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: A detailed discussion of the risks and uncertainties that may affect our future results is contained in AMETEK's filings with the SEC, including in our 10-Q, which we file later today.
I will now turn the meeting over to Dave.
AMETEK delivered a strong third quarter, despite ongoing challenges presented by the COVID-19 pandemic.
While sales continue to be impacted by the pandemic, the demand environment shows solid improvements from the second quarter, as customers return to work and travel restrictions began to slowly ease.
In addition, our businesses delivered outstanding operating performance, allowing us to expand margins, generate excellent cash flow and drive earnings ahead of our expectations.
I continue to be impressed by the strength of our workforce and the dedication to our mission of solving our customer's most complex challenges.
We remain vigilant and focused on our employees' safety.
Our site and country level pandemic coordinators are doing an excellent job adapting to the shifting guidelines provided by the CDC, and local health and safety agencies.
The flexibility our teams have shown in implementing new processes and protocols to ensure a safe working environment has been excellent.
Now let me turn to our results for the quarter.
Third quarter sales were $1.13 billion, down 12% compared to the third quarter of 2019.
Organic sales were down 14%.
With the recent acquisitions contributing five points to growth, the divestiture of Reading Alloys a three point headwind and foreign currency adding one point.
As expected, our commercial aerospace business, which is less than 10% of the overall company, experienced the largest impact from COVID, with sales down approximately 35% versus the prior year.
Our businesses continue to drive operational excellence initiatives to help mitigate demand weakness.
These efforts lead to excellent operating results in the quarter.
Third quarter operating income was $270 million and operating margins were a record 24%, up 40 basis points compared to last year's third quarter, while decremental margins were an impressive 20% in the quarter.
EBITDA in the third quarter was $332 million and EBITDA margins were a record 29.5%, up 210 basis points over last year's comparable period.
This led to earnings per diluted share of $1.01, down just 5% compared to the third quarter of 2019.
Furthermore, our businesses generated a strong level of cash flow.
Operating cash flow in the quarter was $310 million and free cash flow conversion was an impressive 146% of that income.
Next, let me provide additional details at the operating group level.
Our Electronic Instruments Group performed very well in the quarter, despite end-market weakness, delivering outstanding operating performance resulting in strong margin expansion.
Sales in the third quarter for EIG were $748.4 million, down 8% from the comparable period in 2019.
As expected, we saw solid and wide-spread sequential sales improvements from the second quarter.
Organic sales were down 15% year-over-year, with the acquisitions of Gatan and IntelliPower contributing six points and foreign currency contributing one point.
Commercial aerospace remains a largest driver of organic sales weakness in EIG.
EIG's third quarter operating income was $203.7 million and operating margins were an impressive 27.2%, up 30 basis points compared to the same quarter last year.
Our Electromechanical Group also saw sequential sales improvement and mitigated a weak demand environment with solid operating performance.
EMG sales were $378.6 million, down 18% from last year's third quarter, driven in part by the impact of the Reading Alloys divestiture.
Organic sales were down 13%, with a divestiture of 8-point headwind, the acquisition of PDT added two points and foreign currency adding one point.
EMG's operating income was $84.3 million and operating margins were solid at 22.3% for the quarter.
Let me comment briefly on end-market dynamics for some of our businesses.
Overall, we saw solid sequential sales improvements across all markets in the third quarter.
We expect continued sequential improvements in the fourth quarter for all businesses other than customer aerospace, where we expect largely flat conditions sequentially.
Our strongest market remains defense, where we continue to be well-positioned with content across a wide range of important defense platforms.
We are also very well-positioned with our medical and healthcare businesses.
Although, they experienced a delay in the return of electro procedures during the third quarter, which offsets solid COVID-driven demand.
And our most challenging market remains commercial aerospace remain cautious of a trajectory of a recovery given the uncertainty caused by COVID-19.
Given the uncertain and challenging end-market dynamics, our businesses remain highly focused on driving operational excellence initiatives, both structural and temporary, to manage topline weakness, while ensuring we maintain our investments and key growth initiatives across the company.
AMETEK's asset-light operating model provides us with the flexibility to do both.
Our ability to expand margins and generate strong levels of cash flow during this pandemic is evidence of the strength of our operating model.
In the third quarter, we generated $70 million in total cost savings, which was at the high end of our expectations, with $40 million in structural savings and $30 million in temporary cost reduction savings.
Looking ahead to the fourth quarter, we expect a slightly higher level of structural savings, while temporary savings will be reduced from the third quarter levels, as we add back additional temporary costs during the quarter.
As a result, we expect approximately $55 million in our total cost savings in the fourth quarter, with $45 million in structural and $10 million in temporary cost savings.
And for the full year, we expect approximately $230 million in total cost savings, with $140 million in structural savings and $90 million in temporary savings.
Our businesses continue to implement new and innovative ways to reach our customers around the world in new markets.
Through virtual meeting platforms, augmented reality product demonstrations and service, and enhanced digital marketing initiatives, our businesses have adapted quickly to the new landscape.
Seeing our businesses adopt these new ways of doing business quickly and effectively has been very impressive.
Our businesses are also collaborating across platforms.
As an example, AMETEK Land and AMETEK Rauland recently partnered together to help support Rauland's reopen schools safely campaign for their Telecenter U solution.
Rauland is the leading provider of critical communications, workflow and safety solutions for hospitals and schools.
Their Telecenter U solution connects classrooms and educational facilities to district offices for emergencies, event management and everyday communications.
As I mentioned on our last earnings call, AMETEK Land, a leading manufacturer of non-contact temperature measurement solutions, recently developed their new VIRALERT three system for rapid detection of elevated skin temperatures at points of entry to various facilities, including schools.
