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: I continue to be inspired by the outstanding operational performance by my colleagues throughout the Reliance family of companies.
Our resilient business model favorable metals pricing trends and excellent execution combined to produce another quarter of record-setting financial results.
Beyond execution of our business model, operational excellence includes our top priority of ensuring the health and safety of all of our Reliance colleagues, and I'd like to extend my gratitude to each and every one of them for their unwavering commitment to operating safely despite the many challenges that have persisted during the ongoing pandemic.
I would especially like to recognize our teams that were directly impacted by Hurricane Ida last month.
While Ida had a minimal impact on our operations, some of our colleagues were impacted personally.
We're very happy that everyone is safe and that our employee-funded and company match program, Reliance Cares was available to support those who are impacted and in need of assistance.
Reliance Cares is an inspirational example of how the Reliance family of companies come together and meaningfully take care of each other.
Turning to our results.
The trends of strengthening metals pricing persisted through the third quarter, which featured multiple mill price increases, most notably for carbon and stainless steel products.
The favorable pricing environment, along with fundamentally strong underlying demand in many of the key end markets we serve drove record quarterly net sales of $3.85 billion.
In addition, strict pricing discipline by our managers in the field helped us generate a strong gross profit margin of 31.5%, which, when combined with our record sales, resulted in a record quarterly gross profit dollars of $1.21 billion in the third quarter of 2021.
Despite various supply disruptions and continued increases in metals pricing that drove LIFO expenses of $262.5 million in the third quarter, our record quarterly net sales, along with record gross profit dollars and our continued focus on expense control led to the third consecutive quarter of record quarterly pre-tax income of $532.6 million.
As a result, our earnings per diluted share of $6.15 were also a record, representing an increase of 21.1% from our record earnings per share achieved in the prior quarter and substantially exceeded both our guidance and analyst consensus.
We attribute this performance to our highly resilient business model, which is strategically designed to perform throughout changing macroeconomic circumstances.
First, we are highly diversified by end markets, products and geographies.
Second, our decentralized structure leaves the decision-making and resources close to the end customers.
We rely on our managers in the field to appropriately price the value of the products and services we provide, which is particularly important in times of tight metal supply and volatile pricing.
In this localized and entrepreneurial environment, our focus on small order sizes with quick turnaround has also proven particularly effective.
Further, our ability to purchase inventory in the spot market through our long-standing, strong relationships with our domestic mills coupled with our unique ability to cross-sell inventory among the family of companies allows us to source the metal we need despite tight supply.
We were pleased our inventory turn rate for the third quarter came in just below our companywide goal, which indicates that our inventory is properly balanced with current demand levels as we continue to secure the raw materials we need to meet customer demand.
Third, our significant investment in organic growth and innovative technology has significantly expanded our value-added processing capabilities, empowering us to focus on higher quality high-margin business and enabling us to increase our estimated sustainable gross profit margin range.
To expand on that last point, I'd like to emphasize that the strong cash flow generation our model provides fuels our flexible and dynamic capital allocation strategy that supports concurrent investments in growth and stockholder return activities.
We believe that it is our resilient business model and our execution of our capital allocation strategy that sets Reliance apart.
We estimate that approximately half of our $310 million capital expenditure budget this year will be directed toward new, innovative, value-added processing equipment, along with enhancements to existing equipment to strengthen our value proposition and overall service offerings.
As I highlighted earlier, these investments helped support our increased sustainable gross profit margin range as they provide our managers in the field the ability to offer additional value to our customers.
As discussed last quarter, our 2021 capital expenditures will also be focused on opening new facilities as well as expanding, upgrading and maintaining existing operations, including renewable energy investments at many of our facilities.
As our focus on growing the company is two-pronged, we also remain highly focused on M&A.
On October 1st, we completed our acquisition of Merfish United, a leading master distributor of tubular building products in the U.S. The company is based in Massachusetts and services 47 states through 12 strategically located distribution centers.
The Merfish acquisition aligns with our strategy of acquiring immediately accretive companies with strong management teams and significant customer, product and geographical diversification.
The Merfish transaction is a bit unique, in that Merfish is not a traditional metal service center and yet the transaction is one of the larger acquisitions that we have completed in our history, as Merfish had approximately $600 million in annual net sales in the 12-month period ending September 30, 2021.
However, Merfish's broad product offerings expands Reliance's exposure into copper and plastic products among others, which Merfish sells to wholesale distribution customers in adjacent end markets in the commercial, residential, municipal and industrial building spaces.
We expect Merfish will help position Reliance in the broader industrial distribution space as well as provide a platform for further growth in this area, both organically and through further acquisitions.
During the third quarter of 2021, we also returned $174.7 million to our stockholders through the payment of $43.7 million in dividends and the repurchase of $131 million of Reliance common stock at an average cost of $147.89 per share.
