Bob P. Fishman
CAO and CFO at Pentair
Thank you, John. Please turn to Slide 7 labeled Pentair's sales performance. I will also be discussing Slide 8 to help frame how we exited the year in context to our full year performance. Fourth quarter sales grew 24% with core sales increasing 19%. Consumer solutions core sales growth was 23% and industrial and flow technologies delivered core sales growth of 13%.
For the full year, sales grew 25% with core sales growing 21%. Consumer solutions delivered 30% core sales growth and industrial and flow technologies saw core sales growth of 9%. We were encouraged to see price read out the strongest of the year in the fourth quarter. Nearly half of the price for the year came through in the fourth quarter. We have discussed all year the multiple price increases we implemented across all of our businesses and the fact that there has been a delay in some of the price reading out given the strong backlogs we have carried throughout the year. We believe that fourth quarter demonstrates our ability to have priced readout and we expect that momentum carried over into the new year.
For the fourth quarter segment income grew 18% while return on sales declined 80 basis points. The margin degradation reflects further acceleration in inflation in addition to the lower margin contribution of last year's acquisitions. We would note that we experienced inflation in the fourth quarter that was double what occurred for all of 2020. Adjusted EPS grew 24% in the quarter. For the full year, segment income grew 33% and return on sales expanded 100 basis points to 18.2%. Adjusted EPS increased 36% for the year to $3.40.
Our tax rate ended the year at 15% and our share count was 167.5 million. Please turn to Slide 9 labeled Q4 2021 consumer solutions performance. In addition to the fourth-quarter performance for consumer solutions, I will also be referencing the full year performance on Slide 10. Consumer solutions grew sales 31% in the fourth quarter with pool sales increasing 30%[Phonetic] and water treatment up 23%. For the full year consumer solutions grew 34% with pool up 40% for the year and water treatment increasing 24%.
Growth was fairly consistent throughout the year and a testament to the hard work of the teams to meet record demand while facing significant supply chain disruptions throughout the year. The pool industry has received a great amount of attention in the past couple of years with the acceleration of demand where already positive industry dynamics have grown stronger. Pools have become enhancements to residential properties and are desirable features that new home buyers are searching for in their future homes.
The population migration to warmer climates is another positive trend for the industry as homeowners are looking to add pools to existing homes or purchase new homes with pools in warm weather states. We believe that signs continue to be strong for pool growth to continue not only in 2022 but well into the future. Channel inventories ended the year approaching levels more in line with historical levels. There are still some product lines and geographies however where channel inventory levels are not back to normalized levels.
Our pool team did a great job meeting robust demand while managing supply chain disruptions and expanding capacity at the same time. We have also developed capabilities to enhance our ability to better procure products and improve a smoother delivery for our customers. We completed the Pleatco acquisition during the quarter and this adds to pools aftermarket capability. Pool made great progress in improving its customer service capabilities and we believe that continues to be a differentiator for our leading pool business not only with industry dealers but increasingly with consumers.
We saw strong growth across all product categories and we believe that pool exited the year better positioned to save the ongoing supply challenges in order to continue meeting strong industry demand. Water treatment saw continued growth in residential and further improvement in commercial. Within residential, we saw growth across all channels and within our legacy tanks and valves businesses. While the teams were battling inflation and supply chain challenges throughout the year, we continued to invest in the future.
With Rocean being integrated into Pentair at the beginning of 2021, we made great progress in commercializing the first product that is expected to be launched this year. We are excited about the innovation that Rocean brings to consumers around point-of-use countertop technology and we look forward to updating you on the progress of the launch as the year progresses. The recovery in our commercial business continued but industry traffic is still not back to 2019 levels.
We continued to focus on the integration of KBI and the creation of an end-to-end solution for our customers that has generated an increasing amount of interest. By offering both products and services, we believe our commercial business is better positioned to benefit from continued recovery in the industry in addition to benefiting from new customers that are showing interest in our solutions. For the fourth quarter, consumer solutions grew income 10%, while ROS declined 410 basis points.
The margin decline is due to three areas; first, both KBI and Pleatco joined Pentair with lower margins than our segment average. KBI, in particular, is a services business with lower ROS, with strong recurring revenue and cash flow. Second, the margin pressure is in the form of higher inflation, which did not come as a surprise. In fact, consumer solutions experienced nearly half of its full year inflation in the fourth quarter alone. Finally, margins were under pressure due to ongoing supply chain disruptions that have continued to be a challenge.
For 2021, consumer solutions grew segment income 32%, while margins were down slightly for the year due to the fourth quarter inflationary pressures that we experienced. We believe that this will begin to move back in the right direction starting in the second quarter, as price catches up with inflation and we begin to see some pressure taken off of many areas of our supply chain. Please turn to Slide 11 labeled Q4 2021 Industrial & Flow Technologies performance.
