Bonjour. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Gildan Activewear Annual and Special Meeting of Shareholders. My name is Donald Berg, and I am the Chair of the Board. I'm joined today by Maryse Bertrand, our Chair of the Corporate Governance and Social Responsibility Committee, Glenn Chamandy, our President and Chief Executive Officer, Rhod Harries, our Executive Vice President, Chief Financial and Administrative Officer, and Michelle Taylor, our Vice President, General Counsel, and Corporate Secretary. We are once again holding the meeting in a virtual-only format. We are confident that hosting a virtual meeting will enable greater attendance by our shareholders at our annual and special meeting of shareholders by allowing those who would not otherwise be able to travel to a physical location to attend online.
All shareholders, regardless of their geographic location, have an equal opportunity to participate in this meeting via the live audio webcast and engage with directors and management of the company. You'll have the opportunity to ask questions and vote on a number of important matters. We encourage all shareholders to participate in the meeting. We will begin by conducting the official business of the meeting. After the official business is completed, Glenn and Rhod will address shareholders and provide an overview of the company's results and business plans. After that, we will answer any questions submitted during the meeting. The business of the meeting will be conducted in English. However, the meeting is being simultaneously translated into French via the live audio webcast. You may choose between English or French on the webcast main landing page. You may, of course, ask questions in either English or French.
I will now call the meeting to order and will ask Michelle Taylor to act as secretary of the meeting and to take us through certain procedures for the meeting, including the process for voting and submitting questions.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. As mentioned, this will take place in English. However, translation is available in French and in English through web broadcasting. You can choose between English or French on your main page of the website. You can ask your questions in French or in English. Today's meeting is being held virtually through live audio webcast. We wanted to go over a few items to ensure the orderly conduct of the meeting. Please note that today's meeting is being recorded. If you participate in today's meeting and disclose personal information, you will be deemed to consent to the recording, transfer, and use of this information. If you disclose personal information of another person in today's meeting, you will be deemed to represent and warrant that you first obtain all required consents for the disclosure, recording, transfer, and use of such personal information.
Once voting has opened, the voting tab will appear on the navigation bar at the top of your screen. The resolutions and voting choices will then be displayed. After you vote, a message confirming vote received will appear. Your vote can be changed by simply clicking the other option. If you wish to cancel your vote, please press cancel. Only registered holders of common shares of record as of March 6, 2023, who received a control number prior to this meeting, or their duly appointed proxy holders who registered with our transfer agent and obtained an invite code prior to this meeting, are permitted to participate, ask questions, and vote at this meeting. All other proxy holders are entitled to join the meeting as guests.
Registered shareholders and duly appointed proxy holders who have already voted are not required to vote again unless they wish to change their vote. Registered shareholders and duly appointed proxy holders who wish to communicate with the members of the management team and the board or with each other or who wish to ask a question in respect of a motion, may do so using the instant message service on the virtual meeting platform. When asking a question, we would ask that you please indicate your name, the entity you represent, if any, and confirm that you are a registered shareholder or duly appointed proxy holder. Questions can be submitted at any time during the meeting. Questions will generally be received shortly after they are submitted but will only be addressed during the question period at the end of the meeting.
However, questions that relate to procedural matters or the motions before the meeting may be addressed during the meeting. To submit a question, select the messaging tab at the top of your screen. Type your message within the text box at the top of the message screen, and then click to the send button. Questions submitted during the meeting via the online platform will be moderated before being sent to the chair. Questions or comments containing inappropriate language or that are otherwise disruptive to the orderly conduct of the meeting for all shareholders will not be answered. Questions which were already answered or that are redundant or repetitive will also not be answered. We would also like to advise you that in addition to receiving the annual consolidated financial statements, today shareholders will vote on seven items as described in our Management Information Circular.
These are the appointment of the auditors, the election of the directors, the adoption, ratification, and renewal of the shareholder rights plan, the approval of two amendments to the Long-Term Incentive Plan. The first of which is to approve an increase of the common shares authorized for issuance under the Long-Term Incentive Plan. The second of which is to modify the amending provisions to specify when the board will be required to obtain shareholder approval for any future changes to the Long-Term Incentive Plan. There will be an advisory resolution on the company's approach to executive compensation. Finally, the consideration of the shareholder proposal described in the Management Information Circular. All seven votes will be conducted by single electronic ballot. Registered shareholders and duly appointed proxy holders will be asked to vote on each item of business after all the items of business have been presented.
