Prompt:
Human: Joining us today will be our Chief Executive Officer, Dennis Gilmore; and Mark Seaton, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer.
2020 was another strong year for First American.
Our revenues are running well above the prior year and then the pandemic hit impacting our business overnight.
Our top priority is to protect our people and serve our customers and we achieved both.
We quickly transitioned the majority of our employees to working from home and still closed over a million real estate transactions in 2020.
This accomplishment testifies to the dedication of our people and their commitment to our customers.
It also validates our many digital investments we have made to improve the customer experience.
I'd now like to shift my comments to the fourth quarter results.
We generated earnings per share of $2.49.
Excluding realized investment gains, earnings per share were $2.11.
Revenues in our Title Insurance segment were up 26% in the fourth quarter and we effectively managed our expenses, achieving a 53% success ratio, which contributed to a pre-tax margin of 18.9%.
Our focus on automating Title production and digitizing and closing process paid off in 2020.
In a year of rapidly surging volume we closed 32% more orders this quarter than the prior year, with just 6% more employees.
Our direct purchase revenue rose 32% in the fourth quarter.
We experienced an 18% increase in closed transactions and 11% increase in the average revenue per order.
This growth is a sign of a continued strength of the housing market.
Refinance revenue continued to benefit from low mortgage rates with revenue rising 79% over the prior year.
Commercial rebounded strongly in the fourth quarter.
Since the onset of the pandemic commercial has been slow to recover than residential.
Commercial revenue was down 39% in the second quarter, 29% in the third quarter and the fourth quarter improved to a 5% decline of an all-time high fourth quarter of 2019.
We are encouraged that the order momentum over the last few months has picked up and we expect to have a strong commercial year in 2020.
Turning to our Specialty Insurance segment, revenues were $141 million, a 7% increase over the prior year.
As we disclosed in January, our Property and Casualty business entered into a book transfer agreement, which provide qualifying agents and customers an opportunity to easily transfer their policies.
As of February 1, we are no longer quoting new policies and expect to discontinue policy renewals in May.
We anticipate the transfer will be complete by the end of the third quarter of 2022.
This transaction enables us to maintain focus on our core business and redeploy the capital to areas with higher expected returns.
In the fourth quarter, we raised our quarterly dividend from $0.44 to $0.46 and we repurchased 1.3% of our shares outstanding at an average price of $49.20 and have continued our buying in 2021.
We believe both the short-term and long-term prospects of First American are stronger than the market is giving us credit for and as a result of aggressively repurchased shares.
Turning to our outlook, early indications are that the real estate market will remain robust this year.
The strong open order pipeline we built in the fourth quarter is moving to the revenue at what is traditionally our slowest period.
In January, our purchase orders were up 17% and we opened 3,200 refinance transactions per day, continuing the same trend we experienced for the last several months.
And as previously mentioned, we think this will be another good year for our Commercial business.
While we are encouraged by the strength of our markets, we remain focused on the long-term opportunities of our business.
In 2021, we will continue to invest in automation of our title production process and in the refinement of our digital closing platform.
We plan to increase our technology spend in areas of product development, cloud migration, and security.
And we are building digital solutions across our company to transform the customer experience.
An example of this is Endpoint, our title and escrow company that was built from the ground up to deliver a reimagined closing experience.
We believe these investments will enable us to continue to generate strong earnings for the years to come.
In the fourth quarter, we earned $2.49 per diluted share.
This includes net realized investment gains totaling $56 million or $0.38 per diluted share.
Excluding these gains, we earned $2.11 per share.
In the Title Insurance and Services segment, direct premium and escrow fees were up 24% compared with last year.
This growth reflects the 32% increase in the number of closed orders, partially offset by a 6% decline in the average revenue per order.
The average revenue per order decreased to $2,500 due to a shift in the mix of direct title orders to lower premium refinance transactions.
However, at the product level, we continue to see higher average revenue per order for all order types.
The average revenue per order for purchase transactions increased 11%, refinance increased 3% and commercial increased 2%.
Agent premiums, which are recorded on approximately a one quarter lag relative to direct premiums, were up 25%.
The agent split was 79.1% of agent premiums.
Information and other revenues totaled $282 million, up 39% compared with last year.
A number of factors contributed to this growth including growth in mortgage originations that led to higher demand for the company's title information products and our acquisition of Docutech, which isn't included in the prior year results.
Investment income within Title Insurance and Services segment was $52 million, down 26% primarily due to the impact of the decline in short-term interest rates on the investment portfolio and cash balances, partially offset by higher interest income from the company's warehouse lending business.
This quarter, our investment income benefited from a $4.4 million catch-up related to our Warehouse Lending business On a go-forward basis, we expect investment income to be somewhere in the neighborhood of $45 million per quarter with short-term rates at current levels.
Personnel costs were $515 million, up 14% from the prior year.
This increase is primarily due to higher incentive compensation and salary expense and higher costs as a result of recent acquisitions.
Other operating expenses were $300 million, up 34% from last year.
The increase was primarily due to higher production-related costs as a result of the growth in order volume.
The provision for title policy losses and other claims was $81 million or 5% of the title premiums and escrow fees, an increase from a 4% loss provision rate in the prior year.
To recap, we raised our loss provision rate in the first quarter of 2020 from 4% to 5% due to the extreme economic uncertainty that existed.
Economic factors are a key variable in title claims experience.
And given the deterioration in some of those factors, we raised the loss provision rate.
But the housing market and general economy have improved since then.
By raising the loss provision rate 100 basis points, we have added $52 million of additional IBnR reserves in our balance sheet.
Yet our incurred claims in 2020 were $49 million below our internal expectations set at the beginning of 2020.
Paid title claims show a similar trend with claims $30 million below our expectation.
As always, we will monitor our claims experience and market conditions when evaluating our reserves and we'll evaluate it next in connection with our first quarter earnings report.
Depreciation and amortization expense was $37 million in the fourth quarter, up 24% compared with the same period last year, primarily due to higher amortization of intangibles related to recent acquisitions.
Pretax income for the Title Insurance and Services segment was$377 million in the fourth quarter compared with $284 million in the prior year.
Pretax margin was a record 18.9% compared with 17.8% last year.
Excluding the impact of net realized investment gains, pre-tax margin was 16.8%, equivalent to the prior year.
In the Specialty Insurance segment, pre-tax income totaled $27 million.
We recorded a benefit of $18.3 million related to a reversal of an impairment initially taken in the third quarter relating to our Property and Casualty business.
In the third quarter, this accrual was taken so the book value of our Property and Casualty business matched the expected proceeds from the sale.
We subsequently determined that a book transfer rather than a sale was a more attractive alternative.
This decision required us to reverse this accrual and our Property and Casualty business is currently carried at tangible book value.
The ultimate proceeds we'll earn in the book transfer will be immaterial.
Net expenses in the corporate segment were $22 million, up $4 million compared with last year, largely due to higher interest expense associated with our $450 million senior notes transaction which closed in May.
The effective tax rate for the quarter was 26.4%, higher than our normalized rate of 23% to 24%.
The tax rate was adversely impacted by $7.4 million or $0.07 per diluted share due to a permanent tax difference related to the Property and Casualty business.
I'd like to provide an update on matters arising from our 2019 information security incident.
As previously disclosed, we received a Wells Notice from the SEC in September 2020.
We submitted our response in October and have had no substantive communications with the Commission since.
We continue to believe that the SEC matter, along with all other matters relating to the security incident, will be immaterial from a financial perspective.
Finally, turning to capital management, 2020 was an active year for our balance sheet.
We spent nearly $400 million on acquisitions, the largest of which being Docutech, which has been a great addition to our company.
We also returned significant capital to our shareholders.
We paid nearly $200 million in dividends and raised the dividend by 5% on two separate occasions during the year.
Pursuant to 10b5-1 plans, we also repurchased $139 million in stock at an average price of $43.44 in 2020.
We continued our repurchases under these plans early in 2021 deploying an additional $27 million at an average price of $52.97.
During 2020, we also invested $83 million in venture investments in the Property Tech Ecosystem, which gives us insight into high growth technology companies, many of whom have become strategic partners.
We believe our capital management activities have created value for shareholders and will continue to hunt for opportunities with attractive risk-adjusted returns.
 Assistant:

Chosen response:
q4 earnings per share $2.49.
q4 revenue rose 24 percent to $2.2 billion.
qtrly average revenue per order down 6 percent.
board of directors approved a new $300 million share repurchase plan.


Prompt:
Human: Joining you today from First Bancorp are Aurelio Aleman, President and Chief Executive Officer; and Orlando Berges, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer.
