For the first quarter, we generated adjusted earnings per share of $1.32, compared to $0.43 in the prior year for an extraordinary increase of more than 200%.
This strong earnings-per-share growth was driven by two factors: significant funeral volume increases, which we anticipated based upon December volume increases of 31%, and a substantial increase in cemetery property sales, particularly preneed cemetery property sales, which exceeded our expectations and significantly enhanced our earnings per share results for the first quarter of 2021.
At a high level, both the funeral and cemetery segments in the quarter had margin improvement of over 1,000 basis points, driven by double-digit top-line percentage growth, coupled with a more efficient cost structure.
Total comparable funeral revenues grew $109 million or almost 22% over the same period last year.
Core funeral revenues grew $95 million due to a 22% increase in the number of core funeral services performed and a 0.5% improvement in the core funeral sales average.
We were very pleased with the core funeral sales average growth of 0.5% in the quarter.
This was achieved despite a modest 20 basis point increase in the core cremation rate which is well below our typical annual expectation of 100 to 150 basis points.
In March, the funeral average rose an impressive 8% when compared to the prior year and more than offset the more difficult pre-pandemic comps in January and February.
Preneed funeral sales production for the first quarter grew an impressive $35.3 million or 16%, which exceeded our expectations.
From a profit perspective, funeral gross profit increased $85 million and the gross profit percentage increased more than 1,000 basis points to 31%, realizing a 78% incremental margin on our revenue growth.
Comparable cemetery revenue increased almost $161 million or 54% in the first quarter.
In terms of breakdown, at-need cemetery revenue accounted for $40 million or about 25% of the growth, driven by more interments performed due in part to the effects of COVID-19.
And recognized preneed revenues accounted for about $120 million or the remaining 75% of the revenue growth due to higher-than-expected preneed cemetery sales production during the quarter.
Preneed cemetery sales production grew an astounding $130 million or 67% in the first quarter.
The majority of this growth where about $85 million was driven by an increase in core velocity or the number of preneed contracts sold.
The remaining growth of about $45 million was about evenly split between increases in large sales activities, as well as a higher quality core average sale.
Cemetery gross profit in the quarter grew by approximately $111 million.
And the gross profit percentage increased more than 1,500 basis points to nearly 41%, realizing a 69% incremental margin.
Back in February, recall that we issued adjusted earnings per share guidance of $2.50 to $2.90 per share.
Primarily, from this preneed cemetery sales production guidance increase, we are adjusting our annual earnings per share guidance to $2.70 to $3, thereby raising our midpoint by $0.15.
This, combined with the capital structure improvements we have made over the last 15 months, are expected to allow us to produce earnings per share, compounded annual growth returns in the low or even potentially mid-teen percentage range for 2022 and 2023, off of a pre-COVID 2019 earnings per share base of $1.90, even while absorbing these temporary pull forward effects.
We are so proud of all 24,000 of our colleagues that have managed through the challenges of the past year and a half.
So we generated operating cash flow of nearly $300 million during the quarter, representing an impressive increase of $118 million or 65% over the prior year.
Cash flow was also affected by cash interests that increased $10 million, predominantly as a result of timing of payments related to the recent debt refinancing transactions, somewhat offset by lower rates on our floating rate debt.
Cash taxes also increased $12 million in correlation with the higher earnings.
So now let us discuss our capital deployment of approximately $270 million during the quarter, covering reinvestment into our businesses, followed by growth capital, opportunistically reducing debt balances, and finally, returning capital to our shareholders.
So again, we invested $34 million into our businesses through $24 million of maintenance capital and almost $10 million of cemetery development capital spend.
Our cemetery development capital was almost $15 million lower than the prior-year quarter.
From a growth capital perspective, we invested about $9 million on growth capital toward the new build and expansion of several funeral homes.
We also deployed almost $6 million toward real estate purchases.
We only spent a small amount of acquisition capital during the quarter, which we believe is just timing as we continue to be confident in our targeted deployment range for acquisitions for the full year of $50 million to $100 million.
We also paid down our credit facility by a net amount of $80 million during the quarter as cash flow generation during the quarter, as I've said, was very robust.
Finally, we deployed over $140 million of capital to shareholders through dividends and share repurchases.
Dividend payments in the first quarter totaled about $36 million or $0.21 per share.
So we're adjusting our cash flow guidance up from $600 million to $700 million to a revised guidance range of $650 million to $725 million.
This represents an increase of about $40 million at the midpoint of our guidance.
And on that note, we're now expecting $180 million of cash taxes in 2021 or an additional $20 million over the $160 million we guided to in February, driven by the increase in earnings.
We also continue to expect the full-year normalized effective tax rate between 24% and 25%.
Our expectations for maintenance and cemetery development capital spending in 2021 remain unchanged at $235 million to $255 million.
Additionally, we continue planning for the deployment of $50 million to $100 million toward acquisitions and around $50 million in new funeral home construction projects.
We continue to be very well positioned with a significant amount of liquidity of roughly $765 million at the end of the quarter, consisting of approximately $245 million of cash on hand, plus just over $520 million available on our long-term bank credit facility.
On the continued growth in EBITDA, our leverage at the end of the quarter fell below three times to 2.61 times.

Summary:
For the first quarter, we generated adjusted earnings per share of $1.32, compared to $0.43 in the prior year for an extraordinary increase of more than 200%.
Primarily, from this preneed cemetery sales production guidance increase, we are adjusting our annual earnings per share guidance to $2.70 to $3, thereby raising our midpoint by $0.15.