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 more detailed description of such factors can be found in the filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Joining us for today's call are Jerry Grisko, President and Chief Executive Officer; and Ware Grove, Chief Financial Officer.
With the release of our third quarter results, I am extremely proud of our performance to date.
Our results in the third quarter and throughout this year continue to demonstrate the strength and resilience of our business.
We started this year with a good deal of optimism, especially given the performance of the business since the onset of the pandemic, the steadily increase in demand for our services that were experienced through the second half of last year and the level of confidence about the business climate that we're hearing from many of our clients.
Even with our optimistic outlook, our performance to date has exceeded our expectations.
While we oftentimes experienced some seasonal slowness in the third quarter, that has not been the case this year.
The strong demand for our core essential services that we experienced through the first half of this year has continued through the third quarter, and our results have been bolstered by very strong performance from many of our more project-oriented advisory services that are often viewed by our clients as being more discretionary.
And perhaps most encouraging, the strong performance reflected in our year-to-date results is coming from both of our major practice groups and across nearly all major service lines of our business.
Within our Financial Services group, we continue to experience strong performance from our core accounting, tax and advisory businesses.
And in addition, during the third quarter, we saw steady demand for our tax consulting services and robust demand across the board for our advisory services.
These results reflect the strength of our current business climate and the overall confidence and optimism of our clients.
As our clients take steps to capitalize on opportunities to accelerate growth in the future, these actions should translate into additional project-based advisory work for us.
Within our government healthcare consulting business, we are experiencing a rate of growth in the mid-single digits.
While this growth is consistent with our experience since the onset of the pandemic, we would expect to see accelerated growth in the months ahead as more states fully reopen and some delayed work resumes.
A complementary acquisition that provides actuarial services that we made this past summer, is creating additional opportunities for us to bring even greater value to our government clients in the administration of complex healthcare programs.
Now turning to our benefits and insurance group.
We are also experiencing the continuation of the strong performance that we saw for the first half of the year.
We continue to see steady demand for our core employee Benefits, Property & Casualty and Retirement Plan Advisory businesses.
As we've discussed on prior calls, we've made substantial investments over the past several years to accelerate organic growth within our employee benefits business by adding to the number of producers.
We are very pleased with the results that we are seeing in this area and the impact of our efforts are evidenced in our results today.
Within these results, I also want to emphasize the importance of client retention.
We continue to see retention rates of over 90% without our employee benefits business and for many of our other businesses within our benefits and insurance group.
These levels of client retention speak to the value that our clients receive from our team and our commitment to bring them solutions that are unmatched in our industries.
Within our property and casualty business, we continue to see steady demand and production for both the commercial and program components of the business.
We've described in the past earnings call how some industries like hospitality, lodging and adventure sports, were disproportionately impacted during the pandemic.
We are seeing the return of these businesses.
And while some are not yet back to pre pandemic levels, the trend is positive.
The strength of the market is also providing additional lift to our retirement investment services business and an increase in demand for more project-based work, such as our executive recruitment and our compensation consulting services.
Our payroll business is the one area where we continue to experience some softness.
As we've mentioned on previous calls, this business serves a larger number of smaller employers that continue to be disproportionately impacted by current business conditions, including labor shortages.
Overall, we couldn't be more pleased with our year-to-date results and the performance of our business.
I will remind you that during our last earnings call, we raised our full year revenue guidance.
Today, we are pleased to be in a position to raise our revenue guidance and our adjusted earnings per share guidance for the remainder of 2021 and where we'll walk through what we expect in his comments.
Our results for the third quarter and for the nine months ended September 30 continued to be very strong.
I want to take a few minutes to talk about the highlights.
With revenue up by 18.6% in the third quarter, and up by 14.5% for the nine months, demand for our core services continues to be stable and strong.
Same unit revenue for the third quarter grew by 8.3% compared with last year.
And for the nine months, same unit revenue grew by 7.3% compared with last year.
