For the year, we grew revenue $632 million, or 18%; and adjusted earnings per share to $4.57, or 57% compared to the prior year.
While we saw 4% comparable funeral volume growth, even growing over a COVID-impacted 2020, the primary drivers of our revenue was mid-20% growth in both preneed and atneed cemetery revenues, combined with a strong 7% increase in our funeral sales average.
We generated adjusted earnings per share of $1.17, a 4% increase over the prior year quarter and a 95% increase over a pre-pandemic fourth quarter of 2019.
Compared to the 2020 fourth quarter, funeral results drove the earnings per share increase as a healthy 8% increase in the funeral sales average offset slightly lower volumes and cost increases associated with staffing and energy.
Total comparable funeral revenues grew $47 million, or about 9% over the prior year quarter, exceeding our expectations as core revenues, non-funeral revenues from SCI Direct and general agency revenues all saw impressive growth in the fourth.
Comparable core funeral revenues were $32 million, led by an impressive 8.4% increase in the comparable funeral sales average, The core sales average continues to climb sequentially and is up about 5% over the 2019 pre-COVID fourth quarter.
Comparable core funeral volume declined 1.5% compared to the prior year quarter, slightly offsetting the positive impact of the funeral sales average.
Keep in mind, the 2020 fourth quarter we were comparing against was acutely impacted by COVID and saw a 17% higher core funeral volume increase over the 2019 fourth quarter.
From a profit perspective, general gross profit increased $10 million while the gross profit percentage dropped 60 basis points to 27%.
In the fourth quarter of 2020, those costs were actually down 2% versus the 2019 fourth quarter even with 17% more volume as the pre-vaccine era of the virus restricted both the consumers and our ability to provide a full service funeral.
In the 2021 fourth quarter, these costs increased by 8% compared to the 2020 fourth quarter.
So overall, our fixed costs have increased 6% over the two-year period, or let's say, 3% on a compounded annual basis while we are caring for 17% more customers than we did in 2019.
Preneed funeral sales production for the quarter exceeded our expectations, growing $30 million from nearly 14% over the fourth quarter of 2020.
Our core preneed funeral average revenue per contract [Inaudible] the backlog now is over $6,300.
This is an 8% increase over 2020 and more than $300 higher than our atneed average for the quarter.
Comparable cemetery revenue increased $21 million, or 5%, in the fourth quarter.
In terms of the breakdown, atneed cemetery revenue generated $13.5 million of the growth, driven by a higher quality core average sale and a modest increase in contract velocity.
Recognized preneed revenues generated about $8 million of the revenue growth, primarily due to higher recognized preneed merchandise and service growth.
So preneed cemetery sales production grew 30 -- $39 million or 13% in the fourth quarter.
This growth is on top of a 2020 fourth quarter, which grew by 16% over 2019.
However, we were still able to grow the velocity of contract sold by almost 5%, which accounted for the remainder of the sales production.
For the full year 2021, they produced $1.3 billion cemetery preneed sales production.
This represents a 28% increase over and above the very strong 15% growth in 2020.
Cemetery gross profits in the quarter declined slightly by $1 million and the gross profit percentage dropped 200 basis points to 36.8%.
At the midpoint, this represents a 20% increase from our previously mentioned model midpoint $2.80 in our third quarter conference call.
The $3 midpoint reflects a $0.165 compounded annual growth rate over the pre-COVID earnings per share base in 2019 of $1.90, well above our historical guidance range.
As you think about the cadence for the year as we compare back to a $4.57 2021, we would expect negative comparisons for each quarter.
So how are we going to grow earnings per share at a 16.5% compounded annual growth rate from the 2019 base?
And finally, we forecast preneed funeral sales production to grow in a 3% to 5% range for the year.
We continue to believe that after establishing a new base here in 2022, we will return to earnings growth in the 8% to 12% range in 2023.
So operating cash flow is approximately $190 million in the current quarter, compared to $245 million in the prior year with the primary decline due to an increase in cash tax payments during the quarter of $97 million versus the $36 million in the fourth quarter of last year.
Excluding cash taxes in both periods, operating cash flow before taxes increased almost $6 million to $287 million in the fourth quarter, driven by modest increases in earnings and favorable working capital, partially offset by $6 million of higher cash interest payments.
So as we step back and look at the full year of 2021, we generated $912 million in adjusted operating cash flow, representing a substantial increase of $108 million or 13% over the prior year.
Deducting recurrent capex of $260 million, which again represents maintenance, capex and cemetery development capex, we calculate free cash flow for the full year to be an impressive $652 million in 2021, up $33 million from $619 million in 2020.
