You are given a text that consists of multiple sentences. Your task is to perform abstractive summarization on this text. Use your understanding of the content to express the main ideas and crucial details in a shorter, coherent, and natural sounding text. 
Text: On a per share basis, second quarter earnings were $4.09 compared to earnings per share of $0.43 last year and earnings per share of $0.55 for the second quarter of 2019.
During the second quarter of 2021, the company recorded adjustments to earnings, including $303 million of noncash gains related to our minority investments, of which $290 million was related to a higher valuation for the company's investment in GOAT and a $39 million charge was due primarily to the impairment review of Footaction.
On a non-GAAP basis, earnings were $2.21 per share, up over 200% compared to earnings per share of $0.71 for the second quarter of last year and compared to earnings per share of $0.66 for the second quarter of 2019.
Andy Gray, Executive Vice President and Chief Commercial Officer, will then provide additional insights into the business drivers in the quarter.
Andrew Page, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, will then review our second quarter results and provide guidance for the current fiscal year.
We are pleased to report that our momentum continued into the second quarter, leading to excellent top and bottom line results that reflect the health of our category, the deep engagement we have with our customers and the strategic nature of our vendor partnerships.
The broad-based growth was driven by strong performances in women's and kids footwear, coupled with strong demand across apparel and accessories.
In addition, with further gains in our inventory productivity and meaningfully low levels of promotional activity, we were able to deliver significant margin gains in a truly impressive bottom line performance.
For the second quarter, our global fleet was open for approximately 94% of possible operating days with temporary closures in Canada, certain markets in Asia and Germany.
With economies reopening to a greater extent throughout most of the markets in which we operate, we saw a low double-digit lift in traffic compared to fiscal 2020, which demonstrates the ongoing importance of our stores, where our customers enjoy spending time after connecting with us digitally.
Together with the strength of our stores, our digital channels also drove important connections with our customers.
Our digital sales penetration rate was 20.1%, normalizing from the peak levels we saw in 2020 while remaining well above 2019 levels, a trend we expect to continue going forward.
I'm proud of the great progress our teams have made against the ongoing challenges created by the COVID-19 pandemic, delivering great customer experiences despite lean inventory levels and temporary store closures in certain countries.
Turning now to some highlights of our three geographies.
In North America, our Kids Foot Locker and Champs Sports banners led the way with double-digit comp gains on top of last year's double-digit increases.
Our U.S. fleet was open close to 100% of the possible operating days, while our Canadian business was impacted by closures in Ontario, resulting in doors being opened approximately 70% of possible operating days.
We are also making meaningful progress on our North America portfolio and fleet transformation strategy.
As we discussed last quarter, we made the strategic decision to wind down our Footaction banner by the end of fiscal 2022 and focus our resources on our core concepts.
We just completed our first Footaction store conversion, reopening it as a Foot Locker format.
And we have approximately 50 more conversions planned for the back half of the year, along with 130 Footaction store closures.
In EMEA, pent-up demand drove growth as stores reopened across all countries, leading to a double-digit comp gain at Foot Locker Europe.
Altogether, our EMEA fleet was open 87% of possible operating days in the quarter compared to 70% in the second quarter of last year and a meaningful improvement from the 39% in the first quarter of this year.
Our APAC region delivered another solid quarter, also overcoming challenges related to COVID, with the fleet opened approximately 80% of possible operating days compared to over 90% in Q2 last year.
But even with the decline in operating days, we saw a 30% comp increase in our Asia markets and a mid-single-digit gain in the Pacific region.
We continued to make progress in our expansion strategy within Asia in the second quarter.
We launched our local Foot Locker website in South Korea, which will help us connect with our customers and grow our social media following and create a stronger omnichannel business in the market.
We also opened two new stores in South Korea and one store in Singapore.
In addition, we are excited to announce that we have signed a licensing agreement to enter the Indonesia market in partnership with MAP Active, the leading brand commerce and athletic retailer in Southeast Asia.
We expect to launch the local Foot Locker website and open two Foot Locker locations, a power store and a core store this year, with the first store slated to open by early Q4.
Turning to an update on FLX.
We continue to see our membership program gaining traction as enrollment increases.
We finished the second quarter with over 25 million members, up from over 20 million members at the end of the first quarter.
We are excited about the momentum and engagement in the program and the overall benefits it will provide to our business, including higher average spend for members versus nonmembers.
It's worth noting that members spent over 75% more than nonmembers in the second quarter as their average order values were approximately 10% higher than nonmembers and they shopped more frequently at our banners.