We are seeing growth in both our Financial Services group as well as the benefits and insurance group.
In the third quarter, total revenue in the Financial Services group grew by 20.4%.
And for the nine months, revenue grew by 16%.
Same unit revenue in the Financial Services group was up by 9.2% in the third quarter.
And for the nine months, same unit revenue was up by 8.7%.
We are seeing growth across all major service lines, with particularly strong growth within our advisory business services.
Within our benefits and insurance group, total revenue grew by 16.1% in the third quarter.
And for the nine months, total revenue grew by 12.4%.
Same unit revenue within benefits and insurance grew by 6.6% in the third quarter.
And for the nine months, same unit revenue grew by 4.4%.
With the exception of our payroll services, where we are experiencing some slight softness, we are seeing growth in all service lines.
The investment in producers that has been underway for some time now is continuing to show positive results.
The acquisitions we made last year and through the first nine months this year are performing well.
These newly acquired operations contributed 10.3% to total revenue growth in the third quarter and contributed 7.3% to total revenue growth for the nine months.
As we presented second quarter earnings earlier this year, we made an adjustment to eliminate the impact of the $30.5 million nonrecurring UPMC settlement that was announced on June 30, plus an adjustment to eliminate the impact of the $6.4 million nonrecurring gain on sale from a divestiture that occurred in the second quarter.
On an adjusted basis, for the nine months, adjusted earnings per share was $1.84 compared with $1.41 a year earlier.
This is up 30.5%.
In the third quarter, earnings per share was $0.41 compared with $0.36 a year ago.
In line with our comments during the second quarter call earlier this year, as we began to restore discretionary expenses, such as marketing, travel or as other healthcare benefit costs began to normalize from abnormally low COVID influence levels from a year ago.
We cautioned that expense headwinds would impact margin in the second half this year.
As a result, margin on income before tax declined in the third quarter from 11.4% a year ago to 10.3% this year.
This is not a reflection on the health of the business.
This is simply a reflection of the year-over-year pandemic influence impact on these costs, which reflect abnormally low levels a year ago.
On an adjusted basis, eliminating the nonrecurring items I mentioned, we are very pleased that margin on income before tax for the nine months has improved by 120 basis points, up to 15.2% versus 14% a year ago.
To date this year, we have closed five acquisition transactions that will contribute approximately $72 million of annualized revenue.
Through September 30, we have used $74.8 million for acquisition purposes, including earn-out payments on acquisitions closed in prior years.
Future earn-out payments are estimated at approximately $6.6 million for the balance of this year, $26.7 million in 2022, $19.3 million in 2023, $22.9 million in 2024 and approximately $6 million in 2025.
Our continuing priority is to utilize capital to enhance growth through strategic acquisitions, and we continue to have a very active pipeline of potential acquisitions.
With our strong cash flow, we also have the flexibility to repurchase shares.
Through September 30, we utilized approximately $85 million to repurchase 2.7 million shares.
And since that time, through October 26, we have repurchased an additional 258,000 shares.
As a result of these share repurchases, we expect full year share count within a range of 53.5 million to 54 million shares.
With strong revenue growth and expansion of margin, cash flow has continued to be strong.
At September 30, debt outstanding on our unsecured $400 million credit line was $190.2 million with $201.6 million of unused capacity.
Leverage under the credit facility was 1.2 times adjusted EBITDA at September 30.
As a reflection of cash flow, adjusted EBITDA for the nine months this year was $153.5 million, up 21% from $126.9 million a year ago.
Focused primarily on facility and office improvements, capital spending through September 30 was $6.5 million, with $3.2 million spent in the third quarter.
Full year spending may come in between $8 million to $10 million.
Day sales outstanding on receivables was 88 days at September 30, and this continues to reflect improvements that were gained over the past 12 to 18 months.
Bad debt expense through September 30 this year was approximately 10 basis points of revenue compared with 41 basis points a year ago.
Our effective tax rate for nine months was approximately 24.5%.
