Third quarter earnings per share of $0.15 repr-+esent the companies best third quarter performance since 2016 and demonstrates the extraordinary progress we continued to make in our turnaround strategy.
The robust year-over-year third quarter comparable sales increase of 28% was driven by significant digital and store outperformance across all three brands propelled by the meaningful quality, fit, and fabrication enhancements in our products.
Dramatic improvement is continuing at Chico's and White House Black Market as indicated by our third quarter comp sales increase of 23% and 33% respectively on significantly lower inventory levels.
Soma posted a 30% comp sales increase over last year's third quarter on top of an 11% comp sales increase in the third quarter of 2019.
Approximately 3 million customers representing nearly half of our active customer file are now enrolled in file connect.
Year over year bra revenues was up 38% in the quarter boosted by the fact that our customers returned to the stores or in-person fittings.
In the third quarter, our apparel brand had over 2.3 million views in social selling live videos and real.
We continue to acquire new customers with the customer count up nearly 8% from the prior-year third quarter.
We have successfully opened 64 Soma shop-in-shop inside Chico's stores, which are exceeding expectations, driving new customers to both brands, lifting store productivity, and further expanding our digital business.
For example, at the beginning of the year, we expected to close 45 to 50 locations.
This fiscal year but have reduced that number to 37 due to a combination of favorable store performance and successful lease negotiation.
Our momentum continued in Q3 and we posted another quarter of profitable growth with diluted earnings per share of $0.15 for the quarter, compared to a $0.48 loss per share in last year's third quarter and a $0.7 loss per share for the third quarter of fiscal 2019.
I will note that on a non-GAAP basis before onetime charges diluted earnings per share for the quarter was $0.18.
Third quarter net sales totaled $453.6 million, compared to $351.4 million last year.
This 29% increase reflects a comparable sales increase of 28% and is driven by meaningful improvement in product and enhanced marketing efforts, which drove full-price selling partially offset by 31 net store closures in the last 12 months.
At the brand level, Chico's comparable sales grew 23%, White House Black Market comp sales grew 33.4%, and SOMA comp sales grew 30.2% over 2020.
Looking at the third quarter compared to 2019, our comparable sales continue to improve reaching close to 97% of pre-pandemic 2019 levels with Soma increasing 44% in Chico's and White House Black Market down 16% and 5% respectively.
I would note that this level of sales growth was achieved with much lower on-hand inventories compared to 2019 with Chico's inventories down 46% and White House Black Market inventory is down 39%.
The third quarter gross margin was 40.7%, compared to 22% last year, and 35.3% in 2019.
The current year gross margin rate was our best performance in 18 consecutive quarters and reflected higher full-price sales and improved occupancy leverage.
Moving down the P&L, SG&A expenses for the third quarter totaled $162.5 million or 35.8% of sales, compared to 43.6% of sales in 2020, and 37.3% of sales in 2019.
On a year-to-date basis, we generated $89 million of EBITDA through the third quarter, which is significantly higher than EBITDA of $65 million for all of fiscal 2019.
For the current year nine months, we posted earnings per share of $0.29, compared to a loss of $2.43 per share in the prior year nine months, and a loss of $0.7 for the same period in 2019.
We ended the quarter with cash and marketable securities of $137.5 million.
A slight increase over the second quarter balance even after reducing borrowings on our long-term credit facility by a third with a $50 million debt repayment.
On hand inventories for the quarter remain very lean down 13% relative to 2020 and down 19% relative to 2019.
Our inventory has never been more productive and delivered a very high gross margin for us especially in the apparel brands where on-him inventory was down 38% to last year and down 43% to 2019.
In the third quarter, we continued our lease renegotiation initiative with A&G Real Estate Partners securing incremental commitments of $7 million bringing our total year-to-date commitments to $22 million in rent reductions from landlords.
This is in addition to the 65 million introductions negotiated last year for a total savings of $87 million since we commenced the renegotiation program in 2020.
We have flexibility with approximately 60% of our leases coming up for renewal for kick-outs available over the next two to three years.
During the third quarter, we closed five stores bringing our year to date closing to 23 and we ended the quarter with 1,279 boutiques.
We expect fourth quarter total sales to continue to accelerate closer to 2019 and reach $495 million to $510 million.
We expect fourth quarter gross margin rate as a percent of sales to be a part of 2020 and 2019 and in the range of 33% to 34.5%.
We are continuing to manage our expense structure and expect that the SG&A rate as a percent of sales to be in the range of 32.3% to 32.8%.
We expect our effective tax rate to be approximately 33% for the quarter, which will give us a rate of 24% for the full year.
And we expect to deliver dilutive earnings per share a flat to $0.5 for the fourth quarter putting us well above 2020 and 2019 for both the quarter and the full year.

Summary:
Third quarter earnings per share of $0.15 repr-+esent the companies best third quarter performance since 2016 and demonstrates the extraordinary progress we continued to make in our turnaround strategy.
Our momentum continued in Q3 and we posted another quarter of profitable growth with diluted earnings per share of $0.15 for the quarter, compared to a $0.48 loss per share in last year's third quarter and a $0.7 loss per share for the third quarter of fiscal 2019.
I will note that on a non-GAAP basis before onetime charges diluted earnings per share for the quarter was $0.18.
Third quarter net sales totaled $453.6 million, compared to $351.4 million last year.
We expect fourth quarter total sales to continue to accelerate closer to 2019 and reach $495 million to $510 million.