Through this collaborative effort, Rauland was able to incorporate Land's VIRALERT three technology into their Telecenter U solution to help their customers safely reopen their schools by allowing for temperature screening of students and faculty.
In return, AMETEK Land will reach thousands of new potential customers through Rauland's well-established network of school districts.
The result was a valuable solution for our customers.
Congratulations to the AMETEK and the AMETEK Rauland team for the success on this project.
We are also finding ways to support our customers through new product innovation.
Throughout the pandemic, we continue to invest meaningfully in our research and development initiatives, and we are seeing great success from these efforts.
Our Vitality Index, which measures the amount of sales generated from new products introduced during the last three years was very strong at 25% in the quarter.
During the quarter, Creaform, a worldwide leader in 3D measurement solutions, unveiled its R-Series 3D scanning solution that is designed for automated dimensional quality control applications.
The suite of R-Series solutions includes the new robot-mounted MetraSCAN 3D scanner with CUBE-R, a turnkey industrial measuring cell that is designed to be integrated into factories for at-line inspections.
Together, the solution provides customers with much faster cycle times, more accurate and repeatable results, higher resolution and operational simplicity, to increase productivity by measuring more dimensions on more parts without compromising on accuracy.
Congratulations to the Creaform team for launching this outstanding new solution.
Now shifting to acquisitions.
While deal flow during the second quarter and third quarter has been impacted by the pandemic, we are starting to see a healthy pickup in activity.
Our pipeline is strong and conversations with acquisition targets are accelerating.
As Bill will highlight in a moment, over the last two quarters, we have further strengthened our balance sheet and liquidity position, and remain poised to deploy significant capacity -- capital on strategic acquisitions.
We will remain active, yet disciplined, in our acquisition process.
We continue to focus on acquiring niche technology leaders with attractive growth profiles with opportunities for us to add value commercially and operationally.
Now turning to our outlook for the remainder of the year.
While the global economy continues to present challenges and uncertainties, visibility has improved across most markets.
As a result, we are providing guidance for the fourth quarter.
Overall sales in the fourth quarter are expected to be down high-single digits with a similar level of organic sales decline.
Diluted earnings per share are expected to be in the range of $1 to $1.04, down 4% to 7% versus the prior year.
Fourth quarter decremental margins are expected to remain solid in the low 20%s.
To summarize, our businesses delivered a solid quarter in a difficult environment.
AMETEK continues to manage this global crisis well to the proven strength of the AMETEK growth model and with a talented workforce.
Our cost mitigation efforts have allowed the company to weather this ongoing storm and we are confident that we will overcome these challenges with a bright future.
I'd like to echo Dave's comments on the quarter, as we saw outstanding operating performance driven by the tremendous efforts of our team in a very challenging economic environment.
Let me provide some additional financial highlights for the quarter.
Third quarter general and administrative expenses were down $4.5 million, compared to the same period of 2019, primarily due to lower compensation costs and other discretionary spending cuts.
As a percentage of sales, general and administrative expenses were 1.5% of sales in the quarter, down from 1.7% last year.
The effective tax rate in the third quarter was 17.5%, down from 19.5% in the same period last year.
The lower tax rate in the quarter was due to returned provision adjustments and a lower tax rate on foreign earnings.
For 2020, we now expect our effective tax rate to be between 19% and 19.5%, and as we have stated in the past, actual quarterly tax rates can differ dramatically, either positively or negatively from this full year estimated rate.
Operating capital and working capital was an impressive 17% in the third quarter, down sequentially from the second quarter's 19.6% on outstanding working capital management.
Capital expenditures in the quarter were $10 million.
We now expect full year capital expenditures to be approximately $80 million, which is $5 million higher than our full year expectations last quarter, as we are investing in incremental growth opportunities.
Our full year capital expenditures estimate remains below our initial expectations to start the year of $100 million.
Depreciation and amortization expense in the quarter was $63 million.
For the full year, we expect depreciation and amortization to be approximately $255 million, which includes after-tax, acquisition-related intangible amortization of approximately $117 million or $0.51 per diluted share.
Our businesses continue to generate strong levels of cash flow, despite the challenges presented by the pandemic.
Operating cash flow in the quarter was $310 million, free cash flow was $300 million and free cash flow conversion was excellent at 146% of net income.
Total debt at the end of the quarter was $2.8 billion, up slightly from $2.77 billion at the end of 2019 and down $68 million from the end of the second quarter.
Offsetting this debt is cash and cash equivalents of $1.3 billion.
Our gross debt-to-EBITDA ratio at the end of the third quarter was 2.1 times, as we are intentionally holding higher than normal cash balances.
This was comfortably below our debt covenants of 3.5 times and our net debt-to-EBITDA ratio was 1.1 times at quarter end, which improved by two -- 0.2 turns in the quarter.
We remain well-positioned to manage this economic downturn with approximately $2.3 billion in liquidity to support our operations and growth initiatives.
This includes approximately $1 billion in available revolver capacity.
As we have highlighted on previous calls, AMETEK has a robust balance sheet with no material debt maturities due until 2023.
In summary, our businesses continue to manage through the pandemic exceptionally well, delivering strong operating results and high levels of cash flow.
The dedication of our world-class workforce to serving our essential customers has truly been impressive.
We remain well-positioned to manage ongoing economic challenges, while investing in our long-term growth initiatives.
Andrew, we are ready to take questions.

user
q3 adjusted earnings per share $1.01.
q3 sales $1.13 billion versus refinitiv ibes estimate of $1.12 billion.
sees q4 adjusted earnings per share $1.00 to $1.04.
ametek - for q4, expect solid sequential improvements in sales versus.
q3 with y-o-y sales down high single digits on a percent basis compared to last year's q4.

assistant