Well, it's my pleasure to welcome Ingredion back to CAGNY, introduce President and CEO, Jim Zallie. Ingredion is a leader in global ingredient solutions, and Jim is building on more than 40 years in the food industry and 17 years with the company. Over his time with Ingredion, Jim has been instrumental in the company's growth through customer focus, productivity, people development, innovation, and expansion into new markets. He's led the successful integration of strategic acquisitions that have broadened the portfolio in sugar reduction, clean label, and texture solutions. In 2025, the company again posted record results, including $950 million in cash from operations, about half of which was returned to shareholders. Here to tell us more is Jim. Welcome. Thank you. Take it away.
Thank you, Jonathan, and it is great to be back at CAGNY to provide everyone an update on Ingredion's activities and our progress this past year, and the opportunities that we see before us. So I am gonna open today's presentation discussing our strategic vision for growth, and I will be joined by Patrick Kalotis, our Executive Vice President for Texture and Healthful Solutions. I believe this is Patrick's first CAGNY presentation. Patrick joined Ingredion late last year with nearly thirty years of experience in the food industry, working for some of our most important customers. So he brings a real voice of customer to Ingredion.
Following Patrick will be Rob Ritchie, our Executive Vice President for Food and Industrial Ingredients businesses, as well as sugar reduction, and Rob has presented at CAGNY in the past, and he has really deep knowledge of the industry and more than 30 years of experience with Ingredion. Jim Gray, our Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, will conclude the presentation with a financial overview and an update to our long-term outlook. So please note that certain statements we may make today may contain forward-looking information, which is governed by, of course, our safe harbor provisions. Now, let me share with you an update on Ingredion's recent progress and how we're strategically positioning ourselves for the future.
For those of you that are not familiar with Ingredion, we are a global ingredient solutions provider, primarily to the food and beverage industry, where nearly 70% of our revenues come from. But we're also a preferred supplier to the paper making and corrugated box industries, as well as a specialty ingredient supplier to the pharma and home and personal care markets. We have been in business for more than 100 years, and an interesting fact, next year, we'll celebrate 125 years of listing on the New York Stock Exchange as the 12th longest-listed company. And that legacy has us very well-positioned with more than 16,000 global customers and local customers in 120 countries around the world, which we service through 30 Idea Labs that are strategically positioned in 22 countries around the world.
Last year was another record year for Ingredion, with record gross profit margins of over 25%, up 120 basis points on prior year. Record earnings per share, which was driven by our Texture and Healthful Solution segment, where we returned $435 million to shareholders through dividends and share repurchases. We also exited the year, once again, with a very strong cash position. Over the last three years, Ingredion has averaged the generation of $1 billion in cash, providing a very strong balance sheet today, which provides us financial flexibility and provides us also optionality going forward.
Now, more than two years ago, you might remember that we resegmented our business into three large global or multi-country regional segments based on the value propositions inherent in the respective segment portfolios, as well as the way customers prefer to engage with us from an innovation and servicing standpoint. This strategic resegmentation of our portfolio has provided more scale to leverage and increase our intimacy with customers, better enabling us to co-create and deliver consumer-preferred innovation. Our sugar reduction and protein fortification businesses are in the all other category, which we characterize as other growth bets.
Now, I do want to say something about our food and industrial ingredients businesses, because they have performed extremely well in the recent few years, and that's due to the in-country and across region customer relationships and the synergies that are inherent within our food and industrial ingredients businesses, both in LATAM and in U.S., Canada. We've demonstrated an ability to generate strong profit growth, as well as cash generation over the last three years. Due to the strong leadership positions we have, for example, in Brazil, Colombia, and Mexico, our LATAM businesses generate nearly $500 million of operating income with an OI margin of 21%. Our U.S.-Canada business has delivered 15% compounded annual growth over the last three years in operating income, and it operates at an operating income margin of 16%.
So very solid businesses that are strong cash generation businesses that help support the growth ambitions that we have going forward in the future. Now, providing growth opportunities to our global Texture and Healthful Solutions segment are macro trends, where we believe we are well positioned to capitalize on from our market, from our product portfolio, and the focus of our go-to-market teams. For example, our market leadership in natural high-intensity sweeteners position us strongly with customers that are reformulating for low and no sugar recipes. Our pea protein isolates are coming off a very strong year of growth and profit improvement, capitalizing on the increases in protein fortification for those pursuing an active lifestyle or for those that are on the anti-obesity medications.
