Jamey Mock
Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer at Revvity
Thanks a lot and good evening, everyone. Before turning to the financial results, I want to remind everyone that our fourth quarter earnings call presentation has been posted on the Investors section of our website under Financial Information. As Prahlad mentioned, we had another successful quarter to the closeout of 2021, which again came in above our expectations on both the top and bottom line, despite facing some headwinds that were slightly greater than we had anticipated going into the quarter.
I think this performance in the face of some cyclical adversity, is a proof point of the transformation that has taken place at the company over the last two to three years. Not only from a portfolio composition standpoint, but also from an operational agility and teamwork perspective. While supply chain and lockdown pressures are likely to be temporary in nature, new challenges will inevitably arise, but our team has demonstrated the ability to execute and flourish in any environment. I am grateful and proud of their efforts.
Moving to the top line in the fourth quarter, it was great to see both our COVID and non-COVID revenues, again, exceed our expectations, as both our Discovering and Analytical Solutions and our Diagnostic segments came in better than we have expected on a non-COVID basis. I'm also pleased to see our recent addition performing very well, and contribute over $150 million of incremental revenue in the quarter, with more than half coming from BioLegend.
Overall, our adjusted revenue came in at $1.36 billion, which was up 1% year-over-year, despite our COVID revenues declining significantly compared to the fourth quarter of 2020. Foreign exchange was a 1% headwind to revenue, slightly worse than what we had assumed at start of the quarter, while recent acquisitions added 11% to our total revenues, which was in line with our expectations.
When combined with 11% non-COVID organic growth and $336 million of COVID-related revenues, both of which I note are up slightly from our pre-announcement from a few weeks ago. Our total organic revenues only declined 9% year-over-year, despite COVID revenues being down over $200 million compared to the fourth quarter of 2020. This 9% total organic decline came in slightly favorable to the 12% decline we had approximated at the time of our pre-announcement.
I'd also point out that the 11% non-COVID organic growth we achieved in the quarter, was despite an estimated 3% to 4% headwind from supply chain and lockdown pressures, that were above and beyond what we had assumed at the start of the quarter. Also, the Q4 strength was certainly not because of any pull forwards, as we ended the year with our record non-COVID backlog that was up significantly compared to a year ago. So we are in a great position heading into 2022, and we expect to be able to work through some of this backlog in the coming months, which I'll touch on more later.
As to the $336 million of revenue we generated in the fourth quarter from our COVID-related products and services, the contribution from our COVID-related labs was fairly consistent to the third quarter, while our product-related COVID revenue was up mid-teen sequentially, in line with estimated testing volumes to approximately $200 million.
As highlighted in our pre-announcement; we saw strong COVID PCR tests and extraction kit demand throughout the fourth quarter, especially in the month of December, as Omicron spread across the globe. For the full year, this brings our total COVID-related revenues to almost $1.6 billion, with a composition evenly split between our labs and product-related revenues.
As it relates to our business segments, Diagnostics generated $710 million of adjusted revenue in Q4, which represented 52% of total revenue and was down 17% year-over-year. Organically, the business declined 20% due to the lower COVID revenues year-over-year. On a non-COVID basis, our Diagnostics revenue grew 14% year-over-year, with all three franchises growing double-digits, led again by Applied Genomics. Geographically, the strength in our Diagnostics business was evenly spread across the globe, with each of our major geographic regions growing double-digits. For the full year 2021, our Diagnostics segment total revenues grew 42% and was up 35% on an organic basis, as our COVID revenues were up nearly 50% from a year ago.
As it relates to our Applied Genomics business, which falls within our Diagnostics segment, total revenue declined significantly year-over-year due to the drop in COVID revenues, but grew more than 30% on a non-COVID basis. Given this consistently strong non-COVID growth throughout 2021, our Applied Genomics business was up more than 50% last year on a non-COVID basis. Of note, we were seeing strong demand for our JANUS liquid handlers, amongst biotech customers and clinical NGS providers. While we expect our Applied Genomics business to remain strong in 2022, we anticipated top line growth rates to normalize, after the outsized growth this past year.
