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: Here is the agenda for today, Eric will begin by reviewing the highlights of the quarter, then Jim will give a brief review of operations.
Nathan will go into a more detailed review of the numbers, and then I will have a short wrap up before we open it to questions.
As part of an essential industry, we had to jump through many hoops to stay operational so that people could come to work safely and I'm just so appreciative of everyone whose dedication, intelligence and skills lead us through this unprecedented experience.
These folks are the true heroes.
Okay, so on to business.
As mentioned on our last call, we came out of the second quarter experiencing strong demand and I'm pleased to say that the trend continued throughout the third quarter.
Let me discuss each of the divisions separately, starting with Engine Management.
Engine Management sales were up 6.7% for the quarter, clawing back about a third of our sales shortfall in the first half.
Consumer demand has been robust, which we believe reflects the deferred maintenance from the early days of the pandemic when costs were idled in driveways, but we're also experiencing a general surge in the aftermarket, the result of people staying at home and working on their vehicles.
And we believe this has especially impacted the DIY segment.
Good evidence of this is a strong performance of our wire and cable business.
It fits older vehicles and is relatively easy to install which are two hallmarks of DIY business, and while this line has recently been trending down 7% or so per year due to varied [Indecipherable] in lifecycle, it spiked up 10% in the quarter, which we have to assume is a temporary phenomenon.
Customer orders for all of Engine Management have been consistently solid and this has continued into October.
That said, our forecast remains low single-digit growth over the long term.
Our Temperature Control Division was up 25% in the quarter driven by two dynamics.
The first was related to timing.
If you recall, pre-season orders from our last, from our customers were very light this year.
In fact, our first half was down almost 20%.
And then it got hard out creating a surge in demand across the country.
These two factors combined for a very strong quarter, though year-to-date we are slightly behind last year.
This is why we always suggest looking at Temperature Control on a full year basis.
There are often quarterly anomalies but they typically balance themselves out.
We are pleased to report that the quarter set an all-time record for SMP.
Jim and Nathan will provide some detail on the drivers, so I just want to take a moment to speak to COVID-related savings.
As we have mentioned in the past, we put in place short-term cost reduction measures ratcheting back various discretionary expenses as well as cutting Executive and Board compensation.
We do plan to assess what we've learned and identify areas where we believe the savings can be sustained, however, we do recognize that many of these reductions will in fact be temporary.
We had also taken steps to conserve cash including suspensions of both our quarterly dividends and our share repurchase plan and we are pleased to reinstate both of these programs as they are core aspects of how we return value to our shareholders.
So in summary, needless to say, it's been a roller coaster of a year.
After a mediocre first quarter and a truly difficult second quarter, we were able to make up much of the lost grounds with a very strong third quarter.
We always experienced a certain amount of volatility period to period, and while this year, it has been substantially more exaggerated, it does show that our business tends to balance over time, and we do expect that to continue going forward.
Before I hand this off, I would just like to make a few comments about the future.
First, we were delighted, but not surprised to see our industry once again show its resilience.
The basic fundamentals are solid and there are many favorable trends taking us forward.
And while the crisis is certainly not over, we are confident that we are smarter now than we were before, our team were stronger as a result of managing our way through it and we are well equipped to tackle whatever is thrown at us.
With that, I'll hand it over to Jim who will talk about our operations.
I will provide an overview of our business from an operational perspective.
I plan to touch on the basics from supply chain manufacturing through distribution.
As we have all experienced, the past six months to seven months has been challenging and demanding.
Our baseline was a 40% decrease in volume in April.
This was followed by a relatively quick rebound in customer POS numbers in May and June that turned into increased orders to us in June and July.
This momentum increased as we progressed through Q3 and remained steady.
From a supply chain view, this meant working feverishly with our vendors to be able to meet our materials demand.
Overall, with a few exceptions, our vendors and supply team have been able to keep supply flowing to our factories.
Turning to our manufacturing base, we face surging demand with a significant mix shift toward older technology SKUs, driven by our customer sales in the DIY channel.
Early in the third quarter, we were hampered with a shortage of available labor, a combination of higher demand and the COVID impact with high risk employees out and disruptions from contact tracing.