We are excited about where FLX is going, and we will continue to create new features and evolve the customer experience for members within existing markets while also working to launch the program in additional countries where we operate.
Overall, these metrics are why we are optimistic about the strength of our portfolio, the power of our assortments and the loyalty of our customers.
Andy will provide more detail around product highlights in the quarter and what we see in the pipeline for back-to-school and more broadly in Q3.
Before he does, I'd like to spend a few minutes discussing our recently announced agreements to acquire WSS and atmos and how we expect the addition of these two businesses to the Foot Locker Inc. family will advance our four strategic imperatives.
You may recall that on numerous occasions, we have articulated our commitment to our four strategic pillars in order to accelerate growth and drive greater value for our stakeholders.
First, elevate the customer experience.
Second, invest for long-term growth.
And fourth, leverage the power of our people.
The acquisitions of WSS and atmos fit our strategy to a tee while also tying back to our purpose, to inspire and empower youth culture and strengthening our connection to the sneaker community.
Each transaction will be accretive, create disciplined growth and enable us to invest in platforms that will maximize value for Foot Locker shareholders.
As we discussed when we announced the two transactions, the addition of WSS and atmos to our brand portfolio will diversify our store footprint and product mix, provide access to complementary and differentiated customer bases and accelerate our growth both in North America and internationally.
Moreover, together, these acquisitions will expand our ability to service the entire retail price value spectrum.
Today, we would like to provide additional detail on how we expect these two terrific businesses to deliver significant financial benefits and drive additional value for shareholders.
The management team has built a strong and scalable business model, led by their off-mall real estate strategy, full family offerings, focus on the Hispanic customer and the commitment to elevating the communities that it serves.
We see a path to approximately $1 billion in sales in the next five years from the $425 million in fiscal 2020, driven by the differentiated WSS consumer concept that we can bring to new U.S. markets and favorable future demographics of the United States marketplace.
In addition to market expansion opportunities, we also have identified both revenue-generating and operating cost synergies.
Our company's expertise in private label apparel design and sourcing, along with the utilization of our team additions speed-to-market apparel facility, present opportunities to generate incremental apparel sales for WSS.
Our company will also deliver incremental supply chain capabilities and capacity, along with shared services operating synergies across the business.
WSS is also well positioned for operating margin enhancements in light of its full family offering that increases basket size, a successful labor model that values outstanding customer service and expertise in choosing high-potential store locations that are well positioned to succeed.
We are excited to add this premium, globally recognized brand into our portfolio.
Over the past two decades, Hommyo-san, the founder of atmos, and his team have built a digitally led and culturally connected premium lifestyle brand that sits at the center of sneaker culture in Asia and beyond.
This acquisition will represent a highly strategic entry point into the important Japanese marketplace with immediate scale as we continue our expansion across Asia Pacific and tap into youth and sneaker culture across the globe.
As many of you know, atmos has a long and storied history of iconic collaborations with a variety of strategic brand partners that create unrivaled hype in our industry.
They are also best-in-class when it comes to retail design and experiential stores located in key markets and shopping districts that serve as inspiring and critical touch points in the omni customer journey.
Atmos generates over 60% of its revenue from their digital channels and has a strong global following across social media platforms.
Both WSS and atmos are high-growth businesses.
We expect that each will generate low double-digit sales growth annually over the next five years, that will, in turn, be accretive to the bottom line.
Andrew will provide some additional color on the potential accretion in his remarks.
We are excited about welcoming both WSS and the atmos to the Foot Locker Inc. family and look forward to integrating these businesses for the benefit of all stakeholders.
One other call out I would like to make is regarding our investment in GOAT.
During the quarter, GOAT closed $195 million Series F round of funding, again confirming the market's confidence in the broader sneaker category.
We continue to be excited about GOAT's success as they expand into new categories such as luxury apparel and accessories.
And we'll continue to look for ways to work together and expand the ecosystem.
In short, the strength of our business has enabled us to invest in profitable growing businesses and deploy our capital effectively to drive shareholder value.
Andrew will drill down into the numbers and discuss capital allocation and our outlook in a moment.
Before he does, here's my perspective as we look to the back half of the year.
We have positive momentum coming off of strong results from the first half.
That said, we're still facing several macro-level issues from the global pandemic to the knock-on effect that it is having in our supply chain.
We are also working closely with our strategic vendor partners to ensure our continued access to product amid the COVID-19 outbreak in Vietnam and other supply chain-related headwinds.