We wish you all a healthy 2021.
Please let's move to Slide 4 to discuss the highlights of the year.
We're definitely very pleased with our results for the year.
I'm truly proud of what our team was able to accomplish, overcoming all the many challenges posed by the pandemic in the operating environment.
It really was a transformational year for our Company with the acquisition that closed on September 1, which has further expanded our market share, solidified our position in Puerto Rico.
We have now over 30% growth in our customer base, reaching 675,000 customers.
We're also very pleased with the technological advancements on the year and our data preparedness.
Our clients' adoption of digital channels continued to improve during 2020, reaching an increase of over 33% in logins and digital transaction increasing over 55% for the year.
It is a priority to continue investing in technology infrastructure projects on digital.
And so, we continue driving efficiency as we progressed in parallel with the integration.
We are definitely very focused on the integration and has been running on schedule and it's planned to be completed by the end of the summer.
On the economic side, the macro and geopolitical landscape in Puerto Rico seems -- continue to be improving.
Economic measures stemming from additional stimulus and disaster relief funding will definitely provide additional support to those impacted by the pandemic and the overall environment.
Lockdowns continue at a different layer, but when we look at December activity, it was actually fairly healthy considering the limitations in operating hours.
Most impacted sectors, as we know, continued to be hospitality and retail.
On the other hand, we are entering 2021 on very solid foot and a fortress balance sheet to support that economic recovery.
We have very strong liquidity, solid research coverage, and very strong capital to begin the year with.
For the year, we generated $102 million in net income, $0.46 per share, shy to the $167 million that we generated in 2019, definitely impacted by the economic effects on the pandemic and the increased provision driven by CECL and the acquisition.
Pre-tax preparation was strong, increasing 6% to $300 million, with actually only four months of our combined company.
And in spite of COVID, actually loan activity -- COVID -- loan activity -- which impacted loan activity.
We'll cover that later.
And obviously, in spite of the yield curve that the banks are operating, which definitely impact the topline revenue.
Loan origination and renewal for the year reached $4.4 billion, and organic core deposit growth, a record growth of $2 billion.
So, it was really a very positive core year for the Company.
Now let's move to Slide 6 to cover the highlights of the quarter.
This compares to $28 million in the past quarter.
It's important to highlight that this is the first full quarter of operation of the combined franchise.
PPNR came in very strong with $86 million, up from $77 million in the prior quarter.
And I think importantly, we are past the moratoriums, and we are very closely monitoring asset quality metrics.
Asset quality metrics remain stable.
And obviously, there is focus on those borrowers negatively impacted by the effects of the pandemic.
We really say it is early to predict final -- final inflows to NPA created by the pandemic, but when we look at initial metrics post-moratorium, delinquency metrics as of year-end still compared better when we look at December '19 pre-pandemic levels.
As I said, we continue to invest in technology to better share our customer.
During this quarter, we implemented a new online and mobile platform for credit cards.
We also continue the rollout of our new branch digital one [Phonetic] platform.
And then, when we look at capital, CET1 17.3%, definitely post acquisition impact still very strong and among the highest.
So please let's move to Slide 7.
I'd like to expand a bit on loans and loan activity and deposits.
As I say, loan origination activity was robust for the quarter, $1.4 billion.
This excludes credit card activity.
Primarily, growth was in the commercial and the auto portfolio.
I think we all know that commercial activity is seasonal, and yes we have a very solid quarter of deals that got delayed in the year.
We also have some volumes on the Main Street loan programs and PPP.
So, if we exclude Main Street and PPP, origination still increased by $278 million to $1.2 billion, so still strong.
The overall portfolio, now it's at $11.8 billion, declined slightly from prior quarter.
I will say primarily due to strategic reductions in residential.
We continue to originate primary conforming loans, which has helped the non-interest income.
And also we received repayments of about $49 million on the PPP loan forgiveness process.
For this quarter, we anticipate another approximately $100 million of repayment in PPP.
Obviously, it depends on the speed that SBA process, the forgiveness.
And we are now, obviously as you know, working in Round 2 of PPP, which was recently approved.
Our initial estimates are around $250 million in loans during the first half of 2021 on PPP loans.
We know that this could replace some of the normal commercial volume over the next months, as it happens in the first round of PPP.
But definitely, this is a great support to small businesses.
We expect loans -- this loans to be smaller, more granular and to be more focused on the smaller businesses.
On the deposit front, there is ample liquidity in the market.
We continue to see inflow of funds.
We continue to see deposit growth.
And we expect the year to continue on that trend.
So, we really focus on increasing loan generation.
We have excess liquidity that we need to deploy.
And when we look at the quarter, core deposits were up another $257 million.
The pipeline is growing.
Obviously, consumer and mortgage trends continue very solid and very consistent.
And as always, commercial is always model-driven.
So, we're working hard to build that pipeline.
Now let's please move to Slide 8.
I think it's important to highlight that the earnings power of our franchise now reach a new high with $86 million of PPNR on the combined operation, again being only the first quarter of this.
The enhanced funding profile of the combined institution will also contribute to mitigating some of the yield curve impact on the overall yield of the portfolios.
And obviously, now we have more customers to reach -- more customers to go after for loan generation.
Looking into 2021, obviously, there is going to be some noise still because of the integration.
The first half of the year is definitely focused on integration.
We want to finish that by summer.
So, there is some expenses that are there to be able to achieve the full benefit of integration.
So, they will be primarily focused in the first half of the year.
And then on the second half of the year, it's important to know that as we -- market recovers, everything reopens which is what we expect.
And as we grow revenue, there is also some variable expense tied to these revenues that could bring some increase.
We are targeting a long-term efficiency ratio of 55% following the completion of the integration.
I want to make comment that we really need to realize that -- recognize that it is challenging for banks to achieve mid-50s in the current yield curve environment.
So, we also expect hopefully some improvement in the curve at some point in time at the end of the year.
Let's move to Slide 6 to slightly touch on the capital and the balance sheet.
Again liquidity continued to build in the quarter.
So we have -- we continued to see excess cash, reserve coverage remain at the similar levels of prior quarter, so very strong reserve coverage at 3.3%.
And then, capital is again very strong with CET1 at above [Phonetic] 17%, after completing the acquisition.
As I said in the last call, capital deployment opportunities remain a priority and are the focus of management and Board.
Last night, we announced the approval to increase the dividend this quarter to $0.07 per share, definitely driven by current and predicted earnings.
And as I commented in the past earnings call, during this quarter, we're actively working on the data stress test, an updated capital plan to be presented to our Board in order to conclude on potential additional capital actions moving forward.
Aurelio mentioned we had a strong quarter, $50 million in the quarter, $0.23 a share, which compares with $28 million last quarter, $0.13 a share.
Again, keep in mind that the quarter does reflect the first full quarter effect of the acquired operations.
We only had one month of those results in the third quarter of 2020.
The quarter included still some merger and restructuring costs of $12.3 million this quarter compared with $10.4 million last quarter.
And also keep in mind that last quarter, we had a Day 1 CECL allowance for the corporation [Phonetic] of almost $39 million and we recognized an $8 million reversal -- a partial reversal of the deferred tax asset valuation allowance, which also reflected on the results.
Net interest income for the quarter, it's up $29 million.
A lot has to do with the $1.7 billion higher average loan balance we have in the quarter, which includes the Santander acquisition, obviously the full effect, but also new originations on the commercial and consumer loans for the quarter.
Those were partially offset by, as Aurelio made reference to also, the fact that we have continued to reduce the mortgage portfolio, which is down about $130 million [Phonetic] as compared to September 30, as well as the $49 million reduction in PPP loans.
Some loans have been submitted for forgiveness, and they were paid off in the quarter.
The quarter also -- we recognized $1.1 million of interest income we collected on non-accrual loans, mostly charge-off non-accrual loans that were recovered.
And the repayment of the PPP loans resulted in the acceleration of $700,000 of commissions on those loans.
On the quarter, we also had a reduction of over [Phonetic] $800,000 in interest expense.
This is even though the overall interest bearing liabilities went up $2 billion from the full quarter effect of the transaction and continued increase on deposits.
So that is significant.
We saw an 18 basis points reduction on the funding cost during the quarter as compared to last quarter.
Non-interest income for the quarter is $30 million.
It is up $5 million.
If we consider that last quarter had $5 million of gains on loss -- the gain on sales of securities, we didn't have much this quarter.
So excluding that -- those $5 million, non-interest income went up again $5 million.
$2.5 million was service charges on deposits, full quarter of Santander acquisition plus increases that we are starting to see on volume of transactions.
