Olivier Le Peuch
Chief Executive Officer at Schlumberger
Thank you, ND. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for joining us on the call today. In my prepared remarks, I will cover our Q4 results and full year of 2021 achievements. Thereafter, I will follow with our view of the 2022 outlook and some insight into our near-term financial ambitions. Stephane will then give more detail on our financial results and we will open for your questions.
The fourth quarter was characterized by broad based activity growth. With continued momentum in North America, activity acceleration in the Russian markets and a captive offshore market contribution. Upon which, we delivered strong sequential revenue growth, our sixth consecutive quarter of margin expansion and outstanding double-digit free cash flow generation. These financial results conclude an exceptional year of financial performance for Schlumberger at a pivotal time for the company and in our industry at large.
Underlying these results are the following highlights from the quarter. Geographically, sequential growth in North America exceeded rig activity, growing in excess of 20% offshore and international revenue growth accelerated closing the second half of 2021, up 12% versus the prior year. Our international areas posted growth driven by gains in more than 75% of our international business units.
By division, revenue in all four divisions grew sequentially and when compared to the same period last year. Digital Integration led growth posting double-digit sequential growth and record high margins. Well Construction and Reservoir Performance are predominantly service oriented divisions, outperform expectations with strong sequential growth and approximately 30% growth year-over-year on a pro forma basis.
Production Systems recorded year-end sales, which drove mid single digit growth, though partially impacted by logistics change. Operating margins expanded in spite of seasonality effect improving further beyond pre-pandemic levels. And finally, we generated outstanding cash flow from operation exceeding $1.9 billion in the quarter. All in all, I am very pleased with our operational execution, our safety performance and our financial results through the fourth quarter.
Now, let me briefly reflect on what we achieved in 2021. In our core, we fully operationalized our returns focused strategy, leveraging our new division and best in organization to seize the start of the up cycle. In North America, this resulted in full-year top line revenue growth, excluding the effects of divestiture and significantly expanded margins, achieving double-digits, one of the financial targets we laid out in 2019.
Internationally, we also grew the topline and expanded margin significantly as international activity strengthened in the second half of the year. This also resulted in full year international margins that exceeded 2019 levels. Taken together, these margins resulted in the highest global operating margins of the last six years, setting an excellent foundation for further expansion as activity accelerates and market conditions further see both pricing improvement.
In digital, our second engine of growth, I'm very proud of the momentum we'd established during the year. We advanced on our goals to expand market access and accelerate adoption of our platform, AI capabilities and powerful digital tools to reduce cycle time, improve performance and lower carbon intensity. We built partnerships to achieve comprehensive cloud access globally, collaborated with AI innovators to deploy machine learning and AI solutions and enabled digital operations through the automation of key workflows in well construction and production operation.
At the end of 2021, we have more than 240 commercial Dext customers, recorded more than 160% Dext user growth year-over-year and so more than 10-fold increase in compute cycle intensity and a difficult platform. We also made significant production of data business stream and digital operation, advancing our commercial offerings, autonomous drilling and the adoption of Angola edge AI and IoT solutions with great success.
The Q4 results including significant uptake in digital sales and sizable income of the margin are clear testament of this success. In Schlumberger new energy, we continued to advance development of clean-energy technologies and low carbon projects. In 2021, we took a position in stationary energy storage, expanding our total addressable market and advanced all of our venture in hydrogen, lithium, geo-energy and a suite of CCUS opportunities including our bioenergy CCS project.
Some notable milestones achieved include the signature of pilot agreements with Genvia, our hydrogen venture with ArcelorMittal, Ugitech, Vicat and Hynamics, leading company in steel and cement. And with our geo-energy venture, we secured five commercial contracts in Europe and one in North America for a prestigious university campus.
This was also pivotal year for us in terms of our commitment to sustainability. We announced our comprehensive 2050 net zero commitments inclusive of Scope 3 emissions and announced the Transition Technology portfolio to focus on the decarbonization of oil and gas operation with much success. In addition, Schlumberger earned a double-A rating by MSCI and won an ESG top performer award by Hart Energy, recognizing our sustainability efforts, our enhanced disclosure and a commitment to apply our technology and capabilities towards helping the world meet future energy demand.
In summary, 2021 was a great year for Schlumberger. Beyond this operational and financial results and our ESG accomplishments, we made excellent progress in our core, digital and new energy, the three engines of growth that bought us success now and well into the future. Above all, I'm most proud of our people. Their unique ability to execute, mobilizing operation across the world for numerous constraints, adapting logistics and supply chain dynamics and setting new performance benchmark, all of which are in the whole condition of our customers.
I would like to thank the entire team for this being a year of outperformance on every metric. This will pass all of our target this year and created external momentum as we enter 2022, for which, I would like now to share our outlook. Looking ahead, we have increased confidence in our view of robust, multi-year market growth. Tight oil supply and demand growth beyond the pre-pandemic peak, our project that resulted in a substantial step-up in capital spending amid shrinking spare capacity, declining inventory balance and supportive oil price.
In addition, we expect more pervasive service pricing improvements in response to market conditions as technology adoption increases, while service capacity tightens. In essence, 2022 will be period of stronger short-cycle activity resurgence, driven by improved visibility into the more recovery and greater confidence in the oil price environment. And as oil demand exceeds pre-pandemic levels in 2023 and beyond, long cycle development will augment capital spending growth in response to the global supply.
This demand led capital spending growth sets the foundation for a strong multi-year upcycle. Indeed, this scenario has already been established as the number of FID increases, service pricing has begun to improve and multi-year long cycle capacity expansion plans are started, particularly internationally and offshore as seen during the last quarter.
Turning to 2022 more specifically. We expect an increase in capital spending of at least 20% in North America, impacting both the onshore and offshore markets, while internationally capital spending is projected to increase in the low to mid teens, building momentum from a very strong exit in the second half of 2021. All area and operating environments, short and long cycle including deep water are expected to post strong growth with upside potential as omicron disruptions dissipate as they advance.
In this scenario, increased activity and pricing will drive simultaneous double-digit growth, both internationally and in North America that will lead our overall 2022 revenue growth to reach mid teens. Our ambition is to once again expand operating and EBITDA margin on a full year basis, exiting the year of EBITDA margins at least 200 bps higher than the fourth quarter of 2021. In this context in, we see the year unfolding.
Directionally, while we are still experiencing COVID related disruptions, we anticipate typical seasonality in the first quarter with revenue and margin progression similar to historical sequential trends, which will be seen most prominently in Digital Integration. This will be followed by strong seasonal uptick in the second quarter across all divisions with growth further strengthening through the second half of the year, supporting our full-year mid-teens revenue growth ambition and EBITDA margin expansion.
This growth and margin expansion trajectory give us further confidence that we will reach or exceed our mid cycle ambition of '25 adjusted EBITDA margin before the end of 2023, leading to adjusted EBITDA that should visibly exceed 2019 levels in dollar terms.
With this, I will now turn the call over to Stephane.