In the fourth quarter, we delivered 16% organic growth despite auto production declines caused by our auto customer supply chain.
Both our sales and adjusted earnings per share in fiscal 2021 were up double digits versus 2019, and we expanded adjusted operating margins by over 100 basis points by continuing the margin journey that we're on.
We generated sales of $3.8 billion with 16% organic growth and adjusted earnings per share ahead of guidance at $1.69, which was up 46% year-over-year.
Adjusted operating margins were 18.5% as a result of the increases across all three segments, and I'll share more details about segment results a little bit later.
When you look at the full year, year-over-year sales were up 23%, adjusted operating margins expanded approximately 400 basis points and adjusted earnings per share was up over 50% to $6.51.
Our free cash flow was above $2 billion with approximately 100% conversion to adjusted net income for the year, demonstrating our strong cash generation model.
We also continue to remain balanced in our capital deployment with about 3/4 of our free cash flow return to owners this past year and the remainder used for M&A including the earning acquisition in the industrial segment that we mentioned last quarter.
When you look at our orders in the fourth quarter, they remained strong at $4.1 billion, with strength in each segment, and our book-to-bill was 1.08.
With these orders and where we position TE, we do expect a strong performance of our portfolio to continue into the first quarter with approximately $3.7 billion in sales, which will be up mid-single digits organically year-over-year despite a roughly 20% expected decline in year-over-year auto production.
Adjusted earnings per share is expected to be approximately $1.60 in the first quarter, and this will be up 9% year-over-year.
Now let me talk about the market, and frame it to where we were just 90 days ago when we last spoke.
Global auto production came in lower than we expected just 90 days ago as our customers reduced production to enable the supply chain to catch up.
And we're expecting auto production to be in the 18 million unit range in our first quarter.
This first quarter production will be well below the nearly 23 million units made in the first quarter of 2021.
Now versus 90 days ago in our industrial segment, the key is that we continue to see an improving backdrop, which is benefiting our industrial equipment and energy businesses, and our medical business is growing year-over-year as interventional procedures increase.
In communications versus 90 days ago, we continue to see favorable end market trends with global growth in cloud capital expenditures and strength in residential demand benefiting our appliances business.
Now while that's a view of what we've seen versus 90 days ago from a market perspective, I also believe in this environment, so it's important to tell you what we're seeing in our supply chain.
While challenges remain in the broader supply chain, we have seen some improvement in our availability of certain raw materials in our own supply chain versus 90 days ago.
90 days ago, we thought we were impacted by about $100 million of revenue due to us not having availability of supply.
This quarter end, we're only -- that's down to about $50 million.
Some of the key highlights I want to mention is that on the environmental side, we set up a new goal to decrease Scope one and Scope two greenhouse gas emissions by over 40% on an absolute basis by 2030.
And this new goal is above and beyond the 35% reduction we've already made in absolute greenhouse gas emission reductions over the past decade.
And today, I'm happy to say over 20% of TE's production currently uses carbon-free electricity.
If you look at social initiatives, we set a goal to increase women in leadership position by over 26% by 2025.
For the fourth quarter, our orders were over $4 billion, with year-over-year order growth in all regions.
We continue to see growth in Asia, where China orders were up 17%, and growth across all three segments.
In Europe, orders were up 21% and North America orders were up 26%.
But the one key difference is we did see growth in our transportation segment orders in China sequentially where our auto orders were up 9%.
Segment sales were up 16% organically year-over-year with growth in each of our businesses.
Our auto business grew 12% organically despite the declines in auto production that I mentioned.
Hybrid and electric vehicle production grew 50% year-over-year increasing from roughly six million units produced in 2020 to roughly nine million units produced globally in 2021.
We saw 38% organic growth with increases across all submarket verticals.
In our sensors business in the segment, we saw 15% organic growth driven by transportation applications with the new program ramps that we've talked to you about in the past few years.
And for this segment, adjusted operating margins expanded nearly 500 basis points to 18% driven by higher volume and strong operational performance by our team.
Our sales increased 6% organically year-over-year.
