We delivered double-digit sales and earnings growth in a challenging year.
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.
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.
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.
Sales improved 20% in the fourth quarter and 11% during the full year.
Volumes were up 3% for the second half or nearly 350 million pounds.
We delivered solid operating income performance, up 26% during the fourth quarter and 42% for the full year.
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%.
We expect to grow our total Company volumes by 2% to 3% next year, outpacing overall protein consumption growth.
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.
The program is targeted to deliver $1 billion in recurring productivity savings by the end of fiscal '24 relative to fiscal '21 cost baseline.
The first is operational and functional excellence and is targeted to deliver greater than $300 million in recurring savings.
The second is digital solutions, which is targeted to deliver more than $250 million in recurring savings.
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.
By reconfiguring and optimizing our existing footprint, we can increase our harvest capacity by more than 10% without building another plant.
From Q3 to Q4, we again reduced our rate of outside purchases this time by nearly 30%.
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.
This starts by returning our operating margin to the 5% to 7% level by the middle of fiscal 2022.
On capital loan, we expect to invest $2 billion in fiscal year '22 with a disproportionate share focused on new capacity and automation objectives.
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.
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.
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.
Incremental direct COVID-19 costs were favorable by approximately $200 million during the year although our total spending at $335 million was still substantial.
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].
Segment sales were over $5 billion for the quarter, up 26% versus the same period last year.
Offsetting higher sales prices were higher cattle costs, up more than 20% during the fourth quarter.
We delivered segment operating income of $1.1 billion or 22.9% for the fourth quarter.
Segment sales were over $1.6 billion for the quarter, up 30% versus the same period last year.
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.
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.
Operating margins for the segment were 1.7% or $39 million for the fourth quarter.
For the full year, operating income margin was 7.6% or $672 million.
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.
Average sales price improved over 20% in the fourth quarter and 11.4% for the fiscal year, compared to the same periods last year.
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.
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.
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.
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.
We currently anticipate capex spending of approximately $2 billion during fiscal '22, an increase of roughly $800 million.
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.
Prepared Foods is expected to deliver margins during fiscal '22 of between 7% and 9%.
We expect the beef segment to continue to show strength due to prolonged industry dynamics leading to segment margins of between 9% and 11%.
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.

Summary:
We delivered double-digit sales and earnings growth in a challenging year.
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%.
We expect to grow our total Company volumes by 2% to 3% next year, outpacing overall protein consumption growth.
The program is targeted to deliver $1 billion in recurring productivity savings by the end of fiscal '24 relative to fiscal '21 cost baseline.
On capital loan, we expect to invest $2 billion in fiscal year '22 with a disproportionate share focused on new capacity and automation objectives.
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.
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.
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.
We currently anticipate capex spending of approximately $2 billion during fiscal '22, an increase of roughly $800 million.
Liquidity is expected to significantly exceed our target, while net leverage is expected to remain well below 2 times net debt to adjusted EBITDA.
In International and other, we expect margins of 2% to 3% as capacity expansions and strong global demand support volume growth and improved profitability.