Michael M. Larsen
Senior Vice President And Chief Financial Officer at Illinois Tool Works
Thank you, Scott, and good morning, everyone. As Scott said, demand remained strong in Q3 with total revenue of $3.6 billion an increase of 8% with organic growth of 6%. Growth was positive in six or seven segments, ranging from 3% to 22% and in all geographic regions, led by North America, up 9%; Europe, up 1% and; Asia, up 5%. China was up 2% versus prior year and up 6% sequentially. GAAP EPS of $2.02 was up 10% and included a onetime tax benefit of $0.06. Operating income increased 7% and operating margin was flat at 23.8% despite significant price cost headwinds. Enterprise Initiatives were real positive again this quarter at 100 basis points, as was volume leverage, which contributed more than 100 basis points. Thanks to a great effort by our businesses, price cost was EPS-neutral in Q3 but still dilutive to operating margin percentage by 200 basis points as raw material cost increases further escalated in the third quarter. Throughout 2021, our businesses have quickly and decisively responded to raw material and logistics cost inflation with pricing actions in alignment with our policy to fully offset these cost increases with price on a dollar-for-dollar basis. And we've talked about this before, but given the current environment, I'll remind you that we don't hedge.
So current cost inflation is always moving through our businesses in real time. After-tax return on invested capital was 28.5% and free cash flow was $548 million. Free cash flow conversion was 86% as our businesses have been very intentional about adding inventory to both support our growth and to mitigate supply chain risk and sustained world-class service levels for our customers. Overall, for the quarter, then strong growth in six of seven segments and excellent operational and financial execution across the board. Let's go to slide four for segment results. And before we get to the segment detail, the data on the left side of the slide illustrates our strong Q3 results with and without automotive OEM. I wanted to highlight two key points. The first is the benefit we derive from our high-quality diversified business portfolio in terms of the strength, resilience and consistency of ITW's financial performance. which is enabling us, in this case, to power through significant near-term headwinds in our largest segment and still deliver top-tier overall performance. The second is the accelerating growth momentum with strong core earnings leverage we're generating across the company. Excluding our auto OEM segment, given the issues affecting that market right now, the rest of the company collectively delivered organic growth of 11%.
Operating income growth of 14% and an operating margin of 25% plus in Q3. As you can see on this slide, if you eliminate the price/cost impact, our core incrementals were a very strong 52% in the third quarter, which points to the quality of growth and profitability leverage that define the core focus of our business model and strategy. Now let's take a closer look at our segment performance in Q3, beginning with automotive OEM on the right side of this page. Organic revenue was down 11%, with North America down 12%, Europe, down 18%; and China, up 2%. And as Scott mentioned, supply chain-related production cutbacks were much larger in Q3 than what we and most, if not all, external auto industry forecasters were expecting heading into the quarter. While conditions in the auto market are obviously very challenging in the near term, but really good news from our standpoint is that the eventual and inevitable recovery of the auto market will be a major source of growth for ITW over an extended period of time once the current supply chain issues begin to improve and ultimately get resolved. Between now and whenever that is, we will remain fully invested and strongly positioned to support our customers and seize incremental share gain opportunities as production accelerates coming out the other side of this situation.
Turning to slide five for Food Equipment, and organic revenue growth was very strong at 19% and the Food Equipment recovery that began in Q2 continues to gain strength. North America was up 18% with equipment up 20% and service up 14%. Institutional revenue, which is about 1/3 of our revenue, increased more than 20%, with strength in education, up over 40% and health care and lodging growth of around 20%. Restaurants were up almost 50% with strength across the board. Strong demand is evident internationally as well with Europe up 20% and Asia Pacific, up 23%. Equipment sales led the way up 26% with service growth of 8%. In our view, this segment is in the early stages of recovery as evidenced by revenues that are still below pre-COVID levels. Test & Measurement and Electronics organic revenue was strong with growth of 12%. Test & Measurement was up 15%, driven by continued strength in customer capex spend and in our businesses that serve the semiconductor space. Electronics grew 8% and operating margin was 26.8%. So moving to slide six. Welding demand continued to be very strong with organic revenue growth of 22%. Equipment revenue was up 25% and consumables grew 18%. Our industrial businesses increased 32% in the commercial business, which sells to small businesses and individual users grew 18%.