Industrial equipment was up 32% organically with double-digit growth in all regions driven by momentum in factory automation applications where we continue to see the benefit from accelerated capital expenditures in areas like semiconductor manufacturing as well as in the automotive space.
Our AD&M business declined 18% organically year-over-year driven by the continued market weakness I talked about earlier.
And in our energy business, we saw 8% organic growth driven by increases in renewables, especially global solar applications.
And it was nice that our medical business grew 5% year-over-year, and it's growing in line with the recovery that we're seeing in the interventional procedures.
At a margin level, the segment expanded margin year-over-year by 200 basis points to 15.9% driven by strong operational performance.
Sales grew 36% organically year-over-year for the segment, and in both businesses.
It's clear that our communications team continues to deliver an outstanding performance with record adjusted operating margins of 24.7%, and this is up 300 basis points versus a strong quarter in the prior year.
Sales of $3.8 billion were up 17% on a reported basis and 16% on an organic basis year-over-year.
Currency exchange rates positively impacted sales by $51 million versus the prior year.
Adjusted operating income was $706 million with an adjusted operating margin of 18.4 -- I'm sorry, 18.5%, with strong year-over-year fall-throughs.
GAAP operating income was $660 million and included $38 million of restructuring and other charges and $8 million of acquisition-related charges.
For the full year, restructuring charges were $208 million, in line with expectations, and I expect restructuring charges to decline in fiscal 2022 to approximately $150 million.
Adjusted earnings per share was $1.69 and GAAP earnings per share was $2.40 for the quarter and included a tax-related benefit of $0.92, primarily related to decreases and our valuation allowances associated with tax planning.
We also had a charge of $0.07 related to the annuitization of the proportion of our U.S. pension liabilities.
Additionally, we have restructuring, acquisition and other charges of $0.14.
Free cash flow was approximately $535 million for the quarter.
And during the quarter, we utilized approximately $300 million for acquisitions, including earnings in our industrial segment, which Terrence mentioned earlier.
The adjusted effective tax rate in Q4 was 20% and approximately 19% for the full year.
For 2022, we expect an adjusted effective tax rate of around 19% but continue to expect our cash tax rate to be in the mid-teens.
We are back above the 2019 pre-COVID levels on every financial metric, with sales up 11%, adjusted operating margins expanding over 100 basis points, adjusted earnings per share increasing by 17% and free cash flow up 29%.
To provide some segment-level examples, our transportation sales are up approximately 15% versus fiscal 2019, despite auto production declining over 11% during that same time frame.
Similarly, in our communications segment, sales are up approximately 25% over this time period, significantly outperforming our end markets.
Fiscal 2021 sales of $14.9 billion were up 23% on a reported basis and 18% organically year-over-year.
Currency exchange rates positively impacted sales by $444 million versus the prior year.
Adjusted operating margins of 18.1% and expanded by nearly 400 basis points year-over-year with expansion in every segment.
Our adjusted earnings per share expanded 53% year-over-year to $6.51.
We generated approximately 100% conversion to adjusted net income with record free cash flow of approximately $2.1 billion for the year.
During the year, we returned over $1.5 billion to shareholders and utilized over $400 million for acquisitions.
Going forward, we remain committed to our balanced capital deployment strategy and expect to return 2/3 of our free cash flow to shareholders while supporting our inorganic growth initiatives through bolt-on acquisitions.

Summary:
We generated sales of $3.8 billion with 16% organic growth and adjusted earnings per share ahead of guidance at $1.69, which was up 46% year-over-year.
With these orders and where we position TE, we do expect a strong performance of our portfolio to continue into the first quarter with approximately $3.7 billion in sales, which will be up mid-single digits organically year-over-year despite a roughly 20% expected decline in year-over-year auto production.
Sales of $3.8 billion were up 17% on a reported basis and 16% on an organic basis year-over-year.
Adjusted earnings per share was $1.69 and GAAP earnings per share was $2.40 for the quarter and included a tax-related benefit of $0.92, primarily related to decreases and our valuation allowances associated with tax planning.