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 me remotely, again, this will probably be our last remote one, we'll see, hopefully, our last one, is Susan Kreh, our chief financial officer; Molly VandenHeuvel, our chief operating officer; Jessica Moskowitz, vice president and general manager of the consumer products division; Fred Kao, our vice president of global sales for Amlan International; Laura Scheland, general counsel; and Leslie Garber, our manager of investor relations.
And, Leslie, if you would walk us through our safe harbor, please.
Actual results in those periods may materially differ.
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And we certainly can explain what's going on with the margin pressure and really rampant cost increases in my career as president, which started in 1995, I haven't seen this since Hurricane Katrina back in August of 2005 when natural gas went through the roof.
So I think we're seeing it everywhere.
Supply chains are being squeezed.
Materials are being -- demand is exceeding supply, i.e., prices are going up.
And so we are obviously working very hard to get increases to offset these.
But, you know, fell woefully short in the quarter.
And that's why you saw the top line look fine, but gross profit and bottom line are not fine.
Well, let me jump right in.
For the third quarter of fiscal year 2021, Oil-Dri delivered net sales of 76.3 million, which was on par with our record third quarter in fiscal 2020.
Staying with net sales, I would remind you that our third quarter compares to a unique third quarter in the prior year, where we experienced very high sales in our cat litter products that were driven by consumer-pantry loading as the pandemic began to close down many businesses, schools, ball fields, etc.
And consumers stocked up on cat litter, toilet paper, and other essential goods in anticipation of potential supply chain disruptions.
On the positive side, during the quarter, our industrial and sports businesses began to rebound from the pandemic as businesses in ball fields that had been shut down as a result of the pandemic began reopening.
In addition, we experienced steady growth of our agricultural and our animal health products.
The third-quarter net sales in our business-to-business products group decreased 1% from the prior year to 26.3 million.
The higher demand of agricultural and animal health products that I mentioned earlier was offset by decreases in co-packaging, of course, cat litter, a result of the prior year's pantry loading, as well as decrease in bleaching clay sales.
Agricultural product revenues rose 7% in the third quarter compared to the last year, primarily resulting from increased sales to our existing customers.
Sales of animal feed additives increased 3% in the quarter versus the prior year, driven by higher demand within Asia and Latin America that was partially offset by lower revenues in China.
This decreased demand within China was really primarily due to the shift in timing of the Chinese New Year when many businesses temporarily shut down in observance of the holiday.
That occurred during the second quarter in fiscal year 2020, but in the third quarter of fiscal year 2021, making the quarter comparison a little bit differ.
Third-quarter sales of our bleaching clay and fluids purification products declined by 3% from the prior year due to the timing of orders, improved crop conditions that require less material for purification, and the negative impact for the pandemic as many edible oil manufacturing plants have delayed plant tests or have unused product on-hand due to lower production.
The pandemic has also negatively affected our sales of our Ultra-Clear products, which are used for jet fuel processing.
Now switching to our retail and wholesale products group.
Third-quarter net sales reached a record of 50 million, a 1% increase over the strong quarter in the prior year.
A 20% increase in our sales from our industrial and sports products drove much of this growth as commercial businesses are recovering since the pandemic and many sports fields have reopened.
Although we continue to experience the positive impact of increased pet adoption resulting from COVID-19 and the overall macro trend of higher spending on pet, net sales of cat litter decreased in the third quarter compared to the prior year, which, as I mentioned earlier, benefited from the unprecedented pantry loading during the early stages of pandemic.
Now switching to costs.
Our third-quarter gross profit of 16.5 million was approximately 4.9 million lower than the third quarter of fiscal 2020.
This decline can be attributed to a 14% increase in cost of goods sold per manufactured tons driven by higher freight, packaging, materials, natural gas, and nonfuel manufacturing costs.
Domestic trucking supply constraints and elevated fuel costs resulted in a 28% increase in freight costs for manufactured tons compared to the same period last year.
A 19% increase in packaging costs for manufactured tons due to higher resin prices also contributed to the reduction in margin.
Natural gas and material costs for manufactured tons increased by 11% and 9% respectively in the third quarter over the prior year.
Dan mentioned, we certainly did experience some market-based increases in costs, and to offset these significant cost increases, the general managers of our businesses have been implementing and continue to evaluate price increases, many of which are effective as of May 1, which will result in us seeing the impact during our fiscal fourth quarter.
Further, some of those price increases required 90-days notice to our customers and costs continued to rise since those increases were set.
Therefore, we continue to evaluate the needs for further price increases, particularly in our consumer business that is significantly impacted by increases in freight and resin-based packaging costs.
Shifting to total selling, general, and administrative expenses for the third quarter.
They were approximately 1.1 million lower than the prior year, representing a 7% in decrease.
Increased advertising and marketing expenditures were offset by reduced travel, reduced bad debt expense, and a lower estimated annual incentive bonus for fiscal year 2021 compared to fiscal year 2020.
Our effective tax rate in the quarter is worthy of mention.
During the third quarter, it was a negative 1%, compared to 17% in the same period in the prior year.
This reduction reflects not only a decrease in our expected annual taxable income as we have a better line of sight to the impact of cost increases versus price increase on our fiscal year ending July 31, 2021.
It also includes certain employment-related tax credits of which we were able to take advantage during the quarter.
In addition, we were able to claim a new tax deduction for foreign-derived income, which further reduced the effective tax rate for the third quarter.
Net income attributable to Oil-Dri was 2.2 million in the third quarter, compared to 4.6 million during the third quarter of fiscal 2020, resulting from the impact primarily of the increased costs we discussed earlier.
And for the same reasons, our earnings per diluted common share of $0.32, compares to $0.65 in the third quarter of the prior year.
All that said, our financial position remains strong as is reflected in our balance sheet.
We ended the quarter with cash and cash equivalents of 30 million and have very little debt, equating to a debt of total capital ratio of about 6%.
One of the primary uses of our cash flow is to fund our trade working capital.
Taking a year-to-date perspective here, during the first nine months of fiscal 2021, our accounts receivable increased 3.9 million, reflecting our sales growth, as well as a shift in our customer mix, which includes an increase of sales to foreign customers who tend to have longer term.
Our income taxes shifted from a 2.6 million payable balance included in accounts payable as of July 31, 2020, to a prepaid balance of 2.3 million as of April 30, 2021, representing a use of cash of 4.9 million during the first nine months of fiscal 2021.
The decrease in accrued expenses of 4.1 million for the nine months ending April 30 was primarily driven by a reduction in the incentive bonus accrual.
During the year, we used our cash in line with our plan to fund capital investments in our business, including those required for growth and those required to drive cost reductions in addition to normal repair and replacement capital.
We also used cash to opportunistically repurchase stock to help offset dilution that occurs as shares of our restricted stock less.
Year to date, we have repurchased approximately 82,000 shares of our common stock for $2.9 million.
In conclusion, Oil-Dri remains in a strong financial position with low leverage and is well-positioned to capitalize on the strategic investment opportunities that may become available.
And at this time, I would like to open up the Q&A so we can cover the issues that are most important to our investors.
So let's open up the Q&A line.

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q3 sales $76.3 million.
qtrly earnings per common share $0.32.

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