Approval of all the resolutions brought before the meeting will require an affirmative vote of a majority of the votes cast by shareholders. The chair will move all motions except the motion with respect to the approval of the shareholder proposal. This proposal will be moved by the shareholder. No motion will need to be seconded. When you are asked to vote, you will receive a message on the virtual meeting platform advising you that the polls are open. You will only have a certain amount of time to do so. I would also like to draw your attention to the text on the current slide and to advise everyone that certain of the comments you will hear today are forward-looking statements that involve assumptions, risks, and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from future results expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements.
We also refer you to our disclaimer regarding forward-looking statements contained in our management discussion and analysis for the 2022 fiscal year, which is available on SEDAR, EDGAR, and on the Gildan website. I will now turn the microphone over to the chair who will appoint the scrutineer for this meeting.
Thank you, Michelle. I now appoint Computershare Investor Services as scrutineer to report on the number of common shares represented in person and by proxy at this meeting, and to report on the voting results. The scrutineer has already provided me with their report on attendance at the meeting, and it shows that a quorum has been reached. I therefore declare the meeting regularly constituted for the transaction of such business as may properly be brought before it. I now present to the meeting the consolidated financial statements of the company for the fiscal year ended January 1st, 2023, and the auditors report thereof. Copies of such documents have been made available through notice and access to our shareholders. In 2022, Gildan navigated a changing macroeconomic environment, but delivered strong performance. Thanks to our focus on implementing the Gildan Sustainable Growth strategy.
This focus on the Gildan Sustainable Growth strategy allowed us to end the year with net sales of $3.24 billion, up 11%, diluted earnings per share of $2.93, and adjusted diluted earnings per share of $3.11. Further, we continued to reinvest in our business and delivered on our capital allocation priorities, returning a record $573 million to our shareholders through $449 million in share repurchases and $124 million in dividends. As we enter the second year of the Gildan Sustainable Growth strategy, we are on a solid footing to build on this past year's accomplishments. The combination of our focused strategy, competitive strengths, and the caliber of our dedicated team positions us well to deliver long-term value to our shareholders.
The next item of business is the appointment of KPMG LLP as the company's auditors. I move that KPMG LLP be appointed as the company's auditors and that the audit and finance committee of the board of directors of the company be authorized to fix the remuneration of the auditors. Before proceeding with the election of the directors, I would like to take a moment to underline Russell Goodman's positive impact to this company's board. Russell Goodman has been on Gildan's board since December 2010 and is now retiring. On behalf of each member of the board of directors of the company, I wish to extend our sincere gratitude and appreciation for Russell's many years of service and for his significant contributions over the past 12 years. We will now proceed with the election of directors.
The board has determined that 10 persons should be elected as directors of the company and has proposed 10 candidates to hold such office for the ensuing year. In addition to Glenn Chamandy and myself, eight independent and highly qualified individuals are being proposed for election as directors. Their biographies are included in the company's Management Information Circular made available to our shareholders. Each of the nominees has expressed a desire to serve as a director of the company. I nominate each of the following persons for election as a director of the company to hold office until the close of the next annual meeting of the shareholders or until his or her successors are duly elected or appointed. The nominees are Glenn Chamandy, Maryse Bertrand, Dhaval Buch, Marc Caira, Shirley Cunningham, Charles Harrington, Luc Jobin, Craig A. Leavitt, and Anne Martin-Vachon, and myself, Donald Berg.
As mentioned at the beginning of this meeting, voting today will be conducted by a single electronic ballot after all items of business have been presented. We will therefore continue with the next item of business on the agenda. You will be prompted to vote after all items of business have been presented. We will now turn to the item on the agenda relating to the resolution to confirm the adoption, ratification, and renewal of the company's shareholder rights plan as set forth in the Management Information Circular. On February 21st, 2023, the board of directors of the company adopted a shareholder rights plan and subsequently entered into a shareholder rights plan agreement with Computershare Investor Services. This shareholder rights plan is designed to ensure that all shareholders are treated fairly in connection with any takeover bid or other acquisition of control of the company.