And the fourth quarter was no exception, deploying nearly $500 million, which is the highest quarterly capital deployment we have seen in recent history.
We invested $110 million in our businesses with $65 million of maintenance capital and $45 million of cemetery development capital spend during the fourth quarter.
So I'm happy to report, as you've seen, that those acquisitions closed, bringing the total investments during the quarter to $112 million and again expecting low double digit to mid-teen IRRs on each of these transactions.
These businesses added almost $40 million of full year revenues from 28 funeral homes and two cemeteries in Ohio, California, Illinois, Oregon, and Rhode Island.
We also deployed about $16 million toward new builds in Texas, Colorado, Washington, and Florida.
This brings total 2021 spend on new builds to $43 million with again low double digit to maintain IRRs, which also helped drive additional earnings and cash flow growth for the company.
Finally, we deployed $248 million of capital during the quarter to shareholders through dividends and share repurchases and $700 billion for the full year of 2021.
For the last two years alone, we meaningfully reduced our outstanding shares by about 10% through timely execution on our repurchasing strategy.
Since the inception of our repurchase program, we have now reduced our shares outstanding by just over 50%.
As Tom mentioned, at the midpoint of our earnings guidance range of $3, we expect to meaningfully exceed our 8% to 12% earnings growth framework for earnings per share when comparing back to pre-COVID 2019 base of $1.09.
So from a cash flow perspective, our 8% to 12% earnings growth framework generally translate historically into about a 4% growth in adjusted cash flow before cash taxes.
So adjusting for $150 million of expected cash taxes in '22, our adjusted cash flow from operations before cash taxes is expected to be about an $850 million at the midpoint.
This equates to a 6.5% CAGR over our pre-COVID 2019 adjusted cash flow from operations before cash taxes of $700 million, which is similarly in excess of this normalized 4% annual growth that we normally expect.
First, we'll be required to pay the remaining half for about $20 million of payroll taxes that were deferred in 2020 as allowed under the CARES Act.
And as I just mentioned, cash tax payments in '22 are anticipated to be about $150 million based on the midpoint of our earnings guidance, or $115 million lower than the $265 million of 2021.
And from an effective tax rate standpoint, we continue to model in the range of 24% to 25% in 2022.
Now historically, we've guided to around $125 million to $130 million of annual recurring corporate general administrative expenses.
As a result of this review that is ongoing, we have identified about $20 million to $25 million of costs, which we believe may be more appropriately characterized as corporate in nature versus field-related expenses that is primarily related to certain technology, risk, and governance areas.
Therefore, when you're modeling 2022 at this point, I would expect annual corporate G&A to increase to maybe around $145 million to $150 million per year with the corresponding dollar for dollar decrease in costs and the segment margins.
So looking forward to 2023, we expect to return to a normalized cash flow growth trajectory with an expected 4% growth and adjusted cash flow from operations before cash taxes, which again is in line with our 8% to 12% earnings growth framework per share that we just mentioned.
Our expectations for maintenance and cemetery development capital spending is $270 million to $290 million for the year.
At the midpoint, cemetery development capex comprises about $120 million of this amount, and maintenance capex makes up the remaining $160 million.
This maintenance capex of $160 million includes about $110 million of normal routine maintenance capital used at our funeral and cemetery operating locations, as well as another $50 million for field and corporate support capital.
This $50 million is primarily being deployed toward technology to not only improve the customer experience with ultimately customer-facing technology, but also toward network infrastructure at our operating locations.
In addition to these recurring capital expenditures of $280 million at the midpoint, we expect to deploy $50 million to $100 million toward acquisitions, and roughly $50 million more in new funeral home construction opportunities, which together, as I continue to say, drive meaningful after-tax IRRs, well in excess of our cost of capital.
And of course, this strategy is predicated on our stable free cash flow, our robust liquidity, which is over $1 billion at the end of the year, as well as our favorable debt maturity profile.
Lending additional support to this strategy, our leverage ratio at the end of the quarter landed just under 2.6 times from a net debt to EBITDA perspective.
And as we've noted in the past, looking beyond the impacts of this pandemic, we continue to expect to increase back to our targeted leverage range of 3.5 to 4 times toward the latter part of this year as we lap stronger EBITDA quarters moving forward.

Summary:
We generated adjusted earnings per share of $1.17, a 4% increase over the prior year quarter and a 95% increase over a pre-pandemic fourth quarter of 2019.
This is an 8% increase over 2020 and more than $300 higher than our atneed average for the quarter.
At the midpoint, this represents a 20% increase from our previously mentioned model midpoint $2.80 in our third quarter conference call.