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: stepan.com under the Investors section of our website.
We hope you and your families have had an opportunity to be vaccinated and that you have done so.
The best way to protect yourself and your family is to be vaccinated.
Although, demand for cleaning, disinfection and personal wash products has slowed from the pandemic peak, we had Stepan remain committed to doing our part by supporting customers that supply these essential products to the market.
The company had a good first half and delivered record results.
Adjusted net income was $84.6 million or $3.62 per diluted share.
Both adjusted net income and adjusted earnings per share were up 35% versus the first half of 2020, which was negatively impacted by the Millsdale plant outage.
We delivered our best second quarter and had $42.2 million adjusted net income.
Surfactant operating income was down 5%, largely due to higher North American supply chain cost, driven by inflationary pressures and planned higher maintenance cost.
Our Polymer operating income was up 48% on 44% sales volume growth.
The polymer growth was driven by both the INVISTA polyester polyol acquisition and organic market growth.
Overall, the integration of INVISTA's business into our company has gone well and is on track with our business plans.
Our Specialty Product business results were up due to order timing and improved margins within our MCT product line.
Our Board of Directors declared a quarterly cash dividend on Stepan's common stock of $0.305 per share payable on September 15, 2021.
Stepan has increased its dividend for 53 consecutive years.
Luis will walk you through a few more details about our second quarter results.
Let's just start with the Slide four to recap the quarter.
Adjusted net income for the second quarter of 2021 was $42.2 million or $1.81 per diluted share, a 10% increase versus $38.3 million or $1.65 per diluted share in the second quarter of 2020.
Specifically, adjustment to reported net income this quarter consists of adjustment for deferred compensation and minor restructuring expenses.
Adjusted net income for the quarter excludes deferred compensation income of $1.1 million or $0.04 per diluted share, compared to deferred compensation expense of $1.9 million or $0.08 per diluted share in the same period last year.
The deferred compensation numbers represent the net expense related to the company's deferred compensation plan as well as cash-settled stock appreciation rights for our employees.
These liabilities change with the movement in the stock price, we exclude this item from our operational discussion.
Slide five shows the total company earnings fees for the second quarter, compared to last year's second quarter and breaks down the increase in adjusted net income.
Because this is net income, the figure is noted here are on an after-tax basis.
We will cover each segment in more detail, but to summarize, Polymers and Specialty Products were up where Surfactant was down versus the prior year.
Corporate expenses and all others were higher during the quarter due to higher acquisition-related expenses and overall inflation.
The company's effective tax rate was 24.4% in the first half of 2021 compared to 23.9% in the prior year period.
This year-over-year increase was primarily attributable to a less favorable geographical mix of income.
We expect the full year 2021 effective tax rate to be in the range of 23% to 26%.
The Slide six focuses on Surfactant segment results for the quarter.
Surfactant net sales were $384 million, a 16% increase versus the prior year.
Selling prices were up 17%, primarily due to improved product and customer mix as well as the pass-through of higher raw material costs.
Effect of foreign currency translation positively impacted net sales by 5%.
Volume decreased 6% year-over-year.
Most of this decrease reflects lower volume into the North America consumer product end market.
This reduction was driven by lower demand for consumer cleaning, disinfection and personal wash products versus the pandemic peak in 2020.
Additionally, we continue to experience feedstock supply issues and customer inventory rebalancing efforts.
This was partially offset by higher demand for products sold into our institutional cleaning and functional product end markets.
Surfactant operating income for the quarter decreased $2.6 million or 5% versus the prior year, primarily due to higher North America supply chain cost as a result of inflationary pressures and planned higher maintenance costs.
Latin America operating results benefit from a $2.1 million VAT tax recovery project in the current year quarter.
Europe results decreased slightly due to lower demand in consumer products, partially offset by increased demand in functional products.
Now turning to Polymers on Slide 7.
Net sales were $191 million in the quarter, up 70% from prior year.
Sales volume increased 44%, primarily due to 41% growth in Rigid Polyol volumes.
Global rigid polyol volumes, excluding the INVISTA acquisition, was up 7% versus the prior year.
Higher demand within the PA and Specialty Polyol businesses also contributed to the volume growth.
Selling prices increased 21% and the translation impact of a weaker U.S. dollar positively increased net sales by 5%.
Polymer operating income increased $7.5 million or 48%, primarily due to double-digit volume growth in the legacy polymers business plus INVISTA acquisition.
North America polyol results decreased due to rising raw materials and manufacturing costs, partially offset by higher volumes.
Europe results increased due to double-digit volume growth on the base business plus INVISTA acquisition.
China results decreased due to the nonrecurrence of a onetime benefit in the base period in 2020 and lower volumes.
China volumes in the first half of 2021 grew 5%.
Specialty Products net sales were $21 million for the quarter, up 33% from the prior year quarter.
Volume was up 17% between quarters, and operating income increased $3.8 million or 116%.