It replaces and renews the company's existing shareholder rights plan, which expires today. This shareholder rights plan is the same as the company's existing shareholder rights plan, except that it includes minor amendments to permit the issuance and registration of rights under the shareholder rights plan in book entry form and other amendments of an administrative nature. It is similar to shareholder rights plans adopted by other TSX-listed issuers and approved by their shareholders. In terms of the context for the renewal of the shareholder rights plan, the shareholder rights plan was not adopted in response to any specific proposal to acquire control of the company, nor is the board of directors currently aware of any pending or threatened takeover bid for the company.
The board of directors does not intend to try to preclude a bid for the control of the company by recommending the ratification of the shareholder rights plan. Rather, the shareholder rights plan encourages a potential acquirer to proceed either by way of a takeover bid which satisfies certain minimum standards designed to promote fairness or with the concurrence of the board of directors. The shareholder rights plan will come into force at the close of business today, provided that the resolution to confirm the adoption, renewal, and ratification of the shareholder rights plan is approved by a majority of the votes cast by the shareholders who vote in respect of the resolution.
The full text of the resolution is reproduced on page 17 of the Management Information Circular. The full text of the shareholder rights plan is available on SEDAR, EDGAR, and the company website. I move that the resolution confirming the adoption, renewal, and ratification of the company's shareholder rights plan set forth in the Management Information Circular be adopted. Again, as voting today will be conducted by a single electronic ballot, we will continue to the next item of business. We will now turn to the agenda item relating to the resolutions to approve two amendments to the text of the company's Long-Term Incentive Plan as set forth in the Management Information Circular. The company has had a Long-Term Incentive Plan in effect since 1998.
The Long-Term Incentive Plan is designed to assist and encourage officers and employees of Gildan and its subsidiaries to work towards and participate in the growth and development of the company and to assist the company in attracting, retaining, and motivating its executives and key employees. A detailed description of the features of our Long-Term Incentive Plan is available on Appendix C of the Management Information Circular. On February 21st, 2023, the board of directors of the company approved, subject to TSX and shareholder approvals, the two amendments to the plan to ensure its effectiveness. The first Amendment to the Long-Term Incentive Plan is to increase the number of Gildan common shares authorized for issuance under the Long-Term Incentive Plan by 1,797,219 common shares.
Following the increases, the maximum number of common shares issuable under the LTIP would be fixed at 13,797,851 shares. It is worth noting that the proposed increase represents an increase of 1% of our outstanding common shares as of the record date of March 6, 2023. The second amendment is to revise the amending provisions for the Long-Term Incentive Plan. The essence of the modifications to the amending provisions is to specify the changes to the Long-Term Incentive Plan that will require the board to obtain shareholder approval and, conversely, to set out when the board may amend the Long-Term Incentive Plan without shareholder approval. The second amendment aligns with current best practices and recently adopted equity incentive plans and ensures Gildan will meet the requirements of the stock exchanges where our shares are listed.
The proposed changes to the amending provisions are detailed in the Management Information Circular on pages 18 through 20, and the full text of the proposed amendments is available on Gildan's website. On March 13, 2023, the TSX conditionally approved the two amendments to the Long-Term Incentive Plan, subject to approval by the shareholders. These amendments will come into force at the close of business today, provided that resolutions to confirm the approval and adoption of the two amendments of the Long-Term Incentive Plan are approved by a majority of the votes cast by the shareholders. The full text of the resolutions is produced at page 18 of the Management Information Circular. I move that the resolutions confirming the approval and adoption of the amendments to the company's Long-Term Incentive Plan set forth in the Management Information Circular be adopted.
Again, as voting today will be conducted by a single electronic ballot, we will continue to the next item of business. The next item of business is an advisory vote on the company's approach to executive compensation as set forth in the Management Information Circular. The full text of the advisory resolution is reproduced on page 21 of the Management Information Circular. I move that the resolution on the advisory vote on executive compensation set forth in the Management Information Circular be adopted. As voting today will be conducted by a single electronic ballot, we will continue with the next item of business. We will now turn to the next item of business, which is the consideration of a shareholder proposal received from British Columbia General Employees' Union for consideration at this meeting.