But for those things that we can control, we believe we're in a very good place to deliver positive results in the back half of this year.
Our product pipeline, which continues to be very strong, is resonating well with our consumers.
We anticipate the culture of basketball will continue to be a key revenue driver in the third quarter.
Seasonal offerings will also be very important as consumers look to diversify their footwear purchases.
Lastly, apparel trends continue to be very favorable as we enter back-to-school in the fall season.
And as we consider the opportunities for back-to-school in comparison to the delayed back-to-school season last year, a more normalized cadence this year presents an opportunity to capture more of that demand earlier in the quarter.
That said, we are keeping a close eye on possible disruptions caused by the evolving COVID-19 situation.
We continue to monitor the temporary store closures across the countries in which we operate and will adhere to government mandates.
We look forward to getting our store fleet back to full strength and meeting the pent-up demand we expect to see from our customers as we fully reopen our stores.
Our financial position remains strong.
Our vendor relationships are very strategic in nature.
And we continue to obsess around our customers, whether it's through our digital channels, social media, FLX or an in-store customer experience.
It is their dedication and hard work that made these outstanding results possible and will enable us to continue to drive our business forward and fulfill our purpose, to inspire in a power youth culture.
Our second quarter results continue to showcase that our strategy to strengthen the relationship with our current customers and bring new customers into our business are working.
The three key objectives here are: to maximize our product leadership and diversity of brands, utilize our global scale and investments to elevate our store and digital experiences to get great product into the hands of our consumers, and to continue to double down on our commitment to the communities we serve.
And we saw broad-based growth this quarter by following those objectives.
Our footwear business increased low single digits.
Our apparel and accessories businesses were both up double digits, with both families of business also up double digits compared to 2019.
We saw consumer diversity across departments, and our total men's business was relatively flat and we saw acceleration in women's and kids.
Encouragingly, kids had the largest gain as we continue to recruit and bring in the next generation of sneaker head to start their lifelong journey with us.
The culture of basketball, led by the key Nike icons and new additions from Adidas and New Balance, continues to create excitement and drive momentum.
Here, strength in women's and kids more than offset a mid-single-digit decline in men's that was going up against a double-digit comp of last year.
Additionally, we brought new consumers to our business with an increased focus on the seasonal category, delivering a high double-digit increase with gains in Crocs, UGG and Birkenstock along with an expanded balkanized offering in Vans and Converse, showcasing the variety our consumers want on their feet.
Another area of our business that continues to excite us and gain momentum is apparel, which was up double digits to last year and 2019.
Men's, women's and kids all delivered gains over 20%.
And again, our kids business had the largest increase as we bring in the next generation for apparel as well.
To add distinction to our assortments, we are thrilled to continue working with all of our partners to deliver a strong pipeline of exciting exclusive product concepts that resonate with all of our consumers.
This is a big part of how we bring energy every day.
Recent examples would be our celebration of the 25th anniversary of the Griffin with Nike, our Adidas All Day I dream About Summer concept featuring unique executions of their key iconic silhouettes, and our Crocs and Party Animals concept where we partnered with Ron English to reimagine their icon for summertime.
All of these programs are significant in terms of scale and consumer engagement.
Our powerful consumer concept offense continues into fall, including Puma and LameloBall, New Balance and Louis De Guzman, Vans and Kids of Immigrants and many more.
In addition to our product concept, there's a lot to be excited about for fall.
The culture of basketball momentum continues.
We are continuing our seasonal expansion with an increased focus on boots and fleece to maximize the season ahead.
And we have a very strong pipeline of product and inventory in apparel.
What is new to our business will be the launch of our own brands to maximize the ongoing momentum in the category.
These will feature brands like Locker and Cozy as well as exclusive partnerships with tastemakers and celebrity curators like Downs and Melody Ehsani.
I'm also very pleased to see the results of our commitment to building community and driving meaningful and lasting change for our consumers.
We are building and enabling community in many ways, both through the continued expansion of our community stores and geo offense to ensure we are more deeply rooted in the neighborhoods that we serve, and the continued rollout and expansion of our FLX membership program, where we see significant runway to grow our 25-million member community as well as driving engagement and incremental spend through value-added enhancements and meaningful benefits that excite our consumers and drive leadership in the industry.
Finally, with LEED, we continue to fight racial inequality and injustice.
We addressed our first year in June with a statement on our $200 million commitment.
But to be more specific here, for the quarter, we expanded our associate scholarship program and completed our first summer internship bridge program focused on our Black associates.
