On a per share basis, third quarter earnings were $1.52 compared with $2.52 last year and $1.16 for the third quarter of 2019.
During the third quarter of 2021, the Company recorded pre-tax adjustments to earnings, including a $30 million impairment in one of the company's minority investments, $13 million of costs related to the wind down of the Footaction banner, and $14 million of acquisition and integration costs related to WSS.
As a reminder, last year's third quarter included a pre-tax non-cash gain of $190 million related to the higher valuation of GOAT.
On a non-GAAP basis, earnings per share were $1.93 compared to $1.21 for the third quarter of last year, and $1.13 for the third quarter of 2019.
Number 1 is the democratization of sneaker culture, with more brands and more consumers participating in the ecosystem of sneaker culture.
And fourth, we are focused on leveraging the advantage that having approximately 3,000 stores globally offers us to serve our customers and deliver the types of diversified product offerings, inclusive of apparel, accessories and complementary products that our customers come to us for.
It's been about 18 months since we combined these operating units.
Our first home field store will be the largest format we have in our global fleet at about 35,000 gross square feet.
In fact, there are 12 high schools within a 10-mile radius of the home field location.
To date, we've converted 18 locations, and there are another nine under construction, with over half of them rebranding as Foot Locker.
About 40% is Champs Sports and the remaining 10% of Kids Foot Locker.
We have negotiated or worked with our lease flexibility to close about 85% of the total fleet by year-end.
We are continuing our negotiations with landlords for the approximately 35 stores that will remain open into fiscal '22.
The majority of our top 20 vendors posted gains driving excitement in their respective categories, all of which helped to offset supply chain disruption that impacted the flow of some of our franchisees and launch products.
This momentum continues into Q4.
We delivered 15 exclusive concepts in the third quarter, which were significant in terms of scale and consumer engagement.
Local areas of development for the team in the quarter included enhancing our mobile and app experience where we see 90% of our online traffic come from evolving our launch reservation process with new data algorithms to improve fairness and work toward ensuring unique individual winners and enhancing our buy online, pick-up in store experience, leading to greater adoption.
We now have over 28 million enrolled members with over 3 million joining in this quarter alone.
On a year-over-year comparable basis, our third quarter sales were up 2.2% and earnings per share grew almost 60%.
Impressively, this strong result was on top of the robust 7.7% comp gain in last year's third quarter and speaks to the strong connection we have built with our customer base.
Total sales for the quarter rose to $2.2 billion or a 3.9% increase over the prior year and up 13.3% versus the third quarter of 2019.
This includes a $56 million contribution from WSS since the close of the transaction in mid-September.
For the third quarter, our global fleet was open for 97% of possible operating days with temporary closures in Australia, New Zealand, certain markets in Asia and Germany.
Our year-over-year comp sales through our store channel increased 4.2%.
Store traffic increased approximately 30% compared to fiscal 2020 as our customers continued to want an in-store experience with our multi-brand product assortment.
In our digital channels, which continued to be an important connection point with our customers, sales were down 4.6% in the third quarter as we lapped an approximate 50% increase from last year.
Digital sales penetration rate was 19.8%.
While down 160 basis points in 2020, it was well above the 15.3% from 2019.
The other North American banners posted comp declines with Foot Locker in the U.S. down low single digits, Eastbay down high single digits and Footaction in wind-down mode closed the quarter down over 20%.
Our EMEA fleet was opened 99% of possible operating days in the quarter compared to 96% in the third quarter of last year.
The fleet was open approximately 55% of possible operating days, down from 82% in Q2 of this year.
Gross margin was 34.7% compared to 30.9% last year and 32.1% in the third quarter of 2019.
Our merchandise margin rate improved 470 basis points over last year and 80 basis points over 2019, driven primarily by the meaningful reduction in markdowns.
As a percent of sales, our occupancy and bias compensation costs delevered 90 basis points over Q3 of 2020.