Also, given all of the reformulating that's taking place as branded good and private label manufacturers look to innovate with cleaner labels, our portfolio of industry-leading clean label starches and specialty flours are driving overall solutions growth, which Patrick will talk about. Here's an example of the clean label growth. It's one of those categories that is growing in both volume and in revenue. Consumers are checking labels more than ever, and they consider natural or clean label claims more important than ever, and they're willing to pay for it. Over the last four years, the clean label category has grown in revenue at a compounded annual growth rate of 6%. And across the demographic spectrum, buying trends are signaling that consumers have a very strong preference that's increasing in healthy eating. Two buying trends across four generations are for high protein and for high fiber.
You can also see common across all groups is the avoidance of any ingredient that comes across as artificial. For example, artificial colors, of course, and artificial flavors. There is this trend towards positive nutrition or fortification and more authentic labeling. These categories that are shown here are what we call consumer benefit areas, are also large individually, as you see in the case of clean label, a $145 billion consumer benefit category itself, or protein fortification at $28 billion. These categories provide headroom for growth for us, working with customers in these spaces, and all of these health-oriented claims, driven by these, by the tailwinds, are growing high single digits with a forecast for fiber fortification this year and into the future to grow at similar rates due to the satiety benefits of fiber.
According to FMI, the global dietary fiber market is entering a decade of accelerated growth, with industry revenue anticipated to reach $13.6 billion in 2026 and projected to expand at a compounded annual growth rate of 10% between now and 2036. So a little bit about our engine, our engine of innovation. Our approach starts with capabilities that we've invested in over the last number of years, specifically in consumer and market research, market insights that enable us to connect with customers toward unmet needs and co-create with our customers recipes that address those unmet needs.
So with a common understanding of the consumer, we're connecting with customers in ways that we haven't in many years, and we're leveraging investments that we've made in texture and sensory science, supported by predictive formulation, to position ourselves to overcome texture deficiencies as products are being reformulated, that are being positioned healthier, but also looking to help elevate the overall texture experience to develop new and interesting textures that can help drive innovation for both CPG branded goods manufacturers as well as private label manufacturers, and have products that will be winning on the, on the shelf. So what I'd like to do is I'd like to conclude my section before turning it over to Patrick with a reference to our strategic pillars for growth.
Our strategy to drive profitable growth is centered on understanding our customers better, and to best position ourselves to support their innovation needs, and also segmenting our customers smartly as we optimize our support across existing and new customer channels for growth. And again, you'll hear Patrick talk about how we're pivoting towards the growth that we're seeing in private label and food service, and how we're organizing to increase our penetration in those channels. We're also focused on upgrading our mix across target markets for food and non-food through innovation and solution selling. So when it comes to innovation, we're strategically investing in differentiating capabilities, in texture measurement science, to support our aspiration to make healthy formulations taste better through a deeper understanding of the impact of texture on taste. And we're underpinning that with investments in, again, predictive formulation to help scale those capabilities more quickly for customers.
Just this year, we're transitioning out of our Cost Smart program, which outperformed its target over a two-year period, with an undertaking around enterprise productivity, which is engaging the entire organization to help drive efficiency and effectiveness, leveraging, obviously, AI, but all the elements of continuous improvement, lean manufacturing, and eliminating waste throughout the organization. So we're very hopeful and believe that this program is gonna contribute and provide another lever to us to drive long-term profit growth. With that, I would now like to turn it over to Patrick. Patrick?
Thank you, Jim. Good afternoon, everyone. It's great to be here at CAGNY. As Jim mentioned, this is my first time on the stage at CAGNY. I'm pleased to report that the hazing has been low to moderate so far, so I appreciate you all for that very warm welcome. As Jim mentioned, I've been with Ingredion here for just over three months, having joined at the back end of last year as our Executive Vice President for Global Textures and Healthful Solutions. And I bring with me nearly 30 years of CPG industry experience, initially in Europe, globally, but then also in the last 10 to 11 years, in North America.