The operating income increase was primarily attributable to order timing differences within our food and flavor business and improved margins within our MCT product line.
Moving on to Slide 8.
Our balance sheet remains strong, and we have ample liquidity to invest in the business.
Our leverage and interest coverage ratios continues at very healthy levels.
We had a strong cash from operations in the first half of 2021, which was used for capex investments, dividends, share buybacks and investments in working capital, given the strong sales growth and raw material inflation.
We executed agreements for $100 million of new private placement debt at a very attractive and fixed interest rates of around 2%.
We will use a new cash to fund our organic and inorganic growth opportunities and for other general corporate purposes.
For the full year, capital expenditures are expected to be in the range of $150 million to $170 million.
Beginning on Slide 10, Scott will now update you on our 2021 strategic priorities.
We are pleased to have delivered record first half earnings to our shareholders and look forward to carrying that momentum into the second half of the year.
We continue to prioritize the safety and health of our employees as we deliver products that contribute to the fight against COVID-19.
Our EPA-approved biocide formulations kill a specific novel virus that causes COVID-19 and allow our customers to provide the public with additional tools to protect their families and to fight the pandemic.
Based on customer feedback, consumer habits have changed, and these new behaviors require higher use of disinfection, cleaning and personal wash products.
Therefore, we believe our surfactant volumes in the consumer product end market will remain higher versus pre-pandemic levels, however, lower than peak pandemic demand in Q2 of 2020.
We believe institutional cleaning volume will continue to grow as economies around the world reopen and people demand higher standards for cleaning and disinfection in public settings.
We also anticipate that demand for surfactants within the agricultural and oilfield markets will continue to benefit from higher agricultural and commodity prices and improve versus 2020.
We will continue working on improving productivity as well as product and customer mix to improve Surfactant operating income.
Globally, we are increasing capacity in certain product lines, including biocides and amphoteric to ensure we can meet higher requirements from our customers.
As discussed previously, we are increasing North American capability and capacity to produce low 1,4-dioxane sulfates, a minor byproduct generated in the manufacture of ether sulfate surfactants, which are key cleaning and foaming ingredients used in consumer product formulations.
Through a combination of process optimization and additional manufacturing equipment, Stepan will be prepared to supply customers ether sulfates that meet the new regulatory requirements.
This project is the primary driver of our 2021 capital expenditure forecast of $150 million to $170 million and will carry over to 2022 as well.
We are working with our customers to ensure these projects deliver our financial return targets.
Tier two and Tier three customers continue to be a focus of our strategy.
Tier two and Tier three volume grew in the second quarter, driven by increased customer penetration.
We added 150 new customers during the quarter and more than 500 customers in the first half of this year.
Our diversification strategy into functional markets continues to be a key priority for Stepan.
During the first half, global agricultural volume increased high single digits with strong growth obtained in the post-patent pesticide segment and new products launched throughout the world.
Oilfield volume was up mid-single digits due to higher oil prices.
We remain optimistic about future opportunities in this business as oil prices have recovered to the $70 per barrel level.
We continued our consulting work in our Millsdale plant and accelerated interventions and investments in both expense and capex to increase capacity and improved productivity.
We expect to continue this project and investment level throughout the rest of this year.
We are projecting a strong return on investment in this project through a combination of productivity improvements, more capacity in several high-margin product lines through debottlenecking key processes and improved service to our customers.
We anticipate starting to see the benefits of this project in 2022 and beyond.
Polymers had a good quarter and first half of the year as the business is coming back from a challenging year due to COVID restrictions.
The long-term prospects for our polyol business remain attractive, as energy conservation efforts and more stringent building codes should increase demand.
As Quinn stated, the integration of this business acquired from INVISTA is going well, and we expect to deliver $16 million to $18 million of EBITDA in 2021.
Given the strength of our balance sheet, we also plan to continue to identify and pursue acquisition opportunities to fill gaps in our portfolio and to add new platform chemistries.
The company delivered record first half earnings in 2021.
Looking forward, we believe Surfactant volumes in North America consumer product end market will be challenged versus peak pandemic levels in 2020.
While we believe institutional cleaning volume will continue to grow versus prior year, we do not believe it will compensate for lower consumer consumption of cleaning, disinfection and personal wash products.
We anticipate that demand for Surfactants when the agricultural and oilfield markets will improve versus 2020.
Global demand for Rigid Polyols continues to recover from pandemic-related delays and cancellations of reroofing and new construction projects.
This recovery, combined with our first quarter 2021 acquisition, should position our polymer business to deliver growth versus prior year.
We believe that long-term prospects for Rigid Polyols remains attractive as energy conservation efforts and more stringent building codes are expected to continue.
We anticipate our Specialty Product business results will improve slightly year-over-year.
Despite continued raw material price increases and planned higher maintenance costs, we remain cautiously optimistic about the remainder of the year.
Daisy, please review the instructions for the question portion of today's call.

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q2 adjusted earnings per share $1.81.

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