In the last five years, Reliance repurchased 11.7 million shares of our common stock at an average cost of $89.92 per share for a total of $1.05 billion.
We are extremely pleased to have the capital and the flexibility to simultaneously focus on both growth and stockholder returns and expect to maintain our dynamic approach moving forward, remain prudent allocator of capital.
Before I conclude, I'd like to announce that Reliance will be relocating our corporate headquarters from Los Angeles, California to Scottsdale, Arizona in the first half of 2022.
The Scottsdale office will serve as Reliance's new principal executive office and the company's senior corporate officers will have offices there.
Reliance is a Delaware corporation operating through approximately 300 divisions and subsidiary locations in 40 states and 13 countries outside of the United States, and the relocation of Reliance's principal executive office to Scottsdale reflects our growth and expansion as well as our evaluation of post-pandemic business opportunities and related operating practicalities.
We will, however, maintain a presence in Los Angeles with revamped and innovative office offerings that reflect and complement the redefined post-COVID workplace and meet the needs of our corporate and administrative colleagues who remain in California.
Dave has been a strategic and valued partner to Reliance for more than 30 years for his involvement in the metals industry, and Frank is a seasoned and respected public company senior executive and Chief Financial Officer.
We look forward to benefiting from both of their unique perspectives, experience and expertise.
With the addition of Dave and Frank, Reliance's Board consists of 12 members, 10 of whom are independent.
In summary, I am once again highly pleased to share our record-setting third quarter financial results and commend all of my colleagues for their hard work and unwavering focus during the quarter.
despite the challenges of the ongoing pandemic, supply chain disruptions and tight labor markets and limited metal availability, we sustained our efforts to ensure that we continued to provide value customers with the products they need, often in 24 hours or less.
At the same time, we also continued to successfully execute our growth strategy while generating strong earnings and returning value to our stockholders.
As we look ahead, we look forward to remaining a key contributor to the value chain through the ongoing support of our colleagues, customers, suppliers and communities and remain confident that America is going to need Reliance to rebuild.
I'll now turn to our third quarter operational performance.
Once again, we believe that underlying demand was stronger than our third quarter 2021 shipment levels reflect.
Our tons sold decreased 4.6% and from the second quarter, which was below our guidance of down one percent to up one percent, mainly due to more typical seasonality than we had anticipated combined with various supply chain issues.
Reliance, our customers and our suppliers all continue to experience supply disruptions, including limited metal availability, coupled with labor shortages that temporarily slowed demand for metal in the third quarter, and we believe Reliance is well positioned to satisfy the pent-up demand in future periods.
While disruptive from a demand standpoint, limited metal availability in the market helped support ongoing metal price escalation during the third quarter for many of the products we sell most notably carbon and stainless steel products.
Our average selling price per tons sold in the third quarter reached another all-time high of $2,862, an increase of 18.4% compared to the second quarter of 2021 and significantly in excess of our guidance of up seven percent to nine percent.
There is speculation that certain carbon steel products, namely flat rolled, may be at or near their peak.
We continue to see strong pricing for many of the other carbon steel products.
Stainless pricing remains very strong, and we are also seeing increased pricing for aluminum products.
Our product diversity reduces pricing volatility on our earnings, and we expect continued strong average selling prices at Reliance into 2022.
The favorable pricing environment, coupled with outstanding execution by our managers in the field, contributed to record quarterly gross profit dollars of $1.21 billion in the third quarter of 2021 and a strong gross profit margin of 31.5%.
On a FIFO basis, which we believe better reflects our current operating performance, we achieved a record gross profit margin of 38.3% marking our third consecutive quarter of record FIFO gross profit margin.
We applaud our managers in the field for their unwavering effort, relentless focus on high-quality, high-margin business and effective implementation of price increases at the time of no announcement, which enabled us to capture an incremental margin benefit in excess of already strong levels, and further supporting these efforts, with the enhanced cooperation across our family of companies to ensure we meet our valued customers' needs as well as selectively servicing new business opportunities.
I'll now turn to a high-level overview of our key end market trends on a sequential quarter basis.
Demand for nonresidential construction, which includes infrastructure and is the largest end market we serve, remained at solid levels.
Our third quarter tons sold were down slightly compared to second quarter shipments, but remain near pre-pandemic levels.
We continued to experience solid quoting activity for projects in the areas of distribution and fulfillment centers, data processing and manufacturing facilities as well as utility infrastructure.
Due to supply constraints and increased pricing, we also continue to see an uptick in smaller projects that can be completed quickly.
Given our healthy backlog, solid quoting activity, positive customer sentiment and favorable key industry indicators, we are optimistic nonresidential construction demand will continue to steadily improve through the remainder of 2021 and into 2022.