The proposal, as well as a description of the board's response, is set out in Appendix E of the Management Information Circular. Management of the company has met with representatives of British Columbia General Employees' Union to engage on the matter set forth in their proposal. After careful consideration, and for the reasons set forth in Appendix E of the Management Information Circular, the board recommends you vote against the proposal. At this time, we recognize Emma Pullman, a representative of the British Columbia General Employees' Union, to present the proposal and to make a motion to put this proposal to a vote.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. Good morning, fellow shareholders. Again, my name is Emma Pullman, and I am a duly representative proxyholder representing the BC General Employees' Union or BCGEU. I am here to present the proposal found in Appendix E. Since 2017, over $809 billion of sustainability-linked financial instruments have been brought to market. Since 2021, at least 50 Canadian public issuers have established such instruments. These products incorporate ESG goals into an issuer's debt financing, with such ESG goals providing price incentives. These ESG goals or metrics are selected by the issuers. In March 2022, Gildan amended its $1 billion revolving credit facility to convert it to a sustainability-linked loan. Gildan's ESG metrics included one metric on greenhouse gas emissions, one metric on reduction of packaging, and one metric on achieving gender parity.
These sustainability-linked loans are self-regulated. Issuers choose the ESG metrics, and the targets are agreed upon with their lenders. A leading finance industry group has published principles to reduce the opportunity for greenwashing. These principles require that ESG metrics address relevant ESG challenges in the issuer's industry and that they be consistent with the issuer's overall ESG strategy. While Gildan has said that employee health and safety or human capital management is one of its five key areas of ESG focus and that it has already established human capital management targets that benefit workers, Gildan chose not to include any such human capital management metrics in its sustainability-linked loan. Gildan relies on its textile sewing and sock manufacturing operations in developing countries with nine of such facilities in Honduras. Gildan has announced plans to expand manufacturing capacity across its manufacturing network, including plans to undertake a significant expansion in Bangladesh.
That is why the BCGEU asked Gildan to review potential human capital management ESG metrics and include one metric in its next sustainability-linked loan in 2027. Gildan cannot hide behind its lenders as the reason why it has not included a human capital management metric in its credit facility. Our proposal gives Gildan plenty of time to develop a human capital management sustainability target. Issuers often amend and restate their credit facilities before term expiry, Gildan can consider incorporating such a metric at an earlier date if it chooses. I duly move this shareholder proposal and invite other shareholders to support it. Thank you.
Thank you, Emma. We will now proceed with the voting by single electronic ballot. As a reminder, today's items up for vote are the appointment of auditors, the election of directors, the adoption, ratification, and renewal of the shareholder rights plan, the approval of the two amendments to the Long-Term Incentive Plan, each a separate voting item. The approval of an advisory resolution on the company's approach to executive compensation and the consideration of the shareholder proposal. All seven votes will be conducted by a single electronic ballot. You will now be prompted to register your vote in respect of each of the seven items of business. Please register your votes by accessing the voting page when prompted and by first pressing on the For or Withhold button next to the resolution with respect to the appointment of KPMG LLP as the company's auditors.
Second, pressing on the For or Against button next to the name of each proposed director. Third, pressing on the For or Against button next to the resolution confirming the adoption, ratification, and renewal of the shareholder rights plan. Fourth, pressing on the For or Against button next to the resolution approving the increase of common shares authorized for issuance under the company's Long-Term Incentive Plan. Fifth, pressing on the For or Against button next to the resolution approving the amendments to the amending provisions of the company's Long-Term Incentive Plan. Sixth, pressing on the For or Against button next to the advisory resolution on the company's approach to executive compensation. Seventh, pressing on the For or Against button next to the shareholder proposal. All motions have now been presented. If you have not cast your vote, please cast it now.
The voting page will remain open for five minutes, and this will be the last opportunity to vote. After five minutes, we will close the polls. Once the electronic balloting closes, the voting page will disappear and your votes will automatically be submitted. While you complete your electronic ballots, I will now ask Rhod and Glenn to provide a business update.
Thank you, Don. Good morning to all, thank you for joining us today. I will present our performance we made in 2022 against our GSG growth strategy and how our strong competitive positioning will allow us for future growth. Rhod will provide a financial overview of our performance in 2022 and an outlook for 2023. Next slide, please. We delivered record results in 2022 with revenues of $3.2 billion, up 11% over 2021, with strong operating margins in every fiscal quarter. This put us in a strong position to execute on our capital allocation strategy as we returned a record $573 million of capital to shareholders. This performance highlights the resilience of our business and the benefit of our diversified end markets.