In our Immunodiagnostics franchise, total organic revenue was down slightly more than 20% year-over-year in the quarter, due to the reduction in overall COVID revenues compared to a year ago. However, on a non-COVID basis, organic growth was up low double-digits globally, despite facing a larger than expected impact from COVID-related lockdowns, especially in China. EUROIMMUN also continued to grow double-digits in Q4, and finished the year with greater than 20% organic growth, both on a non-COVID basis. It's integration of IDS, which we acquired back in mid-2021 is off to a great start, with joint commercial activities already underway. Oxford saw strong growth in 2021 and performed in line with our expectations for the year, as some headwinds from lockdowns in certain regions were offset by increasing traction of its COVID-related T cell assays, which are being used in research to better understand post-vaccine and post-infection potential immunity, by both vaccine manufacturers and government agencies.
As it relates to our Reproductive Health franchise, while we have continued to face significant pressures from lower overall birth rates in some regions, such as China, over the last few months, we have started to see in some developed markets, including the U.S. and parts of Northern Europe, birth rates begin to flatten out or even increase compared to last year. While it is much too early to determine if this is a durable trend, it is encouraging to see some stabilization after consecutive years of mid single-digit declines in birth rates.
Our Reproductive Health business performed well with low double-digit non-COVID organic growth, both for the quarter and the full year, driven by continued market penetration, menu expansion, strong growth in our labs business and an increasing contribution from our non-invasive prenatal testing offering with Vanadis.
Turning to the Discovery and Analytical Solutions segment; the business generated $655 million in revenue in the quarter, which represented 48% of total revenue, and was up 30% year-over-year. Organically, the business grew 9%, led by strong growth in our life science business, amongst our pharma biotech customers, which grew in the low-double digits. Despite this strong life science growth in Q4, we are entering the new year with a backlog in the business that is more than double that of a year ago, and more than triple what it was heading into 2020. So it really points to the strong demand environment for the business, but probably even more so, the market share we believe we are taking.
I think this is a strong proof point that our complete pharma Discovery workflow solutions for these customers are really resonating [Phonetic], from content development with BioLegend, to target identification, to our high content screening offerings through to our preclinical in-vivo imaging offerings, which are allowing us to provide our customers, a more complete research workflow. These offerings were obviously bolstered over the last year, via the additions of Horizon, SIRION, Nexcelom, and of course, BioLegend. More specifically, Nexcelom saw record quarterly revenue in Q4, while BioLegend continued to grow strongly in the double digits, contributing $80 million in revenue in the quarter.
Through this transformation, we've taken a set of industry-leading small molecule preclinical offerings, and have now transformed them to be well-positioned to provide strong solutions to our customers working in biologic environments.
Outside of life sciences, we saw a strong finish of the year in our spectroscopy instrumentation business, which also grew in the low-double digits year-over-year. Growth was led by sales into industrial accounts, which were up nearly 20% year-over-year, led by our ICP and IR offerings, which we are seeing strong demand from a number of areas, including semiconductors, batteries, testing for emerging contaminants in the environment.
Looking at the company overall from a geographic standpoint in the quarter, we saw double-digit non-COVID growth in the Americas and APAC, while Europe grew in the high-single digits. China grew in the high-single digits, despite being impacted by both lockdowns within Diagnostics and supply chain pressures within DAS.
Operationally, we performed well, despite the aforementioned macro variables. We were able to generate adjusted operating margins of 34%, which while up significantly from pre-COVID levels, were down from the year ago levels, due to the unfavorable mix impact of lower COVID revenues versus 2020. We continued to invest strongly in the business and the team did a good job of managing through inflationary pressures, which we have seen continue into the new year. In an effort to offset these pressures, we began to implement significant pricing actions in the second half of last year, which we expect to translate into a net pricing impact in 2022, greater than what we have traditionally experienced.
Moving to below the line items, our adjusted net interest expense in the quarter was $26 million and our adjusted tax rate was 25%. The better-than-expected top line and strong margin performance, led to fourth quarter adjusted earnings per share of $2.56, which was solidly ahead of our $2.05 guidance. For the full year, we generated adjusted earnings per share of $11.36, which was up 37% year-over-year.
Free cash flow was again very strong in the quarter, coming in at $303 million, which translated into 94% conversion of our adjusted net income. For the full year, adjusted free cash flow was nearly $1.4 billion, with over 100% conversion of our adjusted net income. So I'm really proud of the performance, the team has been able to accomplish here, as we've done a much better job with our collections in particular, and have vastly improved both the absolute performance and the consistency of our free cash flow generation over the last two to three years.