The second and third quarter expenses were lower.
The variable component of the expenses were lower in transaction related fees -- transaction related volume, therefore fees were also down.
We continue to see strong originations, lot of refinancings.
Significant part of it, it's a conforming paper that we end up selling.
So we had $500,000 increases in those gains on sales of some of those mortgage loans.
Also during in the quarter, we recognized $1.4 million on fees on Main Street loans we originated during the quarter.
$184 million of loans were originated under the Main Street Lending Program.
And we sold the 95% participation through the government as tabulated in the program.
Expenses for the quarter were $134 million, almost $135 million, which is up from $107 million; again full quarter effect.
Those expenses again include the $12 million in merger and restructuring costs for the quarter.
So far from the start of the process, we have incurred approximately $36 million in merger and restructuring costs.
It's part of the transaction.
And we expect that there will be an additional somewhere between $26 million and $30 million happening mostly on the first half of 2021, as we complete integrations, conversions and a number of other things that are ongoing in the integration process.
Pandemic expenses, again, cleaning cost, additional security and things like that was -- were $1.1 million, basically similar to the $1 million we had in the third quarter.
If we exclude all these items, expenses went up $25 million, mostly again from having the full quarter of the acquired operations, but also the higher transaction volumes on debit, credit card and some other components increase cost, plus some additional items and some $900,000 in incentive compensation increases.
We had $2.3 million in technology fees.
The increased amortization of the intangibles associated with the transaction was about $1.5 million higher for the quarter.
On the other hand, if we look at credit-related expenses that were slightly down were $1.8 million compared to $2.2 million last quarter.
There is one item that has been affected by -- obviously by the moratorium programs and the delays on foreclosures and some other legal processes in the market.
Over the next couple of quarters, we expect some increases in these categories as foreclosures and other legal processes come back to normal levels.
Allowance for credit losses at December was $401 million, slightly down from about $402.6 million we had at September.
However, the allowance for credit losses on loans was $385 million, $386 million almost, which is $1.2 million higher than September.
The ratio of the loans allowance was 3.28% as compared to 3.25% in September.
The provision for the quarter, as you saw on the release, was $7.7 million, which compares to almost $47 million in the quarter.
But again, third quarter included the $38.9 million provision, Day 1 provision we put in to comply with CECL requirements for non-PCD loans on the acquired operations.
For this quarter, the projected macroeconomic scenarios used for calculations of the allowance for credit losses showed improvements in many of the economic variables, including unemployment, which is a critical driver as compared to what we used in the third quarter.
However, the CRA index shows deterioration in the quarter, mostly due to longer projected recovery time frames, especially on commercial retail real estate.
As a result of the required provision for credit losses for the commercial portfolios went up and we booked a provision of $22.3 million in the fourth quarter and the reserve or the allowance for credit losses increased $252.7 million or 2.7% of loans from our 2.3% of loans last quarter.
In the case of residential mortgages on the other hand, the improvement on macroeconomic variables combined with the reduction in the portfolio that I mentioned, the $130 million [Phonetic] reduction, resulted in a release of credit losses of $9.8 million for the quarter.
And same thing on consumer side, the improvement on the macroeconomic variables resulted in a release of $2.3 million in reserves requirements.
If we exclude the PPP loans on a non-GAAP basis, the ratio of the allowance to loans would be 3.39%, which is still very healthy allowance coverage for possible losses at December.
It was 3.38% at September, so it stayed very consistent.
In terms of our asset quality, in non-performing, we're basically flat from last quarter, $294 million.
Non-performing loans increased $3.80 million in the quarter, $2.6 million of the increase was in residential portfolio and $1.4 million in the consumer portfolio.
On the other hand, the other real estate owned came down by $6 million, driven by sales.
We sold $5.8 million of residential real estate, all the real estate that we had on the books.
With the expiration of the moratoriums, what we did see in this quarter was an increase in inflows.
Inflows of non-performing were $32.9 million compared to $18.4 million in the third quarter.
But if you compare the inflow -- this inflow level to pre-pandemic, these were very much in line to what we had -- what we saw in December of 2019 and the first quarter of 2020.
Early delinquency showed similar trends.
We also saw increases in early delinquency from September levels, but it still at levels that are below what we had at December of last year.
So, it's been still very consistent.
Regarding capital ratios, I think that on the non-performing -- before we go to capital, I think that it's important to mention on the non-performing, the way we see it.
We do expect that there could be some increases, not major numbers, but some increases in non-performing on the first half of 2021, as we complete some of this process with the customers and win moratoriums and had impacts associated with the pandemic.
And then by the second half of the year, those would get back to normal levels.
So it's temporary thing.
We feel it's going to be seen in the first half of 2021.
Regarding capital again, Aurelio already touched, it's strong capital ratios.
I do want to mention that leverage ratio shows a decrease from September, but it's all related to the fact that September we only had one month of acquired operation.
Therefore, average balance which are used for the leverage were lower.
The level of leverage resulting of 11.3%, still very healthy and well in line with what we had expected at completion of the transaction.
Regarding the year, again Aurelio touched on this.
I don't want to go into a lot of detail, but clearly, the biggest impact was the provision.
Net income for the year was $102 million or $0.46 a share, but it was affected by $130 million increase in provision, which includes pandemic impact and the fact that we did record the Day 1 CECL allowance of $39 million I mentioned before required for the loans -- the non-PCD loans we obtained under transaction.
Adjusted pre-tax pre-provision for the year was up 6% to $300 million from $284 million.
So, it was a pretty good improvement.
And that obviously includes some additional months from the acquired Santander operation.
NPAs year over year decreased $24 million to $294 million, and we continue to work on the process of getting those numbers down.
 Assistant:

Chosen response: compname announces increase in quarterly cash dividend to $0.07 per share.


Prompt:
Human: As Lindsay mentioned, I am Christine Cannella, vice president, investor relations with Fresh Del Monte Produce.
Joining me in today's discussion are Mohammad Abu-Ghazaleh, chairman and chief executive officer; and Eduardo Bezerra, senior vice president and chief financial officer.
You may also visit the company's website at freshdelmonte.com for a copy of today's release, as well as to register for future distribution.
With that, I am pleased to turn today's call over to Mohammad.
The message we want to deliver today is one of resiliency.
Fresh Del Monte Produce is driven by a team that understands there will always be challenges somewhere in the world and we operate under a model and philosophy in line with that understanding.
Even with the new challenge brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic, our vertical integration and portfolio diversification strength helped to maintain our business continuity in the second quarter of 2020.
As a global business that operates in over 100 countries around the globe, each of our locations were impacted by COVID-19 in different ways to different degrees and at different times based on mandatory government shutdowns, including restaurants, schools, foodservice, and business closures.
While we did benefit during the quarter from gradual reopenings in certain regions globally, in North America we continued to experience reduced demand from our customers in the restaurant and foodservice industries, as well as ongoing shifts in demand at retail that suffered our quarterly financial performance.
Despite these challenges, our global firms, plants and distribution centers remained operational with minimal disruptions in our shipping and logistic operations.
We also strengthened our liquidity position and we were able to reduce our debt despite the market disruption.
During the quarter as the pandemic took hold, we remained focused on our business transformation plan for 2020 and beyond to respond to the economic environment and position us for better performance as we work through the global impact of the pandemic.
We identified several opportunities to drive efficiencies and improve utilization of our assets that will de-leverage our business and provide liquidity to fund our investments with the potential sale of available properties we do not intend to use in the future.
We capitalized on our new avocado processing facility in Mexico, ramping up production four months sooner than expected.
We commenced our move to our new Gonzales, California facility, with the goal to have our Mann Packing operations consolidated under one roof by the end of the third quarter of 2020.
The consolidation also includes moving our fresh-cut facility from Fresno, California to Gonzales.
This will offer us the unique advantage of processing fresh-cut fruit and fresh-cut vegetables in one facility in the Salinas Valley.
Another highlight of our transformation is consolidating two facilities in Phoenix, Arizona, which we believe will offer significant savings.
In early July, we received the first of our six new containerized vessels.
We are scheduled to receive three additional vessels spread over the next five months, which will replace existing chartered vessels.
We believe these new containerized vessels will allow us to generate substantial savings in our sea logistics, expand our commercial cargo business, as well as ensure food chain optimization, increase quality and have a positive impact on the environment, getting us closer to our commitment to reduce our vessel emissions by 10%, with an estimated savings of nearly 19,000 metric tons of fuel each year.
During the quarter, we aligned our sales, marketing and operations team in North America under one leader to further optimize the way we work as an organization.
