Our Board of Directors echoes this confidence and yesterday authorized an incremental $250 million share repurchase program, underscoring our collective belief in Big Lots' positive growth story and our continued commitment to returning value to our shareholders.
On a two-year basis, Q3 comparable sales increased 12%, while declining 5% to 2020.
Total sales increased over 14% [Phonetic] versus 2019 with 210 basis points of favorability from our net new and relocated stores.
A loss per share of $0.14 was within our guidance range.
Seasonal though was the quarter highlight with comps over 30% on a two-year basis with lawn and garden and Halloween and Harvest all doing very well.
Rewards active members were up over 9% versus Q3 last year.
Now with 22.1 million members still boasting a five-year CAGAR of 10%.
In Q3, rewards members accounted for 64% of transactions and 76% of sales, both up 400 basis points to same quarter last year.
First and foremost, our absolute focus for Q4 has been to position ourselves appropriately with inventory to drive sales and deliver an excellent holiday for our customers, and the quarter has started off strongly with positive 10% two-year comps for fiscal November.
In addition, we have taken pricing actions and we'll continue to do so in response to volatile supply chain costs, while continuing to deliver great value for our customers.
So while we face a big hurdle with the lapping of stimulus in Q1 and Q2 of this year, which we estimate was worth about 5 points of comp on a full year basis and will result in negative comps in Q1 of '22, we expect to deliver overall sales growth in '22 on top of two years that greatly exceeded any prior sales level we achieved as a Company.
Starting with our next generation furniture sales team, this initiative is rolling out presently and is making a strong positive sales and margin impact, driving close to a 50% lift to the furniture business in stores where it has rolled out.
This program is currently in 100 stores and will initially scale to around 500 stores in '22, driving at least a point of comp on an annualized basis for the entire Company.
Broyhill and Real Living each have the potential to achieve $1 billion in annual sales across all home categories and are well underway toward that, both north of $0.5 billion in sales on a year-to-date basis through Q3.
Broyhill accounted for over $160 million in Q3 sales, up close to 50% over the same quarter in 2020.
Approximately 40% of sales came through our home decor, Seasonal and hard lines.
Similarly, Real Living continues on its strong trajectory, almost doubling versus Q3 of last year and delivering over $60 million of growth during the quarter across multiple product categories.
As the first graduate category from the Lot, we have built apparel in a scrappy way to be over $200 million program this year with a clear opportunity for more than doubling sales in the years to come.
These two strategies now in over 1,300 stores have maintained their accretive sales impact and we plan to complete our rollout in '22.
In addition to these strategies, new initiatives such as Lots under $5 offering represents a further opportunity to drive higher productivity.
The Lots under $5 which will roll out in the middle of 2022 will create a value destination for our customers, anchored on surprise and delight treasure hunt products priced at $1, $3 and $5.
In 2021, we are reversing the historical trend of relatively stagnant store count and will increase our net new store count by over 20 stores.
In 2022, we expect that figure to be over 50.
While sales volumes will range depending on square footage and market demographics, we expect at least $120 million of annualized impact from next year's net new stores and that they will deliver 4-wall EBITDA margins of 10% or greater.
Turning to e-commerce, our year-to-date sales growth is around 300% versus 2019, and we have a clear line of sight to e-commerce becoming a $1 billion business over the next few years.
To support holiday, we increased the number of stores providing ship from store fulfillment to 65.
We continue to see over 60% of our demand fulfilled through these new capabilities.
In the coming year, we expect to unveil further capabilities and additional Buy Now Pay Later choices.
Mobile payment now represents 35% of our total online transactions.
As I mentioned, even though our e-commerce channel has grown from close to nothing in 2017, to well over $350 million expected in 2021, huge opportunity remains to further upgrade user experience and drive conversion, where we have already made great strides.
What was less than 20% of our assortment a few years ago is now approximately two thirds of our over 30,000 choices.
Our legacy distribution center network was designed for a $5 billion pick and pack, brick and mortar business model.
Another key enabler as we referenced on the prior quarter's call is our Project Refresh program to upgrade approximately 800 stores, which were not included in the 2017 to 2020 Store of the Future program.
At an average cost of a little over $100,000 per store, far below our Store of the Future conversions.
Project Refresh is underway with around 50 stores being completed in the fourth quarter and we are in the process of finalizing our plans for a more extensive rollout in 2022.
Net sales for the quarter were $1.336 billion, a 3.1% decrease compared to $1.378 billion a year ago, but up 14.4% to the third quarter of 2019.
The decline versus 2020 was driven by a comparable sales decrease of 4.7%, in line with our negative mid single-digit comp guidance.
Two-year comps were 12.3% and was strongest in August, but remained healthy throughout the quarter, driven by basket size.
Our third quarter net loss was $4.3 million compared to $29.9 million net income in Q3 of 2020, and a loss of $7 million in 2019.
EPS for the quarter was a loss of $0.14, in the middle of our guidance range.
As a reminder, we reported diluted earnings per share of $0.76 last year.
Supply chain impacts across gross margin and SG&A accounted for around $0.60 of the year-over-year reduction in EPS.
The gross margin rate for Q3 was 38.9%, down 160 basis points from last year's third quarter rate and 80 basis points below 2019, slightly outperforming our guidance.
The 38.9% rate reflects the freight headwinds that we have discussed, partially offset by pricing increases.
Total expenses for the quarter, including depreciation were $523 million, up from $515 million last year.