So a lot of the companies that I used to work for represent some of our key customers, and that's really an angle that I'm looking to bring to Ingredion as we turn our attention to be more customer-centric and really answer any, be able to deliver against the requirements of our customers. Before I get deeper into the presentation, I wanted to share a little bit about some context around the Texture and Healthful Solutions segment, for those of you who aren't as familiar. So what you will see, we continue to drive above market performance, not just at top line, but critically, expanding our gross margin, which underscores the breadth of our product lines, our solution sellings, and also our robust innovation delivery. And we've got some really supported by some very strong industry-leading capabilities.
So, you'll see here over 1,000 ingredient solutions. Jim already mentioned 30 Idea Labs. We typically position those in different parts around the world, to make sure that we're understanding local textures and, and taste and, and culture, and making sure that our delivery and our innovation match against those consumer expectations, across, all of our regions. While we're already the global leader in texture, as you can see from our number one position here in, in each of the markets that we're present, so number one in U.S., Canada, in Europe, and in APAC, there's clearly a lot of headroom, and a lot of addressable market for us to, to go and capture. And not least because in most cases, consumers are telling us, that texture, in some cases even more than flavor, is driving their choices.
You'll see just a couple of statistics that I've pulled out here from our consumer base and our consumer work. You know, 85% of consumers are highly likely to recommend their favorite food based on texture, and three out of four would actually say that texture is, in fact, more important than flavor as they make some of their choices. I would argue that in some cases, consumers will talk about taste, they're actually referencing texture when they do that. I'm sure you've been in many conversations yourself. "You know, I want something creamier. I like the crispy texture of it. It was nice because it was sparkling." Right, a lot of those consumer descriptors relate much closer to texture than they do flavor, and we feel that represents a unique opportunity for us to really drive that market growth.
There are a number of key trends that we are acutely aware of and that we're tracking and making sure that we deliver against as we look to drive that texture growth over the next three to five years. Jim already mentioned clean label and the importance of wellness, which I'll come back to shortly. But what I did want to do, I wanted to call out increasing importance of two of the other spaces here on the page. So for example, unique ethnic textures, and I think the example of mochi here really represents a perfect example of how important texture can be to consumers as they think about specific food delivery. The other one that I just wanted to highlight real quick is convenience and delivery foods.
It's another great example where the importance of texture is paramount. As an example, no one is looking forward to their next delivery of soggy fries. That's something that we're solving for through our textures business. As we do that, we're also being very intentional about the categories that we believe will create the most value for us and for our customers. The ones shown here on the screen represent about 90% of where we think that value is going to come from. It's notable that while a number of these categories are still delivering growth, the texture component within those, in some cases, is growing even faster than the category itself.
And I direct you to things like, like dairy or beverage, and you'll see the numbers there, you know, mid- to high single-digit growth in terms of the texture market within those categories. And that's what gives us confidence that we are on the right path here and looking to deliver sustainable growth going forward. And a number of those factors driving texture growth also result in a lot of manufacturers now looking to reformulate, and we've coined the term texture deficiency. That is present in a number of product lines. Consumers are increasingly looking for simpler, cleaner labels.
They want to avoid complex ingredients, and in response, manufacturers and our customers are looking to do so, but they need our help in making sure that they maintain the texture without compromising affordability or functionality, and as they continue to innovate in those particular state spaces. And it's really, you know, one of those hard trade-offs between cost, quality, and texture that manufacturers are looking to resolve and where we can step in and really help them achieve that. And of course, all of this is happening in the context of an environment where regulatory impacts continue to accelerate change. So this is where I want to pause on this slide a little bit longer and talk about our ingredient solutions approach, which really comes into its own.
A couple of things that I'll highlight in a slide or two, about $1 billion of our sales, in revenue, are now going through our solutions business. So this is pretty scale part of our business. It's growing at about 2x the rest of our textures and healthful solutions. So in the last year, our solutions approach grew 7.5%. And even more excitingly, if you think about it from an Ingredion point of view, because we're selling a service here rather than an ingredient, it's also margin accretive to us. So some 500 basis points of margin accretion as we grow our solutions business.
So as you think about, you know, what, how our solutions approach differs, really, we start with consumer insights, and then we bring those closely to our customers. And customer intimacy is a key driver here. That allows us to co-create briefs and product briefs with our customers and be with them on that journey of innovation from the get-go. That's huge in terms of ongoing partnership, and then when we do that, we've got an agreed brief, and that will allow us then to go into our customized blends and our formulations, of which we have a library of thousands, which allows us to deliver very quick prototypes. We commit now through our solutions approach, that we will have a viable prototype after we've signed a brief with our customers within 15 days.