Most importantly, even though our industry was challenged by a changing macro environment, we stayed focused on our GSG strategy. Under the strategy, we reinvested in our business to support long-term organic growth and further strengthen our leadership position through increasing manufacturing capacity, working capital, innovation, and ESG. We believe we are well-positioned to grow market share in the current environment. Slide, please. Our GSG strategy aims to leverage our core strength and reinforce what we do best. Large scale, low cost, vertically integrated manufacturing, which puts us in an excellent position to service our customers with basic replenishment products. You recall Back to Basics reinforced the economics of our business by removing unnecessary complexity and setting us up for a strong foundation.
We have now turned our focus to driving top-line growth with our GSG strategy, which is based on three key pillars: capacity driven growth, innovation, and ESG. After one year of implementing the strategy, we have made significant progress. I will take you through some of the key accomplishments. Next slide, please. 2022 was an important year. We made significant advances to strengthen our vertical integration and increase our manufacturing capacity and capabilities. We pursued the modernization consolidation of our U.S. yarn spinning footprint, including the integration of Frontier Yarns in our operations. We've made significant capital investments in the latest technology and equipment, aiming to further improve efficiency and cost reductions. In textiles, the optimization of our capacity in Central America and the Dominican Republic in 2022 allowed us to improve our in-stock levels of all products in all channels.
Another major accomplishment is our new manufacturing facility in Bangladesh. The whole team is very proud. We are now in the process of starting up and ramping up our major new greenfield facility, which will be the largest textile facility in the region. With Bangladesh, we are diversifying our overall manufacturing footprint and will be better positioned to support international and North American markets. Overall, these investments will allow us to support close to $4 billion in sales, and I'm very excited about the opportunity that lies ahead. Next slide, please. Our motto is making apparel better. This requires continuous improvement in both product offering and manufacturing processes. Our products, we look to innovate on fabric features, product fit, printing capabilities, and ESG attributes. These innovations, combined with our manufacturing investments, are positioning us to capitalize on the continued growth in all categories.
Manufacturing, we are continuously exploring ways to improve our operations, reduce cycle times, increase efficiency by reducing energy and water consumption. Finally, we're also leveraging information technology throughout our manufacturing processes, from planning to distribution, to reduce lead times and improve efficiencies. In summary, we are staying ahead of the curve by continuously seeking and implementing innovation solutions across our organization. Next slide, please. We have a 20-year track record we are proud of on ESG. As part of Gildan's GSG strategy, we are committed to reinforcing ESG into all aspects of our business. We're equally committed to reduce our carbon footprint, our water intensity, as well as fostering a circular economy while driving operational efficiency. In 2022, we made strong progress against these goals.
We launched Gildan's next generation ESG strategy with the introduction and important of long-term new targets across five````` key areas covering climate, energy, and water, circularity, human capital management, long-term community value creation, transparency, and disclosure. We launched our Gildan Respect communication campaign. We signed our first sustainability-linked loan . We published our first standalone climate disclosure report. We tied executive compensation to ESG targets. As a result, over the past years, Gildan continues to be recognized for its sustainability leadership, receiving several recognitions from worldwide organizations promoting sustainability and responsible business practices, including the Dow Jones Sustainability Index, S&P Global, Corporate Knights, and CDP Leadership Band. Next slide, please. I would like to finish by saying that our team has done a tremendous work positioning the company for strong growth.
All our initiatives have been improving our product offering, our product availability, our cost structure, and our ability to lead on price and ESG. Despite the current economic uncertainty, key industry trends identified last year remain intact, providing long-term tailwinds to our business, including the importance of casualization, greater economy, the momentum behind private label, the interest in nearshoring, and the growing importance of ESG to all stakeholders. Our focus on success factors throughout our strong financial standing are positioning us to take market share in key growth categories with both the principal and retail customers in the United States and globally. We are excited about Gildan's GSG strategy and how we are positioned for the future growth. This concludes my business overview. I will now pass it over to Rhod, who will cover our financial overview. Thank you.