The strong cash flow allowed us to begin our deleveraging process in the fourth quarter, as we were able to reduce our net debt by over $250 million, as compared to the end of the third quarter. This leaves us with a current leverage ratio of approximately 2.2 times net debt to EBITDA, down slightly from last quarter. While our leverage improved sequentially and remains below our desired target of three times, we do expect our leverage to increase over the coming quarters, even as we continue to pay down additional debt, as we expect our absolute EBITDA performance to come down, as COVID tailwinds subside.
So now moving on to guidance; as you saw a few weeks ago at the J.P. Morgan Conference, I'm happy to reiterate that we're already able to increase our medium term 2023 outlook for total revenue, organic growth, margins and adjusted earnings per share. The highlight in my opinion, is that we now expect our core growth to be in the high single digits in 2023 and beyond.
As it relates to this year, we are providing initial 2022 guidance for non-COVID organic growth, to be in a range of 6% to 8%, which includes the impact from our recent acquisitions rolling in throughout the year, with BioLegend only contributing to our organic growth starting in the fourth quarter. With an estimated contribution from M&A of approximately 7% and assumed 1% headwind from foreign exchange, and at least $400 million of COVID related revenue, this brings our expected total revenue in 2022, to be in a range of $4.42 billion to $4.50 billion. I note these assumptions do not account for any incremental lockdowns and/or any COVID related disruptions.
As it pertains to our COVID related revenues, within the at least $400 million contribution we are projecting for this year, we are cognizant there is a wide range of potential scenarios, but we are assuming approximately $240 million occurs in the first quarter. This is down from the $336 million we generated in the fourth quarter of 2021. Our guidance assumes there are no additional variants that caused significant spikes in testing, and so that by the second half of the year testing subsides, and we reach our terminal level of COVID related revenues of approximately $25 million per quarter.
Depending upon the level of PCR testing demand over the coming months, and the durability of our various COVID related lab contracts, it is possible our expectations could prove conservative, so we believe the -- at least $400 million is a comfortable level at this point. However, as we and most others have seen during this pandemic, projecting future testing demand out more than a month or two is quite difficult, and we prefer to plan with a more cautious approach.
In terms of earnings, we are expecting to be able to deliver adjusted earnings per share this year of between $6.80 to $7, which equates to nearly 20% CAGR since 2019. This assumes approximately $105 million of net interest and other expenses, and adjusted tax rate of 20% and our average diluted share count being in the range of 126 million to 127 million shares, and we continue to expect to offset compensation-related dilution.
For the first quarter, we are projecting reported total revenue to be in the range of $1.17 billion to $1.19 billion, which consists of non-COVID organic growth of 7% to 9%, and M&A contribution of 11%, a 2% headwind from foreign exchange, and the $240 million of COVID-related revenue, which are down $310 million from the year ago period. We think a 7% to 9% non-COVID organic growth assumption as a modest amount of benefit from working through a portion of the current record high backlogs.
That said, moving forward, we hope to run the business with a higher absolute level of backlog than we have in the past, which I believe will further improve our ability to consistently execute towards our goals.
In terms of adjusted earnings per share for the first quarter, we are forecasting a range of $2.05 to $2.10, which assumes $27 million of adjusted net interest and other expenses, and an adjusted 21% tax rate and a diluted share count of 126 million to 127 million. And while we are not providing quarterly guidance at this time for the remainder of the year, I would point out that we will be facing our most difficult year-ago organic comparison in Q2 for this year for your modeling purposes. All of this guidance is detailed on the second to last page of today's presentation, that is on our investor website as well.
In closing, a year ago, I described the year 2020 as likely being one of the most important in the history of PerkinElmer, and that I felt we were much better positioned as an organization heading into 2021. After completing the addition of nine new businesses to the PerkinElmer family over the last 14 months, while also continuing to make significant progress on our internal strategic imperatives, I will repeat my comments from a year ago, and that I think 2021 is likely going to go down as one of the most important years in the history of PerkinElmer, and I know we are much better positioned as an organization heading into 2022.
And with that, operator, at this time, we would like to open up the call for questions.