While expenses deleveraged versus last year, they leveraged 90 basis points to Q3 2019, driven primarily by efficiencies in store expenses, partially offset by supply chain expense, including the costs of our new forward distribution centers and expense from the June 2020 sale and leaseback of our regional DCs.
Operating margin for the quarter was a loss of 0.3% compared to a profit of 3.1% in 2020, and a loss of 0.4% in 2019.
Interest expense for the quarter was $2.3 million, down from $2.5 million in the third quarter last year and down from $5.4 million in Q3 2019.
With this new facility, we anticipate saving a minimum of $850,000 in interest and fees on an annualized basis and substantially more if we draw on the revolver.
The income tax rate in the third quarter was a benefit of 29.3% compared to last year's expense rate of 24.1%, with the rate change primarily driven by the impact of the disallowed deduction for executive compensation and the favorable impact of the discrete item in the prior year.
Total ending inventory was up 17% to last year at $1.277 billion and up 14% to 2019, somewhat ahead of our beginning of quarter guidance.
We ended Q3 with 1,424 stores and total selling square footage of $32.5 million.
Capital expenditures for the quarter were $46 million, compared to $34 million last year.
Depreciation expense in the third quarter was $35.9 million, up $3 million so the same period last year.
We ended the quarter with $70.6 million of cash and cash equivalents and no long-term debt.
As a reminder, at the end of Q3 2020, we had $548 million of cash and cash equivalents and $39 million of long-term debt.
We repurchased 2 million shares during the quarter for $97 million at an average cost per share of $47.43, completing our August 2020 $500 million authorization.
Under that authorization, we have repurchased 9.35 million shares in total at an average cost of $53.49 per share including commission.
We announced today that our Board of Directors has approved a new share repurchase authorization, providing for the repurchase of up to $250 million of our common shares.
Also, our Board of Directors declared a quarterly cash dividend for the third quarter for fiscal 2021 of $0.30 per common share.
For the quarter, we expect diluted earnings per share in the range of $2.05 to $2.20, compared to $2.59 of earnings per diluted share for the fourth quarter of 2020 and $2.39 cents in Q4 of 2019.
For the full year, we now expect diluted earnings per share in the range of $5.70 to $5.85.
The $0.20 reduction from our prior guidance range is entirely accounted for by additional supply chain, SG&A expense, which I will come back to in a moment.
The guidance does not incorporate any share repurchases we may may complete in the quarter.
In addition, the Q4 sales will see a benefit of approximately 180 basis points from net new and relocated stores.
We expect the fourth quarter gross margin rate to be down around 150 basis points from last year and and also Q4 2019.
For the full year, we expect gross margin rate to be down approximately 70 basis points versus 2019 and approximately 120 basis points versus 2020.
Relative to our prior full-year guidance, forth quarter distribution and transportation expenses have increased by around $14 million.
This includes $4 million related to additional receipt volume during the quarter, in addition to the $6 million we called out on our last earnings call.
It further includes $4 million of higher initial costs related to our new FTCs, $2 million related to fuel and domestic carrier rates, and $2 million related to additional actions we have taken on DC labor rates.
For the full year, SG&A expense dollars will be up around 3% to 2020, driven by the full year impact of the sale and leaseback of our distribution centers, additional supply chain expenses, including investments in our new FTCs, other strategic investments and higher equity compensation expense.
We now expect inventory to end Q4 of approximately 20% to 2019.
We now expect 2021 capital expenditures to be between $170 million and $180 million, including around 55 store openings, of which around 20 will be relocations.
Our capital projection includes approximately 50 Project Refresh stores in 2021.
On a net basis, we expect total store count to grow by around 20 stores in 2021, we expect to further accelerate store count in 2022 and beyond.

Summary:
Our Board of Directors echoes this confidence and yesterday authorized an incremental $250 million share repurchase program, underscoring our collective belief in Big Lots' positive growth story and our continued commitment to returning value to our shareholders.
A loss per share of $0.14 was within our guidance range.
In addition, we have taken pricing actions and we'll continue to do so in response to volatile supply chain costs, while continuing to deliver great value for our customers.
While sales volumes will range depending on square footage and market demographics, we expect at least $120 million of annualized impact from next year's net new stores and that they will deliver 4-wall EBITDA margins of 10% or greater.
In the coming year, we expect to unveil further capabilities and additional Buy Now Pay Later choices.
Net sales for the quarter were $1.336 billion, a 3.1% decrease compared to $1.378 billion a year ago, but up 14.4% to the third quarter of 2019.
The decline versus 2020 was driven by a comparable sales decrease of 4.7%, in line with our negative mid single-digit comp guidance.
EPS for the quarter was a loss of $0.14, in the middle of our guidance range.
We announced today that our Board of Directors has approved a new share repurchase authorization, providing for the repurchase of up to $250 million of our common shares.
For the quarter, we expect diluted earnings per share in the range of $2.05 to $2.20, compared to $2.59 of earnings per diluted share for the fourth quarter of 2020 and $2.39 cents in Q4 of 2019.
The guidance does not incorporate any share repurchases we may may complete in the quarter.
In addition, the Q4 sales will see a benefit of approximately 180 basis points from net new and relocated stores.
We expect the fourth quarter gross margin rate to be down around 150 basis points from last year and and also Q4 2019.
For the full year, we expect gross margin rate to be down approximately 70 basis points versus 2019 and approximately 120 basis points versus 2020.
We now expect 2021 capital expenditures to be between $170 million and $180 million, including around 55 store openings, of which around 20 will be relocations.