Vicente Reynal
Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer at Ingersoll Rand
Thank you, Chris, and good morning to everyone. Starting on slide three. 2021 was a pivotal year for Ingersoll Rand with many accomplishments and new records. We solidified our compounding growth story as we reshaped our portfolio to focus on mission-critical, flow creation technologies and high-growth, sustainable end markets while establishing a new capital allocation strategy designed to enable us to consistently compound earnings over time. We continued a strong operational execution where the commercial effectiveness of our team, driven by our IRX process, yielded a backlog at the end of the fourth quarter that was our largest ever and positions us very well for continued strong results in 2022 as demand for our products and services continue to grow. Moving to slide four. I want to take a moment to recognize some of the accomplishments across each of our five strategic imperatives in 2021.
In deploy talent, our employees think and act like owners because they are. Shares granted to employees to date have appreciated from $250 million to over $500 million in value, motivating our engaged employee base to make decisions each day that can benefit our value creation and ultimately, their personal wealth. Furthermore, we implemented a plan to also grant shares to employees who join us as new employees or via acquisitions, yet another factor enabling Ingersoll Rand to be considered an employer and acquirer of choice. Our employee engagement score, up 17% over the last three years, also shows the power of ownership. Our current engagement score now ranks in the top quartile of manufacturing organizations. In expand margins, we have improved the company's adjusted EBITDA margin 370 basis points in 2019, including an improvement of 160 basis points in 2021 alone.
We have realized $215 million in synergies out of the $300 million commitment from the IR merger, with an additional $15 million expected in 2022. In operate sustainably, we continue to make progress and have received recognition from ESG rating agencies, including S&P Global and MSCI, once again demonstrating how we leverage the power of IRX to drive performance across a multitude of initiatives. In accelerate growth, our unique growth enablers outlined during our 2021 Investor Day, strongly contributed to growth in the past year. Our demand generation engine now generates 3 times more marketing-qualified leads compared to 2019. IIoT-enabled assets were up 250% year-over-year, and new product innovation increased 95% in 2021. In allocate capital effectively, we secured approximately $2 billion in gross proceeds from the divestitures of Club Car and High Pressure Solutions, and redeployed over $1 billion through acquisitions in 2021, which represents over 6% of sales when annualized. We also repurchased $731 million in shares as part of the KKR's final equity sale, established a new $750 million share repurchase program and initiated a quarterly dividend of $0.02 per share during the fourth quarter.
We're incredibly proud of our 2021 accomplishments and could not have done it without the dedication of our team. Turning to slide five. We're committed to executing the strategy we outlined at our 2021 Investor Day and are confident it will produce the expected results. This slide outlines how we are already delivering on that strategy and associated commitments. Our portfolio is now positioned to capitalize on global megatrends such as digitization, sustainability and quality of life. We expect to leverage our organic growth enablers to deliver mid-single-digit organic growth through 2025. And as you can see, we outperformed on this commitment in 2021, delivering 12% year-over-year organic growth. When coupled with mid-single-digit annual growth from M&A and technology investments, we expect to deliver total growth of low double digits through 2025. And in 2021, we delivered 4% in-year growth from M&A and 6% annualized.
Our strong pricing, aftermarket and I2V initiatives enable us to generate operating leverage and incremental productivity, with an expected 100 basis points of margin improvement per year over the period. And in 2021, we overdelivered on this target, capturing 160 basis points of margin expansion despite several challenges like supply chain constraints and inflationary pressures. With IRX as our competitive differentiator and over 275 IMPACT Daily Management or IDM meetings across our company each week, our high-performance culture encourages strong execution. This continues to support our goal of being a premier, high-quality company that consistently compounds earnings by double digits each year, with free cash flow margins in the high teens. And we feel that we're well on our way, as in 2021, we grew EPS by 63% and achieved adjusted free cash flow margin of 16%. Turning to slide six.
We have achieved strong margin improvement across our portfolio since 2019. Looking at the company, margins improved 370 basis points from 2019 despite COVID impacts and persistent supply chain and inflationary pressures. In the ITS segment, we improved an impressive 470 basis points since 2019 as we continue to accelerate synergy capture and execute on value creation opportunities from the IR merger. Incremental operating leverage and productivity should enable ITS to achieve margins in the high 20s over time. In the PST segment, margins have expanded 170 basis points since 2019 and 290 basis points, excluding M&A. Continued strong flow-through in the base PST business, coupled with diligent synergy execution as we onboard acquisitions, should yield adjusted EBITDA margins in the mid-30s over time.
It is important to note that as we highlight on the last bullet point, due to the nature of our products, we're mission-critical with premium brands and high quality and reliability, and we have the ability to remain price/cost positive. We have accomplished this in each quarter since the merger even during these inflationary times and expect to do the same in 2022. Moving to slide seven. We're thrilled to announce the recent validation of Ingersoll Rand's progress as an industry leader in ESG. Based on demonstrated progress, we received another upgrade from MSCI, which is our second upgrade in the past 18 months, and now have an A rating. And I'm really excited to announce that S&P Global, in its annual sustainability assessment that was just released a few weeks ago, scored Ingersoll Rand in the top 15% and included us in its Sustainability Yearbook for 2022.
In addition, S&P Global recognized us with the Industry Mover Award, which is given to the most improved company in each sector of the year. These recognitions exemplify our unwavering commitment to ESG. In March of 2021, we committed to becoming a top-quartile ESG industrial company in three years. And we believe we have achieved or are at the cusp of achieving that goal in one year. And S&P Global agrees as it elected us to its Sustainability Yearbook, which recognizes the top 15% ESG performing companies in each industry sector. Despite this progress, we're just getting started on our ESG journey, and we're very focused on accelerating progress towards our ESG growth. I'm incredibly proud of our team for being recognized by the rating agencies already this early in our journey.
I will now turn the presentation over to Vik to provide an update on our Q4 financial performance.