Demand for the toll processing services Reliance provides to the automotive market fell slightly from second quarter levels due to normal seasonality as well as temporary shutdowns at certain automotive manufacturers due to the semiconductor chip shortage.
Our recent investments, which include purchasing a new facility in Michigan and opening a new tolling facility in Indiana as well as our other greenfield tolling expansions in Kentucky and Texas have allowed us to perform well despite challenging market conditions by increasing our capacity to support our customers' increased transportation and storage needs.
We are optimistic that underlying automotive demand is solid and will recover in 2022 as the impact of global microchip shortages on production levels in certain markets subside.
Longer term, we are confident our toll processing business will remain strong, given the significant level of investments we are continuing to make to support our growth and innovation in this area.
We continue to see new opportunities to expand our tolling presence for automotive, appliance, packaging and other end markets, some of which are already underway and will benefit us in 2022 and beyond.
Demand in heavy industry for both agricultural and construction equipment declined during the third quarter following exceptional growth during the second quarter from a combination of seasonal shutdowns at many customers, along with broad customer supply chain challenges and labor constraints.
That said, third quarter shipments remained above pre-pandemic levels, and underlying demand remains strong, and we expect demand from the heavy equipment and manufacturing industry to be delayed, not lost, and improve in the quarters to come.
Semiconductor demand during the third quarter remained strong.
While our third quarter shipments were somewhat impacted by global supply chain issues, the semiconductor space remains one of our strongest end markets in 2021, and we expect this trend to continue well into 2022.
With regard to aerospace, demand in commercial aerospace, which is roughly half of our aerospace exposure, was impacted by normal seasonal factors in the third quarter.
Looking ahead, we expect demand in commercial aerospace to slowly improve throughout 2022 as build rates increase and excess inventory in the supply chain continues to decline.
Demand in the military, defense and space portions of our aerospace business remains solid with strong backlogs and exceeded our pre-pandemic shipment levels.
We anticipate strong demand in the noncommercial aerospace market will continue into 2022.
Finally, demand in the energy sector, which we define as mainly oil and natural gas, continue to slowly improve, supported by higher oil and natural gas prices.
Looking ahead, we anticipate that increasing rig counts along with customer inventory replenishments will result in a modest improvement in demand levels into 2022.
In summary, the first three quarters of 2021 were distinguished by consecutive quarters of record financial performance.
And today, early in the fourth quarter of 2021, we see a positive landscape heading into 2022 with strong and improving underlying demand in most of the markets we serve, continued elevated metal pricing even if certain products may begin to decline and the best team in the industry.
Our proven, resilient and opportunistic business model, along with our diversity, scale and solid long-term relationships with our suppliers and our customers have set us apart in dynamic markets before and positions us once again to optimize our performance and deliver strong results.
I'll start with our sales trends.
Favorable metals pricing fueled by limited availability and solid demand trends in the vast majority of key end markets we serve resulted in record quarterly sales of $3.85 billion, up 12.5% from the second quarter of 2021 and up 84.5% from the third quarter of 2020.
Strong pricing momentum contributed to the 18.4% increase in our average selling price per tons sold over the second quarter of 2021.
In comparison to the same period of the prior year, our average selling price per tons sold was up 77.9% due to increases in metal prices, but the vast majority of the products we sell, notably carbon and stainless steel products.
As Karla noted, Reliance has limited exposure to the more volatile and lower-margin hot-rolled coil and sheet products that made up only about 11% of our third quarter sales.
While benchmark pricing for hot-rolled coil products was up over 275% from the third quarter of 2020, Reliance's average selling price per tons sold for the same period was up 77.9%.
This level of broad product diversification along with strong pricing discipline and significant investments in value-added processing capabilities have been instrumental in our ability to maintain both stable and industry-leading gross profit margins in both rising and falling price environment.
These factors collectively resulted in record quarterly gross profit of $1.21 billion and a strong gross profit margin of 31.5% in the third quarter of 2021 despite including a significant LIFO charge.
Our non-GAAP FIFO gross profit margin of 38.3% in the third quarter of 2021 was a record and exceeded the prior quarter by 80 basis points and the prior year period by 650 basis points.
We incurred LIFO expense of $262.5 million in the third quarter of 2021 compared to $200 million in the second quarter of 2021.
LIFO expense in effect reflects our cost of sales at current replacement costs and removes inventory gains from our results in an environment of rising metal costs and conversely, removes inventory losses from our results in times of declining metal costs.
Our guidance for Q3 2021 assumed LIFO expense of $150 million based on our $600 million annual estimate.
As a result of higher-than-anticipated costs for certain carbon and stainless steel products in the third quarter of 2021.
We revised our 2021 annual LIFO expense estimate from $600 million to $750 million.