Another example of our business transformation was taking steps to accelerate the expansion of our e-commerce strategy launched in the Middle East in the first quarter.
I am pleased to share that in mid-July we launched a pilot of myfreshdelmonte.com in the Dallas, Texas area, bringing our e-commerce initiative to North America, our largest market.
We look forward to enhancing our offerings and expanding delivery to additional areas in the near future, allowing us to market and message our Del Monte brand of products directly to consumers.
We are extremely proud that we will introduce our new Del Monte pink glow pineapple on our e-commerce site in the coming weeks.
Our initial test launch has gone well and we are excited to share this innovative product with consumers.
In summary, we remain intensely focused on continuing to execute our plan to further strengthen our operations and fortify our balance sheet.
I'm extremely proud of our team for their focus and perseverance through an extraordinary set of circumstances brought about the COVID-19 pandemic and the unprecedented challenges presented by this situation.
I want to highlight some key financial accomplishments.
Despite continued disruption in foodservice sale and shifting demand at retail during the second quarter of 2020, we achieved a net income per diluted share of $0.38 per share versus net income per diluted share of $0.78 in the second quarter of 2019.
Excluding among other things the effect of other product-related charges, which resulted in a $10.6 million gross profit impact related to inventory write-offs, which included donations of products to local communities, we delivered adjusted net income per diluted share of $0.54 compared with adjusted net income per diluted share of $0.72 in the second quarter of 2019.
However, I would like to point out that if you apply the adjusted gross profit margin of 8.1% to the $132 million of net sales impacted by COVID-19, we estimate that we would have delivered an additional $10 million in adjusted gross profit.
Additionally, keeping strong liquidity has been a key focus for our team.
Despite the headwinds of the COVID-19 pandemic, we generated $111 million in cash flow from operating activities during the second quarter, we reduced our long-term debt by $52 million since the end of 2019 and we reduced our long-term debt by $64 million compared with the end of the first quarter of 2020.
During the quarter, we also focused on investing in critical, higher-margin capital projects to optimize our operations and we undertook a review of underperforming assets.
As Mohammad mentioned, the strength of our company and the diversity of our portfolio are most apparent in times like these, and I remain confident Fresh Del Monte will emerge stronger from the challenges imposed by this pandemic.
With that, I'll now get into the results for the second quarter of 2020.
Net sales were $1.092 billion compared with $1.239 billion in the second quarter of 2020, with the unfavorable exchange rate negatively impacting net sales by $6 million.
Adjusted gross profit was $89 million compared with $98 million in 2019.
Adjusted operating income for the quarter was $44 million, compared with $53 million in the prior year, and adjusted net income was $26 million, compared with $35 million in the second quarter of 2019.
In regards to our business segment performance in the second quarter of 2020, in our fresh and value-added products net sales decreased $128 million to $636 million, compared with $764 million in the prior-year period.
The decrease in net sales was primarily the result of lower net sales in our fresh-cut food and vegetables, avocado, pineapple and prepared food product line.
As compared with our original expectation, the COVID-19 pandemic affected our net sales of fresh and value-added products by an estimated $117 million during the quarter when compared with our original expectation, driven by reduced demand for and price competition in the retail channel.
Also, the continuing effect of the November 2019 Mann Packing voluntary product recall affected our net sales in the second quarter of 2020.
Gross profit decreased $21 million to $37 million compared with $58 million in the second quarter of 2019.
Other product-related charges represented $9 million for the segment primarily related to inventory write-offs, including donation of pineapples, fresh-cut vegetables and melons.
In our pineapple product line, net sales were $114 million compared with $126 million in the prior-year period, primarily due to lower selling prices and sales volume in North America and Europe.
Also contributing to the decrease in net sales was the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, which resulted in lower demand for pineapples.
Partially offsetting this decrease were higher sales volume in Asia and higher selling prices in the Middle East.
Overall, volume was 5% lower, unit pricing was 4% lower and unit cost was 10% higher than the prior-year period.
In our fresh-cut food product line, net sales were $110 million, compared with $146 million in the second quarter of 2019.
The decrease in net sales was primarily the result of lower demand in our Big Box Club Store distribution channel as a result of social distancing measures imposed by governments around the world.
Overall, volume was 26% lower, unit pricing was 2% higher and unit cost was 1% higher than the prior-year period.
In our fresh-cut vegetable product line net sales were $86 million compared with $119 million in the second quarter of 2019.
The decrease in net sale was due to the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic, which resulted in a significant reduction of most of our global foodservice business during the quarter, mainly in our Mann Packing subsidiary.
We also faced the continuing effect of our voluntary product recall in November 2019.
Volume was 32% lower, unit pricing was 6% higher and unit cost was 11% higher than the prior-year period.
In our avocado product line, lower selling prices and decreased sales volume in North America as a result of COVID-19 led to net sales of $94 million compared with $125 million in the second quarter of 2019.
Volume decreased 7%, pricing was 19% lower and unit cost was 23% lower than the prior-year period primarily due to favorable exchange rates and increased efficiencies as a result of our new processing facility in Uruapan, Mexico.
In our vegetable product line net sales were $35 million, compared with $43 million in the second quarter of 2019, primarily due to lower sales volume as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic and lower net sales due to the impact of the Mann Packing's voluntary product recall.
Volume decreased 21%, unit pricing was 3% higher and unit cost was 9% higher than the prior-year period.
In our non-tropical product line, which includes our grape, berry, apple, citrus, pear, peach, plum, nectarine, cherry and kiwi product lines, net sales were $75 million compared with $70 million in the second quarter of 2019.
Volume increased 14%, unit pricing decreased 5% and unit cost was 7% lower.
In our prepared food product line, which includes the company's prepared traditional products and meals and snacks product lines, net sales decreased primarily due to lower sales in the company's meals and snacks product line principally due to the impact of COVID-19 pandemic, the continuing impact of the 2019 product recall and product rationalization effort in our Mann Packing operations in North America.
The decrease was partially offset by higher sales volume and per unit selling prices of canned pineapple products due to increased customer demand and higher selling prices of pineapple concentrate due to lower industry supply.
We look for performance in our prepared food product line to improve as a result of entering into new contracts with higher selling prices versus prior-year contracts.
In our banana segment net sales decreased $10 million to $413 million, compared with $440 million in the second quarter of 2019 primarily due to lower net sales in North America and Europe as a result of decreased sales volume and lower demand due to COVID-19.
The decrease was partially offset by higher net sales in the Middle East and Asia.
The COVID-19 pandemic affected banana net sales by an estimated $15 million during the quarter versus our original expectations.
Overall, volume was 1% lower, worldwide pricing decreased 1% over the prior-year period and total worldwide banana unit cost was 2% lower.
Gross profit increased to $39 million, compared to $37 million in the second quarter of 2019.
Other product-related charges represented $1.6 million for the segment primarily related to inventory write-offs, including donations.
Now, moving to selected financial data.
Selling, general and administrative expenses during the quarter were in line with the second quarter of 2019.
The decrease in travel, administrative, and promotional expenses in most of our regions was partially offset by an increase in selling and marketing expenses recognized in the quarter.
The foreign currency impact at the gross profit level for the second quarter was unfavorable by $0.9 million compared with an unfavorable effect of $4 million in the second quarter of 2019.
In March 2020, we entered into several fuel hedges that extend through the end of 2021 to take advantage of lower fuel prices to reduce the exposure of our shipping costs in the Americas and Asia.
The fuel hedges are similar to the foreign currency hedges we have in place to reduce our exposure in different countries that will market our products.
These hedges are intended to minimize our financial exposure to volatility in the market.
Interest expense net for the second quarter was $6 million compared with $7 million in the second quarter of 2019 due to lower average loan balances and lower interest rates.
The provision for income tax was $4 million during the quarter compared with income tax expense of $9 million in the prior-year period.
The decrease in the provision for income taxes was primarily due to lower earnings in certain taxable jurisdictions.
For the six months of 2020, our net cash provided by operating activities was $111 million, compared with net cash provided by operating activities of $65 million in the same period of 2019.
The $46 million increase in net cash was primarily attributable to lower payments of accounts payable and accrued expenses and lower levels of inventory and accounts receivable, partially offset by lower net income.
Our total debt decreased from $599 million at the end of the first quarter of 2020 to $535 million at the end of second quarter of 2020.
As it relates to capital spending, we have postponed several projects to the second half of the year, as well as into 2021.
We invested $19 million in capital expenditures in the second quarter of 2020 compared with $36 million in the second quarter of 2019.
For the first six months of 2020, we invested $36 million compared with $70 million in the same period of 2019.
