Core revenue growth excludes the impact of currency and the acquisitions and divestitures completed within the past 12 months.
Q3 revenue of $1.59 billion is up a reported 26% and is up 21% core.
This is against the mass decline of 3% in Q3 of last year, so we are well above fiscal year 2019 pre-pandemic levels.
Our Q3 operating margin is 26%, this is up 230 basis points from last year.
EPS is $1.10, up 41% year-over-year.
We continue to perform extremely well in pharma, our largest market growing 27% with strength in both small and large molecule segments.
Our large molecule business grew roughly 52% in the quarter and now represents 36% of our overall pharma revenue, up from the mid 20s just a few years ago.
In chemical energy, our business is recovering faster than expected, expanding 23% in the quarter.
Looking at our performance by business unit, The Life Sciences and Applied Markets Group generated revenue of $680 million.
LSAG is up 22% on a reported basis, this is up 18% core, off just a 4% decline last year.
Our performance is led by strength in pharma, which is up 22% and chemical energy up 31%.
All businesses delivered strong growth led by Cell Analysis at 38% growth and our LC and LCMS businesses, which grew 22%.
The Agilent CrossLab Group posted revenue of $560 million, this is up a reported 21% and up 15% on a core basis.
These results are on top of 1% growth last year.
All end markets grew mid teens or higher with the exception of environmental and forensics, but still grew 9%.
The Diagnostics and Genomics Group produced revenue of $346 million, up 44% reported and up 37% core, compared to an 8% decline last year.
The quarterly results exceeded our expectations, easily surpassing the $30 million revenue milestone, while one quarter does not make a trend, our team has done a tremendous job increasing the output in a high quality manner.
This gives us increased confidence in our ability to exceed the $200 million annual run rate of revenue with existing capacity.
While still less than 10% of DGG revenue, our China business grew 50% in the quarter.
Revenue was $1.59 billion, reflecting reported growth of 26%, core revenue growth was 21%.
Currency added 4.5% for the quarter and M&A added 0.5 point.
Our largest market pharma grew 27% during the quarter, after growing 2% last year.
The performance was led by the continued strength in our Large Molecule business growing 52%, while our Small Molecule business grew mid teens, and all regions in the pharma market grew double-digits.
Chemical and energy also performed well this quarter with 23% growth.
Even after accounting for the comparison against the 10% decline last year, this was clearly our best quarter since the onset of the pandemic.
The diagnostics and clinical market grew 28% against the decline of 10% a year ago, our softest quarter last year.
On a regional basis, all regions grew with China up 41% and Americas delivering 38% growth.
In the academia and government market, we delivered 12% growth as most research labs continue to open globally and expand capacity.
The food market continued its double-digit performance growing 12% on top of growing 1% last year.
Rounding out our key markets, environmental and forensics came in with 5% growth.
On a geographic basis, all regions demonstrated solid growth led by the Americas at 32% and Europe at 23%, both exceeding our expectations.
And as expected, China was up 8% on top of 11% growth last year.
Now turning to the rest of the P&L, third-quarter gross margin was 55.9%, up 80 basis points from a year ago despite roughly 40 basis points of headwind from currency.
Gross margin improvement -- performance along with continued operating expense leverage resulted in operating margin for the third quarter of 26%, improving 230 basis points over last year.
Putting it all together, we delivered earnings per share of $1.10, up 41% versus last year.
Our tax rate was 14.75% and share count was 306 million shares, as expected.
We delivered $334 million in operating cash flow during the quarter, showing a strong conversion from net income and up more than 15% from last year while crossing the $1 billion mark in nine months.
During the quarter, we returned $172 million to our shareholders, paying out $59 million in dividends and repurchasing roughly 800,000 shares for $113 million.
Year-to-date, we've returned $829 million to shareholders in the forms of dividends and share repurchases.
And we ended the quarter with $1.4 billion in cash, $2.9 billion in outstanding debt and a net leverage ratio of 0.8.
We are increasing our full-year revenue projection to a range of $6.29 billion to $6.32 billion, up $125 million at the midpoint from previous guidance and representing reported growth of 17.8% to 18.4% and core growth of 14.5% to 15%.
In addition, we are on track to deliver roughly $100 million in COVID-related revenue in fiscal 2021, in line with our expectations from the beginning of the year and flat to last year.
We expect to continue our strong operating leverage, and so we are increasing our fiscal 2021 non-GAAP earnings per share to a range of $4.28 to $4.31 per share, up 30% to 31% for the year.
This translates the fourth quarter revenue ranging from $1.63 billion to $1.66 billion.
This represents reported growth of 10% to 12% and core growth of 8.5% to 10% on top of the 6% growth in Q4 of last year when we started to see early signs of recovery from the strict lockdowns.
So, our core growth excluding COVID would be comparable to 9.5% to 11%.
We are forecasting higher expenses in the fourth quarter as we invest to maintain our strong momentum, but expect continued operating leverage in excess of 100 basis points.
Non-GAAP earnings per share is expected to be between $1.15 and $1.18 with growth of 17% to 20%.

Summary:
EPS is $1.10, up 41% year-over-year.
Revenue was $1.59 billion, reflecting reported growth of 26%, core revenue growth was 21%.
Putting it all together, we delivered earnings per share of $1.10, up 41% versus last year.
We are increasing our full-year revenue projection to a range of $6.29 billion to $6.32 billion, up $125 million at the midpoint from previous guidance and representing reported growth of 17.8% to 18.4% and core growth of 14.5% to 15%.
We expect to continue our strong operating leverage, and so we are increasing our fiscal 2021 non-GAAP earnings per share to a range of $4.28 to $4.31 per share, up 30% to 31% for the year.
This translates the fourth quarter revenue ranging from $1.63 billion to $1.66 billion.
Non-GAAP earnings per share is expected to be between $1.15 and $1.18 with growth of 17% to 20%.