Sysco's sales for the quarter across all of our businesses were up 82% versus 2020 and up 4.3% versus 2019.
Our sales results in our U.S. business were up 7.7% versus 2019.
The U.S. foodservice industry in total is now within 5% of 2019 levels.
During the fourth quarter, we won another $200 million of business with national customers bringing the cumulative total to $2 billion of net new wins since March of 2020.
As you can see on Page number 12 of our slides, in addition to the large national account wins we have delivered, we have grown our local customer account by about 10%, which is a pace of 2.5 times greater than the broadline industry.
In June, we increased our market share by 60 basis points and posted our sixth consecutive month of market share gains.
During the fourth quarter, our inflation rate was approximately 9.6%.
Notably, our international segment broke even for the quarter, reflecting a $92 million profit improvement over the third quarter.
Our pricing system is now live in over 25% of our regions, and we remain on track to complete the implementation by the end of this calendar year.
We are on track to deliver $750 million of structural cost reductions inclusive of what we delivered in fiscal 2021.
We mentioned in a previous earnings call that we would hire over 6,000 associates in the second half of fiscal 2021.
During fiscal 2022, we expect to achieve growth at a rate of 1.2 times the industry.
That rate of growth is expected to accelerate across the three years of our long-range plan and we intend to deliver 1.5 times the market growth in fiscal 2024.
As Kevin noted, fourth quarter sales were $16.1 billion, an increase of 82% from the same quarter in fiscal 2020 and a 4.3% increase from the same quarter in fiscal 2019.
Please note that this year, our fiscal year had a 53rd week, which included 14 weeks in the fourth quarter as compared to only 13 weeks in the fourth quarter of each of fiscal 2020 and fiscal 2019.
That additional week was worth just under $1.2 billion in sales.
Sales in U.S. foodservice were up 88.4% versus the fourth quarter of fiscal 2020 and up 7.7% versus the same quarter in fiscal 2019.
SYGMA was up 45.3% versus fiscal 2020 and up 20.9% versus the same quarter in fiscal 2019.
For the quarter, local case volume within a subset of U.S. FS, our U.S. Broadline operations increased 74.3% while total case volume within U.S. Broadline operations increased 71.4%.
Given the interest in the recovery curve from COVID-19, today we are disclosing that our July fiscal 2022 sales were also quite strong.
Sales were more than $4.9 billion, an increase of 44.3% from the same period in fiscal 2021 and a 7% increase over the same period in fiscal 2019.
The headline is that inflation during the quarter was up 9.6% for total Sysco.
Gross profit for the enterprise was $2.9 billion in the fourth quarter, increasing 86.2% versus the same quarter in fiscal 2020.
Most of the increase in gross profit was driven by year-over-year increases in sales, the 53rd week in fiscal 2021 worth about $208 million and marginal rate improvement at our largest business U.S. FS.
Gross margin as a percentage of sales during the quarter actually increased 41 basis points versus the same period in fiscal 2020 and finished at a rate of 18.1%.
Importantly, the enterprise margin rate improvement was also driven by 17 basis points of margin rate improvement in our largest business.
For the fourth quarter, international sales were up 83.4% versus fiscal 2020, but down 14.6% versus fiscal 2019.
Foreign exchange rates had a positive impact of 2.9% on Sysco's sales results.
Turning back to the enterprise, adjusted operating expense increased 44.5% to $2.3 billion with increases driven by the variable cost that accompanies significantly increased volumes, one-time and short-term expenses associated with the snap-back, and investments against our Recipe for Growth.
Our expense performance reflects the great progress we have made against our $350 million cost-out savings goal as well as the need to invest in both the current demand recovery and the long-term issues that Kevin mentioned earlier.
In fact, we exceeded our $350 million cost-out goal during the full year.
During the fourth quarter, we estimate that we spent more than $36 million against the snap-back including incremental investments against recruiting, training, retention and maintenance.
We also estimate that we spent more than $50 million against our transformation initiatives such as our customer-centered growth, pricing, supply chain and technology strategic initiatives.