We continued to prioritize investments while keeping a strong liquidity position for the remainder of the year.
Our investments in 2020 will be in key projects that were in the pipeline, including delivery of the four new container vessels, the consolidation of Mann Packing and our Fresno operation in our new Gonzales, California facility, and as Mohammad mentioned, the consolidation of our two distribution centers in Phoenix, Arizona.
This concludes our financial review.
 Assistant:

Chosen response:
fresh del monte produce inc q2 adjusted earnings per share $0.54.
q2 adjusted earnings per share $0.54.
q2 earnings per share $0.38.
q2 sales $1.092 billion versus $1.239 billion.


Prompt:
Human: As Lindsay mentioned, I'm Christine Cannella, vice president, investor relations with Fresh Del Monte Produce.
Joining me in today's discussion, Mohammad Abu-Ghazaleh, chairman and chief executive officer; and Eduardo Bezerra, senior vice president and chief financial officer.
You may also visit the company's website at freshdelmonte.com for a copy of today's release as well as to register for future distribution.
2020 is shaping up to be one of the most challenging periods ever for our industry and Fresh Del Monte Produce.
The difficulties we experienced in the third quarter of 2020 were driven by the continuing impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, which continued to hinder our performance with decreased demand as a result of mandatory government shutdowns, including schools, restaurants, food service and business closures being our biggest headwind.
These challenges continued to hamper our ability to achieve our financial targets for the third quarter.
Net sales for the quarter were $990 million compared with $1.1 billion in the third quarter of 2019.
We reported adjusted gross profit of $69 million compared with $76 million in the third quarter of 2019, with gross profit margin improvements in our fresh and value-added products segments.
Due to the early actions we took by adjusting our business in response to these challenges, we reported adjusted earnings per share of $0.35 compared with adjusted earnings per share of $0.38 in the third quarter of 2019.
I'm pleased to report that during the quarter, we completed our move to our new Gonzales, California facility.
Today, our three Mann Packing facilities and Fresno fresh-cut facility are now operating under one roof, which we anticipate will enable us to improve gross profit in our fresh and value-added products segment by approximately $10 million on an annual basis; a benefit which we expect to achieve over the next 12 months.
We also made progress with the optimization plan we announced in the second quarter of 2020, reducing underutilized facilities and land assets.
We believe this will allow us to shift assets that better serve the long-term growth of the company.
We identified assets across all of our regions that we plan to sell over the next 12 to 18 months for the total anticipated cash proceeds of approximately $100 million.
Since we last spoke, we added two new containerized vessels to our new fleet, the Del Monte Rose and the Del Monte Harvester, replacing vessels we have previously chartered.
This important sustainability initiative reduces our carbon footprint and brings us closer to our 2025 commitment to reduce emissions by 10%.
Also during the quarter, we continued our efforts to diversify our product line and the channels we market our products in with the launch of our newest product, the pink glow Del Monte pineapple.
The variety is produced on our farms in Costa Rica.
In October, we published an update to our 2018-2019 corporate social responsibility report that includes progress toward our 2025 commitments.
I encourage you to visit the Sustainability section of our website to learn more about our progress, including our recently announced partnership between our Del Monte Kenya operations and the United Nations Foundation to promote the health and empowerment of women employees and community members, along with the announcement from PR Daily that we were named to receive the best Green and Environmental Stewardship Award, which we were honored to accept.
Today, I'm confident that the decisions made in 2020 will be a driving force behind our future performance.
In the third quarter, we demonstrated the value of our business model and generated improved cash flow and continue to reduce our debt in order to better position us to weather this pandemic and emerge stronger.
Despite the COVID-19 disruptions during the third-quarter 2020, we achieved net income per diluted share of $0.37 versus net income per diluted share of $0.38 in the third quarter of 2019.
Excluding, among other things, the effect of other product-related charges, which resulted in a $2.3 million gross profit impact related to inventory write-offs, we delivered adjusted net income per diluted share of $0.35 compared with adjusted net income per diluted share of $0.38 in the third quarter of 2019.
However, I would like to point out that if you apply the adjusted gross profit margin of 7% to the $73 million of net sales impacted by COVID-19, we estimate that we would have delivered an additional $5.8 million in adjusted gross profit.
Additionally, despite the headwinds of the COVID-19 pandemic, we generated $63 million in cash flow from operating activities during the third quarter.
We reduced our long-term debt by $76 million since the end of 2019, and we reduced our long-term debt by $24 million compared with the end of the second quarter of 2020.
As Mohammad mentioned, we announced a $100 million asset sale program to be completed over the next 12 to 18 months to strengthen our cash flow position, reduce our debt and continue to reinvest in key areas of growth in our business.
Our focus on our value-added business is also progressing well.
Measures we have taken over the past year demonstrates the significance of our goals to increase sales revenue, enhance margins and maintain our track record of improved cash flow generation.
We believe we are on-track to realize most of our cost savings actions planned for 2021.
With that, I will now get into the results for the third quarter of 2020.
Net sales were $990 million compared with $1.1 billion in third quarter of 2019, with unfavorable exchange rates negatively impacting net sales by $2 million.
Adjusted gross profit for the quarter was $69 million compared to $76 million in the third quarter of 2019.
Adjusted operating income for the quarter was $25 million, in line with the prior-year period, and adjusted net income was $16 million compared with $18 million in the third quarter of 2019.
In regards to our business segment performance in the third quarter of 2020, in our fresh and value-added product segment, net sales decreased $52 million to $601 million compared with $653 million in the prior-year period.
The decrease was primarily due to lower net sales in our fresh-cut vegetable, avocado, fresh-cut fruit, vegetable and prepared product lines, partially offset by an increase in sales of our pineapple and nontropical product line.
As compared with our third quarter of 2019 performance for the segment, the COVID-19 pandemic affected our net sales of fresh and value-added products by an estimated $56 million during the quarter, driven by reduced demand in our foodservice channel and shifting demand at retail due to the pandemic.
Also, the continuing effect of the November 2019 Mann Pack voluntary product recall affected our net sales in the third quarter of 2020.
Gross profit increased to $54 million compared with $53 million in the third quarter of 2019, and other product-related charges represented $2 million for the segment, primarily related to inventory write-offs of pineapples due to volatile supply and demand condition, as well as additional cleaning and social distancing protocols associated with the pandemic.
In our pineapple product line, net sales were $116 million compared with $102 million in the prior-year period, primarily due to higher sales volume in all of our region, mainly as a result of lower production in the prior-year period due to adverse weather conditions in our growing regions.
Overall, volume increased 15%, unit pricing decreased 1% and unit cost decreased 1% compared with the prior-year period.
In our fresh-cut fruit product line, net sales were $130 million compared with $145 million in the third quarter of 2019.
The decrease in net sales was primarily due to lower sales volume in North America as a result of the continued impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and a shortage of certain raw materials.
Overall, volume decreased 11%, unit price increased 1% and unit cost increased 3% compared with the prior-year period.
In our fresh-cut vegetable product lines, net sales were $96 million compared with $122 million in the third quarter of 2019.
The decrease in net sales were primarily due to the effect of the COVD-19 pandemic, which resulted in a significant reduction of most of our global foodservice business during the quarter, mainly in our Mann Packing subsidiary.
Volume decreased 27%, unit pricing increased 7%, and unit cost increased 15% compared with the prior-year period.
In our avocado product line, net sales were $77 million compared with $98 million in the third quarter of 2019, primarily due to lower selling price as a result of normalized industry supply in the market when compared with the prior-year period.
Volume increased 13%, pricing decreased 31%, and unit cost decreased 37% compared with the prior-year period, primarily due to the improved capacity utilization at our new packing facility in Mexico, which opened in December 2019.
In our vegetable product line, net sales were $42 million compared with $46 million in the third quarter of 2019, primarily due to lower sales volume as a result of the COVID-19.
Volume decreased 13%, unit pricing increased 5% and unit cost increased 26% compared with the prior-year period.
In our nontropical product line, which includes our grape, berry, apple, citrus, pear, peach, plum, nectarine, cherry and kiwi product line, net sales were $38 million compared with $32 million in the third quarter of 2019, primarily due to higher sales volume in Europe as a result of increased demand, along with higher sales volume in the Middle East in developing markets.
Also contributing to the increase in net sales was higher selling prices in the Middle East.
Volume increased 13%, unit price increased 4%, and unit cost increased 7%.
In our prepared food product line, which includes the company's prepared traditional products and meals and snacks product line, the decrease in net sales was primarily due to lower sales in the company's meals and snacks product line, principally due to the impact of COVID-19 pandemic, the continued impact of the 2019 product recall and product rationalization efforts in our Mann Packing operations in North America.
