For the quarter, sales increased 25%.
Excluding acquisitions and currency, sales increased 19%.
Operating profit increased 61% to $366 million, principally due to strong volume leverage and reduced spending in the form of lower travel, entertainment, and marketing expenses across our segments.
Earnings per share increased an outstanding 89%.
Turning to our plumbing segment, sales grew 27% excluding currency, driven by strong volume growth at Hansgrohe, Delta, and Watkins.
Our two recent plumbing acquisitions performed well in the quarter and contributed 5% to Plumbing's growth.
North American Plumbing grew 28% led by our wellness business which continue to experience strong demand and begin to comp their March shutdown of 2020.
International Plumbing grew 37% in the quarter as many of our markets returned to strong growth with particular strength in Central Europe and China.
And our Decorative Architectural segment sales grew 15% against a healthy 9% comp from Q1 of 2020.
Acquisitions contributed 2% to our Decorative growth.
Lastly, we actively continued our share repurchases during the quarter by repurchasing 5.5 million shares for $303 million.
We anticipate deploying approximately $800 million toward share repurchases or acquisitions for the full year as we guided on our 4th quarter call.
In addition, we anticipate receiving approximately $160 million for our preferred stock in Cabinetworks, resulting from their recently announced transaction, assuming it closes as expected.
We intend to deploy these funds toward share repurchases or acquisitions, which would be in addition to the $800 million that I just mentioned.
With our strong [Technical Issues] performance, the actions we have taken and will take to offset persistent inflation, the interest savings from our recent bond transaction and the continued strong demand for our products and innovative -- and products brands, products and brands, excuse me, we are increasing our full year expectations of earnings per share to be in the range of $3.50 to $3.70 per share.
This is up from our previous expectations of $3.25 to $3.45.
Turning to slide 7, we delivered a very strong start to the year as first quarter sales increased 25%, currency increased sales by 2% in the quarter and the 3 recently completed acquisitions contributed an additional 4% to growth.
In local currency, North American sales increased 21% or 17% excluding acquisitions.
In local currency, international sales increased 27% or 23% excluding acquisitions.
Gross margin was 35.6% in the quarter, up 80 basis points as we leveraged the increased volume.
Our SG&A as a percentage of sales improved 340 basis points to 17% in the quarter.
We expect SG&A as a percent of sales to increase throughout the year to a more normalized 18%, a certain cost come back along with additional investments in our brands, service, and innovation to fuel future growth.
We delivered outstanding first quarter operating profit of $366 million, up $138 million or 61% from last year with operating margins expanding 420 basis points to 18.6%.
Our earnings per share was $0.89 in the quarter, an increase of 89% compared to the first quarter of 2020.
Turning to slide 8, Plumbing grew 31% in the quarter.
Currency contributed 4% to this growth and acquisitions contributed another 5%.
North American sales increased 27% in local currency or 22% excluding acquisitions.
International Plumbing sales increased 27% in local currency or 23% excluding acquisitions.
Operating profit was $253 million in the quarter, up $94 million or 59% with operating margins expanding 370 basis points to 28.3%.
Given our first quarter results and the current demand trends, we now expect plumbing segment sales growth for 2021 to be in the 15% to 18% range with 10% to 13% organic growth, another 3% net growth from the recent acquisitions and then divestiture of Huppe.
And given current exchange rates, we anticipate foreign currency to favorably benefit plumbing revenue by approximately 2% or $70 million.
We continue to anticipate full year margins will be approximately 18%.
Turning to slide 9, Decorative Architectural grew 15% for the first quarter or 13% excluding acquisitions.
Operating profit in the quarter was $142 million, up $46 million or 48%.
For 2021, we are raising our outlook and now expect architectural segment sales growth will be in the range of 4% to 9% with 3% to 7% organic growth and another 1.5% from acquisitions.
We continue to expect segment operating margins of approximately 19%.
Turning to slide 10, our balance sheet remains strong with net debt to EBITDA at 1.3 times and we ended the quarter with approximately $1.8 billion of balance sheet liquidity which includes full availability of our $1 billion revolver.
Working capital as a percent of sales including our recent acquisitions is 17.5%.
During the first quarter, we continued our focus on shareholder value creation by deploying approximately $303 million to repurchase 5.5 million shares.
In this transaction, we called our 2022, our 2025 and our 2026 debt maturities which aggregated $1.3 billion and refinanced these with a combination of new 7 year, 10 year, and 30 year notes totaling $1.5 billion [Technical Issues].
From an interest perspective, the net effect is a $35 million annualized interest savings.
Due to the timing of this transaction, interest expense will be approximately $110 million compared to our previous guidance of $135 million for 2021 and will be approximately $100 million in 2022.
And two reminders for everyone; first, we will be terminating and annuitizing our US defined benefit plans in the second quarter and we will have an approximate $140 million final cash contribution to these plans to complete this activity.
And second, our Board previously announced its intention to increase our annual dividend by 68% to $0.94 per share starting in the second quarter of 2021.
This will increase our targeted dividend payout ratio from 20% to 30%.
Based on Q1 performance and current robust demand for our products, now anticipate overall sales growth of 10% to 14% up from 7% to 11% with operating margins of approximately 17%.
Lastly, as Keith mentioned earlier, our updated 2021 earnings per share estimate of $3.50 to $3.70 represents 15% earnings per share growth at the midpoint of the range.
This assumes a 254 million average diluted share count for the year.
Year-over-year home price appreciation increased over 17% in March and existing home sales were up over 12%.
Furthermore, the US consumer is healthy with estimated built up savings of nearly $2 trillion even before the new stimulus money and consumers continue to invest in their homes.

Summary:
Our earnings per share was $0.89 in the quarter, an increase of 89% compared to the first quarter of 2020.
Lastly, as Keith mentioned earlier, our updated 2021 earnings per share estimate of $3.50 to $3.70 represents 15% earnings per share growth at the midpoint of the range.