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: Joining the call today are Tom Ferguson, Chief Executive Officer; Philip Schlom, Chief Financial Officer; and David Nark, Senior Vice President, Marketing, Communications and IR.
Those risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to, changes in customer demand and response to products and services offered by the company, including demand by the power generation markets, electrical transmission and distribution markets, the industrial markets and the metal coatings markets; prices and raw material costs, including zinc and natural gas, which are used in the hot-dip galvanizing process; changes in the political stability and economic conditions of the various markets that AZZ serves, foreign and domestic; customer-requested delays of shipments; acquisition opportunities; currency exchange rates; adequate financing; and availability of experienced management and employees to implement the company's growth strategies.
In addition, AZZ's customers and its operations could be potentially adversely impacted by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
While we continue to be impacted by COVID-19, our markets are stabilizing and our businesses have adapted to the new normal way of operating, which encompasses a variety of challenges that we have had to overcome.
While we have had an uptick in COVID cases, all of our plants have remained open with normal production.
The collective efforts of our folks generated consolidated sales of $227 million for the third quarter, split almost equally between our Metal Coatings and Infrastructure Solutions segments.
We had sequential improvement in operating performance, and we have returned over $44 million of capital to shareholders in the form of cash dividends and share repurchases through the third quarter of this year.
Also, we have made good progress on our Board-led strategic review that we announced earlier.
While sales were down 22% from Q3 of last year, our realignment activities and operational performance generated net income of $19.7 million, down about 10% from the same period of the prior year.
This resulted in earnings per share of $0.76 per diluted share, or $0.80 on an adjusted basis.
Our Metal Coatings business continues to execute strongly while navigating the economic uncertainty resulting from COVID.
Hot-dip galvanizing sales were down 8.8% from the same quarter last year, while Surface Technologies was down more due to the nature of their customer base being more impacted by COVID.
Within our Infrastructure Solutions segment, third quarter sales results improved sequentially, even with a muted fall refining turnaround season.
Segment results were below the same quarter of the prior year due to the protracted weak demand for refined oil products, as well as lower international sales, primarily from China.
As we previously communicated earlier this year due to shifting industry and customer dynamics and the protracted impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, we began to take aggressive steps to accelerate the strategic restructure of our portfolio of businesses with the goal of becoming predominantly a coatings business.
Our actions during the quarter included recording a loss on the sale of SMS of $1.9 million and initiating a comprehensive Board-led review of our businesses with the assistance of leading independent financial, legal and tax advisors.
As I mentioned, our review of the Infrastructure Solutions businesses and associated assets, and the exploration of other capital allocation opportunities to maximize shareholder value is ongoing and I am pleased with the progress the team has made during the quarter.
Finally, given the share repurchases currently and attractive use of our capital, we repurchased over 652,000 shares in the quarter, which brings our total for the year to over 850,000 shares.
While our Metal Coatings segment had lower sales in the third quarter of the prior year, they were able to generate higher operating income and improved operating margins to 24.8%.
Surface Technology sales were still way off at some plants, primarily due to how badly COVID impacted demand for several of their largest customers.
However, during the quarter, Surface Technologies began to reopen powder coating lines in two Texas plants that had previously been idled earlier in the year.
I am particularly pleased with how the Metal Coatings team continues to drive value through outstanding customer service and operational performance while maintaining market-level pricing as they benefited from lower zinc costs during the quarter.
We remain committed to our strategic growth plan for this segment, as evidenced by last week's announcement regarding the acquisition of Acme Galvanizing in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
Although COVID has slowed our normal pace of acquisitions, I am grateful that the team was able to close this acquisition right after the holidays.
As we previously indicated on our second quarter earnings call, the third quarter turned out sequentially stronger, but turnaround activity remained constrained by COVID travel restrictions and continued low demand for refinery products.
Our Infrastructure Solutions segment's third quarter fiscal 2021 sales decreased by 31.5% to $111 million.
This resulted in operating income of $8.7 million as compared to $17.4 million in Q3 a year ago.
As I mentioned previously, the decline in sales was a result of muted refinery turnaround activity in the quarter, particularly in the U.S., as well as lower China high-voltage bus shipments and decreased demand for some of our oil patch related products and services.
WSI's domestic and foreign facilities remained open and working and crews deployed on several smaller projects.
All of the electrical platforms operations also remained open throughout the quarter, as they effectively managed the uptick in COVID cases.
Due to the prolonged uncertainty associated with COVID pandemic on many of our end markets, we will not provide an update to our previously suspended fiscal 2021 earnings and sales guidance range.
However, we believe our fourth quarter will be seasonally lower than the third quarter, but we should generate improved earnings versus the fourth quarter adjusted earnings of last year.
Our low debt level combined with our consistent ability to generate strong cash flow provides us with the ability to effectively manage our debt and liquidity throughout the remainder of fiscal year 2021 and beyond.
We expect to establish guidance for normal cadence for the fiscal 2022, as we wrap up our annual budgeting process and review it at our upcoming Board meetings.
Our Metal Coatings business is operating at a fairly normal level despite some continued restrictions and disruptions in a few of the cities and states we're operating in.
We are confident though that our business remains vital to improving and sustaining infrastructure.
So, we will use the remainder of our fiscal year to position our core businesses to emerge stronger and better equipped to provide sustainable profitability growth long into the future.
For the third quarter of fiscal year 2021, we reported sales, as Tom had noted, of $226.6 million, a $64.5 million decrease or 22.2% lower than the third quarter of the prior year.
Sales were down primarily as a result of lower sales in the company's Infrastructure, Industrial platform as a result of the pandemic and lost aggregate sales from divested entities over the past year.