The decrease was partially offset by higher per unit selling prices of pineapple concentrate due to lower industry supply and increased per unit selling prices of canned pineapple products due to increased customer demand.
In our banana segment, net sales decreased $24 million to $362 million compared with $386 million in the third quarter of 2019, primarily due to lower net sales in North America, Europe and the Middle East as a result of decreased sales volume and lower demand due to COVID-19.
The decrease was partially offset by higher net sales in Asia.
The COVID-19 pandemic affected banana net sales by an estimated $17 million during the quarter versus our third quarter of 2019 performance for this segment.
Overall, volume decreased 4%, worldwide pricing decreased 3% over the prior-year period.
Total worldwide banana unit cost decreased 1% and gross profit decreased to $11 million compared to [Audio Gap] in the third quarter of 2019, primarily due to lower selling prices in North America as a result of increased demand, partially offset by lower cost, mainly lower ocean freight cost.
Other products related charges represented $400,000 for the segment incurred as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Now moving to selected financial data.
Selling, general and administrative expenses decreased $7 million to $44 million compared with $51 million in the third quarter of 2019.
The decrease was primarily due to lower selling and marketing expenses in the Middle East and cost savings initiatives in North America.
The foreign currency impact at the gross profit level for the third quarter was unfavorable by $3 million compared with an unfavorable effect of $2 million in the third quarter of 2019.
Interest expense, net for the third quarter, was $5 million compared with $6 million in the third quarter of 2019 due to lower average loan balances and lower interest rates.
The provision for income tax was $5 million during the quarter compared with income tax expense of $3 million in the prior-year period.
The increase in the provision for income taxes was primarily due to increased earnings in certain higher taxable jurisdictions.
For the first 9 months of 2020, our net cash provided by operating activities was $174 million compared with net cash provided by operating activities of $130 million in the same period of 2019.
The increase was primarily attributable to lower payments of accounts payable and accrued expenses and lower levels of inventory due to our optimization efforts on working capital.
The increase was partially offset by lower net income and higher levels of prepaid expenses and other current assets.
Total debt decreased from $587 million at the end of 2019 to $511 million at the end of the third quarter of 2020.
As it relates to capital spending, we invested $57 million in capital expenditures in the third quarter of 2020 compared with $23 million in the third quarter of 2019.
For the first nine months of 2020, we invested $93 million compared with $94 million in the same period in 2018.
Our investments in the third quarter of 2020 included the delivery of 2 new container vessels, the Del Monte Gold and Del Monte Rose.
We also completed the consolidation of four different facilities into our Mann Packing operations into our new Gonzales, California facility during the quarter.
This is an increase of $0.05 per share from our quarterly cash dividend paid on September 4, 2020.
This concludes our financial review.
 Assistant:

Chosen response:
compname reports q3 adjusted earnings per share $0.35.
q3 adjusted earnings per share $0.35.
q3 earnings per share $0.37.
compname announces $100 million asset sales program and increases quarterly cash dividend.
fresh del monte produce - made decision to sell non-strategic & under-utilized assets for total anticipated cash amount of about $100 million.


Prompt:
Human: As Chantal mentioned, I am Ana Miranda, vice president, Global FP&A, and investor relations with Fresh Del Monte Produce.
Joining me in today's discussions are Mohammad Abu-Ghazaleh, chairman and chief executive officer; and Eduardo Bezerra, senior vice president and chief financial officer.
On the site, you can also register for future distributions.
With that, I'm pleased to turn today's call over to Mohammad.
In 2021, we posted robust double-digit operating income growth compared with 2020.
We demonstrated agility and industry leadership in navigating the current challenging macroeconomic environment as we focused on mitigating industrywide supply and labor headwinds.
We implemented inflation-justified price increases toward the end of the year, made investments targeted at automation, and focused relentlessly on productivity.
In the first half of 2021, despite these pressures, gross profit benefited from strong performance across all of our segments, particularly higher per-unit selling prices in our banana segment.
This higher pricing helped offset incremental production and procurement costs following the hurricanes in Central America in the fourth quarter of 2020 and higher demand on key product categories related to relaxed restrictions on social gathering in some of our main markets compared with 2020.
However, in the second half of 2021, inflationary and other cost pressures intensified, negatively impacting gross profit.
The price increase, which took effect toward the later part of the year, resulted in improved performance as we moved through the end of the fourth quarter.
Overall, during the year, we increased adjusted EBITDA to $207 million from $189 million in 2020.
As a result, adjusted EBITDA margin increased 40 basis points to 4.9% from 4.5%.
As a brief recap during the year, we made significant progress on our strategic initiatives, and I would like to focus on that.
We added two state-of-the-art refrigerated container vessels in the first half of the year, bringing our fleet to a total of 13 vessels.
As previously mentioned, six out of the 13 vessels are new, putting us in a stronger, more agile position as we continue to provide reliable quality service to our customers.
The fleet also enabled us to expand our third-party freight services.
In keeping with our shareholder accretion approach, in the second half, we increased our quarterly cash dividend from $0.10 per share to $0.15 per share, bringing our total dividend payout for the year to $0.50 per share, and the same approach will continue in 2022.
In 2021, we reduced long-term debt by approximately $23 million.
Throughout the year, we also made progress on our strategic partnerships.
We successfully implemented a licensing agreement with one of Europe's top frozen goods retailer, the name is Iceland, whereby we offer a broad product mix generating consistent income stream.
In June, we invested in I Squared Capital Global InfraTech Fund.
The fund invests in innovative growth-stage companies, applying technology in various infrastructure sectors, including logistics, supply chain, and agriculture, which are complementary or adjacent to our business.
In November, through a partnership with SEMCAP Private Equity, we invested in Purely Elizabeth, a category-leading organic consumer products brand.
Their current offerings include granola, oatmeal, and pancake mixes.
The partnership is an opportunity to expand our business in the convenience category, providing the platform for us to work together on the development of unique and innovative products.
Additionally, we are excited to leverage our vertical integration to support our partners with supply chain and logistics services.
During our progress into 2022, we announced today another brand partnership with Good Culture.
Founded in 2014, the company focuses on high-quality cultured dairy products, specifically cottage cheese, and sour cream.
They have been an innovator and disruptor in this space, gaining significant market share since its inception.
Both investments, Purely Elizabeth and Good Culture, were facilitated by SEMCAP's food and nutrition team who searches for brands that have proven themselves in the market and ready to scale up their business through strategic alliances.
And we are excited to announce a partnership with McCormick & Company, a global leader in flavor.
This agriculture product aligns very closely with our vision and strategy.
With this project, we are leveraging technology and data, coupled with our agriculture expertise to grow products while minimizing costs and preserving the environment.
At this moment, both companies have decided to keep the location and products and production undisclosed.
In 2021, we made great progress on our sustainability journey.
We were the first global marketer of fruits and vegetables to commit to the science-based targets, consistent with the levels required to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement.
The science-based targets initiative has since validated that our emissions reduction targets conforms with its criteria and recommendation.
And we released our 2020 sustainability report.
On the people front, last month, we announced the appointment of Mohammed Abbas as executive vice president and chief operating officer.
Mohammed joined the company in 2009 and has served in various leadership roles, including head of our Asia and Middle East Regions.
I'm excited to have him in his new role where I am certain he will add significant value to our operations.
Having said that, I'm confident in our team's ability to continue to execute on our long-term strategy of growing our core business; increasing the reach of higher-margin, value-added categories; implementing and leveraging technology solutions as we evolve into an agritech company; and expanding our customer and brand partnerships throughout our global operations.
At this point, I would like to move the call to Eduardo to talk about the financial results.
I will start with our fourth quarter performance by product line, followed by a consolidated overview of our full fiscal year 2021.
Net sales for the fourth quarter of 2021 increased $15 million or 2% compared with the prior-year period.
The increase was driven by higher net sales in our other products and services segment, which includes third-party freight services and poultry and meats category, and our fresh and value-added products segment.
As it relates to comparability between periods, the fourth quarter of 2021 consisted of 13 weeks compared with 14 weeks in the fourth quarter of 2020.
The additional week in the fourth quarter of 2020 contributed an estimated $72 million in net sales.
On a comparable basis, net sales increased $87 million or 9%.
Adjusted gross profit for the fourth quarter of 2021 was almost $40 million compared with $49 million in the previous year.
The decrease was primarily driven by the continuation of inflationary and other cost pressures, which resulted in higher per-unit production and distribution costs, including packaging materials, fertilizers, inland freight, labor, and fuel.
