Robert W. McMahon
Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer at Agilent Technologies
Thanks, Mike. And good afternoon, everyone. In my remarks today, I'll provide some additional details on revenue and take you through the income statement and some other key financial metrics. I'll then finish up with our initial outlook for the upcoming year and for the first quarter. Unless otherwise noted, my remarks will focus on non-GAAP results.
As Mike mentioned, we had very strong results in the fourth quarter. Revenue was $1.66 billion, reflecting reported growth of 12%. And before I get into the details, I want to acknowledge our supply chain team, which has been doing a great job managing in a very challenging global environment.
Core revenue growth at 11% was a point above our top end guidance range. Currency accounted for 0.8% of growth, while M&A contributed half a point of growth during Q4. And as expected, COVID-19-related revenues were roughly flat sequentially and resulted in just over a point headwind to the quarterly revenue growth. Late in the quarter, we did see transit times that were in certain cases greater than anticipated, resulting in some revenues being deferred into Q1. Our results were driven by a continuation of outstanding momentum in Pharma and in Biopharma in particular, while Chemical and Energy and Diagnostics and clinical also delivered strong results for us.
Our largest market, Pharma, grew 21% during the quarter against a tough compare of 12% last year. The Small Molecule segment delivered mid-teens growth, while Large Molecule grew 30%. Pharma was a standout all year, growing 24% for the full year after growing 6% in 2020. And in FY '22, we expect our Pharma business to grow in the high-single digits.
Chemical and Energy continue to show strength growing 11% with instrument growth in the mid-teens during the quarter. This impressive performance was against a 3% increase last year. The C&E business grew 12% for the year after declining 3% in 2020. Growth was driven by continued momentum in chemicals and engineered materials and we expect our C&E business to continue to grow solidly next year in the high-single digits.
Diagnostics and Clinical grew 11% with all three groups growing nicely during the quarter. While the largest dollar contributor to this market is DGG, driven by our pathology-related businesses, the LSAG business continues to penetrate the clinical market and drive growth with strong performances by Cell Analysis and Mass Spec. We saw mid-teens growth in the Americas and strong growth in China, albeit off a small base. For the year, the Diagnostics and Clinical business grew 15% for the year after declining slightly by 1% in 2020. And we expect to continue to grow in the mid to high-single digits in 2022.
Academia and Government, which can be lumpy and represents less than 10% of our business, was up 1% in Q4 versus a flat growth last year. Most research labs continue to remain open globally and increase capacity to pre-pandemic levels. China came in at low-single digits, while the Americas and Europe were roughly flat. For the year, we grew 7% after declining 4% last year. We expect this market will continue to improve slightly in fiscal year 2022 and expect growth of low to mid-single digits.
Food was flat during the quarter against a very tough 16% compare. Europe and the Americas grew while China declined. For the year, food grew 13% after growing 7% in 2020. Looking forward, we expect food to return to historical growth rates in the low-single digits.
And rounding out the markets, Environmental and Forensics declined 2% in the fourth quarter off of 5% decline last year as growth in Environmental was overshadowed by a decline in Forensics. For the year, we grew 5%, off a 2% decline in 2020. And looking forward, like Food, we expect Environmental and Forensics to grow in the low-single digits in the coming year.
For Agilent overall, on a geographic basis, all regions again grew in Q4, led by Americas at 15% China grew 8% in Europe grew 4%. And for the year, Americas led the way with 21% growth, followed by China at 13% and Europe at 12%.
Now let's turn to the rest of the P&L. Fourth quarter gross margin was 55.9%, up 90 basis points from a year ago. Gross margin performance, along with continued operating expense leverage, resulted in an operating margin for the fourth quarter of 26.5%, improving 160 basis points over last year. Putting it all together, we delivered EPS of $1.21, up 23% versus last year. And during the quarter, we benefited from some additional tax savings, resulting in a quarterly tax rate of 13% and our full year tax rate was 14.25%. Our share count was 305 million shares as expected. And for the year, EPS came in at $4.34, an increase of 32% from 2020.
We continued our strong cash flow generation, resulting in $441 million for the quarter, an increase of 17% versus last year. For all of 2021, we generated almost $1.5 billion in operating cash and invested $188 million in capital expenditures. During the quarter, we returned $195 million to our shareholders paying out $59 million in dividends and repurchasing roughly 830,000 shares for $136 million. And for the year, we returned over $1 billion to shareholders in the forms of dividends and share repurchases. And we ended the year with $1.5 billion in cash and $2.7 billion in outstanding debt and a net leverage ratio of 0.7 times. All in all, a great end to an outstanding year.
Now let's move on to the outlook for fiscal 2022. While we are still dealing with the pandemic and we have the additional challenges around logistics and inflationary pressures, we enter the year with strong backlog and momentum. For the full year, we're expecting revenue to range between $6.65 billion and $6.73 billion, representing reported growth of 5% to 6.5% and core growth of 5.5% to 7%, consistent with our long-range goals. And this incorporates absorbing roughly 0.5% headwind associated with COVID-related revenues with the majority of that impact coming in Q1.
We're expecting all three of our businesses to grow, led by DGG. We expect DGG to grow high-single digits with the continued contribution of NASD in cancer diagnostics. We expect ACG to grow at high-single digits with both services in our chemistries and supplies businesses growing comparably while LSAG is expected to grow in mid-single digits.
We expect operating margin expansion of 60 to 80 basis points for the year as we absorb the build-out costs of Train B at our Frederick, Colorado NASD site. And in helping you build out your models, we're planning for a tax rate of 14.25%, consistent with current tax policies and $305 million fully diluted shares outstanding. All this translates to a fiscal 2022 non-GAAP EPS expected to be between $4.76 to $4.86 per share, resulting in double-digit growth.
And finally, we expect operating cash flow of approximately $1.4 billion to $1.5 billion and capital expenditures of $300 million. This capital investment represents an increase over 2021 as we continue our focus on growth, bringing our NASD Train B expansion online and expanding consumables manufacturing capacity for our Cell Analysis and Genomics businesses. We have also announced raising our dividend by 8%, continuing an important streak of dividend increases and providing another source of value to our shareholders.
Now let's move on to our first quarter guidance. But before I get into the specifics, some additional context. Lunar New Year is February 1 this year, a shift from last year when it was in mid-February. As a result, we expect some Q1 revenue to shift to the second quarter of this year as customers shut down ahead of the holiday. In addition, as I mentioned, we do expect to see the largest impact of COVID-related revenue headwinds in the first quarter. We estimate these two factors will impact our base business growth by 2 to 3 points and roughly equal in impact. For Q1, we are expecting revenue to range from $1.64 billion to $1.66 billion, representing reported and core growth of 5.9% to 7.2%. Adjusting for the timing of Lunar New Year and COVID-related headwinds, core growth would be roughly 8% to 10% in the quarter. First quarter 2022 non-GAAP earnings are expected to be in the range of $1.16 to $1.18.
And a couple additional points before opening the call for questions. In conjunction with the new One Agilent commercial organization Mike talked about, we will be reporting under the new structure starting in Q1. In addition, we'll be providing a recast of certain LSAG and ACG historical financials to account for the segment changes after the filing of our Annual Report on Form 10-K in December. I am extremely proud of what the Agilent team achieved in 2021 and look forward to another strong performance in 2022.
With that for me, back to you for Q&A.
