Dirk Van De Put
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer at Mondelez International
Thank you, Shep, and thank you, everyone, for joining the call today. I am starting off at Slide 4. 2021 marked another year of strong top and bottom line results. Growth was driven equally by volume and pricing as we leverage the strength of our brands and execution capabilities. We continued to deliver on our long-term growth algorithm, returning nearly $4 billion in capital to shareholders while investing in our growth initiatives, positioning us well to deliver strong performance in 2022 and beyond.
The COVID-19 pandemic continues to impact both consumer behavior and the broader operating environment. Against this backdrop, over the past two years, consumers continue to choose our trusted and beloved brands for both comfort and sustenance at home and on the go. We have delivered on this strong underlying demand across our brands and geographies with continued strength in execution, activation and innovation. As a result, our cumulative market share remains higher than pre-COVID levels.
At the same time, we are continuing to operate in a dynamic environment characterized by global input cost inflation alongside supply chain, labor and transportation disruption. We are effectively mitigating these challenges through ongoing cost discipline and strategic pricing actions. We also continue to execute well against our strategic growth priorities, investing in our brands, capabilities and sustainability initiatives while expanding our portfolio with the addition of several growth accretive acquisitions, Hu, Grenade, Gourmet Food and Chipita, which closed earlier this month. These additions increased our exposure to broader snacking categories and growing profit pools.
Along with our financial performance, we made progress in other areas. We continue to advance our ESG goals, setting ambitious new targets for achieving net zero by 2050, and we continue to accelerate our DEI agenda. And none of this would be possible without our people, the best in the CPG industry. We're proud of the way our teams continue to focus on delivering great products to our consumers as pandemic conditions continue to impact both our work lives and our personal lives. I am especially grateful to our frontline teams whose hard work and dedication delights families all over the world. We are confident that the strength of our brands, our proven strategy and our continued investments position us well to achieve our long-term financial targets in 2022 and beyond.
Let's take a closer look at the market and macro trends on Slide 5. With the recent rise of the Omicron variant, the rebound in mobility that we saw earlier in 2021 has slowed down in both developed and emerging markets and is expected to remain 10% to 15% below pre-COVID levels in many markets. Time at home and eating at home look likely to remain elevated. In the US, for example, 60% of adults are not expecting to eat out more in 2022 than they did in 2021. This positions our core biscuits and chocolate portfolios well as they are skewed towards in-home consumption.
The pandemic continues to fuel the desire for comfort and indulgence, benefiting our categories and trusted brands. And overall, as we found in our state of snacking survey released last week, the tendency for daily snacking is up for a third consecutive year. And although 70% of global consumers report concerns about inflation, it has done little to date to change their grocery shopping behavior. This is consistent with the observed price elasticity, which has been much lower than historical levels as well as a continued share weakness for private label.
Let me spend a moment on the current operating environment on Slide 6. Like other companies, we are experiencing cost inflation globally, particularly on transportation costs, dairy, edible oils and packaging. We have implemented material price increases, ensures we are significantly hedged across key commodities and we are continuing to drive productivity measures. We also continue to manage through significant volatility in the supply chain due to labor shortages at third-parties as well as a continuing gap between demand and supply of trucking capacity in containers in places like US and the UK.
In addition, the US strike in Q3, although resolved, impacted our production output and inventory levels in the quarter. Additionally, COVID-19 continues to cause disruption in consumer mobility in certain geographies, impacting our gum business and on-the-go products. This currently affects a small portion of emerging markets. Additionally, the rise of the Omicron variant is driving high levels of absenteeism in certain markets while limiting recovery mobility.
We are focused on reactivating part of our COVID playbook from the early pandemic days and also looking to further simplify our operations to offset this pressure. And although challenging, we are managing effectively through each of these dynamics. We implement our revenue growth management levers and continue to invest in our brands while taking extensive measures to lighten the supply chain disruption. By applying the lessons learned from earlier waves of the pandemic and maintaining our focus on execution, we are confident that we remain well positioned to deliver our growth targets.
Turning to Slide 7, you can see that our strategy is continuing to drive a virtuous cycle. Strong volume momentum, combined with brand investments and strategic pricing options, position us well to consistently deliver profitable top and bottom line growth as well as strong return of capital to our shareholders. We grew revenue by 5.2% in 2021, lapping 3.7% growth in 2020. Volume was once again a big contributor to this growth, which demonstrates the fundamental strength and health of our business.
Despite the ongoing impact of cost inflation and supply chain volatility, we delivered gross profit growth of 3.6%. Our working media investments have increased double digit versus last year on the back of a double-digit increase in 2020. Combined with our advantaged portfolio of brands and our execution activation capabilities, we gained or held share across 75% of our revenue on a two-year cumulative basis. We increased operating income by 5.8% and delivered $3.2 billion in free cash flow. We view these results as a healthy indicator of our ability to continue to deliver on our long-term growth algorithm.
As you can see on Slide 8, we are now averaging a 4.2% quarterly growth rate since the launch of our strategy in September 2018. We're proud of our strong and consistent track record over this time. As we continue to focus on profit dollar growth, local first commercial execution, high return investments and aligned incentives, we are confident that we can continue to consistently deliver attractive growth.
On Slide 9, you can see some highlights of our successful execution against our long-term growth drivers. These include delivering our strongest Christmas sales on record in Europe, growing double digit versus 2020 and 2019, led by Cadbury in UK and Milka in Germany. It also includes continuing to expand distribution in emerging markets, adding 300,000 stores in China and more than 200,000 stores in India. It includes investing to sustain growth in digital commerce, which grew 29% on a reported basis, lapping 75% growth in 2020.
Digital commerce now accounts for approximately 6% of revenue, up from 3% in 2019. And it also includes expanding our presence in high-growth segments where we are underrepresented, including well-being where we launched breakthrough innovations on key brands like Oreo Zero Sugar in China as well as Cadbury Plant Bar and plant-based Philadelphia in the UK. As consumer demand for well-being options rises, each of these innovations has a clear potential to expand to additional geographies.
We also grew our presence in the premium biscuit space with double-digit growth led by Tate's, which we successfully transitioned to direct store delivery. Additionally, we expanded our presence in close-in adjacencies, such as baked snacks with the successful integration of Give & Go. By realizing revenue and cost synergies, we grew that business double digit in 2021. We also expanded our presence in snack bars with the acquisition of Grenade in the UK.
Switching to Slide 10. We continue to further enhance and strengthen our portfolio in 2021, expanding our exposure to the growing profit pools in chocolate and biscuits as well as adjacent categories and the well-being and premium segments. We acquired four high-growth strategic assets: Chipita baked snacks in Europe, which just closed in January; Grenade well-being snack bars in the UK; Gourmet Food premium crackers in Australia; and Hu premium well-being snacks in the US. These acquisitions are worth $800 million in annual revenue, and they are well positioned to collectively deliver high single-digit growth for years to come. This takes our total number of acquisitions to seven since 2018 and contributing over $1.5 billion of revenue.
We also earned $1.5 billion in net proceeds from selling down on our beverage assets in 2021, enabling further investment in our brands and growth drivers. Additionally, we are in the process of completing a strategic review of our developed market gum business. We expect to complete that review and have more information to share with you at our May 10 Investor Day. 2021 was a strong year, and we are well positioned for another year of strong shareholder returns in 2022 and beyond. By staying close to our consumers, executing our proven strategy and taking the appropriate actions to navigate input cost inflation and supply chain volatility, I am confident that we can deliver strong performance for years to come.
With that, I will hand over to Luca for more details on our financials.