The decrease was partially offset by an inflation-justified price increase effective toward the latter part of the fourth quarter.
The increase was implemented in an effort to maintain our continued supply and service levels with our business partners.
Having said that, during the fourth quarter, we realized sequential improvements in gross profit, specifically in December.
And in addition to pricing, gross profit benefited from fluctuations in exchange rates.
Adjusted operating income for the fourth quarter was a loss of $7 million, compared with a loss of $4.5 million in the prior-year period, primarily related to lower adjusted gross profit, partially offset by a decrease in selling, general, and administrative expenses.
And adjusted net loss was $8.5 million, compared with a loss of $3.7 million in the prior-year period.
Our diluted earnings per share for the fourth quarter was a loss of $0.24, compared with earnings of $0.02 in the prior-year period.
Adjusted diluted earnings per share was a loss of $0.18, compared with a loss of $0.08 in the prior-year period.
Adjusted EBITDA for the fourth quarter was $15 million, compared with $24 million in the prior-year period, and corresponding adjusted EBITDA margin decreased to 1.5% from 2.4% in the prior-year period.
Let me now turn to segment results, beginning with our fresh and value-added products segment.
Net sales for the fourth quarter of 2021 increased by $12 million or 2% when compared with the prior-year period.
As previously noted, the fourth quarter of 2021 consisted of 13 weeks, compared with 14 weeks in the fourth quarter of 2020.
The additional week in the prior-year period contributed an estimated $42 million in net sales.
On a comparable basis, net sales for the fourth quarter of 2021 increased $54 million or 10% compared with the prior-year period.
The primary drivers were increases in our melon and pineapple product lines.
Melon net sales increased in North America driven by higher sales volume and per-unit sales prices, and pineapple net sales increased across most regions driven by higher per-unit sales price.
As an offset, sales of fresh-cut vegetables decreased during the fourth quarter compared with the prior-year period.
Fresh-cut vegetables net sales decreased primarily in North America, including in our Mann Packing operations.
The decrease was driven by lower sales volume and lower per-unit sales prices related to lower demand from foodservice channel and lack of sufficient labor availability.
For the quarter, adjusted gross profit in the fresh and value-added products segment was $28 million, compared with $32 million in the prior-year period.
The decrease was driven by inflationary and other cost pressures, which resulted in higher per-unit production and distribution costs.
As it relates to comparability, the additional week in the prior year contributed an estimated $2 million in gross profit.
From a product view, the primary drivers of the variance were: in avocados, gross profit decreased primarily in North America, driven by lower sales volume, coupled with higher per-unit procurement and distribution costs; fresh-cut vegetables gross profit decreased in North America, primarily in our Mann Packing operation, mainly driven by lower net sales, coupled with higher per-unit production, and distribution costs.
The decrease was partially offset by higher gross profit across most of our other key product categories, including nontropical fruits, melons, and pineapples.
Moving to our banana segment, for the fourth quarter of 2021, net sales decreased by $13 million or 3% compared with the prior-year period, primarily driven by North America and Asia.
The additional week in the prior-year period contributed an estimated $28 million in net sales.
On a comparable basis, net sales for 2021 increased $15 million or 4% compared to prior-year period.
Adjusted gross profit for the fourth quarter of 2021 was $9 million, compared with $17 million in the prior-year period, primarily driven by North America and Asia.
In both regions, the decrease was driven by lower net sales.
As it relates to per-unit cost, North America gross profit was negatively impacted by higher production and distribution costs, while Asia was negatively impacted by higher production and ocean freight costs.
Now moving to selected financial data.
Selling, general and administrative expenses was $44.5 million, compared with $54 million in the previous year.
The decrease was driven by lower provision for credit losses and lower promotional and administrative expenses.
Net interest expense was lower related to lower interest rates and lower average debt balance.
Income tax were a benefit of approximately $7 million during the quarter compared with a benefit of $4 million in the prior-year period, primarily due to the release of valuation allowance as it was determined deferred tax assets will be utilized.
Now turning to our full year 2021 results.
For the full year 2021, net sales increased $50 million or 1% compared with the prior-year period.
In both periods, the increase in net sales was driven by higher net sales in our other products and services segment, which includes third-party freight services and poultry and meats category, and by our fresh and value-added products segment.
The additional week in the prior-year period contributed an estimated $72 million in net sales.
On a comparable basis, net sales for 2021 increased $122 million or 3%.
Adjusted gross profit was $307 million, compared with $284 million in the prior-year period.
As previously mentioned by Mohammad, in the first half of 2021, despite inflationary and other cost pressures, gross profit benefited from strong performance across all of our segments.
The banana segment realized higher per-unit price -- selling prices.
The higher pricing helped to offset incremental production and procurement costs following the hurricanes in Central America in the fourth quarter of 2020.
In the second half of 2021, inflationary and other cost pressures intensified, coupled with seasonality, negatively impacting gross profit.
As it relates to exchange rates, gross profit was favorably impacted by fluctuations versus the euro, Costa Rican colon, and British pound, partially offset by stronger Mexican peso.
For the full fiscal year, adjusted operating net income was $112 million, compared with $89 million in the prior-year period.
The increase was primarily driven by higher gross profit and a decrease in selling, general, and administrative expenses.
Adjusted net income was $81 million, compared with $55 million in the prior-year period.
Diluted earnings per share was $1.68, compared with $1.03 in the prior-year period, while adjusted diluted earnings per share was $1.69, compared with $1.15 in the prior-year period, a 47% improvement year over year.
Moving on to cash flow.
For the year, we generated $129 million in cash flow from operating activities, compared with $181 million in 2020.
The decrease was primarily attributable to higher levels of inventories as we proactively increased the inventory of key raw materials to secure costs and availability.
Inventory was also impacted by the increase in cost of goods, largely related to current cost pressures.
Partially offsetting the decrease were higher net income and higher balances of accounts payable and accrued expenses.
In the second half of 2020, we announced our optimization program.
The program involves selling nonstrategic and underutilized assets, including land and facilities.
The program is improving our return on assets, shoring up our balance sheet, and reducing operational costs.
Since the program was announced, we generated $57 million in cash proceeds, out of which $17 million came in 2021.
We expressed -- we expect progress toward achieving our target of $100 million in cash proceeds to continue in 2022.
As it relates to capital spending, we invested $99 million in capital expenditures in 2021, compared with $150 million in 2020.
The lion's share of the spend relates to the last two new container vessels added to our fleet, investments in Asia, North America, and Europe, and improvements to our banana and pineapple operations in Central America.
As mentioned by Mohammad, our capex investments are heavily focused on automation.
Turning to long-term debt, we repaid approximately $23 million, bringing our balance from $542 million at the end of 2020 to $519 million in 2021.
Based on a trailing 12-month period, our total debt stands at 2.5 times adjusted EBITDA.
For full fiscal year 2021, we declared four quarterly cash dividends totaling $0.50 per share.
This concludes our financial review.
 Assistant:

Chosen response:
fresh del monte produce inc - net sales for q4 2021 increased 2% to $1,017.3 million compared with $1,002.3 million in the prior-year period.
net sales for q4 2021 increased 2% to $1,017.3 million compared with $1,002.3 million in the prior-year period.
q4 loss per share $0.24.


Prompt:
Human: We continue to be in various remote locations today.
We may have some audio quality issues and we really appreciate your patience should we experience a disruption.
A replay of today's call will be available via phone and on our website.
To be fair to everyone, please limit yourself to one question plus one follow-up.
I'd now like to turn the discussion over to Phil Snow.
I'm pleased with our solid second quarter and overall first half results.
And the investments we've made to further advance our offerings in both content and workflow solutions are resonating.
Over the past 12 months, we've proven our resilience and our ability to strengthen our value to clients and we begin the second half of this fiscal year with good momentum, greater visibility and continued confidence in our ability to execute.
Our investments in content and technology are progressing at pace and we see market validation of our strategy with some key wins this quarter.
Our content advances particularly in deep sector being well received by clients, especially across the sell-side, supporting workstation growth.
And our focus on digital transformation allows us to offer more personalized solutions and an increasing number of ways to deliver value to clients.
The market is looking for solutions that are both easy to integrate and unite the front, middle and back office and we are well positioned to capitalize on this trend.
Our shift to the public cloud is progressing according to plan with the majority of our new storage and collection centers successfully migrated.
This quarter, we are particularly pleased to see growth in our core workstation offering.
The efforts we've made through our investment strategy are starting to drive our top-line and we delivered a strong first half due to our ability to execute on our pipeline with continued discipline.