Thank you, Glenn, and good morning, everyone. I'll provide a recap of our 2022 financial performance, a brief summary of the results we reported yesterday for the first quarter of 2023, and on our full year outlook, and then we'll wrap up with a few final comments before turning it back over to Don. First slide, please. Starting with 2022, I fully echo Glenn's view that it was a strong year. If you look at the upper left-hand side of this slide, you can see net sales came in at $3.24 billion, up 11% over 2021. This was a strong performance and above our initial target for the year with our activewear business, in particular, up 17%, driven by strong volume growth in Ringspun and fleece sales.
It was also delivered in a changing environment, which was definitely more challenging in the back half of the year, given the impacts of inflationary pressures and rising interest rates on in-demand and increasing cautiousness around inventory management across our customer base. If you move to the upper right-hand side of the slide, the chart highlights that in parallel with stronger sales, we were also able to deliver strong margins in 2022, with our operating margin coming in around 19% and our adjusted operating margin at 20%. These are strong numbers at the high end of our 18%-20% target range, reflecting our ability to maintain the efficiency gains from our Back to Basics strategy, which we realized over the 2018-2021 period as we transitioned into the Gildan Sustainable Growth strategy in 2022.
Finally, on the bottom half of the slide, you can see that the strong sales and margins translated into strong diluted and adjusted diluted EPS of $2.93 and $3.11, respectively. Note that the diluted EPS reflected the impact of an impairment charge driven by market conditions, which was partly offset by an accounting gain on insurance. Excluding these items, adjusted diluted EPS was up 14% for the year. All in all, strong top and bottom line delivery for the full year in what ended up to be a challenging environment. Next slide, please. On this slide, you can see that beyond the delivery of the top and bottom line results, we were able to accomplish other important objectives in 2022.
On inventory, we invested in rebuilding our finished goods levels, providing greater product availability to our customers. In a replenishment driven business, this is critically important, and we were not where we wanted to be with our inventory levels in 2021. Though, during 2022, on the back of the GSG strategy, we were able to achieve more inventory depth across all our product categories, further strengthening our competitive advantage on product availability across all markets as we entered 2023. On CapEx during 2022, we made the investments that we said we would make as we focused on the key pillars of the GSG strategy. CapEx came in at 7.6% of sales, in line with our target of investing between 6%-8% of net sales annually over the 2022-2024 period.
As Glenn has highlighted, these were important investments in our vertical integration and capacity that are reinforcing our competitive position and putting us in a strong position for future growth. Importantly, even though we significantly invested during 2022 in our working capital and manufacturing platform to support growth, we still generated an attractive RONA, or return on net assets, during the year. Our RONA came in at 21%, above our 20% annual target. With a large manufacturing base, this is an important metric for us at Gildan. As we know, the combination of strong sales and high RONA will drive substantial value creation over the long term. Finally, our free cash flow for the full year came in at $198 million. In our view, a solid performance in a year when we were making significant investments to support long-term growth.
This was down from 2021 levels and well below what we expect for the business in 2023 now that these investments, particularly with respect to working capital, have been made. Next slide, please. Moving to this slide, you can see that more generally from a capital allocation perspective, we have been following a balanced approach each year, supporting both growth and return of capital to shareholders. We talk in terms of priorities, CapEx to drive organic growth, dividends to our short-shareholders represent the core foundation of our capital allocation program in each year. After these priorities, we look at allocating capital to M&A opportunities then share repurchases, which delivers capital back to investors. On the M&A front, our focus has more recently been limited to manufacturing assets, with our biggest investment related to the Frontier Yarns acquisition in 2021.
In many ways, you could think of this investment like CapEx, which was made to further reinforce our vertical integration and the capabilities we have within our industry-leading manufacturing platform. On share repurchases, we are an active buyer of our stock, particularly when we see opportunities to create strong value for our shareholders. In 2022, we repurchased $449 million of stock or 7% of our float, which combined with our dividend allowed us to return $573 million to shareholders. If you look over the last five years, we have returned $1.8 billion of capital back to shareholders, which we believe reflects a strong commitment to this priority.
In fact, with cumulative free cash flow of $1.8 billion generated over this period, we have effectively returned 100% of our free cash flow back to our shareholders over the last five-year period. Finally, we also believe it's important to maintain a healthy balance sheet, which for us means leverage in the 1-2x net debt to EBITDA target range, thereby providing strong ongoing access to capital support growth initiatives. At the end of 2022, we finished with leverage of 1.1x, positioning us at the lower end of our target range. Next slide, please. We now look at 2023. This slide summarizes the results we reported yesterday. Overall, we were pleased with our performance. Even though the economic environment remains uncertain, we remain comfortable reconfirming our outlook.
