John G. Sznewajs
Vice President and Chief Financial Officer at Masco
Thank you, Keith, and good morning, everyone. As Dave mentioned, my comments today will focus on adjusted performance excluding the impact of rationalization and other one-time items.
Turning to slide seven. Demand for our industry-leading brands remains strong and our teams executed exceptionally well in a dynamic environment. This resulted in another strong quarter of double-digit top line growth. Sales increased to 11% against an impressive 16% comp in the third quarter of last year. Net acquisitions contributed 2% growth and currency had a minimal impact.
In local currency, North American sales increased 9% or 6% excluding acquisitions. The strong performance was driven by outstanding execution to achieve volume growth in propane, faucets, showers and spas, and by increased selling prices. In local currency, international sales increased a robust 15% or 18% excluding acquisitions and divestitures against the healthy 9% comp.
Gross margin of 34.2% is impacted by higher commodity and logistics cost in the quarter. We expect this inflation will have peak impact on our P&L in the fourth quarter. We will offset these costs with additional pricing actions and productivity initiatives. We expect the exit this year price cost neutral.
SG&A as a percentage of sales was 16.7%. As planned during the quarter, we increased certain expenses such as headcount, advertising and marketing to a more normalized level to support our brands. We expect this increase to continue into the fourth quarter and these costs continue to normalize. Operating profit in the third quarter was $385 million, with an operating margin of 17.5%, our EPS was $0.99.
Turning to slide eight. Plumbing growth continued to be strong with sales up 16% against the 13% comp in the third quarter of last year. Net acquisitions contributed 2% to its growth and currency contributed another 1%. North American sales increased 16% or 10%, excluding acquisitions. Delta led this outstanding performance, delivering another quarter of robust double-digit growth driven by strength in e-commerce and trade channels. With strong brand recognition and channel relationships, Delta continues to drive consumer demand for its products.
Watkins Wellness also contributed to growth in the quarter with both demand and our backlog remained strong. International plumbing sales increased 15% in local currency or 18%, excluding net acquisitions. Hansgrohe delivered strong growth and demand continue to improve across Europe and numerous other countries. Hansgrohe's key markets of Germany, China and the UK, all grew double-digits in the quarter.
Segment operating profit in the third quarter was $248 million and operating margin was 18.7%. Operating profit was impacted by the planned increases in SG&A that I mentioned earlier, as well as an unfavorable price/cost relationship. This was partially offset by strong incremental volume. We anticipate additional SG&A increases in commodity inflation will most significantly impact this segment's operating margins in the fourth quarter. We will mitigate the commodity inflation with additional pricing and productivity actions, we expect to be price cost neutral as we enter 2022. For full-year 2021, we continue to expect Plumbing segment sales growth to be in 22% to 24% and operating margins of approximately 18.5%.
Turning to slide nine. Decorative Architectural sales increased 4% for the third quarter and 3% excluding acquisitions. Our DIY paint business declined mid single-digits in the quarter against more than 25% comp in the third quarter of last year. Despite this decline, DIY paint demand appears to be stabilizing, as we have seen relatively consistent demand since July. When comparing to Q3 2019, our third quarter DIY sales are up over 20%. Our propane business delivered exceptional growth of more than 45% in the quarter, as paint contractors are applying top rated Behr paint to more commercial and residential projects. We expect demand in this channel to remain strong as propane contractors report growing demand for their services. When comparing to Q3 2019, our third quarter PRO sales are up over 35%.
Segment operating margin in the third quarter was 19% and operating profit was $166 million. Operating profit was impacted by lower volume, with increased commodity costs and higher marketing expense to support the new Behr Dynasty product launch, partially offset by higher net selling prices. For full-year 2021, we continue to expect Decorative Architectural sales growth will be in the range of 2% to 5%, and operating margin to be approximately 19%.
Turning to slide 10. Our balance sheet is strong with net debt-to-EBITDA at 1.3 times. We ended the quarter with approximately $1.9 billion of balance sheet liquidity, which includes full availability of our $1 billion revolver. Working capital as a percent of sales, including our recent acquisitions, was 17%. Finally, we repurchased more than 15.2 million shares in 2021 for $878 [Phonetic] million. This is approximately 6% of our outstanding share count at the beginning of the year. We expect to deploy approximately $150 million for share repurchases or acquisitions in the fourth quarter as we continue to aggressively return capital to shareholders.
And turning to our full year guidance, we have summarized our expectations for 2021 on slide 11. We continue to anticipate overall sales growth of 14% to $16, and operating margin of approximately 17.5%. Lastly, we are maintaining our 2021 EPS estimate midpoint, but narrowing the range to $3.67 to $3.73 growth at the midpoint of the range. This assumes the 252 million average diluted share count for the year. Additional modeling assumptions for 2021 can be found on slide 14 of our earnings deck.
With that, I'll now turn the call back over to Keith.