I'm happy to report that we have been able to secure additional manpower along with the return of our high-risk employees.
What is the result of the surge in demand?
Production levels are significantly up in all our manufacturing facilities, generating favorable overhead absorption, which can be seen in our very strong Q3 gross margins.
Engine Management was 31.5% and Temperature Control was 29.2%.
These higher margins were generated from the surge in production volume, which we expect to level off.
While this favorable momentum should carry into Q4, we expect sales and production to return to normal in 2021.
Our longer-term gross margin targets would be Engine Management, 30% plus and Temperature Control 26% plus.
We are fortunate to have a substantial manufacturing footprint in North America, including three low cost operations in Mexico, reducing our China exposure.
I will also note on occasion, we have transferred production back to the U.S., the benefit of automating previous manual assembly processes.
Quickly looking around the globe, our Poland operations, which is our coil manufacturing center of excellence, along with other switches and sensors has steadily grown in size and value.
Over the past year, we have approved the added capacity for Poland to meet our increasing ignition coil demand.
Our three China joint ventures, all in the Temperature Control product categories recovered very early from the pandemic at the start of the year.
All three JVs provide us a steady source of supply, whereby we can control costs, quality and lead times.
Finally, our North American distribution centers are our last touch point with our products.
Our Q3 surge in demand present the challenges for our DC shipping performance.
Similar to our manufacturing operations, we experienced the shortage of available labor to meet demand.
The impact from this was slower turnaround time in our DCs to ship orders.
During this period, our DCs were working six and seven days per week to keep up.
Tremendous efforts were put forward by our DC employees to satisfy our customer needs.
We have made great strides securing additional head count and I'm happy to report that we are covering [Phonetic] again and meeting our shipping turnaround goals.
In summary, we are very fortunate to be a resilient industry that bounced back so quickly.
Unfortunately, this is not the same for many other industries that have suffered dearly.
I commend our frontline heroes that were on the job, six and seven days per week to satisfy the customer.
Customer satisfaction is ingrained in our SMP culture and we just do it.
Looking now at the results in the P&L, our consolidated net sales in Q3 2020 were $343.6 million, up $35.9 million or 11.7% versus Q3 last year.
Our net sales for the first nine months of the year were $845.9 million, down $50.8 million or 5.7%.
By segment, our Engine Management net sales in Q3 excluding wire and cable sales were $190.9 million, up $10.1 million or 5.6%.
But for the first nine months of the year were down $40.5 million or 5.7%, finishing at $498.2 million.
The increase in sales during the quarter we believe was due to pent-up demand from earlier in the year and strong customer POS.
But looking in total at the first nine months, the quarter increase only partially offset the declines we saw earlier in the year related to the economic slowdown caused by the pandemic.
Wire and cable net sales in Q3 were $38.7 million, up $3.5 million or 10% and for the first nine months were $105.6 million down $2.9 million or 2.6%.
While the wire and cable business continues to be in secular decline and we still believe it will decline 6% to 8% on an annual basis, sales this year have been positively impacted by an increase in DIY sales as consumer stayed at home during the pandemic.
Our Temperature Control net sales in Q3 2020 were $110.4 million, up $22.1 million or 25%.
However, for the first nine months, sales were down $7.4 million or 3.1% versus last year, ending at $234.2 million.
As Eric noted, Temp Control net sales in the quarter were driven by a very hot summer across most of the U.S. aided by very light pre-season ordering earlier in the year.
Net sales on a year-to-date basis in this segment are more in step with last year, down slightly from the first nine months of 2019.
Our consolidated gross margin in Q3 2020 was 31.4% versus 29.9% last year, up 1.5 points, for the first [Technical Issues] 28.7% [Phonetic] [Indecipherable] versus 28.9% last year, down 0.2 points.
Looking at the segments, Engine Management gross margin in the third quarter was 31.5%, up 0.8 points from Q3 last year, while for the first nine months of 2020, it was down 0.3 points to 29%.
Temperature Control gross margin in Q3 2020 was 29.2% up 3.2 points from 26% last year and for the first nine months, it was up 0.5 points to 26%.