We started the journey at 90 days, and that was considered pretty quick. As you can understand from a manufacturer and some of our customers' point of view, bringing that down to 15 is a game changer for them because that allows us to then move very quickly to the innovation cycle and then to develop, to deliver from there. And of course, with the changing environment, rapidly changing environment, we move even faster, and they've got the pressure to do so. And when we work with our private label customers, the urgency of change can typically be even more dynamic than that. What that all means is at the end of the cycle, we're able to effectively guarantee a higher product success rate because of the intimacy with the customer upfront and the expertise that we have.
And then from a customer point of view, I mean, the most typical failure is innovation. So anything we can do to give them a higher guarantee of success is obviously a welcome partnership. So as we do that, what we're doing is elevating that texture solution to make sure that we're going sort of from the beginning all the way through to the end of the process and give ourselves a higher chance of success. We'll bring in sensory science into it, and then we will use that to identify consumer ingredients, and we're very clear on some of the ingredient spaces that our consumers are looking for. Put that through our texture science application, and interestingly, we're beginning to develop predictive formulation liking.
So, we have now, like I said, a library of ingredients and solutions, and what that allows us to do is keep generating. We're building as a, a, an AI component to that. And we're pleased to say that at this point, we can pretty much predict that, consumer liking with about an 80%-90% accuracy. And that goes back to what I was saying earlier about our customers lowering that chance of failure for their innovation and really buying into, to that partnership with us. And we can only achieve that because of the scale that we've been able to create in terms of the database of, like I say, ingredients and solutions.
So as of, as of now, we've got some 1,800 active and granted patents, which really underpin some of those technologies that we have on both, texture and formulation. I mentioned some of the numbers on this page a few minutes ago. Our solutions business just crossed $1 billion in net revenue, growing at a pretty strong clip at 7.5%, and I mentioned the five points of margin accretion versus our, our average TNHS gross margin. Underpinning that growth are really two key structural changes in demand that we are looking to double down on: clean label and private label, and I'll spend a little bit of time unpacking each of these here in the next few minutes. So starting with, with clean label. Our technology delivers natural, indulgent texture while simplifying the label.
If I can put it simply, clean label means that when we're transforming raw materials, such as milling corn, we are doing so in a way that the alteration of the product is simple enough that it can be labeled essentially as its basic self. We can do this through starches, fibers, protein isolates, depending on the product or the solution we're looking to deliver for our customers. A recent example of that would be our Novation product. It's a great example, because the raw material is effectively citrus rinds, and what we do is we grind, we boil, and we dry that, and then we extract the citrus fiber, and the ingredient can simply be labeled as citrus fiber.
So you can understand that that's very attractive to consumers, very attractive to our customers, by way of being able to execute that simplicity and that clean label denomination. As we think about clean label specifically, we're already the number one in that space. We're about 3x the size of our nearest competitor. We're essentially the only clean label producer in North America, and, we've expanded our margin as we grew into that space, about 200 basis points here in 2025. I mentioned the growth that I was talking about earlier at the overall solutions level, and clean label is growing even faster within that. So over the last year, we've enjoyed an 8% growth, on our clean label, and that's driven mainly by the ASP. So, our average modified starch sells for about, $2,000.
The ASP on our TNHS business, a little bit higher than that, and our clean label will be twice that in terms of the ASP that we're able to charge. Now, you'll see here, you know, EMEA is significantly ahead of the other regions in terms of adoption of clean label, but even within EMEA, we're still below 10%. So the headroom for growth as the pressures come for cleaner label is huge across all of the regions. But of course, the work that we've already done in EMEA helps inform us as we think about catching up fast in APAC and the U.S.
As I pivot to private label as a second vector of significant growth within solutions, what's on the page here will not come as a huge surprise to anyone, I don't think, as our consumers continue to seek, you know, more value, prioritizing affordability, often at the expense of brand loyalty, and that's leading to declines in some of the premium product purchases. And that's about more than 50% of our consumers are switching to cheaper brands to manage that sort of economic uncertainty and some of the affordability challenges that they're experiencing. And as a consequence of that, what we're seeing is food service and private label growth above other food and beverage channels. So if I dive a little bit deeper into private label, these are five trends that we see within private label that are really driving the value.