We launched the Designing with Sol program with PENSOLE and New Balance, which creates opportunity for underrepresented voices in the footwear industry.
And we continue to bring in Black-owned brands and concepts to give them a platform to connect with our audience.
We have featured 20 brands since announcing this program with 25 more planned for the year.
We're extremely dedicated to this initiative and will continue to drive meaningful and lasting change across our company and within the communities we serve.
As we push our consumer-led offense forward, our strategy will continue to be the combination of product leadership and diversity, enhanced omni experiences and our focus on community and purpose that will guide our actions and make the difference in how we lead this industry.
Let me now pass the call over to Andrew.
Before I begin, I would like to note that in addition to comparing our results for last year, I will also reference comparisons to the second quarter of 2019, where it is helpful.
Now let's discuss our second quarter results.
Starting with the top line.
We delivered a 6.9% comp gain on top of the 18.6% gain in the second quarter of last year.
Along with this strong demand, our focus on more full-price selling, combined with our disciplined expense management, yielded non-GAAP earnings per share of $2.21, an increase of over 200%.
Taking a look at the second quarter.
May's comp gain was up over 50%.
June, which was up against the initial reopening last year, was pressured the most, down high single digits.
While July was down low single digits with momentum improving as we move through the month.
Breaking down our performance by region, North America experienced pockets of growth on top of robust comps from the second quarter of last year.
Kids Foot Locker led with comps over 20%.
Champs Sports followed with a low double-digit comp gain.
Foot Locker posted a mid-single-digit comp gain.
And Footaction, in a wind-down mode, closed the quarter down low double digits.
Foot Locker Canada posted a high single-digit comp decline as we continue to face temporary store closures in key markets.
Eastbay was down over 30% for the quarter.
As a digital-only banner, Eastbay did not benefit from store reopenings and was up against a double-digit comp gain in Q2 of last year.
Foot Locker Asia delivered a roughly 30% comp gain, while Foot Locker Pacific increased in the low single-digit range.
Based on easing COVID restrictions, Foot Locker Europe posted a low 20% comp increase.
Sidestep, which experienced the most store closures during the quarter, decreased low single digits.
By channel, the strength in our comp sales this quarter was driven by our stores, which increased 28.4%.
Let me remind you that our fleet was opened 94% of potential operating days in the quarter versus approximately 70% last year.
Our direct-to-consumer channel returned to a more normalized level, accounting for 20.1% of total sales for the quarter, down from 33.2% last year but up from 14.3% in the second quarter of 2019.
Reflecting on the more limited promotional environment, average selling prices were up mid-single digits in the quarter while units were up low single digits.
In addition, the higher sales penetration in our stores led to more full-price selling.
Moving down the income statement.
Gross margin was 35.1% compared to 25.9% last year.
When compared to a more normal Q2 of 2019, gross margin improved an impressive 500 basis points.
The trends we experienced in the first quarter continued in the second quarter with the combination of robust demand and fresher name inventory driving meaningfully lower levels of promotional activity.
Our merchandise margin rate improved 870 basis points over last year and 170 basis points over 2019, driven primarily by the meaningful reduction in markdown.
Looking ahead, we expect the promotional environment to remain favorable through most of this year but to a lesser extent than what we experienced in the first half.
As a percent of sales, our occupancy and bias compensation costs leveraged 50 basis points over Q2 of 2020 and 330 basis points over Q2 2019.
This is inclusive of approximately $6 million of COVID-related rent abatements in the quarter, which was unchanged compared to Q2 of last year.
Our SG&A expense rate came in at 19.8% of sales in the quarter as we returned to more normalized store operating levels.
This yielded 120 basis points of deleverage over last year and 240 basis points of leverage compared to 2019.
In addition to careful expense control, we received approximately $4 million in government subsidies in the quarter, which is down from the $17 million we received in Q2 of 2020.
We also incurred $4 million of lower PPE expense.
And bonus expense came in 40 basis points lower.
For the quarter, depreciation expense was $48 million, up from $44 million last year, while interest expense was $2 million, flat to last year.
Our non-GAAP tax rate came in at 27.4%, below last year's rate of 30.7%.
The improved rate in the current quarter reflects the lower proportion of nondeductible items on the overall rate.
Turning to our liquidity position.
We ended the quarter with $1.8 billion of cash, an increase of $472 million compared to Q2 last year, primarily driven by our higher inventory turns.
We currently have no outstanding borrowings on our $600 million credit facility.