In our second quarter, our organic ASV plus professional services growth rate accelerated to 5.5%.
This acceleration was led by our sales team effectively growing wallet share with existing clients as well as capturing a higher price increase in the Americas.
This was partially offset by cancellations largely across asset management firms.
We are pleased that our performance resulted in increased adjusted operating margin and EPS, we have good momentum going into our second half.
We have reaffirmed our ability to deliver results within our guidance of fiscal '21 and are raising the lower end of our full-year organic ASV growth range to $70 million from $55 million.
Helen will explain in more detail shortly.
Turning now to the performance in our regions.
The Americas growth accelerated to 6%, driven by strong sales of workstations and research and wealth solutions and data feeds in CTS solutions.
Our research solutions had a particularly good quarter supported by our digital transformation and the expansion of our deep sector content offering.
This was evident from wins with our large existing banking clients who benefited from our tailored workflows, which allow them a more connected and personalized experience.
CTS also had a successful quarter as clients bought more of our core and premium data feeds.
And in wealth, we're extremely pleased with the RBC win.
This was an entirely virtual roll out and I'm proud of how quickly and seamlessly our team integrated our Adviser Dashboard workflow and CRM solutions for RBC's entire wealth management team.
Asia-Pac accelerated its growth rate to 9% due to strong performance in Hong Kong, Singapore and Australia.
We saw wins at institutional asset managers and data providers with our research and CTS solutions.
EMEA's growth remained at 4% with wins across the region, most notably in France and the Nordics.
The region benefited from increased sales of CTS and wealth solutions to asset owners and institutional asset managers as well as accelerating new business.
Our diversifying client base continues to seek mission-critical data and we see strong demand for our growing content offering.
We're pleased with the progress we are making in the ESG market as we further integrate our ESG products into clients' everyday workflows.
We've already expanded our ESG content suite with the launch of Truvalue's UN Sustainable Development Goals Monitor.
This is in addition to a new joint offering with Ping An Insurance Group, which offers ESG metrics on companies incorporated in mainland China.
Overall, we see a long runway for growth as we execute more enterprisewide deals and believe that every touchpoint with clients today represents an opportunity to cross-sell in the future.
The conversations we are having combined with our sales team's execution make us optimistic that we will continue to grow our market share long-term.
In summary, our focus continues to be on achieving higher growth and providing clients with effective and efficient solutions across the entire investment workflow.
We remain committed to our investment strategy and to living our purpose, which is to drive the investment community to see more, think bigger and do the best work.
And we are starting to see the rewards of the efforts we are making.
We continue to push ourselves to be a more diverse, inclusive and impactful organization.
To that end, I am pleased to say we recently hired our first Chief Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Officer as part of our strategy to strengthen our organizational accountability, increase diversity across all levels of our company and ensure workforce equity.
We know we have more work to do and remain committed to furthering our efforts.
I'm pleased with our progress as we strive to be the best place to work and give our employees the flexibility they need to thrive in the new normal.
I'm proud of the ways in which we are showing up for one another and for our clients every day.
With that, I'll now turn things over to Helen, who will take you through the specifics of our second quarter and first-half 2021 performance.
I hope that you and your loved ones continue to be safe and healthy.
I am proud of the FactSet team for finding new ways this past year to support both our clients and each other.
Today, I will share more details on our performance to-date and to provide an update to our annual outlook.
For the first half of fiscal 2021, we grew our revenue by 6%, expanded our adjusted operating margin by 60 basis points and increased our adjusted earnings per share by 9% year-over-year.
Our multi-year investment plan is on track and beginning to materialize in top-line growth.
I am pleased to report that the integration of the team and of the ESG and technology assets is largely complete.
As with our previous acquisitions, we will exclude any revenue and ASV [Phonetic] associated with TVL while reporting out on organic related metrics for the fiscal year 2021.
As Phil stated earlier, we grew organic ASV plus professional services at 5.5%, an acceleration from the first quarter that reflects the diligent execution of our pipeline, powered by healthy demand for workstations and data feeds.
Ongoing investments in our core solutions continue to resonate with clients as reflected in our annual Americas price increase, which totaled $14 million, $2 million more than the prior year.
As with previous years, our annual price increase is a contributor to ASV and again this year, further accelerating our growth rate.
For the second quarter, GAAP revenue increased by 6% to $392 million, while organic revenue, which excludes any impact from foreign exchange, acquisitions and deferred revenue amortization increased 5% to $389 million.
Growth was driven primarily by our Analytics and CTS solutions.
For our geographic segments, revenue growth for the Americas was at 7%, EMEA at 3% and Asia-Pacific at 10%.
All regions primarily benefited from increases in our Analytics and CTS solutions.
GAAP operating expenses grew 5% in the second quarter to $276 million, impacted by a higher cost of sales.
Compared to the previous year, our GAAP operating margin expanded by 90 basis points to 30% and our adjusted operating margin increased by 80 basis points to 33%.
These improvements are largely due to net savings from continued productivity through workforce mix and a reduction in discretionary expenses, including those related to travel, office and professional services.
These benefits were partially offset by higher spend in both compensation and technology.
As a percentage of revenue, our cost of sales was 230 basis points higher than last year on a GAAP basis and 170 basis points higher on an adjusted basis.
This increase is driven by higher technology spend related to our shift to the public cloud and increased compensation expense for existing employees as well as new talent to support our multi-year investment plan.
When expressed as a percentage of revenue, SG&A improved year-over-year by 320 basis points on a GAAP basis and 250 basis points on an adjusted basis.
The primary drivers include materially lower travel and entertainment costs and reduced spend due to office closures, offset in part by higher compensation costs.
These results are in line with our expectations as noted in our full year guidance.
As discussed on previous calls, we planned for an incremental investment spend of $15 million each year starting in 2020 through 2022.
While realizing some benefits from productivity and a delayed ramp up in hiring last year, we are on track to spend around $26 million in our fiscal FY '21.
As noted on last quarter's call, we're also using a portion of the pandemic savings to invest further in both sales and new product development.
Moving on, our tax rate for the quarter was 16% compared to last year's rate of 14%, primarily due to lower tax benefits realized from stock option exercises this quarter.
GAAP earnings per share increased 9% to $2.50 this quarter versus $2.30 in the prior year.
The adjusted diluted earnings per share grew 7% to $2.72.
Both earnings per share figures were largely driven by improved operating results, partially offset by a higher tax rate.
Free cash flow, which we define as cash generated from operations less capital spending was $130 million for the quarter, an increase of 75% over the same period last year.
This increase is primarily due to the timing of certain tax payments and lower capital expenditures as we have completed the majority of our office build-outs.
For the first quarter, our ASV retention continued to be above 95%.
We grew our total number of clients by 7% compared to the prior year, reaching over 6,000 clients for the first time in our history.
This growth reflects the addition of more wealth and corporate clients as well as data providers and asset owners, an ongoing trend as we continue to diversify our client base.
Our client retention improved to 90% year-over-year, which speaks both to the mission criticality of our solutions and the solid efforts of our sales teams.
Our user count grew 12% year-over-year and crossed the total of 150,000, largely due to additional wealth and research workstation users.
For the second quarter, we repurchased over 221,000 shares of our common stock for a total of $72 million at an average share price of $322.
Our Board of Directors recently authorized an additional $206 million to our share repurchase program, bringing the total size to $350 million, in line with recent years.
We remain disciplined in our buyback program and committed to returning long-term value to our shareholders.
Given our solid first half performance and improved visibility for the rest of the year, we are bringing up the lower end of our organic ASV plus professional services growth guidance range from $55 million to $70 million, so our full range is now $70 million to $85 million.
This raises our mid-point from when what we first set this guidance six months ago.
Client demand for our enhanced solutions, alongside the momentum built by our sales team, gives us greater conviction in our second half pipeline.
Based on the first half results, we are encouraged by the client response to our enhanced product suite reflected in both growth in new clients as well as increased expansion with existing clients.
We do remain in an uncertain environment as different parts of the world begin to recover from this pandemic.
Our full year views take into account that clients continue to perform in current market conditions and that additional delays in decision making and tightening client budgets could impact our short-term performance.
The global environment will continue to present challenges, but we believe we are well positioned for the longer-term.
I'll turn this over to Jerald.
 Assistant:

Chosen response:
compname reports qtrly adjusted diluted earnings per share $2.72.
factset research systems - board approved increase of $206 million to co's existing share repurchase program on march 23, 2021.
qtrly diluted earnings per share $2.50.
qtrly adjusted diluted earnings per share $2.72.