Of course, you'll see first and foremost, affordability and convenience, but clean label that I already mentioned, enhanced nutrition and functionality, and that's important because things get removed from the ingredient panel, it's important to maintain that same structural integrity of the product, and inventive textures that allow us to still deliver against consumer expectations. Sustainability is also an emerging trend, a little bit less so as we think about private label, but nonetheless present as we try and help our retailers reformulate. So within that, we have built-in expertise within private label. We're present across the world. In EMEA, private label is over 40% penetrated across, on average, across most categories.
And what's interesting from an ingredient point of view, more than or approximately 50% of our total revenue in EMEA actually ends up in private label food and beverage. So this is a path that we've been walking for a number of years in EMEA. 15-20 years ago, we started the journey with private label, and really helps inform some of the growth that we're seeing now in U.S. and APAC as private label catches up, but you can see immediately the headroom that that creates in both of those regions. And of course, to underpin all of that, with the demand that we're expecting to see in these spaces, we're investing very strategically to drive our capabilities and to support the growth.
In the last year alone, about $200 million of CapEx has come to fruition across the regions that I'm highlighting here. And just to give you a sense of what that looks like, in Thailand, we've one of our plants, we've got a new spray dryer. In Hamburg, we increased our fluid bed reactor capacity. That allows us to deliver incremental capacity, while also expanding our footprint and delivering customized formulations with allergen segregation as well. In Indianapolis, we we've modernized a facility there for specialty manufacturing assets by optimizing our slurry-based processes, which also results in cost savings. And then in Belcamp, more recently, we have just opened a blending center of excellence, which helps us expand our in-house blending capacity, and again, enables allergen handling.
A lot of strategic investment going into a number of our facilities across the world to underpin a lot of the growth that I mentioned. I hope that gives you a good sense of why we feel so confident, and with that, I'm gonna hand over to my colleague, Rob Ritchie.
Thank you, Patrick. Good afternoon, everyone. It's great to be back here at CAGNY again to speak to you about Ingredion and our ongoing strategy. I'm gonna talk to you today a little bit about our two food and industrial ingredient segments in the LATAM region and in U.S., Canada, and the significant contributions and growth opportunities that they've provided to Ingredion. In LATAM, we generate around $2.5 billion in revenue, in net sales, with a segment operating income of 21%, so very healthy margins in that market. We're a trusted partner for ingredients and solutions in the region for both local customers and global customers that are established in LATAM. And our strong local presence is supported by nine plants, three innovation centers in the region, which positions us well relative to our peers, who combined only have six plants.
In U.S., Canada region, we have achieved $2 billion in net sales in 2025, and a sub-segment operating income margin of 16%, which is very healthy for the mix of this products. It's also worth noting that we are the only corn wet miller with assets located in Canada. And for all of these plants, more than 80% of the production from these plants and the segments are sold within a 100- to 200-mile radius of the plants. So we've got very strong supply chain. We can optimize shipments. Don't have to deal with rail delays either, so very well positioned to our key customers to provide them with growth. In LATAM, we have market leadership driving higher operating margins and delivering consistent growth.
Our OI growth of 4% since 2022 has added $56 million of operating income to Ingredion. We've increased our OI margins from 17% in 2022 to 21% in 2025. We have over 90+ years in the region of experience, and we have the number one position throughout the LATAM market. So we're very experienced in the region, and as you see from the news headlines, it's a fairly volatile region, so we're very used to that volatility. In fact, it's a way of life in terms of how we operate in the LATAM region. We have strong customer intimacy that allows for consistent and reliable growth in the region, and we're positioned well to support CPG growth in the region over the next several years as those favorable trends continue to emerge. We've got a very strong right to win in LATAM.
Patrick and Jim talked about our, our Idea Labs. So we have local Idea Labs in the region to customize towards local tastes and preferences. However, we leverage our global scale to bring those ideas to the market within LATAM as well. We have the lowest delivered cost producer in the region, as referenced by our plants, which we've located near our customers to ensure cost-efficient service and supply chain within them. We continue to trade up our mix based on customer needs, moving from perhaps bulk sweeteners and starches to value-added ingredients and solutions, and we have that playbook already established in our global Texture and Healthful Solutions business, along with pharma and Beauty at Home. We're able to do that by repurposing our grind to higher value-added ingredients and solutions, and the benefit in LATAM is we sell the full, full portfolio of products.
