Broadly speaking, and not surprisingly, our Q3 sales across most markets were negatively impacted by the ongoing pandemic and resulting economic downturn.
Aggregate year-over-year sales were down 60% in the third quarter, driven by factors we're all familiar with: quarantines, travel restrictions and low 737 MAX production.
Excluding titanium armor, ATI's diversified defense sales were up more than 20% year-over-year, led by naval nuclear and military aerospace growth.
From a performance standpoint, the adjusted earnings per share loss of $0.38 per share in Q3 is significantly better than our previous guidance of a loss of between $0.62 and $0.72 per share.
Consider this, our third quarter revenue dropped by more than 40% versus prior year, including a 60% decline in our high-value commercial aerospace business.
Despite the 40% drop in revenue, we posted a 25% year-over-year decremental margin in Q3.
That's a meaningful improvement from the 28% decremental margins captured in Q2, clear improvement resulting from quick action.
We ended the quarter with approximately $950 million of total liquidity, including $572 million of cash in the bank.
As a result, we expect a fourth quarter adjusted earnings per share loss in the range of $0.36 to $0.44 per share, similar to our third quarter's adjusted EPS.
We reduced managed working capital by $115 million in the third quarter in the midst of the steep economic decline.
Our updated capex forecast range is $125 million to $135 million, about 60% of the original 2020 projections.
We are raising our full year 2020 free cash flow expectations to a range of $135 million to $150 million before pension contribution.
At the end of the third quarter, managed working capital was approximately 50% of revenue.
This compares to 30% at the end of 2019.

Summary:
Broadly speaking, and not surprisingly, our Q3 sales across most markets were negatively impacted by the ongoing pandemic and resulting economic downturn.
From a performance standpoint, the adjusted earnings per share loss of $0.38 per share in Q3 is significantly better than our previous guidance of a loss of between $0.62 and $0.72 per share.