic growth of 8.1% in our snacking and beverage business and steady 1.3% organic growth in our meal preparation business.
For the year, we delivered 2.7% organic net sales growth, driven by outsized growth trends in unmeasured channels, increasingly composed of some of the fastest growing food retailers in the country.
On slide 7, we summarize the tremendous progress we've made in generating free cash flow of nearly $300 million for the year, allowing us to more quickly achieve our leverage target range.
After the acquisition, we finished the year with leverage of 3.1 times.
Financially, deal will have an immediate impact as we expect to add $170 million to $180 million in revenue on a normalized basis and in 2021 generate $25 million to $30 million in EBITDA and accretion of $0.20 to $0.30 per share.
Approximately 35% of our revenue is generated from categories like these, which we are outperforming private label.
We delivered against all of our key metrics and outperformed on the top line at $1.18 billion, which includes Riviana.
Fourth quarter adjusted EBITDA was $154 million and adjusted earnings per share totaled $1.07.
Meal prep organic growth of 1.3% was driven by a combination of volume, mix and pricing.
The addition of the Riviana pasta business in December added 1.7% growth on top.
As Steve mentioned, we closed the acquisition of the majority of Ebro's Riviana brands in mid-December, which added about $12 million in revenue to the fourth quarter.
Moving on to snacking and beverages, we posted strong growth of 8.1% on an organic basis in the fourth quarter, nearly all due to improved volume and mix.
As we walk from left to right, the $19 million impact of the sale of the two ISP facilities is represented by the first orange bar.
The second orange bar is the remainder of the carryover loss business and pricing adjustments, which totaled approximately $36 million in Q4.
After taking these two items into account, our total retail channel sales as seen within the green box grew 8%.
Here we grew 5% in the fourth quarter.
And similar to the third quarter, we meaningfully outpaced our measured channel performance with growth of 14%.
Finally, industrial and other grew 23% in the fourth quarter, while weakness in the food-away-from-home channel continued and was down 27%.
On slide 14, you see our walk across of our key drivers to fourth quarter adjusted earnings per share of $1.07.
Pricing, net of commodity costs or PNOC added $0.07, which was more than offset by $0.17 of COVID-19 related expenses that we absorbed in our adjusted P&L.
The remaining operations impact of $0.14 was primarily driven by higher year-over-year operational costs from unfavorable manufacturing variances and expenses that were delayed from early in the year due to the COVID surge.
Fourth quarter SG&A was unfavorable by $0.07 in the quarter due to higher variable incentive compensation related to our strong performance in 2020.
As you think about the divisions in the context of their strategic objectives, you can see on slide 15 that growth within snacking and beverages, was driven by beverages and drink mixes, up 24%.
New distribution on cookies, as well as retailer promotions around candy were the main drivers of 3% growth in sweet and savory in the quarter.
Net debt finished the year at $1.9 billion and we delivered very strong free cash flow of $298 million in 2020 at the top of our guidance range.
Our leverage at the end of the fourth quarter, net debt-to-EBITDA based on our bank covenant definition ended the year at 3.1 times.
With regard to our capital structure so far this year, we have called $200 million of our 2024 notes.
The total balance is $603 million and our intent is to address the remaining amount this year.
In 2021, we are anticipating $100 million to $110 million in headwinds due to increased ingredient costs.
That's an addition to increased employee cost driven by tight labor markets and rising freight costs.
Turning now to our 2021 guidance on slide 18, our revenue guidance for the year is $4.4 billion to $4.6 billion.
Our expectation for adjusted EBIT in 2021 is $290 million to $320 million.
We anticipate adjusted EBITDA of $525 million to $570 million.
That amount was approximately $26 million in 2020 to give you an idea of magnitude.
Our interest expense guidance of $84 million to $90 million assumes that we refinanced at least $200 million of our 2024 notes this year and successfully lower our rate.
Our adjusted effective tax rate is expected to be in the 24% to 25% range, which translate into adjusted earnings per share for the full year of $2.80 to $3.20.
We anticipate free cash flow in 2021 to be approximately $300 million.
Historically, this winning has been approximately 30% in the first half and 70% in the second half.
We anticipate a similar cadence in 2021.
We estimate that the revenue lift from pantry stocking in the first half of 2020 was $140 million to $150 million.
We assume that the COVID expenses that we have been absorbing in the P&L each quarter will continue throughout 2021 in the range of $10 million to $12 million per quarter.
So from a comparability standpoint, it's worth pointing out that the business contributed $22 million of 2020 first half revenue.
I'll wrap up by saying that the top end of our full year guidance of $2.80 to $3.20 assumes the following.
Our customer’s top 3 priorities are quality, cost and service and while breadth can be important in certain instances, we have seen that category depth is what customers truly value.
We view categories representing 40% of our net sales as growth engines with strong consumer demand defined pockets of growth and existing debts with opportunities to go even further.
Let's take broth for an example, in 2020 private label broth grew 27% and we gained almost 200 basis points of share.
This is a great category and we win in broth because, one, it's on trend with strong consumer demand given its health conscious and protein rich attributes; two, private label share is high, nearly 40%; and three, we have strong capabilities, particularly around assortment, seasonal pricing and promotion and price gap management.
Another 40% of our sales are in cash engines.
These categories represent opportunities for us to harvest cash for reinvestment, balance sheet strength and capital return.
In that vein, we bought back $25 million of stock in the fourth quarter or approximately 650,000 shares.
In addition to delivering 1% to 2% of organic growth on the top line, we will pursue opportunities to drive additional growth through accretive M&A in focused categories.
From a cash flow perspective, a combination of operating leverage, opex improvements from ongoing initiatives and synergies from acquisitions will fuel our continued strength and our ability to generate approximately $300 million in cash.
And finally, we will ensure that translates into profitability, driving at least 10% adjusted earnings per share growth each year through a combination of acquisitions and enhanced for productivity synergies and share repurchase.

Summary:
We delivered against all of our key metrics and outperformed on the top line at $1.18 billion, which includes Riviana.
Fourth quarter adjusted EBITDA was $154 million and adjusted earnings per share totaled $1.07.
On slide 14, you see our walk across of our key drivers to fourth quarter adjusted earnings per share of $1.07.
That's an addition to increased employee cost driven by tight labor markets and rising freight costs.
Our adjusted effective tax rate is expected to be in the 24% to 25% range, which translate into adjusted earnings per share for the full year of $2.80 to $3.20.
We anticipate a similar cadence in 2021.
I'll wrap up by saying that the top end of our full year guidance of $2.80 to $3.20 assumes the following.
These categories represent opportunities for us to harvest cash for reinvestment, balance sheet strength and capital return.