And so with revenue, we were at 25% through the first half through three quarters were exactly still 25%.
With our gross profit margin, we were tracking right on 39% through three quarters last year we had slipped a little to 38%, we're still holding at 39% at this point.
Our operating expenses, you know, we said we would maintain hope to move down slightly if we could as a percent of sales in the first half we had dropped from 35% to 34% and year-to-date, we are now at 33% versus 34%.
Our interest expense is down now at 20%, so we're attracting certainly below 2020 and believe we'll outperform our initial forecast.
On our tax rate, we were 31% versus 23% at -- through the first half, we're now at 27% versus 20% at this point last year.
We do expect that rate to drop in the fourth quarter and certainly to meet or exceed our mid-20% range.
On our debt to EBITDA, you can see we've dropped from 2.5 times to 2.1 times and as we look at it now, we expect to drop further and probably below the 2 times target that we had drawn out.
And as far as net income is concerned, pretty much the same we were at 86% for the three quarters we're at 87% increase.
Definitely a faster rate than our 25% revenue growth and our EBITDA is moving up, as we're now 39% increase from where we were at this time last year.
This is with macro trends as of September 27th of '20 and then comparing that to September 27th of '21, a pretty dramatic increase, it's about 59% increase.
So, soybeans have -- we're at $10.21 a bushel, have increased to $12.85 over that year period, 26% increase.
I think currently or last week we were around 7%, 8%, but -- so it's looking positive for us in that sector.
And then, corn moving from $3.79 a bushel up to $5.42.
So our increase overall in the ag sector was up 38% for US crop.
And he was saying that there are currently 540,000 containers and you're looking at boats here that have about 500 containers on them and 540,000 that are sitting at the port today that have not been -- that are backed up waiting to be unloaded.
So that's about 100 vessels and if you go down there, you can see them anchored all up and down the Southern Coast there.
And the current ability to unload at that port is about 18,000 containers a day.
So if you looked at it and said, well, I guess in 30 days, we would be able to unload those 540,000 containers, which is true, but the problem is that 29,000 new containers are arriving each day.
And just a word, we've got products that we were -- we've been trying to ship to Australia and we can't get a truck to take us -- to take it from the 20 miles from our plant down to Long Beach Harbor.
So, it's created quite a miss and of course, we're dealing with somewhere in that 60,000 to 80,000 truckers short, which makes even once those containers do get offloaded, it gets difficult to actually move them out of the harbor.
The second is on logistics, which we talked a little bit about, but those containers that you saw that come over -- last year, we were running about $2,500 to $3,000 per container.
This year they've picked up to $26,000 per container and that's just bringing them into the US.
I mentioned with China about 8% of our portfolio is dependent on materials from China.
Few years ago, we've started the process of second sourcing, if we could, outside of China, due to the tariffs, which were pushing up to 31%.
Second, we manufacture 46% of our portfolio within our six North American factories.
With regard to our public filing, I understand from my controller that we are in the file and the queue to file and so I expect that we will file within the half hour or 45 minutes.
Overall, our sales were up about $30 million to a $147 million, that's a 25% increase over the prior year.
Our US sales were up about 33% or $22 million and our international sales were up about 16% or $8 million.
And because of the very strong US performance, despite the strong international performance, our international sales reduced to about 40% of total sales, whereas this time last year there were at about 43%.
And that has an impact on our gross margin performance and when I look at the crop business, our gross margin performance improved by about 50%, including the impact of the recovery of [Indecipherable] in the factory.
And you can see that in the third quarter of 2021, on the far right of the graph, our factories cost is about 1.2% of net sales on the recovery and that compares, if you look back a couple of quarters to the third quarter of 2020, you will see that the cost amounted to 2.5% and that's just a reflection of the kind of activity that we managed to record in the factory in this third quarter.
Operating expenses increased by about 24% and that amounted to $9 million.
Our newly acquired businesses accounted for about 14% of the increase and freight accounted for 17%, and then the balance was incentive compensation linked to financial performance, some legal expenses, and increased marketing costs.
And overall our opex as a percentage of sales remained steady at 33%.
Our operating income in the third quarter was up 112% versus last year.
As Eric mentioned, our interest expense continues to track about 24% below the prior year.
And finally, our bottom line is about $5.5 million, which is up 88% in comparison to the prior year.
For the first nine months of 2021, our sales were up 25%.
Gross margin in absolute terms are up 27%.
Overall, operating costs were up 22%, as compared to the net sales increase I mentioned a moment ago of 25%, and operating costs, compared to sales improved 33% in 2021, as compared to 34% last year.
Interest expenses reduced by 23% as a result of cash generated over the last 12 months, and overall, our net income has increased by 87%.
As you can see from this slide, during the third quarter, we increased cash generated from operations by 56%, as compared to the same quarter of the prior year.
Overall, net cash from operations increased by 34%.
At the end of September 2021, our inventories were about $167 million, as compared to $176 million this time last year.
If for a moment, we exclude the impact of products and entities acquired since December 2019, which accounted for $10 million of inventory at the end of Q3, our base inventory decreased by 11% from this time last year.
Our current inventory target for the end of the financial year remains at $155 million that compares with $164 million at the end of 2020.
Our consolidated EBITDA for the trailing four quarters to September 30th, 2021, was $66 million, as compared to $49 million for the four quarters to September 30th, 2020.
This taken in conjunction with outstanding indebtedness translates to borrowing availability amounting to $95 million at the end of September 30th, 2021, as compared to $45 million at the same time last year.
Overall, in summary then, the second -- the third quarter of 2021, we have increased sales by 25%, improved overall margins, we have managed operating expenses, which increased in absolute terms, but declined when expressed as a percentage of sales, our net income increased by 88%.
We have a similar story for the first nine months of 2021, we increased sales by 25%, gross margins by 24%, operating costs have reduced when compared to net sales, our interest expense is down and net income has improved by 87%.
So we mentioned last time that we have, kind of, grown our technology on the green solutions and we've now -- see that we've got 100 different products in our expanding portfolio.
For Q3, we increased about $10 million, which is 26% increase from Q2.
Year-to-date, our revenue is at just $27 million and for the full-year, we're up in our forecast from the $32 million to $35 million range.
We're now sticking somewhere in that $35 million to $37 million range.
And of that, about $10 million is coming from.
And part of that's a result of the 1,500 spot trials we mentioned last time that we were doing in '21, which are basically looking to benefit in the '22 period.
There's over 1 million acres of almonds in California, and we think we've got a nice fit for a biotreatment for canker, a particular disease that hits almonds.
We expect that, that number to double over the next few months and we've identified I think there is 26 here mostly in the Midwest, but also we've got five retailers in the South.

Summary:
Overall, our sales were up about $30 million to a $147 million, that's a 25% increase over the prior year.
Overall, in summary then, the second -- the third quarter of 2021, we have increased sales by 25%, improved overall margins, we have managed operating expenses, which increased in absolute terms, but declined when expressed as a percentage of sales, our net income increased by 88%.