Kimberly-Clark Corporation

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for your patience and holding. We now have your presenters in conference. Please be aware that each of your line is in a listen-only mode. At the conclusion of this morning's short remarks, we will open the floor for questions. At that time, instructions will be given as to the procedure to follow if you would like to ask a question. It is now my pleasure to introduce today's first presenter, Taryn Miller.

Thank you and good morning, everyone. Welcome to Kimberly Clark's year-end earnings conference call. On the call with me today are Mike Hsu, our chairman and CEO, and Maria Henry, our CFO. Earlier this morning, we issued our earnings news release, and we also published prepared remarks from Mike and Maria that summarized our fourth quarter and full year 2021 results. Both documents are available in the investor section of our website. We hope you find it valuable to have our prepared remarks ahead of this call. In just a moment, Mike will share a few opening comments, and then we'll take your questions. During this call, we may make forward-looking statements. Please see the risk factors section of our latest annual report on Form 10-K for further discussion of forward-looking statements. We may also refer to adjusted results and outlook. Both exclude certain items described in this morning's news release. The release has further information about these adjustments and reconciliations to comparable GAAP financial measures. Now, I'll turn it over to Mike.

Okay, thank you, Taryn. Good morning, everyone. Before we get to your questions, I'd like to offer some perspective on our results and outlook. In 2021, we continued to execute our strategy to elevate our categories and expand our markets. While our overall financial results were disappointing, we took decisive action to offset the impact of higher costs with significant pricing actions. These actions, which began in the first half, help us deliver organic sales growth and improve net selling prices in the second half of the year, including strong fourth quarter performance. We continue to make significant progress accelerating organic growth and personal care. Through the year, our team launched strong innovation and supported it with superior local market execution, all of which contributed to strong share gains in numerous key markets. We also strengthened market positions in several important growth markets, by integrating soft techs in Indonesia, commissioning a state-of-the-art production facility in Nigeria, and advancing our route to market in India. While we're encouraged with our top line performance and the way our teams executed in a very dynamic environment, our margins and earnings were negatively impacted by a challenging operating environment. Info costs escalated well beyond previous levels, and supply chain disruptions limited our ability to fully meet the growing consumer demand for our products. In 2022, we intend to accelerate organic growth further. We have strong brands and healthy categories. We'll continue to support our brands with breakthrough innovation, agile digital, and superior local market execution. We also expect performance in our tissue businesses to improve as we cycle a volatility in demand we've experienced over the past two years. We are committed to recovering and eventually expanding our margins, and we expect to make progress this year. We've taken significant pricing actions and expect pricing to offset a majority of the impact of cost inflation. We're confident in our ability to restore our margins to pre-pandemic levels over time. We remain confident in the potential of our brands and categories and in our ability to create meaningful shareholder value while we work to achieve our purpose of better care for a better world. Now, I would be happy to take your questions.