We reported another quarter of record revenues of $6 billion, record net income of $1.3 billion and record adjusted EBITDA of over $1.9 billion, ahead of the guidance we recently set of $1.8 billion.
Our 42% quarter-over-quarter growth in adjusted EBITDA was primarily driven by continued price increases on our index linked and spot shipments.
7, the largest blast furnace in North America.
And even though it was clearly a one timer, we did not add back to EBITDA, the vaccination bonus payment of $45 million that was awarded and paid out to our workforce under our very successful vaccination incentive bonus program, which resulted in over 75% of our workforce fully vaccinated against COVID-19.
In the Steelmaking segment, we sold 4.2 million net tons of steel products with a mix of 32% hot-rolled, 18% cold rolled and 31% coated steel, with the remaining 19% consisting of stainless, electrical, plate, slab, and rail.
Our automotive percentage of revenue was 20% compared to 33% just two quarters ago, clearly reflecting the reduced volumes and the legacy annual prices from that sector.
All these events considered, our fourth quarter production should be reduced by approximately 300,000 net tons compared to the third quarter.
Our free cash flow generation came in at $1.3 billion for the quarter, slightly lower than our original guidance due to slow demand pull from automotive, leaving more inventory to close out the quarter than we expected.
This free cash flow generated during Q3 was returned entirely to shareholders in the form of a stock buyback, executed via the complete redemption of our $58 million common share equivalent preferred stock.
I will note that because of the weighted average calculation and the fact that the prefs were outstanding during a portion of Q3, the full $58 million share reduction is not baked into our Q3 earnings per share just yet, we will see a further reduction of diluted share count in the fourth quarter.
In only the last three weeks since the end of Q3, we have already generated approximately $500 million in free cash flow and have allocated all of it toward debt repayment under the ABL.
Because of our strong profitability this year, at some point in the fourth quarter, we will have utilized the majority of our tax NOL balance, leading to an expected Q4 cash tax rate of around 10%.
Prior to the acquisitions of AK Steel and AM USA, we once expected to be utilizing these NOLs for several more years, but the significantly higher profit generation following the acquisitions will result in the consumption of the majority of the $2.5 billion NOL balance within a year of closing the December 2020 transaction.
The $775 million price of the previously announced acquisition of FPT is equivalent to less than two months of our free cash flow generation.
Therefore, even under the current bearish futures curve for HRC, our average selling price should be much higher next year than it has been this year, leading to the expectation of another year of outstanding EBITDA, cash flow generation and debt reduction in 2022.
We were a $2 billion revenue company in 2019, became a $5.3 billion revenue company in 2020 and expected to be a $20 billion-plus company in 2021.
All this growth was achieved preserving and enhancing our profitability as demonstrated by our Q3 numbers of $1.9 billion of adjusted EBITDA and $6 billion in revenues for an EBITDA margin of 32%.
These numbers have gone primarily from the 55% of our business that is linked to an index price with a smaller contribution from the fixed price contracts that were signed before the market price recovery of last year.
We have seen a looming shortage of this type of scrap coming for several years, which partially motivated our $1 billion investment in our direct reduction plant four years ago.
While the majority of scrap companies we looked at had a prime scrap mix of 10%, 15%, FPT stood out with an outsized 50% of prime scrap in the mix.
FPT is actually one of the largest processors of prime scrap in the country, representing 15% of the entire merchant market in the United States.
On top of that, during the last 50 years, the supply of prime scrap in the United States has been steadily shrinking.
That is very conservatively another nine million tons or 40% growth of demand for these products over the next four years.
Pig iron may be the most likely alternative but they still choose emissions that comes attached to pig iron, whether imported or mainly in North America, effectively create a negative impact to the Scope 3 emissions associated to these EAFs.
In that regard, we fully expect that in a not-so-distant future, the Scope 3 emissions will have to be reported as much as our Scope 1 and 2 already are reported today.
For example, our hot-dipped galvanizing line at Rockport Works was built in the '90s, and it's 80 inches wide and that is six foot, eight inches wide, or 2,032 millimeters before a metric system, more than two meters wide.
But the PLTCM and the hot-dipped galvanizing line are only 10 years old.
That's why Cleveland-Cliffs supplies 2.5 times more steel to the automotive industry than the second largest supplier or more than the second plus the third combined.
Case in point, our all-in cash cost of HBI in Q3 was $187 per net ton, a number much better than the cost projected when we first approved the construction of the plant a few years ago.
The $45 million that we paid in vaccination bonus this quarter was by far our best use of cash.
And we are pleased that we reached above 75% vaccination rate across our entire footprint, beating by a large margin the percentage of vaccinated local population in all communities we operate.
Soon, we look forward to welcoming another 600 Cliffs employees from the FPT acquisition.

Summary:
Therefore, even under the current bearish futures curve for HRC, our average selling price should be much higher next year than it has been this year, leading to the expectation of another year of outstanding EBITDA, cash flow generation and debt reduction in 2022.