In addition to the fourth quarter performance for Industrial & Flow Technologies, I will also be referencing the full year performance on Slide 12. IFT grew sales 14% in the fourth quarter, with residential flow up 14%, commercial flow increasing 4%, and industrial filtration growing 24%. For the full year, IFT grew sales 12% with residential flow up 15%, commercial flow increasing 6%, and industrial filtration up 12%. Residential flow delivered double-digit sales growth all four quarters of 2021.
We believe many of the population trends that have been driving demand for pool are also benefiting residential flow. Our broad portfolio of products are found in more rural and suburban areas. We exited the year with strong tailwinds as many of our dealers are still facing low inventory levels. The growth in residential flow is all the more impressive given the strong focus on complexity reduction that saw the business exit many older or less profitable product lines.
Commercial flow has been focused on complexity reduction and improving margins with good progress made throughout 2021. We have seen improvement in our water supply and disposal businesses, while infrastructure has slowed due in large part to us being more disciplined on bids. Industrial filtration has benefited from stabilization at some of the smaller product lines, while both food and beverage and sustainable gas continued to build backlogs and see their businesses rebound. We have seen accelerating interest in our brew assist IoT-enabled service for brewing, and we now have over 20 connected systems.
Sustainable gas experienced strong double-digit growth in 2021 and exited the year with further increases in backlog. We have had good success in our biogas offerings with a number of wins during the year and the funnel remains strong. We're also seeing more and more interest in our carbon capture technology. For the fourth quarter, IFT grew segment income 63%, while ROS expanded 440 basis points. For the full year, IFT grew segment income 30% and ROS expanded 210 basis points to 15%.
IFT was hit especially hard on the demand side when the onset of COVID-19 brought demand to a halt. The business is focused on the elements within its control and the combination of growth in higher-margin businesses, further complexity reduction, and overall productivity. These are all big contributors to the rebound in margins throughout 2021. IFT saw all three of its businesses exiting the year with strong backlog and we would expect another year of growth and margin expansion for IFT.
Please turn to Slide 13, labeled balance sheet and cash flow. This slide is one we have been proud of all year, and it improved as we ended the year. For 2021, we generated $557 million of free cash flow. We ended the year with our balance sheet levered at only one times and our return on invested capital exceeded 19%. We returned roughly half of our free cash flow to shareholders through dividends and share repurchases. We also funded two strategic acquisitions, KBI and Pleatco, to further the strategies of water treatment and pool.
It is worth noting that Pleatco also contributed a little to IFT as it brought some clean air filtration technologies that fit nicely with one of our existing product lines in Industrial Filtration. We plan to remain disciplined with our capital and we believe that we have more than enough flexibility to return capital to shareholders and fund growth, both organically and through acquisitions. Please turn to Slide 14, labeled Q1 and full year 2022 and their outlook.
Today, we are introducing Q1 and full year 2022 guidance. For the full year, we expect sales to grow 6% to 9%, segment income to grow 10% to 13%, and adjusted EPS of $3.70 to $3.80 or up 9% to 12%. Embedded in our guidance is a continued expectation for growth in all three of our verticals. Residential is roughly 60% of our sales with 80% of that serving replacement and only 20% exposed to new construction. While we would expect new construction overall to moderate following two stellar years of growth, we believe this will free up labor to serve strong demand in the replacement market that has been underserved due to the growth in new construction.
Commercial represents roughly 20% of sales, primarily in our water treatment business. We are encouraged with the growth that commercial experienced in 2021 given that industry volumes are still not back to 2019 levels. Industrial is the remaining 20% of sales and the strong exit to 2021 across IFT informs our expectations that industrial growth should continue in 2022. Within our full year sales guidance, we expect Consumer Solutions to grow mid to high single digits and IFT to grow approximately mid-single digits for the year.
On the income side for the full year, we do expect price to offset inflation given that the many pricing efforts we undertook in 2021 are reading out, and we expect inflation headwinds to lessen in the back half of the year. We also expect that our transformation activities will move to the execution phase and benefit us in 2022 and beyond. As a result, we expect further ROS expansion in 2022 to approximately 19%. While we expect to see continued topline growth in Q1 due to the strong demand in many of our businesses, we expect to continue to be challenged with higher inflation and supply chain challenges.
While we anticipate price reading out higher in the first quarter, we do not expect it to fully offset inflation until the second quarter which is putting pressure on our Q1 profitability. We do expect roughly 50% of EPS for the year to be in the first half, in line with historical norms. Below the operating line, we expect corporate expense to be approximately $20 million in Q1 and roughly $80 million for the full year. We are forecasting net interest to be approximately $5 million in Q1 and between $16 million to $18 million for the full year.
We expect the tax rate to be roughly 16% and the share count to be 167 million to 168 million for both Q1 and the full year. Finally, we expect free cash flow to approximate net income. I would now like to turn the call over to Stephanie for Q&A after which John will have a few closing remarks. Stephanie, please open the line for questions. Thank you.