So our teams there sell all of our food and industrial ingredients and also are part of the Texture and Healthful business in that region as we continue to grow as our consumer needs and preferences change in the region. Some of the key trends here that are very favorable for long-term growth in LATAM, affordability is a key issue. Approximately 24% of the income spent in LATAM is spent on food, unlike, say, in U.S. or Britain, where it's 6%-7%, so the cost of these ingredients and finished products is very important. Private label growth that Patrick had mentioned as well grew at 14.2% versus 2023, so we see an opportunity for affordability there. Also, younger population. So we've got a younger population in LATAM compared to more Western markets. They're moving into the middle class.
They're moving into their prime spending years, which should bode well for CPG growth over the next five-10 years. We expect consumer packaged good growth to be at 3.9%. That's almost double of what it's in in some other regions in Western developed markets. Urbanization, the vast majority of the population is moving from farms into cities. Right now in LATAM, it's 82%, and over the next several years, expected to reach 89%. As those consumers come to the cities, they tend to buy more packaged foods, which aligns very well with our strategy in LATAM. Obviously, there's economics and government in the region, so GDP at approximately 2%, inflation at 5%. As I'd mentioned, we've been there for 90 years, so we're used to the volatility.
So when new taxes come up or different governments are able to be elected, we have the ability to work with them to ensure that our strategy continues to grow in those particular markets. I'm gonna pivot now here to our U.S., Canada business. Very strong financial performance over the past four years, showing an OI growth CAGR rate of 15%. And as Jim had mentioned, 16% OI margins, which based on that product mix, is again very stable and helps grow the business with cash generation. We've been growing our growth in industrial opportunities, in packaging, in biosolutions. We're the leader in paper and corrugating in the U.S., Canada market, and we're pivoting towards sustainable and advanced packaging material opportunities as well.
We focus on margin stability, customer intimacy, and optimized supply chain, as mentioned by the strategic location of our plants, and again, strong cash generation to support capital priorities across the enterprise. So what is our right to win in this market? We have leading market positions in U.S., Canada, and LATAM with competitive moats built on over a hundred years of experience. I'll just start on the right-hand side. We have thousands of farmers who grow our primary raw material, corn, but also potato and other raw materials like that. Relatively few competitors in the marketplace and thousands of customers. It's a very strong operating model. One of the things that we've done with this business over the last several years is put in some advanced hedging on our raw materials to reduce that raw material cost volatility.
So we truly are buying that agricultural product and converting it into a value-added ingredient. Relatively stable industry structure, very high barriers to entry. A corn wet milling plant in U.S., Canada is a very expensive proposition, so very high barriers to entry in that area. Pricing excellence, quite a few years ago, we established pricing COVs that allow us to ensure that we're getting the right value and maximization of our prices for the ingredients in the marketplace. And finally, as mentioned, very strong cash generation, supporting not only our continued reliability investments to deliver the return on invested capital for these plants, but generating cash to invest in value-added ingredients within the Texture and Healthful Solutions, sugar reduction, and protein as well.
So what are some of the challenges that we have, and what we're doing to maybe address some of the gradual declines in high fructose that's driving mix shift and improving margins? I've mentioned our industrial business is growing very well, 3%-5% a year in terms of revenue. Native starch and modified starch into packing and industrial solutions. The biosolutions, liquid dextrose is an excellent feedstock for fermentation, for green chemistry, and advanced biofermentation. That's the wave of the future. We see that being a huge opportunity, not only for Ingredion, but overall corn wet milling. In the sweetener market, we are trading up from some of our bulk sweeteners to dry dextrose and glucose, which are much more value-added. We're the largest dextrose producer in the North American market, and that demand continues to grow.
Differentiated markets, we have polyols, which are used in sugar reduction. As Jim mentioned, we've got a very robust beauty and home, pharma, and sugar reduction market as well. As our consumers change and demand patterns changed, we shift the mix coming out of our plants to make sure that our assets are assigned and aligned very carefully with those consumer trends. Finally, just our market positions and differentiated capabilities across both segments provide competitive advantage. I mentioned our opportunities in LATAM positioned very well. I think that point around, we serve all food and beverage categories with sweeteners, starches, texture, and sugar reduction, and protein. We're positioned very well, and the external factors are set up very well for long-term success. In U.S., Canada, a little more mature market, but again, positioned very well.