Quarter unfolded largely as we anticipated, with sales of $703 million down year-over-year as we faced a strong comparative period, which last year benefited from post pandemic inventory replenishment by our U.S. distributors. Nevertheless, Q1 year-over-year demand trends showed notable sequential improvement across all categories and channels in line with our expectations. Our operating margin came in at 18.2% and our adjusted operating margin at 14.6%. This was slightly lower than we expected due to lower fleece sales in the first quarter than anticipated. Importantly, however, fleece POS at our distributors was strong in the quarter, so we expect this mix impact to reverse as we move through the year. GAAP diluted EPS was $0.54 and adjusted diluted EPS was $0.45, with GAAP earnings reflecting a $0.09 after-tax benefit from a sale leaseback transaction.
During the quarter, we continued to execute on our capital allocation priorities and repurchased 1 million shares at a cost of $32 million. Turning to our outlook, we continue to expect sales for the full year to be up low single digits compared to 2022. With margin pressures from raw materials easing in the second half, we continue to expect adjusted operating margin to fall within our 18%-20% annual target range for the full year. Currently, we are also expecting strong free cash flow during 2023, and with the repurchase of shares in line with our capital allocation target of 5% of our float, we expect adjusted EPS in line with 2022. Overall, I think you can see we are cautiously optimistic for the year despite an unclear economic outlook and a mixed consumer environment. Next slide, please.
This is the final slide in our update, and it reinforces that despite the near-term environment, we feel very well positioned to capitalize on future growth opportunities. This is driven by our vertically integrated, large scale, low complexity, low cost, responsible manufacturing platform, which is the strong foundation of our competitive advantage. As Glenn highlighted, we are combining this with a strong focus on the key product categories where we are well-positioned to gain market share in addressable markets, which are benefiting from long-term broader industry demand trends. With a highly experienced team in place, we are driving the Gildan Sustainable Growth strategy to create strong shareholder value through a clear focus on the three key pillars of capacity-driven growth, innovation, and industry-leading ESG practices.
In closing, we believe we got off to a strong start in 2022 with the GSG strategy and look forward at next year's annual general meeting. With that, I will now turn the call back over to Don.
Thank you, Glenn. Thank you, Rhod. I've received the scrutineer's report on the voting results and can confirm the following. Regarding the election of directors, I am pleased to announce that Glenn Chamandy, Maryse Bertrand, Dhaval Buch, Marc Caira, Shirley Cunningham, Charles Harrington, Luc Jobin, Craig A. Leavitt, Anne Martin-Vachon, and I have been duly elected directors of the company. I am also pleased to report that the advisory resolution on the company's approach to executive compensation and the resolutions for the appointment of KPMG LLP, the approval, ratification, and renewal of the shareholder rights plan, and the approval of the amendments to the Long-Term Incentive Plan have all been carried. The motion on the shareholder proposal submitted by British Columbia General Employees' Union has been defeated. Detailed results for each vote will be available shortly on the SEDAR, EDGAR, and Gildan websites.
This completes the business on the agenda for the annual and special meeting. Before concluding this meeting, we'd be pleased to answer questions from any registered shareholder or duly appointed proxyholder who wishes to address the meeting. For each question we answer, I will read out the question as well as the name of the person who asked the question and, if applicable, the entity the person represents. Please limit your questions to topics relating today's subject matters and keep your questions short and to the point. We would like to remind you that questions which were already answered or that are redundant or repetitive will not be answered. The question period will now start. As we noted earlier in the meeting, we've been accepting questions throughout the entire business portion of the meeting, and we have not received any questions during the course of the meeting.
At this juncture, before concluding the meeting, and on behalf of the board of directors, I wanna thank Gildan's management team and all of the talented employees of Gildan who continue to show their determination and strength in making Gildan the leader it is today. We are heading into the second year of our Gildan Sustainable Growth strategy with the determination and confidence that we are positioned for long-term success and to continue making apparel better. Finally, on behalf of the board and the management team, I wanna thank our shareholders for their ongoing feedback, confidence, and support. I declare that the meeting is now terminated. Thank you for having taken the time to be with us today. You may now disconnect.