Even with those significant investments, our adjusted operating expense as a percentage of sales improved to 14.3% from fiscal 2020 and moved to within 30 basis points of fiscal 2019's 14% as a percentage of sales for the fourth quarter.
If we adjust out the purposeful snap-back and transformation investments we are making as temporary, we can better see the savings as our opex as a percentage of sales would have been 13.8% on an adjusted basis.
Recall that we raised our objective to $750 million with the incremental savings coming largely over the course of fiscal '23 through fiscal '24.
Remember, it is these capabilities that are generating the market share gains of 1.2 times to 1.5 times through fiscal 2024.
Finally, for the fourth quarter, adjusted operating income increased $639 million to $605 million for the quarter.
Our adjusted effective tax rate was 20.2%.
Adjusted earnings per share increased $1 to $0.71 for the fourth quarter.
Let me just wrap up the income statement by observing that for the year, all in, we delivered $1.02 of GAAP earnings per share and $1.44 of adjusted EPS.
Cash flow from operations for the fourth quarter was $424 million.
Net capex for the quarter was $180 million or 1.1% of sales, which was $79 million higher compared to the same quarter in the prior year.
Free cash flow for the fourth quarter was $244 million, significantly above our anticipated free cash flow, even while we grew and maintained inventory at a level $400 million higher than Q4 fiscal '19.
At the end of fiscal 2021, after our investments in the business, our significant reductions in debt and our dividend payments, we had $3 billion of cash and cash equivalents on hand.
During the year, we generated positive cash flow from operations of $1.9 billion, offset by $412 million of net capital investment, resulting in positive free cash flow of $1.5 billion for the year.
$2.3 billion of deleveraging already accomplished during the fiscal year through May 2021.
Plans for an additional $1.5 billion will further debt reductions by the end of fiscal year '22.
Because we have sized the headline on our Q4 tender offer to $1 billion, we are already tracking $150 million ahead of our debt repurchase commitments.
Lastly, we returned almost $1 billion of capital to shareholders in fiscal year '21 in the form of our quarterly dividends.
We were pleased to announce at Investor Day a $0.02 per share increase to our dividend, on which we made the first payment in July.
This brings our dividend to $1.88 per share for the full calendar year 2022 and enhances our track record of increasing our dividends and our status as a Dividend Aristocrat.
In May, I laid out our growth aspiration of growing at 1.2 times to 1.5 times the market.
Also recall that we said, in fiscal year '22, we expected adjusted earnings per share of $3.23 to $3.43.
We also called out that in fiscal year '24, we expect adjusted earnings per share of 30% more than our high point in fiscal year 2019, call it more than $4.65.
That means that to hit our 1.2 times market growth in fiscal year 2022, we have to grow faster and we are.
As a result, we are raising our sales expectations and now expect sales for the enterprise to exceed fiscal '19 sales by mid-single digits, adding roughly $2.5 billion to our top line guidance.
From a tax perspective, we expect our overall effective rate to be approximately 24% in fiscal 2022, as we are not assuming changes to federal tax rates in this guidance.
And based on the early strength of the recovery that Kevin mentioned during his remarks, as impacted by inflation and our continued progress against managing through the snap-back and investing for growth, we are increasing our guidance on adjusted earnings per share by $0.10 for fiscal year 2022 by moving the range up to $3.33 to $3.53.
Capital expenditures during fiscal 2022 are expected to be approximately 1.3% of sales, reflecting the increased sales levels.
And finally, recall that in May, we announced the conditions to the initiation of share repurchase, resulting from the new $5 billion share repurchase authorization.

Summary:
As Kevin noted, fourth quarter sales were $16.1 billion, an increase of 82% from the same quarter in fiscal 2020 and a 4.3% increase from the same quarter in fiscal 2019.
Given the interest in the recovery curve from COVID-19, today we are disclosing that our July fiscal 2022 sales were also quite strong.
Adjusted earnings per share increased $1 to $0.71 for the fourth quarter.
And based on the early strength of the recovery that Kevin mentioned during his remarks, as impacted by inflation and our continued progress against managing through the snap-back and investing for growth, we are increasing our guidance on adjusted earnings per share by $0.10 for fiscal year 2022 by moving the range up to $3.33 to $3.53.