As you know, I'm joining ESCO from Emerson, where I spent the last 24 years of my career.
I started off in the Corporate Accounting and Finance team back in 1997 and finished up as the Group CFO for one of the few business platforms.
Our solid operating results in Q2 and for the first six months of the year, coupled with our increasing liquidity, demonstrate that the measures we've taken over the past 12 months have significantly mitigated COVID impact on earnings.
And I'm confident that our disciplined approach to operating business will result in continued success, throughout the balance of the year.
Our portfolio diversity allowed us to mitigate this headwind, as we're able to hold our ESCO consolidated adjusted EBITDA constant at $31 billion in Q2, compared to pre-COVID Q2 results from last year.
Additionally, we were able to increase our fiscal 21 year-to-date adjusted EBITDA and adjusted earnings per share from a prior year, despite a 6% decrease in sales.
USD delivered an adjusted EBITDA margin of 26% for the first six months of the year, up from approximately 22% in the prior year's first half.
We delivered free cash flow conversion at 134% of net earnings for the first six months.
Today, we have approximately $760 million of liquidity at our disposal between cash on hand and available credit capacity, while carrying a modest leverage ratio 0.23.
We beat the consensus estimate of $0.55, as we reported Q2 adjusted earnings per share of $0.59 cents of share.
This compares to $0.68 of share in the prior year Q2.
Considering Q2 of this year was influenced by the COVID operating environment, I'm pleased to report that we've delivered adjusted EBITDA of $31 million in the current period, which is equal to the $31 million we reported last year in Q2 pre-COVID.
Our Q2 adjusted EBITDA margin increased at 19% from 17% last year.
Year-to-date our adjusted EBITDA increased over $60 million with an 18% margin up from 17% prior year today.
Over the past year, we took several cost reduction actions across the company, and as a result, we were able to increase our Q2 and year-to-date gross margins to 38.1% and 38.7%, respectively.
We reduced our Q2 and year-to-date SG&A spending by 3% in both Q2 and year-to-date periods compared to prior year.
Q2 orders were solid as we booked $176 million in new business and ended the quarter with a backlog of $522 million with a book-to-bill of 106%.
A bright spot worth mentioning was the order volumes recorded in our commercial aerospace businesses, which grew their backlog $7 million during the quarter.
While we solidly beat Q2, and are ahead of our original plan at the halfway point, we still expect the second half of 2021 to be slightly favorable in comparison to the second half of fiscal 2020, given the various elements of recovery that we are anticipating.
Our Test business delivered another really solid quarter by beating our internal expectations and delivering the EBIT margin of 13%.

Summary:
And I'm confident that our disciplined approach to operating business will result in continued success, throughout the balance of the year.
We beat the consensus estimate of $0.55, as we reported Q2 adjusted earnings per share of $0.59 cents of share.
While we solidly beat Q2, and are ahead of our original plan at the halfway point, we still expect the second half of 2021 to be slightly favorable in comparison to the second half of fiscal 2020, given the various elements of recovery that we are anticipating.