Net income for the third quarter of fiscal '21 was $19.7 million, a decrease of $2.3 million or 10.6% below the prior year third quarter.
Diluted earnings per share of $0.76 per share declined 9.5% compared to the $0.84 per share in the prior year third quarter.
Despite the lower sales, third quarter fiscal 2021 gross margin improved 100 basis points to 24.1% on a year-over-year basis and was driven by continued strong margin performance within the Metal Coatings segment.
Operating margins of 12.3% of sales increased 80 basis points compared to 11.5% of sales in the prior year.
Operating income for the third quarter of fiscal 2021 decreased 16.6% to $27.9 million from $33.4 million in the prior year third quarter.
Third quarter EBITDA of $39.6 million decreased 15.4%, compared to $46.8 million in EBITDA in last year's third quarter.
As for the year-to-date results, through the third quarter of fiscal '21, we reported year-to-date sales of $643.3 million, 21.2% below the $816.5 million in sales in the same period last year.
Year-to-date net income for the third quarter was $23.5 million, a decrease of $35.4 million or 60.2% from the same period last year.
Year-to-date net income, as adjusted for the restructuring and impairment charges primarily incurred earlier in the year was $39 million, which was $19.9 million or 33.8% lower than the comparable prior year results.
Year-to-date reported diluted earnings per share declined 59.8% to $0.90 a share as compared to $2.24 per share for the same period last year, primarily driven by restructuring and impairment charges, as well as softer markets and travel restrictions resulting from the pandemic, mostly in our Infrastructure Solutions segment.
On an adjusted basis, year-to-date 2021 diluted earnings per share was $1.49 per share, a reduction of 33.5% from the prior year.
Our fiscal year 2021 year-to-date gross margin of 22.2% declined 60 basis points from a gross margin of 22.8% from the prior year.
Year-to-date reported operating profit of $42.8 million was $43.8 million or 50.5% lower than the $86.6 million reported for the same period last year.
Year-to-date reported operating margin of 6.7% decreased 390 basis points compared to 10.6% last year.
On a year-to-date basis, excluding the impact of the $20.3 million of restructuring and impairment charges, operating margins were 9.8% or 80 basis points below prior year.
I'll now turn to discussion regarding our liquidity and capital allocation.
On a year-to-date basis, our net cash provided by operating activities of $59.4 million declined $12.7 million or 17.6% from the comparable period in the prior year, primarily the impact of lower year-to-date net income.
During the third quarter of fiscal 2021, as Tom had noted, we repurchased 652,000 shares of our common stock at an average price of $37.66.
On a year-to-date basis, we have repurchased 852,000 million [phonetic] shares at an average price of $36.31 per share.
Investments in capital equipment to support our business were $8.6 million for the third quarter and $27.9 million on a year-to-date basis, which are in line with our expectations of spending roughly $35 million for the year.
As of the end of our third quarter of fiscal '21, our existing debt of $182 million is down $20.9 million from the end of the year, as we continue to effectively manage our balance sheet.
I will close by sharing with you some key indicators that we continue to monitor.
For the Metal Coatings segment, fabrication activity will remain solid during the balance of our fourth quarter and we are off to a reasonably good start in December.
Within our galvanizing business, we are closely tracking steel fabrication and construction activity.
Zinc costs in our kettles are relatively stable, but we anticipate increases in zinc costs in fiscal 2022 as zinc prices on the LME have been rising for a while now.
The Acme Galvanizing team is being quickly integrated into our existing operating network, bringing our total hot-dip galvanizing locations to a market-leading 40 sites in North America, in spite of recently closing two Gulf Coast locations.
For Surface Technologies, we are primarily focused on growing sales with both existing and new customers and driving operational process improvements.
Within the Industrial platform of the Infrastructure Solutions segment, we continue to carefully monitor the COVID situation in the states with large refining capacities.
Currently, we still are experiencing travel restrictions in some countries.
For the Electrical platform of the Infrastructure Solutions segment, we are carefully tracking proposal activity and experienced solid bookings in December.
We will continue to focus on growing the backlog for many of our business units so that we enter fiscal year 2022 in good shape.
Finally, for corporate, we have strong cash management processes and have further focused our oversight on cash flow indicators and customer credit.
Currently, we have not experienced any slowdown in customer payments.
Post-COVID crisis, we remain committed to our growth strategy around Metal Coatings and achieving 21% to 23% operating margins, including an increased contribution from Surface Technologies.
We believe galvanizing would tend to run to the high end, if not above the 23%, while Surface Technologies is going to have to rebuild this margin profile as customer demand grows.
For Infrastructure Solutions, we will continue to focus on improving operating margins while we complete the comprehensive strategic evaluation of this segment.
We feel quite confident, in spite of COVID and other disruptions, about the actions we have already taken and the restructuring activities that are now under way.
We intend to focus on completing the Board-led review of our businesses and finish this fiscal year well positioned to enter fiscal 2022 with momentum.
Finally, we will remain active in the area of M&A, primarily in Metal Coatings, and we'll aggressively seek activities that support our strategic growth plan.
While pandemic-related deal travel was still somewhat restricted during the third quarter, we are seeing improved travel conditions and have an active portfolio of opportunities that we will continue to pursue.

user
compname reports qtrly earnings per share of $0.76.
azz inc - qtrly earnings per share of $0.76.
azz inc - qtrly sales of $226.6 million, increased sequentially by 11.4% from q2.
azz inc - board authorized a new $100 million share repurchase program.
azz inc - qtrly adjusted earnings per share $0.80.

assistant