Ernie Herrman
Chief Executive Officer and President at TJX Companies
Thanks, Scott. I'll pick it up with our fourth quarter and full year divisional performance. At Marmaxx, fourth quarter open-only comp store sales increased a very strong 10%. For November and December combined, Marmaxx comp sales increased low-teens. For the full year, Marmaxx delivered an outstanding 13 open-only comp store sales increase and segment profit dollars increased more than $340 million or 10% versus fiscal '20. For the year, Marmaxx' home business posted a comp increase in line with HomeGoods and apparel comps were up high single-digits. Average basket was up significantly throughout the year and customer traffic was up as well. We are very pleased with the performance of our largest division, which delivered double-digit comp sales increases every quarter of the year and offered shoppers an excellent assortment of apparel and home merchandise throughout the year. At HomeGoods, open-only comp store sales increased a remarkable 22% in the fourth quarter and were up high-teens or better every month of the quarter.
For the full year, HomeGoods delivered a phenomenal 32% open-only comp store sales increase and segment profit dollars increased more than $225 million or 33% versus fiscal '20. During the year, we saw consistent strength across all major categories and geographic regions for both HomeGoods and Homesense. Further, both customer traffic and average basket increases were outstanding throughout the year. We are convinced that we captured additional share of the home market in 2021, as our eclectic mix of merchandise and great values continue to resonate with consumers.
In Canada, open-only comp store sales increased 1% in the fourth quarter and were up 8% for the full year. At TJX International, open-only comp sales were down 2% in the fourth quarter, but up 6% for the year -- for the full year. Fourth quarter and full year sales and open-only comp sales at both divisions were negatively impacted by significant government-mandated shopping restrictions throughout the year.
For the full year, similar to the U.S., TJX Canada and TJX International's home businesses outperformed apparel and both divisions saw strong increases in their average basket. We remain confident that our international divisions are well positioned to capture additional market share over the long term. As to our e-commerce businesses, we are very pleased with our overall sales growth in 2021. During the year, we added new categories and brands to each of our online banners and launched shopping on homegoods.com. While e-commerce only represents a very small percentage of our overall sales, we are very pleased to offer U.S. and UK shoppers 24/7 access to our great brands and values.
Now, to some additional highlights from 2021. First, we took steps to improve our profitability and offset some of the persistent cost pressures we've been facing. Our primary initiative to raise retails on our merchandise is working very well. We are in the early stages of this initiative, and believe there will be a multi-year opportunity for our business. Importantly, our customers tell us that our value proposition in the marketplace remained very strong and shoppers continued to see amazing values every time they visit. Second, we opened thousands of new vendors in 2021 and continue to source from a universe of approximately 21,000 vendors around the globe.
Our global buying presence continues to be a tremendous advantage. Further, we have strengthened our relationships with many of our existing vendors. With many retailers continuing to close stores and ongoing congestion in the supply chain, we offer vendors an attractive solution to clear excess product. Importantly, and I can't emphasize this enough, availability of quality branded merchandise is excellent across good, better and best brands.
Next, we are confident that our marketing continues to help drive new and existing customers into our stores and online. The team has done an excellent job allocating our advertising dollars to the right mix of media channels in a constantly changing digital environment. Further, our customer satisfaction is strong and we continue to attract new shoppers of all ages, including a large number of Gen Z and millennial shoppers, which we believe bodes very well for the future. In '22, we are launching many new marketing campaigns across the globe that will continue to focus on our exceptional value and an inspirational shopping experience.
Lastly, we made important investments to support the growth of the company. In '21, we opened 117 new net new stores, relocated an additional 50 stores and remodeled over 300 stores. We also made necessary investments to expand our distribution capacity and productivity to support our rapidly growing top line and future growth.
Our 2021 pro forma performance gives us great confidence in the outlook for our business, especially when we get back to a normalized environment. When stores were open with no restrictions, each division saw very strong sales, attracted new shoppers and captured more spend per customer. Further, we see a path to improved profitability once the retail environment stabilizes and some of the expense headwinds begin to moderate. All of this tells us that we have an excellent opportunity to significantly grow our top and bottom lines over the medium and long term.
I want to reiterate that we remain highly focused on improving our pretax margin profile. We continue to believe that our initiatives to drive sales are the best way to offset the current level of cost pressures we're facing. Further, we're very optimistic about our strategy to adjust retails, while maintaining our value proposition to consumers. To be clear, our goal is to approach a double-digit pretax margin in the medium term and to return to our fiscal 2020 pretax margin level in the long term.
Turning to corporate responsibility and ESG. I'll start by saying that the health and well-being of our associates and our customers remains a top priority as it has throughout the pandemic. I am so proud that while navigating the ongoing pandemic, our team hasn't skipped a beat in our other areas of corporate responsibility.
Let me highlight a few initiatives from Q4. One of the many ways we support the thousands of communities where we operate is through contributions to organizations focused on emergency relief efforts. This past quarter, we supported organizations providing relief for people impacted by the Colorado and British Columbia wildfires and the Kentucky tornado. These contributions are in addition to our annual donations to Save the Children and Red Cross Disaster Relief. In terms of inclusion and diversity, we launched our new mentoring program pilot and our new IND advisory boards have begun meeting regularly. We also continued further our direct support to black communities. This includes making donations to organizations committed to providing professional development for diverse leaders. Finally, as we continue to pursue initiatives that are both environmentally responsible and smart for our business, we are excited to share that we are making progress with plans to pursue additional even more aggressive environmental goals in several of our priority areas. I plan to discuss these in more detail on our next call. As always, we have more information on corporate responsibility at tjx.com.
In closing, I want to again thank each of our associates around the globe who helped us achieve our very strong results. I truly believe the depth of our off-price expertise and knowledge of our teams is unmatched. Going forward, we are excited about the sales and profitability opportunities we see for the business. We are confident in our plans for fiscal '23 and that our value proposition and the flexibility of our business will continue to be tremendous advantages. Our balance sheet is very strong and we are in a great position to invest in the growth of our business and to take advantage of the excellent inventory in the marketplace and return significant cash to our shareholders. We feel great about our market share opportunities and our goal of becoming an increasingly profitable $60 billion-plus revenue company.
Now, I'll turn the call back to Scott for a few additional comments and then, we'll open it up for questions. Scott?