Last night, we reported third quarter adjusted earnings per share of $0.89, up from $0.77 in the prior year quarter.
Adjusted segment operating profit was $849 million, up 11% year-over-year and our trailing four quarter adjusted ROIC was 8.3%.
In our optimized pillar, Ag Services & Oilseeds team continue this work to enhance returns, delivering another $100 million in invested capital reductions in the third quarter.
Since 2017, Ag Services & Oilseeds has improved its capital position by exiting from no longer strategic assets including 71 grain origination locations, six oilseeds facilities, 14 Golden Peanut and Tree Nuts locations, and seven oceangoing vessels.
Our Supply Chain Center of Excellence is delivering as well using our enhanced processes and tools, as well as integrated planning between commercial, supply chain and operations we recently piloted changes at the nutrition facility that are on track to unlock a 20 plus percent increase in production capacity at that location.
By the end of the third quarter, our team identified and executed on readiness initiatives that unlocked almost $1.2 billion in run rate benefits.
And now, I'm pleased to announce that we are on track to achieve $1.3 billion by the end of the year.
Such as our Strive 35 goals to improve our performance on greenhouse gases, energy, water and waste.
And of course, readiness is one of the key elements, powering the growth algorithm we laid out at the beginning of the year, because of its success, along with tremendous progress in our harvest and improved initiatives, we now expect to meet or exceed the high end of our $500 million to $600 million goal for targeted improvements in 2020.
Revenue is up 5.7% on a currency-adjusted basis for the first nine months of the year.
As Juan mentioned, adjusted earnings per share for the quarter was $0.89, up from the $0.77 in the prior year quarter.
Excluding specified items, adjusted segment operating profit was $849 million, up 11%.
And our trailing four-quarter average adjusted ROIC was 8.3%, 255 basis points higher than our 2020 annual lack.
Our trailing four-quarter adjusted EBITDA was about $3.7 billion.
Our cash flows are strong, as we generate about $2.3 billion of cash from operations before working capital for the first nine months of the year.
The effective tax rate for the third quarter was a benefit of approximately 13% compared to an expense of 19% in the prior year.
Absent the effect of earnings per share adjusting items, our effective tax rate was approximately 11%.
These actions were not about cash flow or liquidity as we had cash and available credit capacity at the end of the quarter of almost $10 billion.
Return of capital for the first nine months was $724 million, including around $115 million in opportunistic share repurchases, the vast majority of which were executed earlier this year.
We finished the quarter with a net debt to total capital ratio of about 27%, down from the 30% a year ago.
Capital spending for the first nine months was about $560 million.
We expect capital spending for the year to be around $800 million that we previously indicated and well below our depreciation and amortization rate of about $1 billion.
Other business results were lower than the prior year quarter, driven by lower ADM investor services earnings and captive insurance underwriting losses, including a $17 million settlement impact for the high water claim with Ag Services and Oilseeds.
In the corporate lines, unallocated corporate costs of $196 million were higher year-over-year, due primarily to variable performance-related incentive compensation accruals, which were low in the prior year.
Corporate results this quarter also included $396 million related to the early debt retirement charges that I referred to earlier, which is an earnings per share adjustment item.
Looking forward, we expect unallocated corporate expenses to be in line with our initial $800 million guidance for calendar year and Q4 net interest expense to be slightly lower than Q3.
We also expect a loss of about $50 million in other business in Q4 due to anticipated intercompany insurance claim settlements.
Ag Services also benefit from a $54 million settlement related to the 2019 US high water insurance claims, which is partially offset by an expense in captive insurance.
Both Ag Services and Crushing saw expanding margins during the quarter resulting in around $155 million in total negative timing effects, which led to lower results.
With results significantly higher than the third quarter of this year, though lower than Q4 of 2019, which included a $270 million benefit for two years of the retroactive biodiesel tax credit.
The global population is growing, and consumer behavior is shifting in ways we couldn't have predicted only 10 or 15 years ago.
Global sales of specialty ingredients across both human and animal nutrition are as much as $85 billion and growing at a rate of 5% to 7% per year.
For example, global market for functional beverages could be as large as $190 billion in 2024.
The global dietary supplement market could be worth more than $77 billion in that same time frame.
Global retail sales of alternative proteins are already a $25 billion market today, with a projected growth rate of 14% per year.
Global retail sales of pet food are projected to grow at 4% per year, reaching $120 billion by 2024.
In that time, we built or expanded more than 16 facilities from our pea protein complex in the US through our network of free mix plants in China.
From our more than 50 global customer innovation centers to daily virtual innovation and tasting sessions.
All in all, we have invested just over $6 billion to build our global leadership position in nutrition.
Since 2014, we've increased our annual revenue by $3 billion.
And by the end of this year, we'll have grown operating profits by more than $300 million over those six years, more than double.
In Animal Nutrition, only 1.5 years after we completed our Neovia acquisition, we can look back on a successful integration in which we exceeded our synergy goals and built a global business that offers a full portfolio of on-trend items from pet treats to enzymes to ingredients for aquaculture to meet evolving customer needs.
These are the reasons we expect to continue to lead the industry outpacing the market and operating profit growth, and we remain confident in reaching $1 billion in OP in the medium-term future.

Summary:
Last night, we reported third quarter adjusted earnings per share of $0.89, up from $0.77 in the prior year quarter.
As Juan mentioned, adjusted earnings per share for the quarter was $0.89, up from the $0.77 in the prior year quarter.