As a reminder, in last year's third quarter, we benefited from $32 million of COVID-related tenancy relief versus $3 million this year.
When compared to Q3 of 2019, we leveraged our occupancy expense by 180 basis points.
Our SG&A expense came in at 20.9% of sales in the quarter compared to 20.1% in the prior year period.
When compared to 2019, our SG&A rate improved by 40 basis points.
For the quarter, depreciation expense was $49 million, up from $44 million last year.
Interest expense rose to $4 million from $2 million in the prior year due to the incremental expense related to the company's new bond issuance.
Within other income, there was a benefit of $26 million or $0.18 per share from the mark-to-market of our investment in Retailers Limited.
Our non-GAAP tax rate came in at 27.8% compared to last year's rate of 30.7%.
We ended the quarter with approximately $1.3 billion of cash, down $54 million from a year ago.
At the end of the quarter, inventory was up 9.1% to last year, driven by our supply chain and logistics team efforts to position us well for the upcoming holiday season combined with the inventory that was included in the WSS acquisition.
On a constant currency basis, inventory was up 8.5% and sales increased 3.6%.
In terms of capital expenditures, we invested $50 million in the quarter, bringing the year-to-date total to $137 million.
This funded the opening of 32 new stores, including new Foot Locker community stores in Downey, California and Brixton, UK.
Champs Sports Power stores in the Bronx, New York and Torrance, California; the expansion of Sidestep in Belgium; and the conversion of 18 Footaction stores.
We also relocated or remodeled 29 stores and closed 80 stores in the quarter, including 50 Footaction stores.
With the addition of WSS stores, we finished the quarter with 2,956 company-owned stores.
For the full year, we now expect to open approximately 144 stores, including eight new WSS stores, remodel or relocate 200 stores and close 370 stores, including about 205 Footaction doors.
Looking forward, we now expect to invest approximately $240 million in capital expenditures this year, lower than our prior guidance of $260 million due primarily to supply chain challenges with the balance shifting into 2022.
First, we returned $30 million to our shareholders through our quarterly dividend program.
Next, we saw opportunity given the value of the company's stock, and we repurchased 2.75 million shares of common stock for $129 million during the quarter.
In total, we have returned $242 million to shareholders through the first nine months of the year through share repurchases and dividends while continuing to make strategic investments to fuel our growth.
We also returned to the capital markets during the quarter, taking advantage of favorable market conditions to create more flexibility by issuing $400 million worth of 4% senior notes due in 2029.
Proceeds from the issuance will be used for general corporate purposes such as repaying $98 million of senior notes due in January 2022 and replenishing our inventory levels.
We believe we are well positioned for the holiday season in terms of both strong customer demand and inventory levels to support that demand.
We are expecting the gross margin rate to be up 540 basis points to 550 basis points for the full year versus 2020, mostly driven by a more rational promotional environment.
Our SG&A expense rate is expected to leverage between 40 basis points and 50 basis points year-over-year.
We expect depreciation and amortization expense to be approximately $190 million, interest expense of about $14 million and our year-over-year effective tax rate of around 28%.
We now expect our non-GAAP earnings range to be approximately $7.53 to $7.60 per share.

Summary:
On a per share basis, third quarter earnings were $1.52 compared with $2.52 last year and $1.16 for the third quarter of 2019.
On a non-GAAP basis, earnings per share were $1.93 compared to $1.21 for the third quarter of last year, and $1.13 for the third quarter of 2019.
This momentum continues into Q4.
On a year-over-year comparable basis, our third quarter sales were up 2.2% and earnings per share grew almost 60%.
Total sales for the quarter rose to $2.2 billion or a 3.9% increase over the prior year and up 13.3% versus the third quarter of 2019.
At the end of the quarter, inventory was up 9.1% to last year, driven by our supply chain and logistics team efforts to position us well for the upcoming holiday season combined with the inventory that was included in the WSS acquisition.
We believe we are well positioned for the holiday season in terms of both strong customer demand and inventory levels to support that demand.