At the end of Q2, inventory was down 9.5% to last year versus total sales increase of 9.5% as strong demand outstripped the increase in receipts during the quarter.
On a constant currency basis, inventory was down 10.4%, while sales increased 7.3%.
We invested approximately $36 million into our business in the form of capital expenditures during the quarter.
This funded the opening of 16 new stores as well as the remodeling or relocating of 23 stores.
We also closed 57 stores in the quarter, primarily in the U.S., leaving us with 2,911 company-owned stores at the end of Q2.
For the full year, we now expect to open approximately 120 stores, remodel or relocate 165 and close 345.
These amounts reflect about 190 Footaction stores we plan to close or reposition in 2021.
Looking forward, we now expect to invest approximately $260 million in capital expenditures this year, down slightly from our prior guidance of $275 million.
However, this number and the fleet update do not reflect any impact related to our announced acquisitions of WSS and atmos.
As Dick mentioned, we are excited about the strategic potential that both assets bring to the Foot Locker Inc. family.
They will provide us with the opportunity to expand into new markets, customer segments and price points as well as deepen our relationships with existing vendor partners, create new relationships with new vendors and diversify our retail footprint.
In addition, while both transactions are about growth, we also see opportunity for cost synergies with the WSS transaction.
More specifically, in 2022, we expect that we will begin to generate approximately $10 million in annualized cost synergies by leveraging our supply chain and operating capabilities.
Based on the expected growth trajectory for both WSS and atmos, we expect each of these businesses to achieve low double digits to mid-teens EBITDA margins over the next five years.
As we previously communicated, we anticipate both WSS and atmos will be accretive to Foot Locker's earnings for fiscal 2021.
We anticipate that accretion on an annualized basis will be in the range of $0.44 to $0.48 in 2022.
In light of these strategic investments, we want to use this opportunity to reiterate our approach to capital allocation.
While we made adjustments to our strategy over the past year as we tackle the effects of the pandemic on our business, we have historically maintained and communicated our balanced approach that includes: investing in our business to drive growth while also returning value to shareholders through dividends and opportunistic share repurchases.
What you have seen so far this year is a reflection of exactly that approach, with a combination of thoughtful organic investments in our business and highly targeted M&A activity.
At the same time, we continue to focus on delivering meaningful returns of cash to our shareholders through our dividend and share repurchase program.
We believe the 50% increase to our quarterly dividend, which we announced earlier this week, signals our Board's confidence in the business and our financial strength.
To-date, in fiscal 2021, we have paid out $42 million in dividends and repurchased approximately 745,000 shares for $41 million.
Going forward, we and the Board expect to continue with this focused capital allocation strategy designed to maximize shareholder value.
Finally, we are providing guidance for the current fiscal year.
As a reminder, our general practice is to only provide annual comp sales and earnings per share outlook and not quarterly guidance.
Also, please note that this color excludes any impact of the acquisition as they have not yet closed; and that we are still operating in an uncertain environment and seeing shutdowns in certain markets outside the U.S., along with changes closer to home due to the COVID-19 variance.
For fiscal 2021, we remain optimistic and expect to deliver a low to mid-teen increase in comp sales.
From a cadence point of view, keep in mind that Q3 is up against a strong back-to-school period, and some of the enhanced government assistance programs are scheduled to end.
We are expecting the gross margin rate to be up 490 to 510 basis points for the full year versus 2020, mostly driven by a more rational promotional environment.
Our SG&A expense rate is expected to leverage between 40 and 60 basis points year-over-year.
In terms of depreciation and amortization expense, we expect it to be approximately $185 million to $190 million.
Lastly, we expect our full year effective tax rate to be in the range of 28% to 28.5%.
We expect our non-GAAP earnings range to be approximately $7 to $7.15 per share.
This guidance reflects the strong performance in the first half of the year and our optimism around the back half of 2021 and while recognizing that we are going up against more normalized store operating days versus last year.
Our financial position is strong, and it allows us to remain flexible as we seek to deliver against our strategic plans and drive shareholder value.

user
compname reports q2 earnings per share of $4.09.
q2 non-gaap earnings per share $2.21.
q2 earnings per share $4.09.
q2 same store sales rose 6.9 percent.
cautiously optimistic about outlook for back-half of 2021.
continue to keep a close eye on business, including temporary store closures and supply chain challenges.
at july 31, 2021, co's merchandise inventories were $1,081 million, 9.5% lower than at end of q2 last year.

assistant