Pre-tax income rose 93% and earnings per share rose 85% in the quarter compared to one year ago.
In our first quarter, net signed contracts rose 68% in dollars and 69% in units against a tough comparison in fiscal year 2020's first quarter when orders grew 31% over Q1 of fiscal 2019.
Three weeks into our second quarter, our non-binding reservation deposits are up approximately 34% overall and 38% same store over another difficult comp to last year and despite the cold and snowy weather impacting about one-third of our markets over the past few weeks.
Our backlog, which is up 37% in dollars and 38% in units, provides visibility into the significant gross margin expansion we project this year, especially in our third and fourth quarters as we deliver homes sold after last May.
As a reminder, most of our homes take nine to 12 months to deliver.
According to data released by the National Association of Realtors last week, there is just 1.9 month supply of homes on the market, a record low.
This quarter, our buyers added on average $170,000 or approximately 26% of the base price in lot premiums, options and upgrades.
This is up from about 22% in the first quarter of fiscal year 2020 and our long time average of 21%.
We now operate in over 50 markets in 24 states and have communities in both high growth and a high barrier to entry markets where a tremendous brand and wide range of price points enables us to serve a broad spectrum of buyers.
As the 72 million millennials transition to homeownership, our growing affordable luxury product lines are designed to appeal to these buyers.
This quarter, approximately 25% of our customers were first time buyers.
At the end of our first fiscal year, we owned or controlled approximately 67,700 lots and were selling from 309 communities.
Even though we are selling out of communities faster than anticipated, we expect to grow community count to approximately 320 at the end of Q2 and 340 by fiscal year end, which is an 8% full year increase from the end of fiscal year 2020.
We expect to grow our return on beginning equity by approximately 425 basis points in fiscal year 2021 and we see further improvement in fiscal year 2022.
In fiscal year 2020, we generated over $1 billion in net cash from operating activities, a record.
In fiscal 2021, we are forecasting approximately $750 million of operating cash flow.
In our first quarter of fiscal year 2021, we repurchased $179.4 million of our stock or roughly 3% of outstanding shares at an average price of approximately $44.54 per share.
This quarter, we also repaid approximately $190 million of debt by paying down $150 million of our floating-rate bank term loan and reducing purchase money mortgages on some of our owned land by about $30 million, among some other things.
We also just announced the redemption of the $250 million of 5.625% notes that were due in 2024.
These notes will be retired in early March, and we expect to incur a charge for the early extinguishment of debt of approximately $33 million in our second fiscal quarter.
As a result, we expect to have retired approximately $440 million of outstanding debt in our first two quarters of fiscal year 2021 and for our net debt to capital ratio to be in the mid-30% range at the end of the second quarter.
At fiscal year end, we expect this ratio to be in the mid-to-high 20% range.
Coupled with the planned retirement of our $410 million of 5.875% notes scheduled to mature in February 2022, we expect to reduce our capitalized interest incurred by approximately $40 million annually.
In fact, we took these steps, while simultaneously expanding our land position from approximately 63,200 lots at fiscal year end 2020 to approximately 67,700 at the end of our first quarter.
Optioned land was up to 46% of the total land at the end of our first quarter versus 43% at fiscal year end and 40% one year ago.
Although this ratio may fluctuate from quarter-to-quarter, we are targeting a ratio of 50-50 in the near-term.
It is important to note that approximately 11,000 of our 36,400 owned lots as of January 31 were already contracted for and in our backlog or have model or unsold spec homes on them.
Taking this into account, our optioned land moves from 46% to 56% of total and our supply of owned land moves from 3.6 down on the 2.6 years.
As Doug mentioned, most of our homes take nine to 12 months to deliver.
Our cancellation rate in the first quarter was 1.4% of backlog and 3.7% of this quarter's contracts.
The units in backlog are supported by an average non-refundable deposit of approximately $66,000.
We now expect full year deliveries of between 10,000 and 10,400 units, our highest total ever with approximately 2,175 in the second quarter.
This second quarter delivery guidance is consistent with guidance on our fourth quarter earnings call in December where we guided to 40% of deliveries in the first half of fiscal year '21 and 60% in the second half.
Our average delivered price for the full year is estimated to be between $790,000 and $810,000 per home.
Average delivered price for the second quarter is expected to be between $785,000 and $805,000.
We have increased our projected adjusted gross margin for the full fiscal year by 20 basis points to 24.3%.
We expect adjusted gross margin to be approximately 23.4% in the second quarter.
This implies a 25% gross margin in the second half of fiscal year 2021.
We expect full year interest in cost of sales to be approximately 2.4%.
It is also what we expect in the second quarter versus 2.5% in fiscal 2020.
We have improved our SG&A guidance as a percentage of revenue for the full year by 30 basis points to approximately 11.9%.
Our estimate for the second fiscal quarter is 13%.
In total, we are projecting our full year operating margin before impairments to improve by 60 basis points compared to prior guidance with further improvement expected in fiscal year 2022.
We expect community count to be 320 at the end of our second quarter and 340 at fiscal year end with similar growth in fiscal year 2022.
During the first quarter, we were able to close sales of a parking garage and two sets of retail shops associated with our Hoboken, New Jersey condo projects sooner than originally expected, which generated cash of $79 million and a pre-tax gain of approximately $38 million.
In addition, during the quarter, we generated $75 million of cash by selling land we owned into two newly formed Toll Brothers Apartment Living joint ventures, partnerships in which we retain 25% of the equity.
As a result, our full year guidance for other income, income from unconsolidated entities and land sales moves up $15 million to approximately $80 million for the full year with approximately $7 million projected for the second quarter.

Summary:
Our backlog, which is up 37% in dollars and 38% in units, provides visibility into the significant gross margin expansion we project this year, especially in our third and fourth quarters as we deliver homes sold after last May.
Our average delivered price for the full year is estimated to be between $790,000 and $810,000 per home.
Average delivered price for the second quarter is expected to be between $785,000 and $805,000.