There are a number of unpredictable factors that can impact the tax rate either up or down, but we expect the effective rate for the full year within a range of 24% to 24.5%.
As we look at the remainder of the year and update guidance on our full year outlook and as you begin to compare expectations to last year, be aware of the year-over-year anomalies to the items that I mentioned earlier.
Headwinds with higher expense levels compared to last year on the same items we experienced in the third quarter, such as healthcare and benefits, travel and marketing are expected to persist for the remainder of the year.
In addition, consider that we closed several significant business acquisitions in the financial services space in midyear this year.
These operations will have a very positive full year impact on both revenue growth and contribution to earnings, and this will provide a significant tailwind for us in 2022.
However, recognizing the typical seasonality of these businesses with higher first half revenue and profitability, we are projecting a slight operating loss in these newly acquired operations in the fourth quarter this year.
One other nonoperating item to point out is the impact of the timing of vacation expense accruals.
In a normal year, vacation expense accruals are relieved throughout the year.
Last year, as we work with clients to maintain high levels of service throughout the pandemic conditions, a higher portion of vacation time was delayed into the fourth quarter.
As a result, there was a larger-than-normal fourth quarter favorable adjustment last year as vacation expense accrual was relieved.
This year, vacation accruals have followed a more normal pattern, so there is no significant favorable adjustment projected in the fourth quarter.
Of course, there is no full year impact, and this is purely a COVID influenced accounting anomaly that will be unique to the comparison of fourth quarter this year compared to fourth quarter a year ago.
With revenue up 14.5% and adjusted earnings per share up 30.5%, the health of our business is very strong.
As we consider the unique items described above that are projected to impact the balance of the year-over-year comparisons, our expectations for the full year are as follows: Total revenue growth in 2021 is expected within a range of 12% to 15% over 2020.
Adjusted earnings-per-share growth is expected within a range of 20% to 24% over the $1.42 earnings per share recorded in 2020.
We expect a full year weighted average share count within a range of 53.5 million to 54 million shares.
And unpredictable factors can impact the tax rate either up or down, but we expect a full year effective tax rate within a range of 24% to 24.5%.
Again, we are extremely pleased with the performance of the business this year.
Despite the several headwinds I described that impact the second half comparisons this year, the business is very healthy, and there are considerable growth opportunities as we look ahead.
As I discussed last quarter, we started this year with the strongest M&A pipeline that we've seen in our recent history.
The annualized revenue contribution from the five transactions that we've already closed this year will provide nice momentum going into 2022.
In addition, we continue to have a very strong pipeline, including some larger deals, and there's still opportunity for us to close one or more of these transactions before year-end.
While we are always looking ahead, I'd like to take a moment to talk about the most recent group to join our team.
F In early September, we completed the acquisition of Shea Labagh Dobberstein, and accounting, tax and advisory services firm based in San Francisco, Bay Area.
SLD serves privately held businesses, individuals and nonprofit organizations across the West Coast and has offices in San Francisco, San Mateo and Walnut Creek, California.
This acquisition is part of our long-term growth strategy on the West Coast.
SLD complements our existing geographic footprint and increases the visibility of our brand while adding valuable capacity and scale in this growing market.
Moreover, we always seek to find partners that share our commitment to client service and demonstrate a strong cultural fit and alignment on core values.
SLD checked all of these boxes and more, and we look forward to working together to bring even greater value to our teams, our clients and to accelerate growth.

user
compname reports q3 earnings per share of $0.41 from continuing operations.
‍sees aggregate annual revenue from acquisitions of about $72 million on full year basis (not​ sees fy revenue about $72 million).
sees fy gaap earnings per share $1.36 to $1.42.
q3 same store sales rose 8.3 percent.
q3 earnings per share $0.41 from continuing operations.
sees fy revenue up 12 to 15 percent.
q3 revenue rose 18.6 percent to $282.7 million.
cbiz sees fy gaap earnings per share of $1.36 to $1.42.
sees fy revenue about $72 million.

assistant