North America was up 24% and international growth was 12% with continued recovery in oil and gas, which was up 9%. Welding had an operating margin of 30% in the quarter. Polymers & Fluids organic growth was 3%, with demand holding steady at the elevated levels that began in Q3 of last year. And as such, had a tough comp of plus 6% a year ago. In Q3, growth was led by the Polymers business, up 8% with continued strength in MRO and heavy industry applications. Automotive aftermarket grew 4% with sustained strength in the retail channel. And Fluids was down 5% due mostly to a decline in pandemic-related hygiene products versus prior year. Margins were 24.2% with more than 250 basis points of negative margin impact from price cost driven by significantly higher costs for resins and silicone. Moving to slide seven. And a similar situation with construction, where organic growth was also up 3% and also on top of a strong year-ago growth rate of plus 8%. All three regions delivered growth with North America up 2%, with residential renovation up 1%, on top of a plus 14% comp a year ago and commercial was up 10%. Europe was up 8% and Australia and New Zealand was up 2%. Specialty organic revenue was up 8%, driven by continued recovery in North America, which was up 15%, and international was down 4%. Equipment sales were up 10% with consumables up almost 8%.
Let's move on to slide eight for an update on our full year 2021 guidance. As you saw in the press release, we're updating our GAAP EPS guidance to a range of $8.30 to $8.50 which incorporates the impact of actual and anticipated lower automotive customer production levels in Q3 and Q4 versus our previous guidance on July 30. We now expect the Automotive OEM segment revenue to be down about 15% in the second half, including being down 20% in Q4 versus the forecast of roughly flat second half auto OEM revenues that was embedded in our previous guidance. All other segments remain on track or better versus our previous guidance. Our $8.40 midpoint equates to earnings growth of 27% for the full year. We now expect full year revenue to be in the range of $14.2 billion to $14.3 billion, which is up 13% at the midpoint, with organic growth in the range of 11% to 12%. Of that organic growth rate of 11% to 12% volume growth, including share gains are 8% with price of 3% to 4%. For the full year, we expect operating margin of approximately 24%, which is up 100 basis points versus last year. And the fact that we're expanding margins at all in this environment is pretty strong performance, considering that we now expect raw material costs to be up 9% or more than $400 million year-over-year, which is more than four times our expectation coming into this year.
Our businesses are on track to offset raw material cost increases with pricing actions on a dollar-per-dollar basis, which, as you know, is EPS neutral but margin dilutive. As raw material costs and consequently, price have gone up more than what we predicted in our previous guidance, we now estimate margin dilution percentage impact from price cost for the full year at about 150 basis points versus our previous expectation of 100 basis points. These margin headwinds though, will be offset by strong volume leverage of about 250 basis points and another solid contribution from enterprise initiatives of more than 100 basis points. Free cash flow is expected to be approximately 90% of net income as we continue to prioritize sustaining our world-class service levels for our customers in this challenging environment, and as such, we will continue to invest in additional working capital to support our growth and mitigate supply chain risks. Our updated guidance is based on an expected tax rate for Q4 of 23% to 24% for a full year tax rate of approximately 19% to 20%.
And as per usual process, our guidance excludes any impact from the previously announced acquisition of the MTS Test and Simulation business. We are awaiting one final regulatory approval and expect to receive that and close the transaction in Q4. So in summary, this will be a record year for ITW with double-digit organic growth, margin expansion, strong cash flow and EPS growth of 25% plus. We expect this strong demand momentum to continue in Q4 and well into next year with an additional boost from automotive OEM likely at some point in 2022 as the supply chain issues there begin to improve. ITW remains very well positioned to continue to deliver differentiated best-in-class performance as we leverage our diversified high-quality business portfolio, the competitive strength of ITW's proprietary business model and our team's proven ability to execute at a very high level in any environment.
With that, Karen, I'll turn it back to you.