Margins for the quarter reflect the strong sales volumes we experienced in both segments and the positive impact of high fixed cost absorption, resulting from the compression of production into just a few short months as Jim alluded to earlier.
On a year-to-date basis, gross margin in both segments, more closely aligned with long-term trends as Engine Management margins are really flat with last year and Temp Control margins ended just slightly ahead of the prior year.
Consolidated SG&A expenses in Q3 were $59.5 million, down $0.4 million in Q3 '19 and came in at 17.3% of sales versus 19.5% last year.
For the first nine months, SG&A spending was $163.7 million, down $16.8 million at 19.4% of net sales versus 20.1% last year.
While our SG&A expenses in the quarter were roughly flat with last year, the improvement as a percentage of sales is reflective of the higher sales volumes we experienced this year.
Lower SG&A expenses in the first nine months were helped by cost reduction plans put in place as a response to the impact of the pandemic and overall better leverage of expenses as a percentage of sales.
Our consolidated operating income before restructuring and integration expenses and other income net in Q3 of '20 was $48.3 million or 14% of net sales, up 3.6 points from Q3 '19 and for the first nine months was 9.3% of net sales, up 0.5 points from last year.
As we note on our GAAP to non-GAAP reconciliation of operating income, our performance resulted in third quarter 2020 diluted earnings per share of $1.59 versus $1.02 last year and for the first nine months, diluted earnings per share of $2.53 versus $2.51 in 2019.
The increase in our operating profit for the quarter was mainly due to higher sales volumes, while the increase for the first nine months, primarily reflects lower SG&A expenses across the Company which slightly more than offset the impact of lower sales volumes.
Turning now to the balance sheet, accounts receivable at the end of the quarter were $238 million up $102.5 million from December 2019 and up $69 million from September 2019.
The increase over year-end reflects seasonal patterns in our business while the increase over last year reflects the strong sales we experienced in the third quarter as well as the timing of this in the quarter as compared to last year.
Inventory levels finished the quarter at $311.4 million, down $56.8 million from December 2019 and down $28.8 million from September 2019.
The decrease from both year-end and September last year mainly reflects the sharp recovery in sales we experienced in the third quarter, after having lower production levels earlier in the year in response to general expectations of slowdown in sales.
Looking at the cash flow statement, it reflects [Phonetic] the cash generated from operations in the first nine months of 2020 of $78.6 million as compared to a generation of $43.1 million last year.
The increased cash generation during the first nine months of this year was driven mainly by timing, both of movements in inventory and accrued customer returns and offset by an increase in accounts receivables stemming from strong sales during the quarter.
We expect this timing around cash flows to normalize as sales and production levels stabilize.
During the first nine months, we continue to invest in our business and use $13.2 million of cash for capital expenditures, which was higher than the $12.3 million used in the first nine months of 2019.
Financing activities included $5.6 million of dividends paid and $8.7 million of repurchases of our common stock, both of which occurred during the first quarter.
Financing activities also included $44.9 million of payments on a revolving credit facility.
We finished the third quarter with total outstanding borrowings of $12 million and available capacity under our revolving credit facility of $238 million.
Larry, you're on mute.
As you saw in the release, come January 1st, I'm going to be moving from Executive Chairman to Chairman of the Board and this reflects the fact that I'll be stepping back a bit from day to day activities, but I'll still remain closely connected to the Company as Chairman of the Board.
I believe this is an appropriate and a proper move after 53 glorious years, where I had the privilege of being part of the Company's growth from roughly $20 million in our core business when I began to well over a $1 billion today.
And we still have many plans for future growth.
I'm confident it's going to be a very seamless transition as all our major moves have been.
We have in place, what I believe is the strongest and deepest management team I can remember who proved themselves on how well we performed during this very difficult year.
So I am very confident about the future.

user
standard motor productsa nnounces third quarter 2020 results and reinstates quarterly dividend.
q3 earnings per share $1.59 from continuing operations excluding items.
q3 earnings per share $1.59 from continuing operations.
q3 sales $343.6 million versus refinitiv ibes estimate of $327.3 million.
approved reinstatement of quarterly dividend of 25 cents per share.

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