We'll continue to invest and pivot away from maybe some of the products from 30 years ago to drive growth and opportunity and keep our margins stable in that business. With that, I'm gonna turn it over to Jim Gray, our Executive Vice President and CFO.
Thanks, Rob. With just a few minutes left here, we'll focus on the math part, so I may go quick. Hopefully, this room can follow math. So just a quick recap of 2025. So net sales were down. For those of you who may not know our company, generally, when the cost of the raw materials, like corn, goes down or up, we're passing it through our top line. So we very much, as a company, focus on gross profit and gross profit per ton. That's reflected in our adjusted EBITDA, which was up, and this is the third year in a row that was a record for us. Strong cash from operations, with over $900 million generated, and we do focus on return on invested capital as one of our key metrics.
So let me turn now to our three-year outlook, and we're gonna extend that by a year. So in 2025, we put forth an outlook for 2025, 2026, 2027, and I think in the second half of the year, what we really saw, at least in the U.S., was some real changes. I think we saw some changes from some tariffs that were impacting packaging costs for a number of our customers. That led to probably some mid-year pricing, and in a number of the categories in which we sell ingredient solutions into, they're elastic, and so we saw some volume demand headwinds in the second half of 2025.
You know, the other piece that I would argue is that within, looking forward into 2025, we knew that immigration might be an impact within the U.S. We didn't really know, I think, the debate between probably the, the labor rate and what that income might look like, but it actually turned out to be really people and stomachs. And so, you know, we've seen both voluntary and involuntary deportation start to impact the United States, and that affected some consumption of specific categories in which we sell into. So here what we're doing in our outlook, you'll see that our net sales for the whole enterprise, we think, are gonna be probably between 1% and 3% through 2028.
We still believe that we can hit that very solid mid-single digits operating income growth, and we see operating income expansive over that time period. We're gonna do our best to control our corporate costs, and we're also gonna manage our fiscal policy such that we think adjusted EPS can be in the range of 7%-9%. You combine that with our dividend rate, and we really strive for greater than a 10% TSR.
We outlined here by segments, and maybe the only one that I would highlight is that, for our U.S., Canada segment, while we finished at about $315 million of op income for 2025, we'd really like to put out a target there where we think that the profit potential of this segment can solidly be in the $350 million range, and we would put that out there for 2028. Then below, you can see the kind of target operating income margins for each of the segments that we do report in our 10-K. Against this, there are risks out there. There's continued tariff and trade risks, potentially regulatory risks, and kind of those all combine with kind of input cost inflation.
And then separately, you know, we're looking at a bit of a weaker dollar, so we'll have some FX impacts. We're watching population change and then always there's this kind of economic growth. But we are seeing some, generally around the world, rates come down, which should be a boost, a tailwind to economic growth. One pillar that Jim introduced, and I just want to put a cap on it here in my final minute, is enterprise productivity. We're really moving. Most companies are moving to a stage where they're thinking about: How are they gonna streamline processes? How are they gonna really change the responsibilities of the professional and augment those with AI and get to just greater effectiveness of our people and greater efficiency within the organization? We've embarked on a multi-year program here on enterprise productivity.
I shouldn't call it a program. It's actually a journey. It's a change in our mindset, and we think that's gonna lead to over a point of operating income growth by 2028. We balance our capital priorities. We focus on growth first. We're very disciplined. I'll leave this to you to follow up on the presentation. We're very consistent in turning cash back to shareholders. Here you can see both share repurchases as well as dividends. We've increased the dividend, the annual dividend rate, 11 times in the last 11 years. We also think and take a very disciplined approach to M&A, and you could read through the details here.
I would just say that we really target a three-year, so three-year post the acquisition, at least a return on invested capital of 10%. So we give, give ourselves a couple of years to capture those synergies, get the costs out, get the capacity balanced, work on those revenue adjacencies, and really drive that. And so with that, we'll finish. Our last theme was the investment thesis, but we'll leave, we'll leave it there and on time. Thank you very much.
Thank you very much. Please join me in thanking the management team of Ingredion. We'll take it over to the breakout.