Accordingly, we had to true up our third quarter 2021 LIFO expense by incurring an incremental charge of $112.5 million, which increased our total third quarter LIFO expense to $262.5 million.
Based on our revised annual LIFO expense estimate, we now project LIFO expense for the fourth quarter of 2021 to be $187.5 million or $2.21 per share and $750 million or $8.73 per share for the full year.
As in prior years, we will true up to our actual annual LIFO expense calculation based on our on-hand inventory cost at the end of the year.
As of today, the LIFO reserve on our balance sheet at the end of this year is expected to be $865.6 million based on our revised $750 million annual LIFO expense estimate.
This provides $865.6 million available to benefit future period operating results, significantly mitigating the impact of declining metal prices on our gross profit and pre-tax income.
Now turning to our expenses.
Our third quarter SG&A expense increased $43.5 million or 7.7% compared to the second quarter of 2021, and increased $157.6 million or 35.1% compared to the prior year period.
The bulk of the sequential and prior quarter increases were attributable to higher incentive-based compensation resulting from our record gross profit and pre-tax income levels.
Additionally, inflation continued to contribute to increased variable expenses, most notably for fuel and freight as well as packaging costs.
Overall, our headcount increased slightly compared to both the second quarter of 2021 and the third quarter of 2020, but is nonetheless down approximately 11% from pre-pandemic levels at the end of the third quarter of 2019.
As a reminder, approximately 65% of our total SG&A costs are people related.
Our pre-tax income of $532.6 million in the third quarter of 2021 was the highest in our company's history.
Our pre-tax income margin of 13.8% was also a record.
Our effective income tax rate for the third quarter of 2021 was 25.5%, up from 22.6% in the third quarter of 2020, mainly due to higher profitability.
We currently anticipate an effective income tax rate of 25.5% for the full year 2021.
We generated record quarterly earnings per share of $6.15 in the third quarter of 2021 compared to $5.08 in the second quarter of 2021 and $1.51 in the third quarter of 2020.
It's worth emphasizing again that our third quarter 2021 results were impacted by LIFO expense of $3.06 per share.
Turning now to our balance sheet and cash flow.
Despite significantly higher working capital needs attributable to ongoing rising metal costs, our operations continue to fuel our cash flow.
Our third quarter cash flow from operations was $142.2 million after servicing over $325 million in additional working capital requirements.
As of September 30, 2021, our total debt outstanding was $1.66 billion with a net debt-to-EBITDA multiple of 0.6 times.
We had no borrowings outstanding on our $1.5 billion revolving credit facility and had $638.4 million of cash on hand, providing us with ample liquidity to continue executing on all areas of our capital allocation strategy, including funding our acquisition of Merfish United on October one and our record 2021 capex budget.
I'll now turn to our outlook.
We remain optimistic about business conditions in the current environment with solid or recovering underlying demand across most of the key end markets we serve.
However, we expect factors impacting shipment levels in the third quarter of 2021, such as metal supply constraints, labor shortages, and other supply chain disruptions will continue to persist in the fourth quarter of 2021.
In addition, we anticipate demand will be impacted by normal seasonal factors including customer holiday-related shutdown and fewer shipping days in the fourth quarter compared to the third quarter.
As such, we estimate tons sold will be down 5 percent to eight percent in the fourth quarter compared to the third quarter of 2021.
We expect pricing for certain stainless and aluminum products to increase in the fourth quarter, offsetting the impact of declining prices for certain carbon steel products.
Also, as metal prices at the beginning of the fourth quarter are higher than the average for the third quarter, we estimate our average selling price per ton sold for the fourth quarter of 2021 will be up by seven percent.
Based on these expectations, we currently anticipate non-GAAP earnings per diluted share in the range of $5.05 to $5.15 for the fourth quarter of 2021.
In closing, we are extremely pleased with our record third quarter operational and financial performance against the backdrop of challenging market dynamics despite ongoing strong pricing and healthy demand trends.
Our record financial performance and strong cash flow enabled us to continue allocating capital to simultaneously invest in the growth of our business and return value to our stockholders.

user
compname reports q3 earnings per share $6.15.
sees q4 non-gaap earnings per share $5.05 to $5.15.
q3 earnings per share $6.15.
q3 sales $3.85 billion.
estimates its tons sold will be down 5% to 8% in q4 of 2021 versus q3 of 2021.
estimates its average selling price per ton sold for q4 of 2021 will be up 5% to 7%.
compname says estimates its average selling price per ton sold for q4 of 2021 will be up 5% to 7%.
reliance steel & aluminum - sees demand impacted by normal seasonal factors incl.
customer holiday-related shutdowns, fewer shipping days in q4 versus q3.
qtrly average selling price per ton sold$2,862 versus $2,418 in q2.

assistant